Week 19

Anywhere I worked before creating grammes, I was always part of a suffisant team. What I mean, is that we were often just the right amount of people in the team for the work that needed to be done
(with some good and bad exceptions, IYKYK).
This week, Carlos was unwell for 5 days. We had to adapt.
Usually the best way to compensate is by limiting the range of products. It also implies that someone's 38 hours of work has to be repercuted on the others. With Mother's Day last sunday,
we couldn't afford to miss out, so we kept the same range.

Back then, I would always boil in my head, complaining about the management. I was thinking that it would be way easier to hire an extra person in each station in order to be safe in these situations.
But now, we are the management, and I still complain.
Unlike when someone is going on vacations, we could not anticipate with creating more stock on some items, or being mentally prepared to take over more work than we already have.
So I put my alarm earlier, did the work that needed to be done.
Like the old days. It was slightly bitter-sweet though, as it kind of felt like a step back, but it was temporary.
At the moment, it is still tricky to justify hiring more personel because we lack of space to be more than 3 people at the same time in the kitchen, and we are close to being at our maximum production capacity based on our actual range. On the FOH side, the flow of people coming to the shop is easily manageable by one person on weekdays. It might change with the new counter with the espresso machine and pastry display.
On another hand, the lack of applicants is also an issue and prevents us from growing faster. We are not the only ones in the industry to struggle with that unfortunately.

Thanks to the improvment of everyone in the team (Tossia, Romi, Dav, Carlos), we are finally opening an extra day, adding Thursday to our times. We are super curious about how it will go,
but we are ready to welcome you !

This week, we will not offer any pastry of the weekend because Nawal and I are going to a wedding in the region of Paris.
As it will be the very first time that the shop will be open with neither of us on site, we will only offer the regular range.
It will be a good test to see how the team will handle it on their own, but also for us to "let go" a bit of the controle we've had over the shop, and fully trust them.
I am sure they'll managed like champions.

That would be all for today.

See you soon !

Reminder :
- This week, we are open :
Wed-Thurs-Fri from 8:00 till 14:00,
Saturday from 9:00 till 16:00.
- Pre-order your treats for Saturday is highly recommended.
- Make sure you come at the right time based on your time slot, not earlier. But no worries if you are a bit late.
- Two lines are available : one for Pick-up on Churchill-laan, one for walk-ins on Maasstraat.