well... foxy is officially eight weeks old on sunday - who would've thought! and so far so good. We had our initial rush of enthusiasm and what a friend described as 'tire kickers' - those who swing by the latest whatever, maker their sweeping proclamations, and then move on. admittedly we had our fair share of teething problems as does any new establishment, but we've gone a long way towards addressing them. we've got a review coming out in The Age in the next few weeks and I already know that they've canned our service - a fair call I guess from where we were at at the time and a fair wakeup call, but its a long way from where I feel we are at now which is more confident and more established with better procedures in place Coffee is getting consistently better also - though I guess I had better be saying that coz I'm the main guy on the machine! BUt we've managed to identify quantities for ordering and ideal post roast consumption dates which means that we're hitting our sweet spot more often and with greater accuracy - we're also getting plenty of coffee cups coming back with tell-tale finger marks where folks have scraped out the cups to enjoy every last morsel - which appears to be the case more often than not so that's a great accolade! The extreme fluctuations in weather are the main detriment to trade now as we depend upon walk by traffic or at the very least on folks to be out and about and when its over 30C people are just not out on the street! We've also scaled back the roster to more manageable levels which means that payroll's not eating into the overheads as much so that feels good And the place is still constantly changing, constantly evolving, with banquette seating on the way which will dramatically increase our seating capacity, and evaporative cooling to help deal with the heat. We're also tiding up the rear courtyard by trimming the elm tree - I lobbed off a few branches yesterday with Josh, young Kiwi and resident whiz! Getting a nice consistency and mix f clients through the week now as well and weekends are consistently busy so that feels like a solid foundation to build upon, and we're covering our cots at the moment which I think is good for a cafe which is less than two months old, but of course we're always striving to improve upon what we do In the process of applying for a liquor licence a the moment - haven't submitted the paper work yet as we're still ironing out some of the logistics, but we should be better placed to roll out that process next week - put some signage up in the store already asking for feedback from the local community - being in a residential area I expect that there will be a few objections - but we're only applying for a licence from 11am till 7pm - so that should go a long way towards answering local concerns Anyway that's our news for now - I'll keep you posted! Cheers, Pat
