Day in the Life: Tom, Café Owner

A café with a team of two has no back office, which means the back office is Tom, after close.

He owns the place and one of the two is on the coffee, so any job that is not making or serving lands on him. Ordering, rostering, the socials, the supplier chase. It is the work that keeps a small shop small, because the owner becomes the bottleneck, and a bottleneck cannot grow.

This morning the roaster order went off overnight, sized to what the week’s bookings and last week’s sales say he will pour, not the round number he used to guess at. The milk order adjusted for the school holidays. The pastry count nudged up for Saturday’s market.

In the lull he would have lost to admin, the week’s social posts are drafted and queued in the daggy, friendly voice his regulars know, not in marketing-speak. He swaps a photo, fixes a caption, and they are scheduled. A catering enquiry from the website already has a draft reply with availability and a rough quote, waiting on his yes.

It works because the parts talk to each other. The bookings, the till, the supplier orders, and the socials are wired together, so the assistant works from what is happening in the shop that morning rather than from whatever Tom last had time to type in.

By close the till is reconciled, tomorrow’s order is set, and the weekend is planned. The back room being tidy is the least of it. A two-person shop can carry the load of a much bigger one, and Tom spends his hours on the counter with the customers, which is the part that grows the place.

Priya runs her electrical business on the same kind of plumbing. Her day is here.