Culture of Excellence-business structure

Owners and Managers,

In the previous post I mentioned that of course, to achieve a culture wherin’ staff are truly excited about your business, it is necessary to remain fairly small and tightly focused. In an artisan business it is the passion of the owner that is the seed that can grow into a true culture of excellence… but only if it is nourished and protected while it grows.

In my experience a person that is passionate about coffee might not be able to handle the mind numbing detail necessary to run a coffee business and still maintain that initial passion. They will wear out trying to handle accounting, payroll, taxes, inventory, store management, scheduling…and on and on…Business administration is a separate skill from creating beauty and inspiring others to follow your dreams. So if the business is too small the owner will burn out trying to do everything themselves. If it is too big the owners passion will be diluted through intermediaries that conduct training for them. For us the Goldilocks Zone is three stores and a roasting plant.

So let’s analyze Vivace for clues why my staff and myself can remain fresh and excited after 32 years of doing this.

First I stop in at all three coffee bars, and the roasting plant, daily. I show up and make sure equipment and techniques are up to par. I taste a lot of coffee with them. And I get excited with them to see beautiful latte art and perfect pours when they come out … Staff know this and it keeps them sharp and excited to excell at the art. So, in general, the size of the business is important. If it is too small you cannot afford bar managers and accountants and you will eventually fail. If it is too large you cant keep up with staff performance and training personally and the excitement gets watered-down.

Bar Management
I have a general manager with 18 years of experience, and a bar manager (also 18 years with VIvace), dedicated mainly to our Alley 24 location. They protect me from the daily blizzard of details required to run the bars. I totally trust them to handle the shops and they have meetings with me weekly.

Accounting
My partner handles this as her main responsibility. She has one professional accountant to assist in her department. This area also includes payroll and taxes.

Macchinesti-the machine specialist.
For all the coffee equipment, especially grinders, I personally maintain them. On the espresso machines, major repairs are usually delegated but “tuning” the temperatures and pressures, and handling small issues like replacing group gaskets, is done by myself. And, as I have mentioned making this my immediate priority when I visit reinforces my stated drive for perfection.

Training
This is my primary responsibility. I’m directly teaching fundamentals such as flow rate control, distribution and dosing, rinsing and machine cleaning, milk steaming and latte art. They see me monthly for the first few years at Vivace. When I personally teach them this culinary art the message is clear-Vivace is an authentic artisan business. The coffee matters.

We have one additional dedicated trainer for extraction fundamentals whose responsibilities also range into line management, and alternative milks. Also, we have a dedicated latte art trainer.

Training is where it all happens…we share the frisson of excitement at creating and tasting perfect shots. And we share the thrill of each employees first success pouring hearts, rosettas, winged hearts and other patterns as they learn them. This year some staff that have been with me for eight years were thrilled to free-pour Christmas trees for our lock-down holidays. (I love it when long-run pro baristi are still excited). And training each one keeps me fresh also because each person is a unique puzzle to figure out how to best teach them the skills required while instilling ownership of this art form. And, as baristi get better we honor their work with our online latte art gallery.

So the takeaway from this short series I’ve written is that authentic passion is required in the owner to be the seed of the culture of excellence surrounding your company. And that passionate person has to be protected by dedicated partners and managers to survive the realities of small business. The size of the company has to be small enough for the owner to personally check in daily at all stores, but big enough to have professional bar management and accounting to run the machine that is a business.

And, an artisan espresso business, once established, is a tough little entity, financially stable through the ups and downs of economic cycles. And it brings discerning and intelligent customers into the door which serve to reinforce staff interest in the art.