Hardest Thing Ever
Work, work, and work. We have been pulling off 7-day workweeks ever since we opened Lily’s Creperie to the public on July 5th. It has been a great, yet tiring experience. We knew we would be busy, but neither my partners or I thought it would be this difficult to handle every piece of work at the restaurant — reason I’m thankful for having great, dedicated, and passionate friends, business partners, and team members including our Store
Manager, Chef, and Kitchen staff.
This first month of being in business has taught us essential skills on how to run a business. For instance, inventory and employee management. We thought we had a good idea and game plan for having our inventory replenished every week, but found out that game plans as most plans in life change all the time.
We initially started fulfilling the restaurant’s inventory every Thursday and Sunday afternoon at different local groceries; however, the manual process of checking for every single item and writing it down in a paper got time consuming and was not very efficient, and we often miss one or two items, if not more. This is when we realized we needed to implement processes and try a new shopping schedule. We thought of it and Andy put our ideas into action by creating master inventory list so our Store Manager and Chef could go through it quickly and decrease the possibility of missing items during the weekly grocery run. Solved, or at least we hope so.
Second, we started business with most of the same staff members from the previous business. All great, hard working and friendly people. No complaints so far. Then one employee decided to go on vacation, then another followed, then another got sick, then another had to deal with personal issues — this is all fine. I am a true believer that people should deal with their personal life first and solve that before coming to work — essentially, life comes before business. Anyways, we started running low in our restaurant family headcount, so we decided it was a good time to put the “HELP WANTED” sign out and post a Craiglist ad to attract people willing to work in a fun yet demanding work environment with flexible hours and days. Little did we know how difficult it is to find good employees who can get up and running quickly. It is challenging, very difficult. So far we have got a decent amount of candidates through friend referrals who are now training and working at the store. However, WE NEED MORE and BETTER, so any help and referral is welcomed with open arms — send me a message if you know of someone who is looking for a job in San Mateo with possibilities of growing inside the business since we have plans of expanding around the Bay Area within the next 12 to 18 months.
Do you have any great inventory and/or employee management trick or tip? Share it with us! 😀
Originally published at rchrdchn.com on August 7, 2016.
Richard Chan 