Into the frying pan…

Wow! What can I say?

Firstly, sorry I haven’t blogged more regularly. I wish I had because blogging does give you a great opportunity to gather your thoughts. It’s been a fascinating, exhausting, revelatory, scary, frustrating yet satisfying first couple of weeks. I’ve metaphorically thrown my business plan in the bin and retrieved it several times (it might help if I actually wrote one). I’ve had moments when I’ve questioned my sanity in doing this, although this is strongly connected to waking up to the morning alarm while it is still dark. And I’ve had moments of deep, deep satisfaction, usually when a customer has praised my food or my coffee, but occasionally just because I’m chopping away at a carrot or mushroom or whatever, and it feels good to be doing so to earn a crust.

The biggest surprise is coming to terms with a change of career. Having thought and planned and dreamed for so long of opening my own food joint, it is weird to finally be here. And odd too to no longer be a bookseller, which is pretty much what I have done since 1990, give or take a spate of child-rearing and a manic diversion into shopping professionally at IKEA. It is very strange to be back in the world of not really knowing what I am doing professionally, a feeling I haven’t really had for quite some time. Luckily parenting is quite good preparation for this, as that particular practice remains a mystery to me after a full decade of experience. But having taken the plunge of both changing my career and becoming self-employed, I can simultaneously see why people often stick to what they know whilst wishing I had done this earlier.

There has been an element of fantasy or unreality about the whole affair, mainly because of the newness of the project, but this has been magnified by the festive season. So Jenni has been on holiday and looking after the kids full-time, and many of the days the cafe has been open have been ‘unusual’ days, which don’t really give a good guide to what an average week is likely to bring. I have also been waiting for some of the more tiresome elements of starting a new business to fall into place, such as bank accounts, refuse collections, utility provision and phone lines (don’t get me started on this last one!). A very clever person should start a business that starts businesses for people like me, i.e. does all the tiresome stuff mentioned above to leave one free to do the good bits like making cookies or buying new pans. Suffice to say that the business feels a lot more real now that I can bank my takings and stop paying for things from our joint bank account.

I think the real Up of the business so far has been the tremendous encouragement I’ve received from friends and customers. People clearly feel genuinely pleased for me to have reached a long treasured goal, and also seem to relish the idea that I’m having a go, taking a chance. This encouragement is hugely important, because there are downsides to this project that can give me the collywobbles at times, and it’s vital to me that I feel the uplift that being part of a community brings. I’ve also really enjoyed the interaction with other small businesses, mainly suppliers who are making their own way as self-employed, self-reliant people, and as such understand where I am in my journey. The one-to-one nature of these relationships is so different to the interactions with bigger corporate bodies, which get caught up in their own cultures, and the ‘individuals’ within them don’t seem to have any notion of how embedded they are in those cultures, and how alienating it is to deal with those cultures from the outside. A free tip from me to the big businesses of this world: there are few things more annoying than listening to recorded messages boasting of the brilliance of your customer service whilst being on hold trying to get some even half-decent customer service.

The first twelve days of being open for business (interrupted by some festive activities planned long before the cafe popped into our lives so suddenly) have been not so much a learning curve but a learning waaahh!what’s happening?!? Whilst it is possible, and indeed highly advisable, to envisage outcomes, make plans, write lists etc., it has been my regret at times in the last couple of weeks that I didn’t try to get myself a job in a kitchen before taking the plunge myself. Doing my diploma at Ashburton Cookery School in February was a bloody good idea, and gave me a great grounding in the discipline of cooking professionally. But it’s not quite the same as the real thing: making five different breakfasts for nine people simultaneously, and trying not to drop anything, or burn myself, or burn the food, or forget the coffee, and trying to remember to smile and be hospitable and actually make the food well, and present it well, and check the loos, and turn up the extractor fan, and refill the reservoir in the coffee machine, and… all the other things I’ve forgotten or not remembered or don’t know yet. It’s been great fun, and scary as hell.

At this point I’d like to say a big thanks to Majid from the Blue Man Restaurant, or Magic as everyone calls him. Magic came into the cafe on the first or second day, and I managed to not really get round to making his breakfast while trying to be pleasant and chatty to my other customers. He postponed his breakfast order to another day, told me who he was, what he did now, and what he used to do: run a breakfast cafe all on his own. He offered his help and advice free of charge or obligation, and a couple of days later I popped in to see him at The Blue Man. It was an invaluable hour that has already made my life a lot easier, not least his advice on pre-cooking the mushrooms and adding a little lemon to preserve their colour. I know I’ll be calling on him again in future.

Magic’s wisest piece of advice is to keep things simple. Get good at one thing first: making breakfasts. The premises in Ship Street Gardens have housed a breakfast cafe for the best part of twenty years and I’ve already had customers telling me of its past incarnations. There have been many people already saying they are glad the place is open again so that they can get a good, hot breakfast in The Lanes. And that really is what people have wanted so far. I’ve cooked stew, ratatouille, soups etc but what people are asking for, expecting even, is a cooked breakfast. Magic’s point was that if I concentrate on getting that right, becoming known for a great fry-up or an irresistible bacon sandwich, then the core of the business will be secure. Not only that, becoming comfortable with the task of bringing the familiar ingredients of a Big Breakfast together onto a hot plate will allow me the time to deliver the other, intangible side of the bargain: hospitality. It is so easy to overlook this indispensable ingredient when juggling plates and pans and cups and cutlery. Magic explained that in the long run that is what people keep coming back for: the patron, not just his or her food. And this reminded me that hospitality is my first love, more profound even than cooking. For a long time I never planned to cook in my own gaff, envisaging being front of house in a bigger restaurant. Seven Bees has thrust me into both roles (and many more besides, not least chief dishwasher. On second thoughts, do make that least – washing dishes sucks!), and as things stand the vital thing for me to master is how to prep for, cook and deliver the menu to the table. But I look forward to the day when I feel relaxed in performing those tasks, as it is then that I will be more able to enjoy the role of host. Le patron.