foxy opening goes off!!!!

askthecoffeeguy

well we opened yesterday to rapturous  applause selling 400 coffees (including hot chocolate and teas) and 14dz eggs in fact we sold out of our breakfast items by 2pm !

the place was packed to the rafters - thank goodness I relented and bought 16 extra seats and put three couches in during the week as we needed every one of them!

and just as well it was cold and wet outside as I don't think we could have coped if our outside tables were busy as well!!!

big thanks to all for their support along the way its been an amazing journey!

cheers,

Pat

blanyon

Congrats Pat, glad to see that all your hard work has started to pay off. Any pics of the final product?

Koffee_Kosmo

Congrats Pat, glad to see that all your hard work has started to pay off. Any pics of the final product?

That sentiment goes for me X 2 Sorry I was not a good luck charm for the Saints Pat better luck next year Work hard and prosper V KK

askthecoffeeguy

yeah shame about the saints - I was busy working setting up the cafe so I missed the game anyway but a win would've been a double whammy! cafe's coming along in leaps and bounds - made 120 coffees yesterday which is pretty good for day two! it was a mammoth effort to be ready to trade: I worked till 4.30am and was back at 7am the same day to be ready to trade - and my builder worked around the clock and was still painting partitions and tweaking the glasswasher at 5am! still need to put in shelves and finish the rear courtyard but otherwise we're nearing completion in terms of first stage of development! the place looks a million dollars already and will look even more so once its finished - will see if I can get some photos up sooner rather than later Cheers, Acg

admin

hi mate - can't wait to see early pics! A

takeaim

Nice work Pat, very coffee focussed with several single origins available, 3 grinders that I could see and a few great touches on the menu. I especially liked the 'flight' of coffees, a ristretto, espresso and piccolo for just $8 - already had too many and decided against it today. Will definitely pop in again now that I don't work far from there.

askthecoffeeguy

mate was I blind or did I just not see you? hope you didn't come in in the morning as I was feeling ***house and was not nailing it at all! things went much better in the afternoon but still a long way to go with new touchscreen pos system playing up (prices reverted back to 2007!) and two new staff on! I'll be much happier when my full time barista starts in a weeks time and fingers crossed I might have hired a kick arse manager today! finally starting to get the hang of the machine after some serious tweaking and the (sudden) realisation that my milk is much better from the right hand steam wand (as this is the side that I'm used to), and managed to figure that if I don't lock down the grind on the Compkak K10 it just keeps tightening up until the only thing that comes out of the chamber is fluff! still little by little we will get there - I'm seriously happy with my staff, my food, and my chef - its only me that I'm not happy with! mind you once I stop putting in the 18hr days I might be a bit more coffee focused! make sure you say gidday next time coz my mind not working so well at the moment! Cheers, P

askthecoffeeguy

well... we're getting there we've been ironing out some problems with the machine / grinders / cash register / software programming / new staff / new systems etc which have seen some lengthy delays and less than ideal coffee on some occasions i wont bore you with the details except to say that we've had a few irate customers and we've probably lost some due to circumstances beyond our control - but these are all teething problems that are to be expected and if we can learn from these and move on I think we will be much better placed to anticipate the rush when it happens on the up side I've hired some excellent staff who make my life a lot easier by being trained professionals - self initiators - which is great because at the moment I sometimes need someone else to do the thinking for me! and after last sunday which was crazy busy I've already pulled out my old glasswasher and replaced it with a $5000 dishwasher - as we need some serious industrial equipment if we are to cope with the same or greater amount of traffic shelves still need to go up which is a big job - custom built 'boxes' of varying sizes stacked on top of one another mounted above the service area almost to the ceiling - and we still need to enclose and encase our sheds out the back and to create a dedicated area for our rubbish bins... but on the up side the rear courtyard should be cleared out tomorrow so that it can become a functional space - this means removing the materials left over from construction and any furniture which will not fit in the cafe as well as cleaning the place up a bit  to create a dedicated play area for children we've already re-landscaped the rear courtyard several times so I'm looking forward to seeing it as a functional space! my bookeeper comes next week to bring all my accounts up to date - I shudder to think how much I've spent on the place - certainly enough buy a house in the inner city (well... a pretty serious deposit anyway) - so now its time for the joint to start paying for itself! I've been doubling up on the roster recently to familiarize staff with the place and to run through procedures / get some training happening and waqge costs are through the roof so hopefully this will pay off with our first full weekends trading! Cheers, Acg

askthecoffeeguy

one week down at foxy and we've hit the ground running! ploughed through a massive 20kg which is pretty good considering that we're closed Tue Wed at the moment - managed to hire a full time chef, and two full time floorstaff as well as two Kiwi baristas - which can only be a good thing - and all of them walked in off the street and live within walking distance of the cafe - how good is that! New shelves have gone up and definitely look the biz - a series of chocolate brown with charcoal black backing 'speaker boxes' - all of different shapes and sizes stacked on top of each other! banked my first deposit from takings today which feels great considering how much I've spent on the business - may it be the first of many - challenge now is to get on top of staff training and to reign in overheads as wage cost has been peaking at 100 per cent some days - which I guess you would expect with a new business and intensive hands on training we've pulled well over 4000 coffees through the machine now and around 1000 of those in our first week of trade - so it feels like we're starting to hit our stride as far as the coffees go - sold out completely of the blend and 10kg of single origins and now we're running with some blended orange and yellow brazillian until the new batch of stock gets some age on it also got my sound system a fully sick six speaker Yamaha number up and running which has made a huge difference to the place - and the touchscreen pos and production monitor working as well - still a few teething probs with the register but we'll get there slowly slowly... been working 18hour days on average every day for the past two weeks plus which puts a lot of pressure on family life especially when we don't have any immediate family locally for support - thankfully we have an excellent community of friends though and we're going away down the coast tomorrow with three families five kids and a hired nanny!

askthecoffeeguy

well its early days yet but we're coming up to week four and so far the indications are good - broke a new record during the week with 195 coffees on a weekday including 25 iced coffees! weekend are going off but mid week can be hit and miss prob doesn't help that we're closed tue wed at present as quite a few folks have been rocking up when we've been closed - which aint no good we'll remedy that when we begin trading weds as of next week though and we've hired a second chef to keep up with demand, help out with catering, and to cover the additional trading days my new gun barista starts the week after next which will be a huge relief as its mostly been just myself behind the machine but with 300 plus coffees per day on the weekend we really need that extra person after a month of trading I feel that we're really starting to find our stride - but I would hate to be judged on some of our lessor days that got us here as we've learned from our mistakes along the way finally got the pos system operating to specifications and fully programmed how I would like it which has also been a process of try and see what works and if i ts not working change it - and I've enjoyed programming the touchscreen - its been a while since I did it last so had to brush up my skills! all our staff are really great staff which I'm grateful for - I'm not the easiest employer to work for so if they can handle me they must be great! got a mention coming up in a local newspaper, and a photoshoot scheduled for that as well - good timing now that we're coping with the flow really well, and of course the fab review on the Crema Website: http://www.cremamagazine.com.au/foxy-brown thanks to admin for putting that one up! apparently one of my main floor staff members found me through following the Crema forum so I'm really grateful for that opps its late and I'm up early so gotta fly! Acg

takeaim

Went back for the flight of coffees and had 3 different coffees that were all great even with a near full house. First up was the coffee of the day, an Ethiopian Limu served as a ristretto, soon followed by an espresso of the house blend featuring a Nicaraguan and PNG combo and then finished with a piccolo of the same blend. I love the idea but it's not for everybody, 3 shots in succession can be full on if you're not used to it. Great job done by all and it broke up my day at the roastery well, I'm sure I'll be back for another Pimp (BLAT) soon!

askthecoffeeguy

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    

mrblack

What are the chances of 07:00am starts?

askthecoffeeguy

not good I'm afraid - we (read I) tried opening at 7am when we commenced trade but there simply wasn't enough (any) trade at  that time to make it worthwhile - likewise we were closing at 4pm initially, but there was considerable foot traffic after that time so we switched opening time to 8am and closing to 5pm On the upside we're looking at obtaining a liquor licence for the hours of 11am till 7pm daily - which means that we will be prepared to trade later, which I believe will benefit the local community And we do get a fair bit of coffee traffic through from 7.30am onwards - even though we're not 'officially' open at that time! P

askthecoffeeguy

Oh yeah - foxy brown gets a positive wrap in The Age newspaper today - hard copy only - in the Epicure, Bites section - check it out!