Shout Out!

I have to give a shout out to our friend, Per! Per and my best friend Libby have been a huge help and support during this process. Per, however, was a major help in the creation of our website. Being the completely un-computer savvy person that I am, I had toyed with the idea of hiring someone to do our website--which costs a fortune! After a lot of great advice from Per I felt like I had the potential to attack this mission myself. Per did some research for me and found a great site with some easy-to-use software that allowed me to (what I think is) successfully build our website. If you haven't already seen it, check it out:

www.CoffeeBuzzMN.com

Welcome to Coffee Buzz, Can I Take Your Order?

Today was a major day! Our POS systems and security systems were installed and the menu boards were hung!

 

 

We also had a preliminary walk through with the Health Inspector. After our walk through our contractor told me that it couldn't have gone any better and it was the smoothest walk through he's ever had. RELIEF! She gave us a couple of things we need to do to really meet the codes but for the most part she said everything looked great! 

Tonight, the magic cleaning angels are coming to give it a really good scrub down which I could not be more excited for! The shop is so dusty and so dirty from all the construction and all the people coming in and out. I cannot wait to get there in the morning and see it sparkle! I have a small order coming tomorrow to add to a huge order I got yesterday, so my day will be filled unpacking and organizing all of our smallwares. Basically, I'll be getting everything set up and organized out on the front counter and start stocking our back room. Then, tomorrow afternoon we have our electrical inspection, Thursday afternoon we have our building inspection and on Friday at 11:00am we have our FINAL HEALTH INSPECTION!!! If we get all the inspectors approval and signatures by Friday afternoon we will have our license and be ready to start training and open on our terms! FINGERS CROSSED!

Meet the Team!

Jason and I are so excited to have wrapped up interviews and offered three wonderful ladies a position, all of which accepted!!! So, it's time to meet the Coffee Buzz Team!

Sara Walz, is a twenty-five year old graduate of Crown College with a degree in Intercultural Studies. She is currently working in the very early stages of creating a non-profit clothing line. Sara spent a year living in Nashville after her and two friends decided to move there without jobs or a place to live! Sara also has almost six years of coffee shop experience!

Leslie Spriggs is a forty-nine year mother of three who just recently moved to o Hopkins from Mankato to be closer to her kids. After twenty-two years working for a bank, Leslie, decided to start her own Interior Design business. With the slow times and the growing amount of energy Leslie finds herself having, she needed something to supplement her business. Lucky for us, Coffee Buzz was just the thing she needed!

Josi Krawec is a twenty-nine year old graduate of the Culinary Arts program at MCTC. Josi works part-time at the St. Paul Cheese Shop and is quite the cheese expert. She has an amazing knowledge and appreciation of food and beverages. Josi will be an awesome addition to Coffee Buzz and I think we will all benefit from her passion for fine food.

So those are the ladies! Don't they sound great? If you want to get to them better you'll have to come buy a latte and meet them! :o)

¿Dónde está el baño?

Things are slowly wrapping up over at the Buzz. As you can see, our bathrooms are dangerously close to being completed!

 

  

As for interviews, Day 4 went well and I am finally done with round one. We took 200 applicants and narrowed it down to 25 interviewees. Now we have 5 people that Jason is going to interview a second time, that's 5 people for 3 spots.  I am so excited about the people we have left and I have no idea how we're going to choose. Some VERY EXCITING news though, we did hire our first employee! More on that next week! 

This coming week is a big week, it could potentially be the final week of construction! We have a walk through with the health inspector on Tuesday afternoon which I am praying goes well. I am hoping for some criticism though, so I know what needs to be done for the final inspection .

On a personal note: it's VALENTINE'S DAY!!! One year ago today, Jason and I had the absolute best day of both of our lives! I surprised Jason and brought him to Arizona to watch his favorite basketball team the University of Arizona Wildcats play a HUGE game against UCLA. We had an awesome time driving from Scottsdale to Tucson, exploring the U of A campus, standing for 2 straight hours while McHale center cheered the cats on to a victory and even met some of the former and current players! 

It was a day we'll never forget!

Interviews: Days 2 and 3

The last two days of interviews have been quite interesting, I have learned so much! Hopefully, I won't have to but if I ever do need to interview for a job again I will be more than prepared. It is amazing the difference between a good interview and a bad interview. A good one makes you feel excited and energized and hopeful. A bad one just drains you. Over the past three days I have interviewed 17 people! I'd say 20% have been AMAZING, 50% have been really good and 30% need not be discussed. I will say this though; I had two people over 20 minutes late, a no show and one person say "prick." Yup, that's right, "prick" in an interview and not used like "prick your finger:"

I have 4 interviews today and 3 more tomorrow then I am done! From there Jason gets to start this magical process called interviewing and hopefully by the end of next week we will have our crew! This has been a great learning experience and I am excited about these potential employees but by tomorrow afternoon I am going to be so fried I will probably look like this:

Staging Area

The current condition of Coffee Buzz can only be described as dirty to quite dirty. On top of the dirtiness there are people coming in and out all day long. When it came time to get our big ticket items ordered and delivered (ie; the TV), I really didn't feel comfortable having it delivered to a store that doesn't always have someone to accept deliveries, that is dirty or that has strangers working day in and day out. The solution? Have everything delivered to our place.

It might not look like much...but if we unpacked all these boxes our living room would look like an aisle at Best Buy (except I don't think BB is carrying Puggles...yet!)

I am super excited because by the end of the week all of these boxes will be out of my house, unpacked and installed at Coffee Buzz! The POS systems get set up on Thursday and the TV, speakers, etc get set up on Friday!

*On a side note, Day 2 of interviews is still in progress and I will be updating on today's candidates later!

Interviews: Day 1

After nearly 200 applicants, Jason and I narrowed down the resumes to 25! So this week I will be conducting 25 interviews, of which today was my first day.

I had to text a couple of my close friends last night because as I was prepping for these interviews I felt like I was getting ready for sorority recruitment. It is very exciting and very nerve racking, picking the right person (or the wrong person) will shape the furture of your sorority, I mean business. I have to give a mini shout out to Alpha Omicron Pi (especially Jessi Atkinson) for making me a good recruiter and hopefully a good interviewer.

Overall, the interivews went well. 1 great one, 3 decent ones and 1 terrible one! About the terrible one...I realize this is a casual job and a casual atmosphere but you still need to dress to impress. NEVER EVER show up for an interview of any kind wearing a zip up sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes. One other girl did show up in jeans, but they were tucked into very cute boots and paired with a cute sweater and a really, really cute scarf that I wanted to steal--this is totally appropriate.

Big Day

Friday was a huge day for both me and Jason.

After almost four years, Jason put in his two week notice at Miller Davis. I know it was hard for him, but luckily his boss took the news really well and was supportive. In just two short weeks Jason will join me as an official full time employee. As Jason says, "We're all in" Now that he is leaving his job and we're so close to opening, those words have never been more true.

Friday was a big day for me for completely different reasons. I walked in to Coffee Buzz at about 11am for a meeting. I walked in and the first thing I saw was my SCONCES! I actually gasped out loud! I didn't expect the scones to be up until Tuesday, so seeing them was a huge surprise. And I must say, they were worth the wait. They look amazing! They are everything I hoped they would be and more. I wish I could take them and hang them in my house! Here's a couple of pictures of them!!!

Schedule of Events

As things are wrapping up construction wise things are adding up on my schedule, here's the schedule of events for the next week and a half...

Friday, 5th: *Meeting with Cocoa Cola-we'll be ordering bottled Coke and Diet coke. *Meeting with Aramark-they offer a great service that will be a huge help to us! They supply towels, mats, and aprons and then once a week they'll come with clean ones, take the dirty ones, wash them, then do it all again the following week..*Towel, soap and toilet paper dispensers will be delivered-seems dumb but those little things add up! *Craigslist ad will be removed and we will narrow are near 200 applicants down to 20 interviewees.

Monday, 8th/Tuesday, 9th: *The electrician and plumber will come to finish up their work, which means SCONCES will be installed!!! They will also hook up all of our kitchen equipment and sinks. *I will be doing a first round of interviews as well!

Wednesday, 10th/Thursday, 11th: *Meeting with Espresso Partners-they are supplying our espresso machine and coffee brewer (some pretty key items), they'll come and just double check that all the plumbing and electrical have been set up properly for the machines. They will also test our water so they can determine how to set up our water purifier. *Pre-inspection Inspection. Our contractor is going to set up an inspection one of these days so that the health inspector can come and check out the progress. She will give us a to-do list on things we need change, complete or make sure we have by the time of the real inspection. I am nervous for this but I am glad we'll have a good idea of what she'll be checking for in our real inspection. *I will still be doing round one of interviews.

Friday, 12th: *The Geek Squad will be coming to hook up our TV, speakers, stereo etc. *A company called In-Focus who did a lot of our wiring will also be coming to hook up our POS systems and our Security System. *The handy man will also be coming this day to install our toilets; doors; towel, soap and tp dispensers and other little odds and ends. *Our menu boards will also be put up this day, which I am so excited for!*I will be finishing up round one of interviews.

Monday, 13th: This is most likely be the day that the espresso machine and coffee brewer will be installed! Once this is done that should complete the construction and installation!!! I am hoping that Jason will be able to start the second round of interviews this day as well!

From there we will have a cleaning crew come in and give it a really good scrub (it needs it)! Then the painter will come in and do some last minute touch ups. We will hire a couple of people and start training, training, training. THEN...it will be time to open!!!

Whew, us luck!

Holy Coffee Shop, Batman!

Tears were definitely flowing when I walked into Coffee Buzz this morning, good tears! The millwork is complete and it actually looks like a coffee shop now! Everything all of a sudden felt really real and I realized that it's all coming together how I imagined and in within weeks we will be up and running! I am so happy with how everything is coming together.

These pictures do not do it justice and it doesn't help that the store is filthy (I cannot wait for the cleaning crew to come!)...

 

 
 

  

 

Now Hiring!

Coffee Buzz is officially hiring! I placed an ad on Craigslist last night and sent out an e-mail to my sorority's chapter and I already have OVER 100 responses!

It is so fascinating to see what people send you when looking for a job, especially in this economy. We have so many applicants who send such professional resumes and cover letters and are way over qualified for this job. On the other hand, I cannot believe that some people think they are going to find a job sending the crap they send. A word of advise, PROOF READ your resume and your e-mail before you send it!!! Also, if the ad asks for availability and a resume, then send BOTH! Don't send me an e-mail that says, "Hi my name is Kristin and I am interested in this job." That means NOTHING to me! All I know about you is your name! One more thing, people always say to edit your facebook page in case employers look at it...well do it! You better believe I am creeping all of these people on FB and if your picture is anything over rated PG-13, you're gone.

Needless to say, this process is going to be an interesting one. There are a lot of very qualified, really great people who have applied. It's going to be so hard to figure out who we will interview! This was something I was extremely stressed and nervous about, but after seeing so many great people I am very confident we're going to get a great Buzz team together!

Everything AND the Kitchen Sink

Today was a busy day at The Buzz, all of our kitchen equipment came! Our back room actually looks like a back room! There was a slight problem though, which is a bummer. There is a requirement by the city that there needs to be at least a three foot walkway between all walls, equipment, etc. There was some mis-measuring in the back room and there is only two and a half feet in between our hand sink and shelves. The good news is it's a very easy fix, we can just scoot down the shelving to create the space. The bad news is that moving the shelves only leaves us three feet for our desk. That's not only a tiny desk but we need room for a file cabinet and a safe. Needless to say, it's going to be crammed back there. Hopefully, we'll be so busy up front we won't really need to be in the back too often.

Here are a couple of pictures of how it's looking today: 

 

Check out that bakery case!

Back room-that's the freezer on the right. 

Other side of the back room-that's our refrigerator and our ice machine!