Own The Business

Stuff to do:

1. DRIVE TSD'S!

Nicole would be so proud, amirite?

K. So. The point is to comp 6% year over year, right? The way to do this is drive transactions - basically do 6% more customers than you did last year.

This means during every single PPV, I need to find out the specific things that are going to get people in the door - a new latte or mug won't, but a discount on it will. Find these and plug the SHIT out of them.

How?

- Baristas talking about it to customers (hey, there's an idea!) at the POS
- Create an excuse for customers to return (or come in, in the first place)
- Actual Sampling Plan (incl. surprise travellers - map this out and delegate to shifts)
- Store Instagram

2. Drive Food

Our UPH is supposed to be 46-ish, right?

- Ask every customer if they want a specific food item
- Sample food "while they wait" (creates an opportunity to change their mind)
- Power Lunch (counts for 4 USD)

3. In-store Events

- French Press Fridays/Coffee Seminars (Fridays at 11 AM) - drive AHC
- Business Card Raffle - one free traveller per week! - drive repeat customers
- Lunch & Learns (Wednesday at 12) - for the cost of a power lunch, hear a 1/2 hr talk on:

• Coffee Agronomy/History/Farming Practices, etc.
• SBX's Environmental Commitments/CI Partnership
• Starbucks Speaker Series (1x/month)
• Mican - Women & Business
• Kathy - Leadership
• 
  
• Latt-eh Art: Coffee in Canada

IDK just some ideas... 

Things I Learned in High School

It's a common trope in high schools across the land: "When are we actually gonna use this stuff?"

In response, school boards across the province have created a number of courses that teach "real life" topics, such as personal finances, civic education, and parenting classes.

What do I use?

Surprisingly, I use math the most in my day-to-day life. It's not always algebra - a lot of the time, it's simply the basics. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division come up all the time. Percents and some fractions. Some slightly more advanced stuff comes up - rate of change, interest, and so on. Math was always a subject I was skilled at, but wasn't always passionate about.

English also plays a role - but not the "describe the imagery" garbage they feed you. Instead, a lot of it has to with analysis and extracting information from written texts. These texts can get pretty damn complex, so knowing how to identify shades of meaning is really useful.

Science has also played a part. As a CM, part of my job relies on knowing the science of coffee - in particular, chemistry and agronomy/botany. I remember I absolutely hated the botany unit in bio, but was taken with the genetics unit. Now, botany is part of my job.

Civics is definitely a thing. When you're marking an X on a ballot to decide who's gonna run the country on your behalf, you'd better have a decent civics education. This isn't to say a civics course should teach you your own morality, or try to impose opinions. On the contrary. The course should be objective about how "the system" works, how it was set up to disadvantage certain people, and so on.

Careers was ... interesting for me. I had a teacher who was a big union mover-and-shaker, and she tended to be more interested in the proletariat's battle for justice rather than actually teaching students how to get a job and earn money. In fact, most of my job-hunting skills have come from good old Craigslist, LinkedIn, and a handy-dandy book I once read called The Damn Good Resume Guide.

If I had to say what kind of course I'd love to see put in place in Ontario high schools, I'd have two answers.

First answer would be a critical reasoning course. It's not exactly about extracting information from a text, but extracting information from a situation, and then making informed choices. Newspaper analysis (compare and contrast), perhaps political literature from each of the major parties, some fun facts about body language, and so on, eventually turning into leadership studies. It's a course that'll teach you how to think intelligently, and perhaps strategically too!

Second answer would be Research and Inquiry Skills. The Ministry already requires each course have objectives related to these skills. Students will learn to use Google. Christ. How about we call it "Beyond Google"? Basically, the course I'd envision is about books, articles, intelligent web searches, and so on. Field trip to the Reference Library. Phone interviewing techniques - yes, people still interview on the phone.

Anyway, rant over.

The Math

Am I going crazy?

So, the longer I'm in the role of ASM (well, I guess that role technically starts on Sept 19, but who's counting?), the more I notice something.

There's a hell of a lot of math to do as an SM.

Why does no one see it? It's a numbers game. Pure and simple. The tools are right there: ALS is going to be, like, one of my best friends ever when the time is right. Because math makes sense. People are predictable creatures. And if you can somehow... correlate ... that predictability to math, it's incredibly powerful what kind of information you can derive.

Let's break this down into Food Growth, Labour, and Waste. This is the first chapter.

Food Growth

Let's say that your target for food is (ahem) 31.3 UPH across all categories, and your store does 1400 TSD's, as mine does.

ALS gives you a history of what was sold on any given day last year. It's in the ledger view. Go back one year, select a date, and then it's in View --> Historical Data. It gives you a unit total, and even breaks it down by the hour for you.

So, if you have a target of 31.3 on 1400 TSD's, you'd be looking at 438 units per day. (So

Now, that 438 is not "sell anything". In fact, we can break this down further into the various categories: Breakfast Sandwiches, Packaged Foods/Impulse, Bakery (pastries) and Chilled Lunch (Salads/Sandwiches).

Let's say that YOY, your food growth target is 5%. For the purposes of this example, in 2015, you would do 95% of 438 USD, so that'd be 416 USD.

Let's also say that your sales mix for food is roughly 30% Breakfast Sandwiches, 30% Pastry, 25% Chilled Lunch, and 15% Packaged Foods. (Of course, it'll vary from day to day, but these are rough guides.)

All of a sudden, with your growth target of 5% in mind, and your and UPH target and sales mix as a measuring stick, you can pretty much figure out what to sell on any given day.

30% of 416 + 5% =  131 Breakfast Sandwiches
30% of 416 + 5% = 131 Pastries
25% of 416 + 5% =  109 Chilled Lunch
15% of 416 + 5% = 65 Packaged Foods

Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

Because all of a sudden, it's much easier to break down 438 into a semi-achievable "131 Breakfast Sandwiches".

Now comes the interesting part: food forecasting, ordering, and pulling.

Those 131 breakfast sandwiches can be even further subdivided. Look at your Top 10 sellers. Are there any breakfast sandwiches there? (Yes. Sausage is there. Bacon Gouda is there. The rest are up in the air.)

What's your sales mix of breakfast sandwiches on a typical day? Never mind a forecast for growth - just plain and simple. On a typical day, what mix of breakfast sandwiches will you sell?

--> 18 Bacon Gouda
--> 18 Sausage
--> 12 Ham & Swiss
--> 12 Spinach & Feta
--> 8 Spicy Chorizo
--> 10 Egg & Cheddar
--> 12 Double Smoked Bacon
--> 12 RF Turkey Bacon

For a total of 102 units.

Wait. There's a gap. We need to sell 131 to grow BKS by 5%. 131 minus 102 is 29.

Where can we invest those 29 extra units? The obvious answer is to go deep on your top sellers. You can probably squeeze in another third of that (so roughly 10 units) into your Top 2 sellers, these being S and B. The rest get divvied out based on how well they perform.

Let's refine these numbers:

--> 18 Bacon Gouda + 5 = 23
--> 18 Sausage + 5 = 23
--> 12 Ham & Swiss + 4 = 16
--> 12 Spinach & Feta + 4 = 16
--> 8 Spicy Chorizo + 2 = 10
--> 10 Egg & Cheddar + 2 = 12
--> 12 Double Smoked Bacon + 4 = 16
--> 12 RF Turkey Bacon + 3 = 15

For a total of 131 units. Perfect.

Want to go even further? Let's divide this in 3, for 3 tills in my store. That's 44 for R1, 44 for R2 and 43 for R3. (Lucky R3!)

Ah, but wait! There's more! Remember when I said ALS breaks down category sales by the hour in the ledger view? Who says that R1-2-3 need to sell all 44 breakfast sandwiches by the end of peak? It's 44 per day, darling. Split it 60-40. The AM POS partner needs to sell 25 breakfast sandwiches.

I repeat. All morning long, the POS partners need to sell 25 breakfast sandwiches. Each. The POS partners in the afternoon (there only being 2) need to sell 28 each. Poor babies.

And now that the math on one category is done, we can repeat the process across the other categories (Pastry, Lunch, and Packaged). That is what you should be selling every single day.

---

Closing Thoughts:

Now, here comes the obstacle. Breakfast sandwiches are vastly more popular during the morning than during the afternoon. (That's the reason why the AM/PM split isn't 50-50.) It's statistically more likely that someone is going to buy a salad, sandwich, or bistro box over lunch rather than the morning rush, when we primarily serve drip coffee.

How can we make breakfast sandwiches more attractive as an all-day option?

--> Grande Pike + Breakfast Sandwich = How Much?
--> Discount on Tea/Coffee after 4 PM

A clearer number for the customer (tax included!) is much easier to digest than "Would you like a Bacon Gouda to go with that?". It's easier to hear that both items together are $5.

I've also been getting good results from offering free coffee/tea with the purchase of any breakfast sandwich after 4 PM. (It gives people that little extra incentive to spend their dollars.)

The other thing is that till partners need to be aware of what they need to sell every single day. Perhaps a "POS Partner Target" table of some sort is needed? How do partners know, throughout the week, what they need to sell? How can supervisors communicate this better to till partners? They're both going blind. Information is key.

Anyway yeah, that's where I'm going to leave it.

Over a Year

I guess I occasionally add to this blog whenever I feel like it.

As for that potential job at the EP, it didn't pan out. Again. Add to that one more subsequent failed attempt to get back to Brussels (as a SS) and I guess that chapter's closed for now.

That second store I referenced in the last post? It's Wellington & Simcoe. And surprisingly, my time there is nearly at a close. It's strange how it happened.

Originally went there for 2 weeks to suss it out. The point was for me to try a few stores and pick the one I liked. It so happened, on the very last day there, one of their supervisors quit. So there goes Stephen offering me a spot. It took a few hours to mull it over - would the stars ever align like this again? - but ultimately, I'm proud to say that I chose Wellington & Simcoe.

Couldn't be happier that I did, either. Because if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be an ASM right now. I went through 3 DM's, 2 SM's, and basically an entire staff turnover (Delcia, Simon, Camilo and Glenda are originals). Countless coffee tastings, shifts, meetings, you need to do more of this, more of that, prove this, prove that. I was chasing nothing.

But then it happened. I got an interview. And I killed it.

And since then it's been nothing but going up. I go for my Coffee Master interview on Wednesday - I'd be the second in the district, after Julian. (Whose CM certification, by the way, is a direct result of my getting Totis off his butt to find someone to certify this guy!)

I also called Jazmin yesterday. And she was so proud of me. And I still am such a fan of her too. I can't wait to see her again someday.

And then today I went to a neighbour's unit to check it out. Because I'm probably going to move to Phase II in the fall, when the salary comes through and a unit opens up.

I think the title of this blog is more apt than ever. Moving out at 29. (Finally.) Stable job. Salary. Heeeeey. Doesn't look half bad, right? Toss in a gym membership and a boyfriend and it resembles a life.

I might even host one of those fancy dinner parties I imagined adults always held. Isn't that what adults do? Fancy dinner parties at each other's houses?

Ding-Dong, London Calling

Well, not London. But Brussels! Heeeeey.

So I'm still at Starbucks. I had a great review. My boss is searching for a second store for me to go to. Will be there a few months before going for an ASM interview. All good, right?

On Tuesday, I picked up a phantom shift at Queen & Bathurst (they love me). Before I left the house, I checked my e-mail. In it was a note from Annika. Annika is one of the interviewers for the job I applied for at the EUD.

It turns out she has since left the EUD, and is now working as a Parliamentary Assistant to Helga Stevens, a Deaf Member of European Parliament (MEP), also in Brussels. Turns out that they've been daisy-chaining VGT, spoken Dutch and spoken English together, and it's really not effective. They are looking for an ASL-English or BSL-English interpreter to work till the end of the current session (April 2014), and if they like me, they'll keep me until 2019.

Um, WHAT. HI. LET'S CHAT.

So, luckily, I chatted with Annika over the phone. Her first words were, "I bet you have a lot of question!" Yes, I certainly do! Ha-ha-ha. Basically, this offer sounds amazing, except for the whole 10-weeks business. I asked what's the possibility of extension. Turns out that, even if they don't renew my contract, there is other work available within the EP and at the EUD. Main contract is a daily rate, payable in Euros. Cool!

Annika wanted me to interview with Helga and Oliver (main guy running Overseas Interpreting in Paris) the next day. So I did. Erin thought I was crazy for getting my shift covered for super-mysterious reasons.

I had yet another 6:30 AM interview with folks in Strasbourg. The connection was a bit choppy, but I think I did pretty well. They were big on me getting my COI, and me being able to handle the crazy EP language that floats around. The thing lasted about 45 minutes before we ended it. Good stuff, beyond the random disconnect in the middle.

No answer yet. They said they'd be in touch. Nothing yet, so I sent a thank-you e-mail to Annika. It's a thank-you, yes, but also a *poke poke* remember to let me know if I have the job or not.

So. Is Brussels gonna holla at me and bring me back? Let's see.

I'm Alive

I'm alive.

No, seriously. I'm alive. What the hell has happened over the past two months?

Okay, so yeah, I'm still at Starbucks. But these last two-or-so months have been easily some of my darkest days. And I have no idea why.

I don't know what happened, but I guess it was seeing everyone go to school and me being "done" that took some of the wind out of my sails. It suddenly felt hard to do everything. I mean, I could get up and go to work and do a good job. But the communication wasn't really me. It was Starbucks-style communication. How are you? I'll get your latte. That sort of stuff. I didn't have to think about that kind of communication.

But for real, person-to-person communication? I found it harder and harder to talk to people. People texted asking where I was, and if I was OK. And I read them, but... I didn't reply. I don't know why I didn't. Talking to people was legitimately hard. I got anxious because I hadn't texted or communicated in so long that I thought people would be mad. So I put it off even more.

One day, I had a bad - bad  - day. I don't think I smiled all day. I worked in near silence. I didn't want to have anything to do with anybody. Dave texted me, wondering where I had gotten to. And it was easily one of the most vulnerable moments I've ever had.

Do you know how hard it is to admit you may have an issue? Holy Christ. I was literally shaking as I was texting him. Because it's VERY hard to start saying you feel depressed. You're afraid of people overreacting. Oh, you're just having a bad day, they'd say. Voices in my head. Unreal conversations with myself. Cheer up, you're just tired. People have it worse than you.

I texted another friend of mine in Halifax, who immediately gave me some kind words which made me pretty much burst into tears somewhere along Spadina. Might I add, I was walking furiously, which is what I do when I'm super stressed out.

Then I called my doctor.

What I was feeling wasn't right, but I knew that if I left it one moment longer, I would literally never tell anyone that I needed help. I left the nurse a message saying I needed to see him. And wouldn't you know it. The bastard STILL hasn't called back. Remind me to switch doctors.

I got home, and could barely hold it in. Good thing Dad is the level-headed one of the family. It wasn't pretty. I basically relegated myself to the corner of the kitchen because I didn't want to see anyone. Sat alone for the rest of the night. Cried myself to sleep that night wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

It felt like a dark cloud was over me 24/7. I had difficulty understanding people. People pointed out that I looked "sad". There were a few days where I basically just stayed home, because it was easier than going out and doing stuff. And the days where I went out and interacted with people, it was, for the record, completely fake. Sir, your change? Oh, right. Silly me.

One of my bigger "turning points" has been acknowledging this. And acknowledging that people do, in fact, live with that terrible cloud for years before they do anything about it. I'm lucky that 2 months is pretty short. But still. Depression is fucking scary.

Now, it's a little easier to talk to people. I'm starting to come around. I have my days where it feels a little pointless. Like... why? Why bother? Why bother with anything? Who cares about me? Friendship feels so fake sometimes.

But what's especially weird for me is that every single person I've spoken to about this has been immediately supportive and asked what was the matter. Those unreal conversations never happened. It's something like cognitive dissonance. Perhaps I underestimate people.

So yeah. That's where I am right now. I'm still trying to keep my head above water. I haven't posted anything on social media for days. Wondering how I can start "coming back".

But at least I'm alive.

Pocket FAILURE!

I think I figured out what was fundamentally wrong with Pocket. It's that whenever I come across an article I want to read, I, uh, you know, read it. I hate saving things for later. And if I save an article, I stick it in a bookmark. So Pocket can fall off a cliff.

In any case.

Work has been wonderful! I'm working around 40 hours/week (yikes!), I have a business debit card (double yikes!), and I have a burgeoning professional career as a sign language interpreter (triple yikes!). I am almost - almost - an adult.

But first, I must stop eating junk food and not caring about some things. Perhaps I should get a beta fish.