The Inner Workings of a Training Cafe-Bread Co

I spent week 5 shadowing management at my job. My location is a training cafe, meaning we get managers in training (MITs) and they’re with us for 2-8 weeks learning how to do their job. We currently have an MIT, which gives us another person. We also don’t have a drive-thru. Since last Saturday, I’ve worked about 60 hours, hours managers tend to work in a week. Saturday and Sunday were normal craziness and we had to do a lot of damage control. We’re insanely short-staffed and so we had to step in and work in position quite a lot. Normally the manager in charge (MIC) floats around and runs things, checking on the dining room, line, cashiers, counting drawers, and generally not being tied down anywhere. I opened Sunday, coming in at 6 am (we open late on Sundays, normally it’s 5 am), and learned about how managers open (the manager and I were running on a combined 5 hours of sleep). They do coffees/teas, get a drawer for cashiers, print various papers out, and get a head start on any bagel orders that have come in. Sunday lunch was bad, and it set the pace and feel for the next week. After lunch, we had to stock and clean and as a rule of thumb, managers shouldn’t leave until things are well set up for the rest of the day, so I got out of there just before 4. On Monday, I worked 13:00-close, Tuesday and Wednesday from 12:00-close, and Thursday I worked 10:00- 21:30. For closing, since we are a training cafe, the standards are higher, which means we get out later. We close at 21:00, but I didn’t get out before 23:00 any day this week, it tended to be 23:30, or later. Tuesday I got out at midnight. Suffice to say, I was a little tired. Basically, if I wasn’t at work, I was sleeping.

We’re terribly short-staffed during the afternoon when we have to get everything done and set up for dinner, a change that has happened in the last 2 weeks. For most of the week, it would be the manager, me, and our dishwasher for an hour or two in the afternoon. This was probably the most real manager experience I had throughout the week. I was completely alone on the line and the manager was completely alone ringing. On Monday, I helped set up for truck, which was supposed to come Sunday night but didn’t. It ended up showing up at 19:00 on Monday, while we were busy, delivering half the stuff, then showing up at 22:00 and delivering everything else, which threw off our schedule to put everything away. Because of the supply chain and understaffing truck schedule was thrown off this week. On Tuesday, I helped with pull thaw, an hour or more lengthy process. On Wednesday, I worked on closing checklists for dining room, bakery, and line. I finished the line close checklist and will work on dining room and bakery the rest of this week and next. They will be used to train new associates, and be a backup for both MITs and new team managers. Just as we were finishing up closing on Wednesday, truck came and we skedaddled. On Thursday, we found out truck put the stuff in the wrong spot, and I helped put truck away. I also sat down with the food cost manager and learned about how food costs work. After that conversation, I worked on a spreadsheet for leftover bakery product, which will be used to help other managers and MITs understand the concept.