Behind the Scenes: Why Work at a Café?

Working at a café may seem like the perfect job. Social media certainly makes it seem "trendy" and while it is rewarding, you must be willing to navigate uncertainties swiftly and efficiently. You develop valuable skills working in a small business café environment - read on to learn more about the behind the scenes!

1. You develop excellent communication skills.
Taking orders requires you to be friendly and personable as you interact with customers. You must be able to answer questions about the menu and possibly clear up any confusion if orders get mixed up. You will also have to communicate with other team members to ensure every order is completed.

2. You learn to work on a team.
No one can run the bakery café by themselves, so you must be a team-player and willing to jump in as needed during a shift. Especially during a rush, expect to move as efficiently as possible while completing orders accurately. When there isn't a rush, team members work together in the back to split tasks like prepping ingredients, wiping tables, and doing dishes.

3. You create delicious food and drinks.
As a part of the team, you learn how to make lattes, smoothies, breakfast sandwiches, baked goods, simple syrups, and everything that goes into the final products that we sell. We use a lot of house made items, so we must make sure that we always have enough to get us through each business day.

4. You will multitask.
At any given point during a shift, there will be things baking in the oven, customers in line, orders to fulfill, dishes in the sink, and areas to sweep or wipe clean. Timers will be going off and you will have to make sure the right thing comes out of the oven.

5. You must be flexible.
Weekends are our busiest days of the week and especially with farmer's market season upon us, we need staff to be willing to work mornings on these days. The early mornings are worth it because then you have your whole afternoon for other commitments.

6. You will experience problem solving scenarios.
You never know the kinds of requests customers will have or what types of situations you'll run into. Possible scenarios include to substituting ingredients if we run out, suggesting alternative products for customers, dealing with technical difficulties, and keeping customers satisfied during long wait times.

Working at a café is highly fulfilling as you interact with people from all walks of life, deepen your repertoire of food/drink knowledge, and develop soft skills that can be implemented at future jobs. Especially working at a small business, you contribute meaningfully to the community as you make a small business owner's dreams come to life.

If you are interested in working at Tucker&Co., please email heidi@tuckercoadventures.com!