The Cautionary Tale of Planet Coffee
Published on 30th August, 2007 by Stephen Lewis
I’ve already discussed my fascination with business processes (in particular the E-Myth) on this blog. To briefly recap, a well-defined process provides clear instructions for completing a task, enabling anyone capable of following a few simple to directives to perform that task to a consistent standard.
Document enough processes, and you’ve got a complete user manual for your business.
The ability of processes to facilitate a consistently high level of service is what interests me most, particularly as we continue to grow. The downside is that clarifying and documenting every process in your business is a daunting task. It can also seem like complete overkill, particularly when your workforce is still very small.
Sometimes it takes a cautionary tale to remind me of the value of such things, and luckily for my business I’ve recently witnessed what can happen when a business ignores the importance of processes.
To Err is Human
Not far from my house is a café called Planet Coffee. It’s in an excellent location, and does very good business peddling cappuccini and lattes to caffeine-hungry students and, um, company directors.
Planet Coffee is staffed entirely by students from the nearby University of Hull, which means that a couple of times each year the majority of the workforce changes, as staff members graduate, return to the parental nest for Christmas, and so forth.
Every time this mass exodus occurs, the entire place descends into chaos, as new recruits stumble about, learning the “right” way to do things through a painful process of trial, error, and ad-hoc instruction.
For several weeks, service slows to a crawl and tables remain uncleared, as the fledgling personnel struggle to cope. Worse still, the little touches that make Planet Coffee a nice place to be — such as the chocolates they serve with their coffees — are frequently forgotten, much to my distress.
The net result of all this confusion is a wholly unsatisfactory customer experience, along with some mysterious personal weight-loss. The latter may be a good thing for me, but given the prevalence of competing cafés in the immediate vicinity, the former is most certainly a bad thing for Planet Coffee.
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