The Art of Taking a Holiday

Holidays matter. They might seem trivial, but they’re not. You probably didn’t start a cafe or bakery because you were desperate to work 52 weeks of the year and never take a break. Everyone needs a break, and everyone needs a change of scenery.

If a holiday seems like an impossible dream or the very notion brings you out in a cold sweat at the idea of leaving your baby behind, this is for you.

Perhaps you don’t make enough money to be able to afford a holiday, or you might not feel that you can trust your team to keep things running smoothly in your absence. Perhaps you work in a very hands-on way, in the kitchen or bakery and it there’s no one to cover you if you’re not there.

I won’t get too much into the lack of money thing as I could write an opus on that, so I’ll just say for now; it’s incredibly to common, you’re not to blame but it is your responsibility to fix. There isn’t a silver bullet to a lack of cash in your food business but there are strategies and solutions if you are willing to apply yourself to the problem in a focused way.

The thorny issue of your team. Is it that they aren’t up to the task or is it just a lack of trust on your part because you haven’t done it before? Probably a bit of both. Most of us either delegate a bit too much without putting the necessary time into training, so staff don’t always have the skills they need to do their job, or we micro-manage and do too much for them with the same end result. A lot of us do both, at different times and with different people. Managing people is a skill, hard work and time consuming. And then they leave, and you have to start the whole damn process again. Put time into training your staff, give them the space and grace to learn and accept that sometimes they will balls things up and it won’t be the end of the world. The last one is probably the hardest. The reality is that when you get back from your holiday there will probably have been a couple of mishaps. No one remembered to order ground almonds from the wholesaler so they bought loads of tiny bags from the supermarket and it cost a million pounds. A loyal customer’s important order got forgotten and no one thought to call them and smooth it over. The grinder broke so they spent a morning trying to grind coffee in the spice grinder before calling the repair guy. It can be a bit painful, but your business won’t suffer unduly. You will explain how to handle things better in the future and you’ll call the loyal customer, apologise profusely and give them some free cake. But you will be fresh and well rested whilst you’re doing those things because you’ve been on holiday. Your team will never be up to the job if you don’t give them the training, and also the space, to be up to the job. If you are breathing down their necks 24 hours a day, they won’t have the opportunity to step up and you will be chained to your business forever.

And finally, what if you’re working in a hands-on way in your business and you have no one to cover you? This is really about the kind of business you want to run long term. If you want to remain very hands on and don’t want to grow and build a team you will need to have certain times of year when you shut for a week or two. Build these closure times into your profit planning and accept that it is ok not to be open 52 weeks a year. If you do want to grow and build a team start working out the finances and structure for that, what would your sales need to be to support that? My 4-week summer reset would be the perfect opportunity to hash that out and make some real progress towards all those holidays.

If you need a bit of help whipping your food biz into shape, Summer Reset is a 4 week one-to-one programme to help you work on whatever is challenging you most in your business. There are only 4 slots available and it just for July and August, so if you’re interested give me a shout.