After the café closed I needed something that would keep the income coming while I figured out what came next.
I took on a school canteen.
Not glamorous. Not the plan. But it turned out to be one of the most useful things I could have done, because running a canteen forced me to build a business the right way from the start. Not because I'm smarter now. Because the constraints demanded it.
A school canteen has a fixed window. Orders come in, orders go out, service ends. There is no "we'll sort it out as we go." Either the system works or it doesn't and everyone finds out immediately.
So I built systems. Properly this time.
And somewhere in the process of doing that, I realised I was building exactly what my café never had. A business that could function without me standing in the middle of it.
The principle I keep coming back to is this:
A business must be built so that a complete stranger can walk in, read a piece of paper and execute the job to 80% standard on day one.
Not perfect. 80%. That's the bar.
If your business requires your institutional knowledge, your relationships, your memory, or your physical presence to function, it isn't transferable. A buyer can't step into something they can't learn from a document. A staff member can't cover for you if the process only exists in your head.
80% from a piece of paper on day one. That's the test.
Here is what that actually looks like in practice.
Shrink the menu.
Fewer items means tighter purchasing, less waste, faster production and easier training. A menu that tries to do everything is a menu that depends on an experienced operator to hold it together. A tight menu can be executed by almost anyone who follows the process.
The café tried to offer too much. The canteen offers exactly what works and nothing else.
Use systems that remove the need for memory.
App-based ordering. Pre-ordering enforced before service. Inventory managed against supplier thresholds so reordering is triggered automatically rather than relying on someone remembering to check the stock.
When a process depends on a person remembering to do something, it will eventually fail. When a process is triggered by a system, it runs whether you are there or not.
Build the workflow so it runs in sequence.
Orders close. Prep list is generated. Production runs. Assembly line fulfils the orders. Delivery or pickup happens. Every step is defined. Every step follows the last.
There is no improvising inside a well built workflow. Improvising means the system depends on someone experienced enough to improvise. That person is usually the owner.
Create visual SOPs for every operational area.
Production. Hygiene and compliance. Tech and admin. Not long documents nobody reads. Visual, simple, posted where the work happens.
A new staff member should be able to look at the wall and know what to do. If they have to ask you, the system is incomplete.
None of this is complicated. But almost nobody running a small hospitality business actually does it.
Because when you are in the middle of a busy service, building systems feels like a luxury. There is always something more urgent. A supplier call, a staff issue, a customer complaint. The system building gets pushed to later and later never comes.
That was my café. Always too busy to build the thing that would have made it worth something.
The canteen forced me to build first because there was no other option. The window is fixed. The volume is real. It had to work from day one.
The difference between a business and a job you own comes down to one question.
Could someone else run this tomorrow if they had to?
If the honest answer is no, you are the system. And when you are the system, you cannot take a day off, you cannot get sick, you cannot step back, and you cannot eventually hand it to someone else without it falling apart.
That might feel manageable right now. But it compounds. Every year you run a business that depends entirely on you, the harder it becomes to change that. The exhaustion builds. The options narrow.
The systems you build today are not just about making operations easier. They are what turns a job you own into a business that works. Start building them now. Not when you have more time. Now.
Next edition: I have looked at deals from the buyer's side. Here is what makes me close the tab.
If you are running a hospitality business and have not documented a single process, hit reply. It is not too late to start.