Objectives

Towards the end of the day, we want to start getting ready to pack up and go home! At the same time, we need to give customers the same welcome and service until the time we designate as “end of service”.

This policy is designed to find the right balance between these two competing objectives.

Policy

1. One hour before closing time: last orders for tartines
   • In practice: start putting away tartine ingredients and cleaning up tartine area one hour before closing time, or a few minutes after if the last tartines are still being prepared
2. 20 minutes before closing time: last orders for juices
   • In practice: start cleaning up the juice machines 20 minutes before closing time, or a few minutes after if the last juices are still being prepared
3. Closing time = last orders for everything else
4. We do not automatically start serving the last orders in takeaway containers
5. Customers may stay inside for another 10 – 15 minutes after closing time.
   • In practice: For customers that arrive within 15 minutes of closing time, let them know a) what the closing time is and b) that they can stay for 10 to 15 minutes after that. Otherwise, all service is the same (do not serve in takeaway containers)
6. For the 10-15 minutes after closing time, if there are still customers seated, we do not start putting chairs on tables (nor packing away the outside chairs and tables if there are still people seated outside)

Rationale

There must always be a closing time that we publicly announce. Customers have a reasonable expectation that they can walk in the door before that time and be served. (We all know how frustrating it can be to arrive at any shop just before closing and to have the feeling that we’re not welcome!)

Stopping the service early for some products saves us time later on for the closing. We do this for products that a) require quite a bit of cleaning up and b) are not part of our core coffee shop offer (for example, we would never take coffees off early!!).

We let customers stay inside for a short time after closing because this has no impact on our closing procedure. The first 15 minutes or more of the closing procedure is spent in our own work space anyway, not in the customer space.

We do not serve the last customers in takeaway cups because this does not save us much time either. Experience shows that normally we don’t have that many orders in the last 15 minutes of the day. At most, this adds only a few extra cups and plates to put in the dishwasher, not enough to warrant dropping our quality of service.

But still, not matter what we do …

We can never fully control how long the closing will take, mainly because we never know how many customers might happen to walk in the door just before closing. We try to manage this in two ways:

1. The aim is that we allow enough time for closing on average. That is, the days when closing is quicker because there are very few customers at the end of the day will help balance out the days when closing is slower because there are a lot of customers at the end of the day.
2. If there are some days or periods where there are significantly more customers at the end of the day than usual, the extra time taken to do the closing can be counted as paid overtime.

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