Bread is the staff of life

So now we're in business... so what next...?

There are a few things we're learning - and as quickly as possible because we are determined not be one of the two-in-three-businesses which fail in their first year.

Nat's looking at all our procedures: what are we doing right? Well, not a lot to begin with. But we are sincere in finding better-upon-better ways to do things, so treating nothing as sacred allows her to cast a critical eye upon everything, at all levels.

In teh first two week she's already developed systems for doing pretty well everything in pretty well all areas of the business, with the exception of what the chef does an the way we procure our stock.

Food is - not suprisingly - a biggie. Our chef can make good things, but is not very proactive and definitely lacks presentation skills. So we've decided three weeks in that we are going to take the bull by the horns and just start showing him how we want things done ...and hoping that we don't get too far up his nose in the process but at the same time resolute that if we don't get what we want then we're better off looking for someone else anyway - but of course cognizant to the possibility of being chefless if it blows up in our faces.

I really think he'll be ok, but let's see...

The next thing is procurement. It's my job to source better goods at the best possible price but we;re stillin the process of sorting out what the better goods are.

We've just gotten in contact with Efes, a turkish style bakery who will be providing us with some tempting sounding panini and ciabata tomorrow to try as a medium for our lunches...