Manage small coffee shop in historic Hebbronville, Texas

[ColoradoRFL]

We recently opened a small coffee house in an historic town in South Texas (just North of RGV) and have been overwhelmed by the community support and business success.

Training young baristas has been easy but finding a responsible manager who can oversee the business part-time while we are out of town isn’t so easy.

The coffee house is on the main plaza of town (still very quiet) and we can offer you plenty of parking with 110 electric access and there are a number of affordable small RV parks with full hook-ups around town for workers as well but no resorts.

The Franciscan Friars of Mexico landed here in the 1920’s fleeing persecutions against the Catholic Church by Mexico’s leftist government building their iconic seminary in exile which they still own today while saying Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church next door.

If you are looking for a new experience that can minimally cover your parking costs and possibly fill-in as a barista from time to time for $12/hr plus tips let me know. Ideal will be a retired couple with some food retail knowledge and a passion for history and some Spanish language skills but not required.

Let me know if I can answer any questions.

If you just want to visit give us a shout and we can arrange free RV parking overnight plus get museum access and great coffee.

[ocbizman1]

I ran a family business for a long time. Taking time off was always a challenge. We did find people we could trust. Then again, we hired one guy who stole from us.

Whenever I took time off I was always on the phone with the office. It's got to be easier now with business software you can access from anywhere. Still you have to manage people, payroll, banking. I could never be away more than a couple of weeks.

I had a manager who could do the payroll and submit it to my payroll service. Electronic payroll systems make that easier now. You'd have to be concerned about cash transactions. If you do mostly card then you're ok, but too much cash means someone would have to make a bank run to deposit or worse, go get change. Then you've got to manage deliveries, pay bills, not to mention emergencies or break ins.

Texas is not my cup of tea, could never live there. And this town sounds especially like a place I couldn't stay based on its history and founding.

The Federal Poverty Level is $20,440 for a family of two. It sounds like you are trying to find two people to cover one manager position with a base salary of $24,960 based on 40 hours a week. Not counting overtime and tips. A coffee shop manager should be more in the $60k range. And even that is not great pay.

Summer time temps there in the 90's means the 110v shore power won't run an AC unit. So they'd need a generator. Or pay for a spot in an RV park which in that area is about $950 for a monthly. About half of the months salary that you are offering.

This is the problem I discovered about the small business I inherited. The small business model isn't designed for people who want to be absentee owners. Most people start a small business to create a job for themselves.

[ColoradoRFL]

Your reply reminds me of the famous Admiral Rickover story when he dismissed a job candidate after salting his own steak without first checking to see if it was already salted by the chef; which it was.

You have made a lot of assumptions, in error, so trying to add your own critique on top of your own many false assumptions is difficult to respond to comprehensively so here are just a few items.

1. You asserted a 110 electrical plug cannot run any RV air conditioner. In fact, our 10,000 BTU roof air conditioner works great when we plug into a 20 amp normal house plug. Many travel trailers and Class B units use 10,000 BTU units. People who own poorly insulated units often forget the double pane windows and increased insulation on better built units means cooling in hot climates is easier so we don’t require 15,000 BTU roof air to cool nor as much propane in winter to heat either. So depends on the RV.

2. The cost of living here is low so the cost of a monthly RV site rental you quoted for the “area” could actually rent an entire house. Fulltime RV sites here in small parks (no resorts) run around $300 - $400 monthly.

3. You took the hourly pay for a barista (which I said a manager could choose to do sometimes as well) and assumed it was the manager pay and added it up to 40 hours weekly which is absurd. The coffee shop is only open until Noon 4 weekdays and 6 hours on Sunday. I don’t know anything about your family’s business but the management help we are looking for is far from a fulltime job.

4. We use Toast POS which automates most all accounting and pay for employees who clock-in at the register. I never said we need two people for the price of one, never said I am looking for someone to do manual payroll or any accounting you mentioned since we can do that from anywhere.

You also dismissed all of the State of Texas and especially south Texas as a place you would never stay. Well, we know the northwest quite well and never enjoyed the constant rain or cloud cover days nor the occasional snooty and self-important people you may encounter.

We could live anywhere as well and choose Texas for not only the warm winters but wonderful and kind people everywhere you go in this big state.