Sponge mode

Talking to people about our plans, I hadn't anticipated how often we'd hear something along the lines of "Oh, my cousin/friend/mum's next door neighbour is a winemaker/sommelier/distributor/started his own bar..." or whatever... "and he/she/they'd be totally happy to give you some advice." So many people! Our strategy in response to this has been to always say "yes" and talk to as many people as are willing to give us their time.

I think about our preparation as happening in five phases: information gathering and planning, training, financing, finding a venue, setup and fitout (and then... profit! Jokes...). Well, we are definitely in the information gathering phase at the moment (and the planning, which I'll write about in future posts). I remember a friend in the corporate world telling me a story about how he was in a meeting once where  everyone was talking except this one guy who was just sitting back with his arms folded and a look of concentration on his face, and eventually someone else took notice of this and said "Hey Steve, you're very quiet today." To which the guy replied "yeah, I'm just in sponge mode."

Sponge mode. Total corporate buzzword expression which I would never, ever use... except I keep thinking that's a perfect name for what we're doing now. Thanks, faceless corporate exec dude, for providing me with a useful analogy for our wine bar blog. 

So far, 'sponge mode' (last time I'll use it I promise) has really paid off. We've talked to people with lots of different backgrounds who've given us lots of different perspectives - people who run their own bars, cafes and restaurants, people who've started service businesses after being in office jobs their whole life, a wine wholesaler and former sommelier, a shop fitter - and there are many others people have suggested who we haven't talked to yet. Everyone we've spoken with has given us useful advice - some have been positive, others less so, but all of it has been valuable and has added to our knowledge in some way. Tips are great, because we're still trying to understand everything that's involved. Encouragement is great - of course - although it's always tempered with realism about how hard it will be. And warnings are great too, because they help us to be better prepared for the challenges we'll have to face (one contact told me "Do you understand just how much money you WON'T have??). 

Something else we're hoping to get out of these meetings is to start things moving on our second phase - training. Because if we're going to run our own bar it would probably be a good idea for us to have worked in one first - unfortunately I don't think my teenage experience as a Customer Service Agent at Ampol Road Pantry Drummoyne is going to help much, nor Georgy's job at Esprit. So the idea is that we maybe do some shifts at a few places but also spend some time observing how all the back end organisational stuff works, too. Kinda delicate, because it's not like we'd be helping much (at least at first) and you don't want to get in the way, particularly when someone's doing you a favour. But we do have a few possibilities already, and hopefully we can turn those into something - all the more reason to keep talking.