ph: Morning Resumes

Bacon omelette with chili and cheese at the Cafe Hon.

There's lots of pain in running your own business, but one the more painful aspects is hiring new staff. With the impending arrival of project hampden it's time to start hiring baristas. Young, old, experienced or novices - I'm looking for great people who are excited about the prospect of working with people and serving customers. The basic Order Of The Day at The Spro is: We want our guests to leave feeling stoked that they visited us today. It's the essence of what we do and what we're about.

Some people confuse this with a crazed obsession on coffee and coffee quality but it's much more than that. It's about serving customers and anticipating their desires. It's about delivering the absolute best quality product that we possibly can while accommodating their needs, desires and requests. It's not about the traditional barista Third Wave "we know coffee better than you" attitude - in fact, that kind of approach has no place amongst our ranks. It's about enthusiastic service and great quality products.

I've placed ads on Craigslist Baltimore and I've got a literal mound of resumes to review, attempting to find the gems in pile, while trying to ensure that I don't miss out and pass over someone who might not look terribly great on paper but could be the exact person we're looking for.

At the risk of tipping our hat, project hampden is about taking the coffee experience to a level that's not widely seen in the industry, and certainly not in our hamlet of Baltimore. The standards are high and so are the expectations. The task at hand is pouring through all the resumes that are flooding my email box to find the right people to make it happen.