Butter Notes Cafe

As a small business owner, I thought that the most important thing about getting my cafe’s name out there is to get the most amount of views as possible, whether that may be through socializing our desserts or through our jazz. But through managing the cafe for about two years now, I’ve found that that may have been a bit misguided.

Our coffee shop should lean more on coffee. Making good coffee. And improving our existing coffee offerings so that it’s coffee that should get the most attention, not jazz or desserts.

Part of the reason is scale. We can build out more coffee drinks and we’re able to push out more coffee drinks moreso than croffles or crepes. And our jazz and cultural aspects of the cafe shows our commitment to the community, but they shouldn’t necessarily overshadow what we primarily should serve, which is coffee.

It’s definitely a learning process for the most part. But refining our brand identity so that we understand what we are has been a journey that I’ve been working through the past few years

We had a WiFi outage yesterday and today.

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it definitely puts a damper on service. Thankfully, we have offline mode, so we can still take yo monaaay 💸

But flaky WiFi in a sit-down coffee shop? No bueno.

So naturally, I put on my network guy hat and started troubleshooting.

First, I thought it was our WiFi gateway. I replaced all of the old Ethernet cables connecting it to the modem. Still broken.

We’re also supposed to have a backup internet connection, but that seemed to be crapping out too.

At that point, I frantically went out and bought a new WiFi gateway for $200.

Then I finally called our internet provider.

Turns out they could see an issue with the modem on their end. They fixed it during the call, and suddenly everything was working again.

Lesson learned: before I start replacing cables, buying hardware, and turning myself into an amateur network engineer, maybe just call the internet provider first and make sure there isn’t an obvious problem. 😂

Small business ownership means being the barista, maintenance guy, IT department, purchasing department, and occasionally the person spending $200 to solve a problem that required one phone call.

Butter Notes Vlog 🤎😋🙌🏻

One of the hardest things about running Butter Notes has been figuring out how to properly pay the artists who provide the music here.

Jazz and community building are core pillars of what we do, but at the rate and amount of coffee that we sling, it is nearly impossible to consistently support artists at the rate they deserve. That disconnect has been really challenging for us.

We’re now growing a partnership with Jazz Clubs Northwest, a nonprofit in the greater Seattle area that puts on jazz walks and helps create continuity between those events and shows at places like ours.

Danny, the organization’s founder, has been gracious enough to partner with us. We’re still contributing what we can, but this support helps us pay artists a bit more and makes the whole thing a little more sustainable.

Honestly, it feels like nonprofit relationships like this are crucial if a small jazz café like ours is going to survive. If I were smarter, I would have more seats and be an amazing marketer who could fill every seat every night. Then artists could just focus on making the best work they can without having to market themselves.

But it’s not the real world, and we are living in the sauce right now.

Last night was a fully seated show. It was amazing, and it felt like the start of something really good. I kind of feel like I’m dating Danny now, and I hope we have a beautiful relationship moving forward.

16 bar intro but the gang didn’t pull up one the one