Why Your Cafe Doesn’t Run Itself

How to Create Simple, Effective SOPs for Your Team

As a café owner, your days are full. But when something starts to slip, a KPI, customer experience, food costs, the question isn’t “What’s wrong?” It’s “Where’s the system?”

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) aren’t just a formality, they’re your most powerful tool to identify problems, correct them, and grow sustainably.

Here’s how we do it at Dad and the Frog Café.

1. Start with the KPI, Not the Clipboard

We don’t create SOPs just to tick boxes. We create them to move the dial on specific goals.

• Average customer spend stagnating? Review your Sequence of Service, are your staff upselling or just taking orders?

• COGs creeping up? Time to assess supplier pricing or portioning and wastage procedures.

• Service times inconsistent? Revisit your station prep and opening routines.

SOPs are the lever that helps improve performance. But to pull the right one, you need to track your KPIs closely and regularly.

2. Keep It Simple (Seriously)

A confusing SOP never gets used. Build each procedure using one clear framework that suits the task:

• ✅ Checklists - for cleaning, closing, restocking, and opening

• 📋 Step-by-step guides - for ordering, POS, incident reporting

• 🤝 Service analogies - like “Treat your guest like they’ve walked into your home” to guide FOH behaviour

Clarity drives consistency. And consistency drives confidence, especially in new team members.

3. Train It Like You Mean It

Writing SOPs is just the start. If you don’t train your team to use them, they won’t.
And if you don’t follow up, even your best staff will eventually stop using them.

Make SOP training a part of:

• 💼 Onboarding

• 📆 Weekly meetings

• 🔁 Refreshers during quiet periods

4. Assign Ownership (and Tie It to Performance)

No SOP will survive if you are the only one responsible for maintaining it.

Delegate responsibility:

• ✨ A manager can own front-of-house SOPs

• 🔪 A head chef can lead BOH procedures

And where possible, tie SOP adherence to performance reviews, promotions, and even bonuses.
What gets measured gets managed - especially when there’s skin in the game.

5. Let SOPs Become the Backbone of Your Business

When your SOPs are clear, trained, and owned by the right people, your café starts to function without your constant supervision. That’s when you move from operator to owner.

Because every well-run café isn’t just built on great people - it’s built on great systems that empower great people.