Frankly Speaking: After 473 days, we are ready to open our cafe

It’s 11.34pm and I am scrubbing the tiles of the cafe on my hands and knees with the largest brush I could find at the supermarket. I have to wake up in 5 hours to get ready for our first ever day of trade at our cafe. 

“These were a terrible idea,” I say to my sister, who is scrubbing away on the other side of the room. 

We thought we had done our due diligence, opting for hardy terrazzo tiles that not only matched our design vision, but were non-slip, too. Unfortunately, they were impossible to clean. The things you realise with the benefit of hindsight. In this moment, I make a promise to myself that I will do more research into floor coverings if we ever open another cafe. 

I was aching all over and somehow would have to be up, ready and presentable for our very first customers – it felt like a tall order.

We should have been thrilled – just a few hours earlier, after 473 days, we had finally been given the all-clear by the council health department to open the doors of our cafe, Two Franks. Weeks of practically living at the shop, painting, sanding, vacuuming, and putting together IKEA cabinets with relative ease, had finally paid off. 

But not without some hurdles. We had some preliminary inspections from the health inspector to check on our progress – making sure we knew about the three different sinks a cafe needs to operate, about coving beneath cabinets, about the fact that you’re not supposed to have pendant lights over a food prep area (despite the fact that I seem to see pendant lights at cafes wherever I go). 

Our final and most critical requirement was getting our hot water turned on. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to open. We were aiming to open on a Wednesday. To add more to the challenge, it was a public holiday on the Monday. 

We teed it up precisely – our hot water would get turned on first thing Tuesday morning and our final health inspection and sign-off would happen last thing Tuesday afternoon. 

There was no margin for error. We had staff rostered on, milk in the fridge, coffee in the grinder, and a whole lot of fresh food being delivered for opening day. Some way or another, we had to open on Wednesday. 

Tuesday morning, the gas company assured us that the gas had been connected to the property and so we faced our final hurdle – an ancient-looking hot water unit in our tiny outdoor space that had been switched off for over a year. If it didn’t turn on, we didn’t know what to do. 

Like a conga line, we each took turns pressing the ignition switch, hoping, praying, for the flame to light. The neighbour poked his head over the fence at hearing our attempts and came around to help. 

Eventually, we caved and called our plumber, who swooped in, no questions asked. Surround yourself with good people and magic happens. 

I anxiously watched him as he worked on the hot water unit.

“If I run, you run,” he quipped.

It seems so insignificant, but the moment that the flame lit, I very nearly burst into tears. That was it. Our final hurdle. The hot water was on, we had ticked off every other thing on our list and we knew, without a doubt that we would be opening tomorrow. 

That was until the health inspector didn’t show up. Our 4.30 appointment time came and passed. I paced out the front of the shop and frantically tried calling, messaging, and emailing everyone and anyone I knew at the council. 

Finally, like a bespectacled angel descending from above, our health inspector arrived. After a quick walk around, he said the words I had been dreaming of hearing: “I’m very pleased to let you know that you will be able to open tomorrow”. 

As he and his hand sanitiser walked off into the sunset, the three of us, me, my sister and her husband, and our little management team took just a brief moment to celebrate, before heading into a final frenzy of preparations, which is how we found ourselves scrubbing tiles just before midnight. Everything had to be perfect.

The floor finally clean, the shelves dusted, and the fridges stocked, we turned out the lights and locked the door behind us. 

As I crossed the road, I turned to look at our little shop. In the moonlight, it looked so fresh and loved with its white paint and new tiles. I took a moment to think back to how it looked when we first got the keys – grey, graffitied and a little worn. We had come so far and now the finish line was here. 

Were we ready? Ready as we ever could be.

Chryssie Swarbrick is a writer, small-business-juggler, and mum of two. She is currently documenting her adventures in opening a cafe, Two Franks, opposite her childhood home.