So, this week we had our Trek Christmas party. I know. It’s February. Christmas was over literally months ago. But, we never got a chance to celebrate with our people. And, we realized that we really wanted to celebrate with these people that have become our extended family. Hence, Christmas in February.

My most read blog posts are about how we make this whole owning a business and having a young family thing work. People like to hear stories. Maybe some of you out there are considering starting your own business– and as we’ve shared before, we’d LOVE to sit down and talk with you. We collected these stories before we started. We learned a lot from others, and we feel like we’re paying it forward when we share our experiences with others considering taking the leap to follow a dream. We’ve talked before about how we are intentional with our time and our resources. We’ve talked about how we rely on our families. But we haven’t really touched on how much we rely on our staff.

In an industry with incredibly high turnover, we’ve been lucky enough to have a stable team. We’ve built a crew that is trustworthy and knowledgeable. They are kind and charismatic. The Trek team is truly exceptional.

Attracting and maintaining good staff members is one of the hardest things about owning a small business. It can literally make or break you. When choosing our staff, we were fortunate to be able to be “choosy.” John and I created a standardized interview so that we ensure that we ask the same questions to every candidate. We both were present at the interviews, and afterward, we rated them separately and then together. We then made offers to our favorites, and we brought them onto the team. We have created written processes and procedures to make it easy for new staff to understand how to do things the Trek way. John is able to be onsite to train new staff, and we try to walk them through all our different crowds before we put them on alone.

When we’re not behind the bar, our staff is the face of Trek. Because of them, we’re able to step back just a little bit and gain a few more nights of family time. We trust them to run Trek just as we would if we were there.

In addition to them becoming an extension of our family, we feel incredibly lucky that they also treat each other like family. We all genuinely enjoy each other’s company, and that makes for a huge difference in our daily lives.

It was wonderful to sit and share a meal with these people that we love. We toasted each other and we toasted the future. It’s going to be a really exciting year, and we’re looking forward to growing together.

We love to build relationships with our customers, so come on in and join our journey. This Trek is constantly growing and changing, and the adventure just keeps getting better. We’re looking forward to seeing you from across the bar.

Cheers friends!