Today we’d like to introduce you to Will Goodwin and Sido Gaude.
Will and Sido, please share your story with us.
I was working for Potbelly’s Sandwich Works when they were just a small company with probably three locations. I spent three years working for them making my way up the managerial chain while the company continuously expanded. Eventually, I found myself with multiple bosses all doing the same job and much of the fun of the job had been eroded away for me. When I left, I took some time off for a few months and when I was ready to rejoin the workforce I inquired with the local coffee shop that I frequented, Beans & Bagels. It was a cool little spot and the staff was super friendly. Very punk rock sort of with gig posters from local screen print artists plastered all over the shop and music always playing that was chosen by the staff. Also, the staff remembered all of the customer’s names. It seemed fun and a definitive break from my most recent experience working in the food industry. It was much less financial compensation than my previous job, so I was hustling any angle I could find. When the boss had extra work I was on it. Eventually, we needed new menu boards and I jumped at it. I had never done anything like this but I had good handwriting and some artistic sense from numerous years in architecture school. One of our coffee vendors saw the menu boards and wanted some for his cafe and roastery and the story goes ad nauseum from there for a few years. About half way through the three or so years of menu board hustling, I fixed up a bike someone had traded me for some artwork of mine. It had been languishing and a friend saw it and suggested I fix it up and get on it as it was a really good road bike. This was around the time of the fixie and cycling craze in general becoming more of a mainstream thing in Chicago so of course after blindly fumbling my way through getting this bike in working condition I am propositioned by someone to build them a bike too. They saw mine and liked it and wanted one for themselves. This turned into about a 10 years stretch of making custom bikes at a furious pace all while still working at the shop. We had by this time opened a second location at Rockwell and Leland and I had been bouncing back and forth between the two shops. Eventually, the owner of the shop had to move to Florida due to his spouse accepting a job offer to the shop was left in the hands of a close friend of the owner, Adam Snow, and myself. Each of us running a location. We had skirted around forever the idea of the shops being sold and who would buy them. I had been saving money from menu boards, building bikes and working at the shop so it was sort of on my radar but I had really been out of practice with all of the behind the scenes stuff management, budgeting, food costs, labor costs etc., so I left the Montrose Ave. location and went to work beside Adam Snow at the Rockwell location. He and I worked on improving the food quality, the coffee quality, the shop atmosphere and the sustainability of the shop. Adam had a background in environmental ethics which suited him well to tackle some of these things. After spending almost two years working alongside him and gaining much experience in how to turn things around, I went back to the Montrose location to begin the work there. It all started with eschewing high fructose corn syrup from the shop via our beverage cooler and before we knew it we had gotten to this place where we were making almost everything in house rather than buying any prepared foods or sauces. In August 2013, I finally purchased the Montrose Beans & Bagels from the previous owner with a 2 year license to use the Beans & Bagels name and in August 2015 we renamed it Spoken Cafe. My wife , Sido, and I run it alongside an astounding staff of humans making it a very democraticly(sp?) run cafe. We make as much as we can ourselves sourced through local vendors and farmers keeping ever as seasonal and organic as possible. We have a pretty intense pickling, preserving and fermenting program in place allowing us to use all of these amazing Midwest fruit and veggies all year long. We still keep very close ties to our customers and know almost all by name. The core of our regulars makes up about 75% of our business. We say we make “Beautiful food for beautiful people!”
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I am a patient person and I am lucky to have been able to buy a restaurant that was already established with a customer base that already knew me well. With literally every single hurdle I was able to look to my staff or my customers for the answer. Our CPA was a referral through a customer, extra money for renovations through the Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce ( they actually came in and made me stop spending any more money until I read up about the city’s SBIF program), our Quickbooks consultant is a customer and helps me keep my books straight, almost everyone on staff has their taxes done next door with the guy who runs the currency exchange( he does taxes on the side for $50 a pop), several of our food vendors are customers (one is someone who my wife nannied for), lots of our customer base is also self-employed, so we get to ask them all of the questions and last but not least our staff has been the biggest help in getting us where we are. I believe that no matter what you have to make sure everyone is given the opportunity to play to their strengths. We have a food historian on staff who does all of our preserving of foods and much of our taste-making, we’ve had photographers and videographers make videos and photo sessions for the shop in exchange for more and better equipment( the next time you need me to do a job they have better equipment than the last time), when we needed to get a variance to our business license for our pickling and preserving the City of Chicago demanded a HACCP plan and fined us for not having one… multiple times. They also had no clue nor guidance to offer on how to create a HACCP plan so I turned to one of our staff who runs a non-profit and better administrative experience than myself and she accepted the challenge. Around that time one of our other staff members had broken his hand and couldn’t work floor shifts any longer so they teamed up and at their usual hourly rate with the added incentive of a lump cash sum at completion they took on the city of Chicago’s ineptitude and got it done. There are folks out there in the city that do this task for restaurants exclusively and they charge through the nose for this. My staff got it done. As an old friend used to say ” Ain’t no hill for a high stepper!”
Spoken Cafe – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Cafe serving breakfast and lunch focusing on bagels, breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, soups, salads and coffee all at a level way above your average cafe. We specialize in real interactions with real humans trying every day to eliminate that overpowering sense of anonymity that is so pervasive in a city this big. We are friends with our customers and know them well. My wife and I are both from southern Louisiana and people ask all the time if we do Cajun food and yes we do sometimes, serve very traditional dishes from home but its more about making people feel like they’re at home than serving them the food from your home. We take pride in our food. We know that our customers look forward to coming in to eat with us as well as see us and say hi. They spend their very hard earned money to visit our shop and the least we can do is make it worth their while.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
A few months ago, we paid off the note on our business 6 months early. When that happened we realized we were in the black and had been the whole time while making continuous improvements to our business, continuous improvements to our food, and most importantly continuous improvements to the ways we treat and compensate our staff. I always had to have a second or third job while working here. I can say that our proudest moment is when we realize that for all of our staff that works at or near full time, none of them need a second job. Some restaurants go on and on about the quality of the food, some about the level of pay they offer their staff, some about the customer experience. I think we can do it all.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1812 W. Montrose Ave.
Chicago, IL 60613 - Website: spokenchicago.com
- Phone: 773-769-2000
- Email: will@spokenchicago.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spokencafe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Spoken-Cafe
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
