Not unlike your clothes, your menu design says a lot about you. Are you clean and polished and easy to read, or disheveled and a bit confused? Keep the following guidelines in mind when creating your menu and you’ll be sure to make a positive first impression:

A good restaurant menu will encourage customers to dive into your offerings. They should be able to rely on popular go-to items and new favorites—with a fair amount of flexibility mixed in, so they know what to expect. But your menu should not be set in stone (read: do not laminate). The big reasons for keeping it loose: fluctuating food costs, spoilage and passing trends.

Business owners are known to dread creating a formal coffee business plan, and many especially avoid revisiting an old one. But a truly valuable business plan is a living document. By keeping it up to date, you are forced to step back from the chaos and make sure the big picture still makes sense. And if it doesn’t, you can take corrective action instead of burying your head in the sand.

As a small business owner, you wear many hats and have a plethora of tasks to complete throughout the day. It can be hard to find time to do everything, so you have to be efficient wherever possible. By making small changes to your inventory management system, you can save hours.

Whether you operate an upscale restaurant or a casual cafe, food allergies can affect your success. But when it comes down to it, providing customers with good food that they can eat and friendly service will go a long way.

If you want to expertly extract espresso, you’ll need to pack the perfect puck.

A good espresso tamping technique creates resistance (with evenly compacted coffee) that makes the brewing water work hard to push through it and saturate all of the fine grounds, thus extracting all of that great coffee flavor. The water pressure pulls oils from the grounds and creates the bold taste and rich texture inherent to a good espresso.

Pouring the perfect shot of espresso is within every barista's reach. Beyond the basics of pulling a shot, they need to know how to evaluate its appearance, smell and taste.

So, what does it take to make a great espresso? 

The right brew time, for starters. Let's assume you already know how to evaluate and adjust your grind and how to tamp it in the portafilter. If you've got those parameters in line, your espresso should take between 20 and 25 seconds to brew.

While brewing, the stream of espresso should resemble thick, warm honey. The finished shot should be golden and have a crema thickness of about 1/4" to 1/3".