How We Opened a Cafe With Absolutely No Experience (And How It Led to Sunnys)

No hospitality background. One day of barista training. Staff not turning up. A lot of anxiety. Somehow, we made it work—and it’s the exact reason Sunnys exists today.

Before We Were Sunnys, There Was Casa

There’s a lot we could tell you about opening our first cafe, Casa.

The good bits, the bad bits, the anxiety, the mistakes, the long days—and the fact that, if we’re being completely truthful, we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We didn’t come from hospitality. We weren’t experienced baristas. We weren’t chefs. We hadn’t spent years managing cafes. We just decided we wanted to open one.

Looking back now, that was probably both our biggest weakness and one of our biggest strengths. When you enter the coffee and hospitality industry, it can be pretty intimidating. Everyone seems to be an expert. Everyone has an opinion on how coffee should be made, how a cafe should operate, and what you’re doing wrong.

Meanwhile, we were trying to learn everything as quickly as possible while running an actual business. And things started going wrong almost immediately.

Opening Day

Our barista didn’t turn up.

Not exactly the ideal start when you’re opening a cafe. My wife, Maddy, had only had about one day’s barista training, and suddenly she was behind the machine trying to make it work on opening day. No real experience. No experienced barista there to guide her. Just customers walking through the door expecting us to know what we were doing. To say it was daunting would be an understatement.

Then there was the kitchen. The chef didn’t turn up either.

So while we’d opened the cafe, we couldn’t properly open the kitchen. It ended up being delayed for around a month while we tried to find a solution. At the same time, we’d completely overstaffed the place. Not because we were trying to build some massive team, but because we genuinely didn’t understand how many people a cafe needed. We had no reference point. We were learning staffing, coffee, food, suppliers, customers, and cash flow all at the same time.

It was chaos.

The Anxiety Was Real

This is probably the part of opening a business that doesn’t get talked about enough: the anxiety.

Maddy would be physically sick with anxiety some mornings before going into work. I wasn’t much better. I remember constantly having this feeling that we weren’t skilled enough for what we’d created. We’d built this cafe, customers were walking through the door, and suddenly there was an expectation that we actually knew what we were doing. And at that point, we didn’t.

But you don’t really have a choice. You learn. Quickly. Every day was another lesson.

Finding the Right People Changed Everything

It wasn’t until around October that things really started moving in the right direction.

We finally found a barista who had experience, initiative, and the confidence to take some responsibility. That was massive for us. For the first time, we weren’t trying to figure absolutely everything out ourselves.

The kitchen took longer. It was months before we found a chef who had the experience and direction to help us understand what the kitchen actually needed to be. Gradually, things started falling into place. But financially, we still had to survive long enough to get there. And that meant doing whatever we could to bring money through the door.

Friday Night Bar. Sunday Roasts. Live Singers.

For a while, our cafe had a bit of an identity crisis.

During the week, we were a cafe. Friday night? We turned it into a bar. Sunday? Roast dinners and a singer. It wasn’t some carefully planned business strategy. We needed cash flow. Simple as that.

And the schedule was brutal. We’d work six days a week. Friday could mean starting at 8am and finishing around 10pm after the bar. Then we’d be back in at 8am Saturday, working until around 3pm. Sunday we’d do it all again with roast dinners and live music, sometimes working from 10am until 10pm.

Monday the cafe was closed. And we were absolutely knackered. Then Tuesday we’d start again.

We kept doing it because we had to. The cafe wasn’t making enough money on its own yet, and those extra nights and events helped keep the business alive while we figured everything else out.

There is actually something I miss about those Friday nights. Our dads would come in for a drink. At the time, we were probably too exhausted and stressed to properly appreciate it. Eventually the cafe became strong enough that we didn’t need to put ourselves through those ridiculous shifts anymore. That was obviously a good thing. But it was strangely sad too. Those Friday nights had been part of the struggle. Our dads coming in, everyone having a drink, us working stupid hours trying to make this thing survive.

Then suddenly, that chapter was over.

Eventually, Something Clicked

Slowly, we started getting better.

The team improved. We understood staffing. We understood the kitchen. We got better at coffee. We understood our customers. And instead of constantly reacting to problems, we finally started feeling like we were actually running the business rather than the business running us.

That’s when things started getting really interesting. Because somewhere along the way, coffee had become much more than something we served. We wanted to understand it properly.

And eventually, we started roasting.

That decision sent us down another completely different path and ultimately became a huge part of what we’re doing today with Sunnys. Of course, we didn’t suddenly become business geniuses. Far from it. After figuring out the cafe, we went on to attempt multiple expansions that didn’t work out. Some of them were expensive lessons. Some were probably stupid ideas. And some make pretty good stories now (we’ll save those for the blog).

Would We Do It Again?

Opening a cafe with no experience was one of the hardest things we’ve done.

There were periods of genuine anxiety. Staffing disasters. Cash-flow problems. Ridiculously long working weeks. And plenty of moments where we questioned whether we’d made a massive mistake.

But we learnt more in those first few years than we ever could have learnt from a course or a book. Sometimes not knowing everything forces you to learn. And sometimes being surrounded by people telling you the “right” way to do something makes you realise there isn’t always one.

We definitely wouldn’t recommend opening a cafe after one day’s barista training. But somehow, we made it work. We made plenty of mistakes along the way, and there were definitely easier ways we could have done it.

But those mistakes shaped how we think about coffee, business, and Sunnys today.

And really, that’s where the Sunnys story starts.