Passing the Latte: Bryana Weston-Wyatt Looks Back on Being SCEO at Millersville University
Bryana Weston-Wyatt spent the past six months running Saxbys Millersville, which serves hundreds of students a day. From her “bagel of the day” promotion to setting new inventory baselines after the amount of guests her team served this year saw big increases, Bryana’s innovative solutions and forward thinking helped propel the cafe to new heights.
Not bad for a senior in college.
Bryana worked as Student Cafe Executive officer as part of our Experiential Learning Program. While earning college credit and a minor in Entrepreneurship, Bryana learned valuable lessons about developing a strong team, ingraining the cafe into the wider community, and managing the financials of her cafe. Shortly after she finished her tenure on December 31, she sat down with us to discuss her thoughts on the program.
Overview
How would you briefly describe your experience as SCEO?
Challenging but worth it. As stressful as it was, it was fun. I love Saxbys. I always went to Saxbys before I joined the company but to work there gave me so much respect for my team members and all the past CEOs because, wow, they do a lot. As a guest you don’t see all that.
How does this program prepare you for your eventual career?
It gave me a glimpse into the real world. It showed me how much it takes to run your own cafe or business. It also showed me which parts of hospitality I like best, which were interacting with guests and building a solid team. I just loved going into work everyday and seeing our people happy and having a good time under my responsibility.
Team Development
How did you build a culture based off your leadership style within six months?
Since I was an external hire, I didn’t know the team before I started as SCEO. So I took time to get to know everyone. I’d just say “tell me about yourself. I literally want to hear your life story.” There were 50 team members and I wanted to connect with them all in some way. That really helped me because when issues came up, they trusted me. That was my foundation and it helped establish the culture in my cafe.
Is it difficult to manage people your own age?
Absolutely. It was challenging but I built trust and respect by making genuine connections with team members.
What was the most rewarding aspect of developing your team?
Knowing that the new people I brought in were great hires. Knowing that I introduced them to the culture of Saxbys and then hearing them say things like “there’s no place I’d rather be right now.” They thoroughly enjoy coming to work everyday.
What was a major obstacle you had to overcome when it came to developing a team member?
Trying to figure out if a team member needed extra help, or if working at Saxbys just wasn’t a fit for them. Letting people go is so hard but some people consistently didn’t show up for shifts and we had to make a tough decision. I’d tell them “you’re a great person but you’re hurting other team members who had to cover for you.”
Community Leadership
How did you balance the best interest of your team while also contributing to the community you served?
My COO (Cafe Operating Officer), Paige Robbins focused on that and did an amazing job. We did “coffee with cops.” We had slam poetry. We had people come in and sing. We got other clubs involved too. We opened our space to other organizations to do what they love in the space that we love.
What was your favorite community event?
My favorite was slam poetry. It was inspiring to see so many people in the cafe listening to people telling their stories. Slam poetry can get really personal, and you could feel that everyone was captivated by each poet. It was amazing.
How did becoming a community leader impact your cafe?
It attracted new guests. For people who don’t come in that often, events like this expose them to the cafe. It brings a wider audience to help our cafe grow.
Financial Management
How did you achieve mastery to manage and understand your P&L?
Financials is the probably the hardest thing everyone has to do. I tackled it by learning how every little thing contributes to the bottom line. Millersville Saxbys got busy this semester compared to last year, so I had to redo all my Periodic Automatic Replenishments, developing a new bottom line for how much coffee, food, milk and other inventory to order. That is what I had to master so I didn’t run out of things but also didn’t waste.
How did you keep your cafe accountable to the day-to-day responsibilities in order to manage your costs?
My team members truly care so much about the cafe even when they’re not working, they’re hanging out there. So for me it was really simple, I just told them about our initiatives around not wasting product and fixing simple problems and they were really responsive.
A major part of the job is to be entrepreneurial, which you did with your “bagel of the day” promotion. Tell us about that.
I heard a lot of guests talking about cool bagel flavors like blueberry, french toast. They just wanted something different. I thought maybe we should try something fun, so I talked to our bagel distributor and each week I’d bring in one bagel we didn’t have before. We had asiago, sun dried tomato, chocolate chip, blueberry. We increased our bagels sold by 100 per week. People who normally didn’t get out of bed until 11 a.m. were at the door at 7 a.m. to make sure they didn’t miss the bagels because they would sell out so fast.
Final Thoughts
How do you feel that it’s over?
Bittersweet. I’m back to work at Saxbys as a Team Lead 3, so I’ll enjoy making coffee without having to worry about doing everything else that needs to be done. I’m ready to go back to being a normal student.
Did you give any advice to Meghan Tezik, the incoming SCEO?
Not yet, we have a dinner coming up where I’ll certainly share my thoughts. I’ll tell her what the old SCEO told me: try not to get overwhelmed at first. There is so much and you’re going to want to do it all by yourself but you have people — lean on them. Take everything one day at a time. And when you need help, don’t be afraid to ask. You got this. Make it your own and kill it.