Introducing Slack Time to the Cafe
The story of Anna Campbell’s decision to embrace Slack
Sometimes, doing nothing is better than starting something new. ☕
In my ongoing hunt for real-world stories of agility in action, one theme keeps popping up more than any other: Slack. And no, not the app - though that’s a future blog topic 😏. I’m talking about the intentional kind of Slack - the space between busy moments that helps teams thrive. (If you want to dive deep on how your team can use it, check out my practical guide.)
I wish I could say Slack shows up in my stories because people struggle to accept it (they do), but the truth is…I just love watching it work. If you follow the blog, you know I like to say, “Stop Starting. Start Finishing.”
Nowhere was this more evident than at The Café at Centerpointe.
📖 Story Time
During one of our Café team training sessions, we talked about how to create and maintain Flow in both the café line and the kitchen. Unlike most businesses that get this wrong, we don’t optimize for efficiency.
“If you optimize for efficiency, you get gridlock. If you optimize for flow, you get efficiency.”
— John Terry 💡
In a café setting, if our point-of-sale barista is focused on being hyper-efficient - rapid-fire taking orders and passing them to the espresso or frozen drink barista - we’d create a bottleneck. The faster they take orders, the more the orders pile up, and the more pressure stacks on the team 😬.
As the guy making our famous Peanut Butter Heaven, I’ve lived it. Five empty cups in a row? My brain panics. I start rushing, doubling up, cutting corners - trying to go fast -and guess what? I go fast… in the wrong direction. The drink ends up wrong, and I have to remake it. The customer waits longer. The team gets frustrated.
That’s why introducing Slack Time changed everything 🔁.
When the café line reached five queued drinks - our WIP limit - I told the team to pause order-taking. Just stop. Let the kitchen catch up.
I explained,
“When we get about five drinks stacked up, stop taking orders and let us finish what we’ve started. Take a beat. Talk to customers. I call this Slack Time - it helps us favor finishing over starting. We aren’t in a rush, but we want to serve people well.”
And then came Anna.
Anna didn’t just embrace Slack Time - she elevated it. When we hit the WIP limit, she’d gently let customers know there’d be a brief pause, then turn toward the kitchen. Sometimes she washed dishes. Sometimes she restocked. Other times, she simply chatted with customers—something most baristas barely have time to do.
And the customers? They loved it ❤️.
Slack created space. Space for quality. Space for connection. Space to breathe. And you can absolutely add value to your Slack time. Some leaders fear Slack because they immediately think, “My team will go para-gliding or twiddle their thumbs.” Anna proved this was not the case. There will be times when your teams get it wrong. They may scroll Social Media for a few minutes. But here is the silver lining…it’s STILL better than starting new work.
This story is the real-world version of my Taco article 🌮. I believe in Slack so much that I was willing to slow down taking money from willing café customers. Every time we did, we ended up serving MORE drinks, FASTER - and with fewer mistakes (AKA high quality).
✈️ Landing the Plane
Slack isn’t laziness. It’s margin. It’s intentional. It’s the buffer that keeps systems - and people - from breaking 🧠.
In a world obsessed with hustle, maybe the bravest thing you can do… is pause.
Until next time,
Keep learning. Keep growing. 🌱