A new independent daytime restaurant has opened near where I live this week.  I was walking past when I paused to peer through the windows and check out their menu. 

For 10 years my wife and I owned and ran one of the busiest independent coffee shops in the UK.  That meant employing a lot of young and energetic staff to handle the constant stream of customers at the tills.  My guess is that over the years we have employed more than four hundred counter staff who stayed with us for anything from, in one case the full ten years down to, in another case just fifteen minutes of uninterrupted service.   Yes it is true; one girl could be seen to be running off down the high street just a few minutes after being introduced to “The Beasts”.   That’s not me and the wife but our original matched pair of Rancilio Classe 10 4 group Espresso machines.