The site housed three distinct operations sharing one building: a coworking space, a premium café, and the first official commissary kitchen of its kind on the island. The team running it was three people. The operational discipline holding it together was thin. Financial workflows lived in head-knowledge, the café existed only on paper, the commissary was an idea waiting for an operator, and the day-to-day execution depended on the owner being present. The work was to build the operating backbone — procedures, recipes, financial workflows, and the café itself — and run them while doing so.
Re-engineered the operator's tax-payment workflow — collapsed a multi-tab spreadsheet into a single automated sheet that calculated and tracked obligations to the local tax authority. The model was effective enough that the owner adopted it across her other businesses.
Authored the full library of Standard Operating Procedures for every operational function — front desk, café, member onboarding, facilities, vendor coordination — and uploaded and distributed it to the team. The docs became the institutional memory after my departure.
Designed the menu and the recipe book, sourced and contracted every supplier and maintenance vendor, configured the Clover POS, calibrated the commercial espresso equipment, and authored the training program for the café staff. Opened the doors and worked opening shifts during stabilization.
Pitched and co-consulted on the expansion of a shared commercial kitchen on-site — the first official commissary kitchen of its kind in Puerto Rico — bringing third-party food businesses into the building as paying tenants of the production space.
I departed in June 2024. As of this writing — June 2026 — the operation has been running on its own for over two years, on the operating backbone I installed: the café procedures, the SOP library, the financial workflows, the commissary model. The team turned over, the members turned over, the market shifted, and the structure held.
About this case: all references to the operator, the business, and other staff have been anonymized. Specific identifying details, financial particulars, and individuals are withheld out of respect for confidentiality. The figures and outcomes cited above are accurate and verifiable on request, under NDA, by serious prospects.