What we do at 7am in PichaEats

Since we started having weekly meetings in PichaEats few years back, we had to sometimes change our meeting schedule due to catering events, external important meetings or urgent matter that we have to attend to. 

Even during the meeting, the small team can’t even focus because of incoming customer calls, caterers/delivery guys who needed our attention or other matters that required immediate action. It was sometimes annoying and it disturbs the flow of the meeting. By the end of the meeting, it feels like everyone is just everywhere.

Then we thought to ourselves, why can’t we schedule our meeting way earlier when everyone is just preparing to head to work or having their breakfast. LET'S SCHEDULE OUR CORE MEETING AT 7AM. At first, some people in the team freaked out, like who goes to work at 7am? Or this means I have to probably wake up at 5am?

We experimented it, telling everyone that if this does not work out, we’ll go back to old routines. So, we gave it a go. Slowly, we realised that it’s working out for everyone. Besides sometimes having trouble to wake up that early (which the habit can be trained), everyone liked it.

Here are 3 reasons why I think a 7am meeting helps my team.

1. Skipping the traffic 

I guess this is like the best reason everyone gave me why they preferred the 7am meetings. It has always been a hassle to go through the morning jam and sometimes it frustrates people.

Everyone in the team told me that they loved skipping the morning traffic to go to work because they can start off the day or the week with a better mood. With a people driven business, every members in the team has got to be in good mood so that they serve our customers with the brightest smile.

2. Escape from any distractions

It has always been very frustrating to sometimes see my team members needing to attend to urgent matters via call during meetings. The flow of the meeting is disturbed, it sometimes can be seen as disrespectful to the person speaking or it wastes a bit of time picking up the pieces from where we left off after the person returns.

Since our 7am meeting, we’ve been able to smoothen out our meeting with no distractions at all because which customer would call you at 7am anyway? You can feel the positive energy in the group because the team member’s mind is not bogged down by daily operations or screw ups that was made or frustrating conversations over the phone. Everyone is focus and it feels like each and every one of them were ready to conquer the world.

3. Increase productiveness

Before deciding this, you’ve got to probably consult your team members if they are a morning person. As for my team, everyone prefers to work early morning as they’ll be able to start work with a fresh mind and a better sense of direction for their work throughout the day or week.

It helps them to make clear and better decisions, feels like more work can be completed before lunch hour and it generally increase productiveness among members. Sometimes, I think they communicate better as well. HAHA!

Well, this weekly meeting routine helped us in many ways and we even perform our core team learning at 7am too. It provides us a better sense of direction and navigation. I’m quite happy that we made that decision especially when we have zero distraction from the outside world.

Of course it comes with some cons, example probably some team members not being able to get used to waking up that early or if we have something going on during the night before (like catering or events), it can be quite a long and tiring day. So, be flexible around it and look after your team member’s health and performance. After all, it’s not supposed to lower down productivity but increase it instead.

One more tip to get your team members committing to a 7am meeting, get them nice and good breakfast. HAHA! 

If you decided to change your weekly meeting routine’s schedule, let me know how it works for you. If you have a better idea, share it with me too.

The team started a core team learning at 7am and still going strong in learning about kitchen flow at 9pm. It's hard work but growth is a must in PichaEats.