One year ago, we opened the doors to the Resident cafe at 4401 NW 25th Place.
It feels fast and not fast at all.
Fast because somehow we are already here, looking back on a full year of packed weekends, early mornings, late nights, messy systems, better systems, and a thousand tiny decisions that nobody sees.
Not fast because this year was heavy. Good, but heavy.
Resident started in 2020 as a roasting company. Before that, there was Wyatt’s. Wyatt’s taught us so much about service, speed, regulars, pressure, and how much people remember the way a place feels. I still love that shop so much. It has its own pace and personality. It is smaller, faster, younger, a little chaotic in the best way.
But I always felt like Resident had another side to it that we had not built yet.
I wanted 4401 to be a place with more room. Literally and otherwise.
A place where someone could come in with a stroller and not feel like they were in the way. A place where families could eat breakfast. A place where you could meet a friend, bring your parents, sit with a laptop, taste something new, ask questions about coffee, or just have a really good meal without it feeling stiff.
I wanted it to feel like us.
The coffee we care about. The food we grew up around and the food we love now. Gainesville. Our families. A place that could take the work seriously without taking itself too seriously.
Before you open, though, all of that is still mostly theory.
You can make plans. You can write menus. You can design the bar. You can talk about service models, seating, community, and coffee education. You can imagine what it will feel like when the room is full.
But eventually, people have to walk in.
And before that happened, we had to actually finish the thing.
The buildout was one of the hardest things I have ever been part of. It was expensive, stressful, and more complicated than I knew how to explain while we were in it. We had loans. We had private financing. We had a plan. We had forecasts. We had spreadsheets that made us feel responsible.
And then the end got bigger.
Final contractor payments. Equipment. Opening payroll. Training. Inventory. A lot of things needed money at the same time. Near the end, we ran lower than I wanted to admit out loud.
Then a business tax refund we had been waiting on came through at the exact right moment.
I do not know how else to say it. We needed it, and it showed up.
That helped us get across the line.
And then there was permitting.
The certificate of occupancy lived rent-free in my head for weeks. I barely slept before that inspection. I kept walking the space, staring at corners, checking little things, moving chairs, overthinking anything that could possibly keep us from opening.
I was in the shop early. Some mornings around 5 a.m. I would leave late, go home, try to be a normal person for a few hours, then wake up and do it again.
I cried in that space. I bled in that space. I sweat through more shirts than I care to remember.
And in the middle of all of that, my second daughter Adelina had just been born.
She was born in February. We opened the cafe in May.
So while we were bringing this huge, expensive, very needy business into the world, my wife Aleena and I were also adjusting to life with another actual newborn. My first daughter Brooklyn was becoming a big sister. Adelina was tiny. We were tired in every possible way.
It really did feel like having two newborns at the same time.
One of them needed to be held and dirty diapers changed. The other needed inspections, staff training, plumbing fixes, menu testing, cash, prep lists, signage, and an organized POS.
Both were loud in their own ways.
I look back on that season with a lot of gratitude, but I do not want to clean it up too much now. It was hard. I was trying to be a present husband and dad while also trying to help open the most complex thing we had ever built. I did not always get that balance right.
Eventually, somehow, we got to the doors.
After friends and family service and some quieter test runs, we announced a soft opening through internal channels. I remember showing up that morning and seeing people waiting outside before we had even unlocked the door.
That was the first moment where the idea stopped being an idea.
Outside, there were people waiting.
Inside, there was a full team. Nervous. Excited. Ready enough, which is probably as ready as you ever are.
Then service started.
Drinks were going out. Plates were landing on tables. Guests were finding seats. Food runners were moving through the room. People were looking around, trying to understand what this new place was.
I spent a lot of those early services standing at expo.
That first Saturday, I remember looking at the screen and seeing it blink red. Drinks were passing 15 minutes. Food was past 15, then 20. The numbers were not where we wanted them. The pressure was immediate.
There is nothing theoretical about a ticket screen blinking red.
You can have all the right language around hospitality, but in that moment the work is very plain. Move someone here. Help there. Get the next plate out. Reassure the guest. Fix the thing you can fix. Do not make the team more panicked than they already are.
I kept having to remind myself to slow down.
That sounds ridiculous when everything is behind, but it is true. When every part of you wants to rush, you have to get clear. One guest. One ticket. One decision. One small recovery at a time.
Year one taught us quickly that Resident was not just a bigger Wyatt’s.
It is about three times the size. More seats. A full kitchen. A larger team. More equipment. More service positions. More expectations. More ways for a small issue to become a real issue.
At Wyatt’s, a lot of things could still live in muscle memory. At Resident, that was not enough.
More people meant more communication. More communication meant better structure. Better structure meant clearer leadership. We learned that one the hard way.
For a long time, I have probably taken too much pride in being the person who can just figure it out. Show up early. Stay late. Carry the thing. Push harder. Solve the problem.
There is a place for that. There is also a ceiling to that.
Resident cannot depend on me and Noe being everywhere. Wyatt’s cannot. The roastery cannot. The food program cannot. Wholesale cannot. Our team deserves more than two tired owners trying to hold everything together by force of will.
That is why the people leading this place have mattered so much.
Lauren brought structure to the retail side when we badly needed it. Christian kept pushing the kitchen into something more honest and more interesting than the safe version. Matt carried the roasting side while the cafe took up a lot of time.
Shane helped shape the day-to-day culture inside the cafe. Dylan shaped wholesale and education in a key season. Dani stepped into that work and helped keep it moving.
And then there are the teams who actually live the service every day. FOH. BOH. Roastery. The people on bar, at the register, on expo, on dishes, on prep, on the roaster, packing orders, running food, answering questions, resetting tables, cleaning up after the rush.
That is the business.
Not the idea of the business. The actual business.
Another thing year one forced us to answer was the question of what the Resident cafe actually is.
Coffee shop? Restaurant? Cafe? Workspace? Brunch spot? Coffee education space? Family spot?
Yes.
Which is nice, and also very complicated.
Different guests walk in with different expectations. Someone coming in for coffee may expect to grab any table, open a laptop, and stay for a few hours. Someone coming in for brunch may expect an open table, quick food, clean seating, and a room that feels built around eating.
Both make sense.
They just do not always fit neatly in the same room at the same time.
That is why we had to make decisions around laptop tables and no-laptop tables. Seating. Table turnover. Online orders. Counter service. Food runners. How much we explain at the register.
Some of those choices were not fun. A little table sign can become a whole conversation. A policy can put a team member in an awkward spot. A decision that seems small in a meeting can feel very personal to someone sitting in the cafe.
But we had to make those decisions because the kitchen had to work.
And honestly, the kitchen has been one of the biggest surprises and encouragements of the year.
At Wyatt’s, food has always been simpler. Smaller menu. Smaller team. More limited space. At Resident, we built a real kitchen team, and that meant the food could not be treated like a side project.
It had to be strong enough to stand on its own.
Fresh masa. Heirloom corn. Huaraches. Salsas. Breakfast tacos. Avocado Not Toast. Masa pancakes. Maduros. A menu shaped by our backgrounds, our taste, and the kind of food we actually wanted to eat.
I will be honest, I was not always sure how Gainesville would respond.
It is easy to get cynical and assume people mostly want the safest option. But Gainesville showed up for the food. People asked questions. They came back for specific dishes. They brought friends. They left reviews about tortillas, masa pancakes, brunch, service, and the care behind it.
That encouraged me a lot.
It also confirmed that if we are going to do this, we should keep doing it honestly. Not just add food because we need higher tickets. Not just copy what already works somewhere else. Build something that makes sense for us and then make it better.
There are a few moments from the year that I keep coming back to.
Seeing people wait outside before that first soft opening.
Standing at expo with the screen blinking red and realizing we were not playing restaurant anymore. We were actually in it.
Watching Aleena bring Brooklyn and Adelina into the cafe and seeing my own family use the space the way I hoped other families would.
Seeing kids at tables. Parents with strollers. People trying to eat with one hand while keeping a toddler alive with the other. I know that season. I am in that season. I wanted Resident to make room for that.
Hosting our team Christmas party in the cafe was another one.
Back before the space was finished, I remember walking through it with Dylan and talking about how cool it would be if one day we could host Christmas there. Not at another restaurant. Not somewhere rented. In our own space.
And then we did.
The room was full of people from every part of the business. Baristas, cooks, leaders, roastery, wholesale, people who had been with us a long time, people who were new, people who had given a lot of themselves to get us through the year.
I do not need to make that more poetic than it was.
I just looked around and felt the weight of it.
A year in, I am proud. I am also aware of how much we still have to figure out.
We are still learning how to care for guests well.
We are still learning how to make the kitchen stronger.
We are still learning how to make coffee education a regular part of the space, not just something we talk about wanting to do.
We are still learning how to build systems that support people instead of burying them.
We are still learning how to be present. With guests. With the team. With our families. With the work right in front of us.
That one is hard for me.
As a business owner, it is easy to be physically present and mentally somewhere else. Thinking about payroll, repairs, staffing, the next decision, the thing that broke, the thing that might break soon.
Presence is harder than I want it to be.
Thank you, Gainesville, for showing up this year.
To our regulars and guests, thank you for making Resident part of your week. Thank you for bringing friends, parents, kids, laptops, questions, and appetites into the space. Thank you for waiting longer than we wanted more than once and still giving us grace.
To our team, thank you for doing real work with real pressure behind it. The kind of work people do not always see, but absolutely feel.
And Noe. There is no Resident without him. His fingerprints are all over this place in the best way, from the food to the feel of the room to the decisions that got us here. I thank God for him often.
One year in, I do not feel like we have arrived.
I feel like we have a much clearer picture of what this place requires.
More care. Better systems. Clearer leadership. More patience. And, hopefully, more room for people.
My abuelito used to say, “Siempre adelante.”
Always forward.
I think about that a lot. Not in a cheesy, everything-happens-for-a-reason way. More like a steady reminder.
Take the next step. Fix what needs fixing. Be honest about what is hard. Be grateful for what is good. Keep going.
One year of the Resident cafe.
Still learning.
Still moving.
Siempre adelante.