My friend Martha Lucius owns and manages Boheme Cafe in downtown Baltimore. She has also catered my book launch before, and so I thought it would be great to introduce you to her — and to the math that she does.
What is involved in owning and running a cafe? My job is diverse; I wear many hats. I make sure that customers can be served the food on the menu (a matrix of salads and items for the pastry case), which also means ensuring that staff follows the recipes (read: math) every time. I also make sure our catering clients get trays of food and that they receive their bill. And my job includes marketing, artwork, and simple mechanics!
When do you use basic math in your job? I make conversions every day: pounds to ounces or vice versa. My entire business profile is on QuickBooks, so often I can ask the program to do the math for me, but simple percentages, and regularly noting where daily numbers are, helps me know how healthy the business is. (Healthy and profitable are actually related subjects.)
Do you use any technology to help with this math? We do use calculators and computers; they confirm the math that we do in our heads. Sometimes we talk about food costs, which refers to how much we are paying for any one product.
How do you think math helps you do your job better? I must do the math on my job or I would be out of business. Without math, I would not necessarily know if there is money in the bank to do anything.
How comfortable with math do you feel? I am comfortable with the math I use at work, and at home. My daughter takes algebra, which I like, but I wish she wouldn’t rush me… it takes me a while to understand the topic they are discussing.
What kind of math did you take in high school? I took high school algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, and I was comfortable with it. As time has passed, I have come to love getting the correct answers!
Did you have to learn new skills in order to do this math? No, most of the math I do is just a reintroduction to math I already knew. I just have to reach back there and see what I did know–get back to the page in the proverbial textbook.