FOCUS: Best friends line up the orders in St. Ouen

Tuesday 06 September 2022

Going to the Bay might seem for most like the ideal weekend, especially when there’s a good swell, but for others it is part of their daily commute.

Among the thriving hospitality businesses that work within this special part of Jersey’s Coastal National Park is The Line Up, where it gets so busy sometimes, its owners haven’t got time to take in the view.

When two best friends share the same first name, it’s something they and those closest to them are well used to. It might cause one or two amusing misunderstandings at work from time to time, but for the interviewer it causes a bit of a problem, namely, how to help the reader tell who is saying what.

“We both call each other Char, as a joke,” one of the two Charlottes laughs.

“I think I’ll have to be Charlotte 1,” interrupts Charlotte Terry. “Well, it makes sense, sorry,” she looks at her friend.  So that makes her business partner Charlotte Smaller, you guessed it, Charlotte 2. “She loves being number one,” the second Charlotte confirms.

Pictured: Charlotte Terry supplying the goods! (Gary Grimshaw)

The Line Up has been owned by Charlotte Terry for three years. She bought it when she was in her early 20s after working there for a summer season. Last year, she asked her best friend, who was living in London, to join her and co-own it. They got cracking with their new joint business over the winter and spring, knocking down the old building, now running their café out of something much larger.

“I had lived in Jersey all of my life,” said Charlotte 2. “I didn’t go to university; I went straight into finance. But during covid, I had a bit of a rethink and decided I wanted to leave Jersey and move to London. Now I am back.”

Moving to London during the pandemic when everyone else was moving out of big cities was the opposite of what many others were doing, but Charlotte doesn’t have any regrets, describing it as the best thing she has done. But it was clear something was calling her back to the island.

“I’ve always had a five-year plan and I would’ve stayed longer had my career taken off a bit more. But it felt like I had just hit a dead end.”

“You always wanted to have your own business,” Charlotte 1 interrupts. “You’d been talking about that for a long time.”

Pictured: Two besties, one thriving business (Gary Grimshaw)

Best friends since they were 10, like many, their lives took a different course after school. Charlotte Terry did a degree in law at the institute in Jersey but felt being tied to an office was not for her.

“I always wanted my own business and I also wanted to be by the sea and this opportunity came up when I was 22. I didn’t over think it, I just thought ‘Yes, let’s do that,’ and it’s worked out really well.”

For a hospitality business, her busiest time is the weekend when most of her friends were off work and planning their nights out. I ask about how it felt to be a young business owner with all the ties and responsibilities that go with it.

“It had its sacrifices; my friends were going out partying and I was in here. But it paid off in the end. At the time you don’t think about how young you are. A few years on I think that I must have looked very young to people, but you don’t feel it at all. Every day was a learning curve, and I am still happy to learn.”

Charlotte 2 put her friend’s success down to her drive and impulsive nature.

“When she wants something, she’ll just go and do it. It’s always amazed me, because she’ll say she wants to go to Canada and the next minute she’s on a plane. I’ve got to plan it, spend a year saving the money, I’ve got to make sure everything is in place. I’ve never done something like this before, so I am learning from her all the time.”

Pictured: It's work, work, work at the line up (Gary Grimshaw)

Before Charlotte Smaller came on board, the business was getting to a point where her friend needed help to take it where it needed to go. There were plans to increase the size of the café, but the lease was coming up for renewal.

“I’ve only known it as a partnership, so I have no idea how she did it before I joined,” laughs Charlotte 2. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot, but it’s a crazy amount with all the admin in the background. When you are working down here and you’ve had a full, busy day, you go home and there’s still all the admin to do. On your days off, your mind is consumed with the business.”

Her friend and business partner agrees. “We’re open seven days a week, eight, nine, 10 hours a day. That's a lot, and the responsibility is huge.

Pictured: Charlotte Smaller to the rescue...(Gary Grimshaw)

For those that might think that overlooking St. Ouen’s Bay really isn’t working at all, well, think again. In the run up to and after opening, there were no days off, but they’ve hit their routine and try to get two days off a week.

“I guess in the morning when it’s quieter, we do get time to appreciate it,” explained Charlotte 1. “But on a weekend, we don’t see outside. You are looking down, looking at what you are doing. So, you don’t see where you are, and we could be anywhere.”

“But it is such a different way of life for me,” said Charlotte 2. “I’m used to the commute into London, or working in St. Helier staring at a wall, staring at a screen. I really appreciate this complete change of lifestyle. I feel so much more relaxed even though I am stressed. But it’s a different type of stress. It’s your responsibility and you are not really stressed about pleasing someone else.”

That previous career hadn’t involved thinking about the where plugs should go in the new building, or whether they would need a 3-phase amp.

“The electricians would come down and talk to us in their electrician garble and we would say, ‘What are you talking about?’, we had no idea and had never dealt with it before, but now we are right clued up! Towards the end we were getting worried about whether everything was in the right place, and we made a few tweaks, but other than that, it’s worked really well.”

The café is open all year round, with New Year's Day traditionally one of the busiest. Making sure they keep up with the orders to satisfy all those hungry customers is down to preparation in the morning.

“You have to get two people in an hour and half before you open, and they have to prep everything. You make sure it lasts the whole day because it’s constant,” says Charlotte 1. “You’ve got a queue the entire day.”

They employ a full-time chef plus 15 people who work at the times that suit them, but most, including the two Charlottes, take a turn at the grill. Some changes to the menu since the re-launch have included chips and tasty burgers for vegans. Like many kitchens, it is a high-pressure environment.

“For me, it was the biggest and scariest thing about doing this,” Charlotte 2 says. “I love to cook in my own time but coming here and having to learn a whole new way of cooking which is quicker, there’s a time pressure and you want to please the customers so that they come back, plus, you own the business. When the rack is full of tickets and there is a queue, you want to get it out, but you must provide good quality.”

“The only way to learn it is to do it,” her friend adds. “You are always going to be thrown in at the deep end. That’s what I said to you when you had a busy day, you just have to do it. But you’ve done really well. Two weeks in you had an epiphany and you said it was good and that you could do it.”

Pictured: A post-surf snack, or not! (Gary Grimshaw)

It isn’t all work and no play. The obvious question for two business owners in St. Ouen’s Bay is whether they surf. They both look at each other and smile.

“I feel like we should get some lessons,” volunteers Charlotte 2. “I was thinking about doing a staff event and getting us a big surf lesson.”

“I can do it,” admits Charlotte 1. “But I prefer paddle boarding. I love the sea, but we just don’t surf. I wasn’t born here so I wasn’t brought up surfing, I prefer to swim. When it is 27 or 28 degrees all you want to do is walk down to the ocean and we’ve done it, after a shift, fully clothed. We're so hot and sweaty and the best thing in the world is to walk straight into the sea.”

It’s clear they love working together and they are focused on getting the business running smoothly so that, as best friends, they can go away on holiday together. The problem is they both have birthdays in August.

“We know how lucky we are,” Charlotte 1 says. “We get to work here, by the sea in this amazing place. We get to work together. We don’t feel like we are coming to work.”

“It feels like we’re on activities week,” Charlotte 2 adds. “But we get to do it again the following week.”

READ MORE...

This article first appeared in Connect. Read the full magazine below and enjoy all previous editions here.

Want to be the first to see next month's edition? Sign up to our free daily news email here for an exclusive first look every month.