Running your repair café
You’ve planned and prepared and now the day has come. It’s time to repair! Here’s everything you need to know for the event to go smoothly.
Preparation
Before the repair café starts, we recommend you draw up a runsheet. It should specify:
key milestones: arrive for setup, doors open, doors close, repairs finished by, clean up and bump out
who is involved in each milestone
Make sure everyone in the support crew working the event has a copy of the runsheet, so they know what they need to do and when.
Support crew roles
For each event, it’s a good idea to assign people to specific roles in the support crew. There are three key roles, and some additional jobs that can be done by anyone.
Floor manager
The person in overall charge of the event. This should be you or an organising team member. The floor manager keeps everything on track, handles problems as they arise, makes sure the repairers are looked after, and steps in as backup when needed. Any problems other volunteers encounter should be escalated to the floor manager.
Welcome desk
The people who greet visitors, record the details of their items, and manage the backlog of repairs. It’s a good idea to have at least two people on the desk. This is also a good place to start a new volunteer, buddied with one or two experienced team members.
Runners
The welcome desk matches repairs to repairers’ skills; the runners are the ones who keep track of when a repairer is ready for another customer and identify who is next in line. Depending on how many repairers you have, one runner may be enough, or you may need more.
Secondary roles
In addition there are some jobs that don’t need a dedicated person, but can be assigned as secondary responsibilities to one or other of the key roles.
Photography: Taking pictures of the event and of completed repairs which you can use for future promotion. Make sure to ask about and respect people’s willingness to have their photo taken.
Promotion and recruitment: It’s quite common for people interested in volunteering at your repair café—or just interested in the concept—to drop in during an event. Someone should always be available to chat to these people and follow up on their interest.
Refreshments: If you choose to provide refreshments, someone should be in charge of making sure tea and coffee supplies are replenished, water is topped up, clean cups are available, and so on.
Donations: Repair cafés are a free service, but people who’ve just had an item fixed often want to make a donation. Have someone who—depending on what you’re set up for—can handle cash, accept electronic donations, or direct people to your donations website.
Setting up
Arrive at the venue well in advance of the official start of your repair café so you can set up. For your first repair café, allow at least an hour. Once you get to know your venue, setup will be much quicker.
Set up tables for your repairers, grouped by type of repair—for example, put everyone doing electrical repairs next to one another. This makes it easy for repairers to help each other. Make sure each repairer has:
enough space
power at their table
sufficient light
Set up your welcome desk near the entrance. Pay attention to lines of sight: the welcome desk needs to see the people coming in, but also keep track of the repairers and how busy they are. The welcome desk will need:
a large, laminated copy of your house rules, if you have any
a branded “Fixed!” sign to use in photos of completed repairs
a list of the repairers working and what they can repair
a system for repair intake, whether this is software based or using dockets
a system for assigning repairs to repairers
ways to take donations, if you are set up to accept them
Identify a suitable waiting area, and set up chairs, tea and coffee, activities, toys, and anything else you intend to provide. Try to position the waiting area so attendees have to go past the welcome desk to get to repairers, enabling you to control traffic and prevent people from jumping the queue.
Processing repairs
The moment is finally here! You have a queue of people with items in need of repair. Let’s get them fixed.
On arrival
The welcome desk greets people as they arrive. Make sure you have a system in place for recording what order they arrive in, so the people who have been waiting longest are served first.
SEE Change repair cafés run on the principle of one repair at a time; people are welcome to bring more than one thing for repair, but they need to choose one to be seen, and go to the back of the queue for each additional item. In some cases, such as knife sharpening, a small number of objects count as one “item”.
The welcome desk needs to:
log the details of the item into the system you are using
make sure the visitor signs their agreement to your house rules
put the item into the appropriate queue—we recommend organising queues by type of repair, rather than individual repairer
direct the visitor to the waiting area
With repairers
Once a repairer of the appropriate type is available, a runner should identify the next person in the queue and escort them to the repairer. Make sure your repairers have time to take breaks!
The repairer will discuss the issue with the attendee and agree an approach. Agreeing is important—repairers shouldn’t do anything an item’s owner hasn’t agreed to in advance.
If parts beyond basic consumables are required for a repair, the attendee will need to provide them. This may require them to leave and return on another day.
Repairers can always:
refuse to repair an item they are not confident they can fix
stop a repair in progress if it is beyond their skill level
This should be explicit in your house rules. Repairers are encouraged to rely on each other for assistance but should never be pressured to complete a repair that isn’t safe.
After repair
Once a repairer has finished with an item, whether or not they were able to repair it, they should complete the repair docket with details of the work done. The attendee should go back to the registration desk to sign out.
If the repair was successful and the visitor is willing, a photo of the repaired object with a sign saying “Fixed at [your repair café]” is great for social media and as a record of your success. It’s even better if the visitor is in the photo too—but be respectful of people’s comfort levels around photographs; give them the choice of a photo of them, a photo of the object, or no photo at all.
This is also a great time to collect feedback, positive or negative. It’s good to do this anonymously, either by directing visitors to an online form, or having a locked box where people can leave notes.
Afterwards
Once you’ve closed the doors and all the visitors have left, there are still a few things to do.
Debrief with your repairers and support crew: capture issues, ideas, things that went well or poorly. Make sure everybody has a chance to be heard.
Pack down the venue and clean up after yourself. Repair cafés generate dust and rubbish; don’t leave these behind for the next person to use the space.
If you are using a paper-based intake system, make sure all the sheets are collated for the person who will do the data entry.
You may wish to arrange a post-event get-together for your volunteers.
Congratulations! You have just run your first repair café. Be proud of your work.