Dartmouth café owner finds success through unconventional hiring pitch

A Dartmouth cafe owner was inspired by one of his former baristas to take advantage of social media platforms when it came to a recent hiring push.

“My sense is anything like that, that sets you apart helps because there’s a lot of people out there hiring,” said Danny Martin, the owner of The Cottage Café – An Teachín, in Dartmouth.

Martin recorded an off-the-cuff hiring pitch aimed at social media-savvy demographics.

It was all the more candid because the filter he used superimposed him into the background of a toilet, which set the tone for his call to action.

“Things are really in the crapper here. We need some staff, bad,” Martin’s voice says in the video clip.

Staff shared the post to the cafe’s social media platforms and it ended up being viewed more than 1,000 times.

“We had been trying to get attention at least, getting interviews from people for so long that it was kind of like, is this what we’re doing? But it worked! Which was amazing,” said Katie Stoneman, one of the cafe baristas.

Stoneman says the video helped alleviate some of the staffing pressures their small but mighty team has endured.

“A lot of the people that showed up are a little bit younger, so clearly we hit a certain demographic we needed to hit, but there were people coming in just to see the guy from the toilet. So, it stirred up some traction,” Stoneman said.

Martin says between the ups and downs small businesses have faced throughout the pandemic and staff just naturally progressing with their careers, he was in need of a roster reboot.

“I definitely got a big uptick in resumes over that, people walking in cause they saw it. A lot of people even just saw it and came to the cafe cause they wanted to see it, see the cafe itself. So I even got new customers over it,” he said.