I work in the city centre, and often have lunch out, and your kind of food sounds like exactly the kind of stuff I would like to eat and is mostly lacking around the middle of the town - interesting variety, a tendency towards vegetables without actually being haughtily vegan, complete plates of food that cover all the nutritional groups, so I can eat something more exciting than a Tesco meal deal once or twice a week but isn't just a mass of lard and cheese. It could be great, and it fits a gap in the market.

But I'll advise you one thing - your internet presence is a fucking bombsite. I considered going out of my way to visit Somewhere, but for every bit of information on the internet about your food, there's three of four about your own personal life and issues, your travails with staff, your inability to serve customers at busy times. That does not attract me as a customer.

You really need to separate your personal life from your business, as far as social media is concerned. If/when I'm your customer coming in for lunch, for all you know, I'm also in the middle of a 14-hour day that's going to shite, with all manner of issues on my mind. I don't for a second even want to consider that the place where I might take refuge in the middle of my working day is going to add to that stress. All I want to know is that I'm going to get a plate of good food and a quiet corner to eat it in. I genuinely couldn't give a shit if the person who made it is having a good day or not - obviously I hope they are, but as I don't know them personally or socially, it's just not on my radar. Maybe if I became a regular I might eventually care.

I know you have some connection to Spitfire, and they are a perfect exemplar of the issue - awesome coffee, great food, perfect location, not unreasonably priced, and I would be in there twice a week, but you know what? I haven't been there for months because every time I go in, aside from the chaos and the seemingly inability to cope with more than 3 tables of people, I get the owner's fucking life story and all the problems he's having with keeping it going, and I simply cannot be arsed with that. All I want is a coffee, presented to me by someone who understands that when I ask, "how's it going?", it's not a genuine question. They've scared off half their clientele.

A successful 'mom n pop' business is about projecting the image of a happy family, even if you're completely dysfunctional in reality. Hide that shit from us.