Summary
In 90 days, we turned a growing events pipeline that was quietly leaking leads into a documented, visible, four-touch operation the team runs on the tools they already had, at almost no ongoing cost.
A thriving coffee and events business, growing faster than a hands-on, two-person process could keep up with, and how we built the operational foundation to scale.
MILA CO ADVISORY · CLIENT STORY
NUDAE Coffee: the problem was never demand
Hospitality operations advisory · Specialty coffee, mobile cart events & catering · Costa Mesa, CA
Intro
NUDAE Coffee started as a passion project between two friends, two women, both mothers, building something of their own, and grew into a beloved Costa Mesa cafe with a busy mobile coffee cart and catering arm. Great coffee, loyal regulars, food people love and share. By early 2026 the events side was taking off, more inquiries coming in every week. The demand was there, and growing.
MILA worked with NUDAE over a 90-day engagement to build the operational foundation to keep up with that growth, so leads stopped slipping through the cracks and the know-how for running events stayed with the business as the team changed.
The Problem
The events business had been run the way most great small businesses start: personally and by hand, by a couple of people who held the whole thing in their heads. Every inquiry was read and answered personally. The know-how for running a cart event lived with a few experienced people. Event details were scattered across notes, texts, and email. It worked beautifully at one size. As the volume grew, the manual way started to stretch.
So we did something NUDAE had never had the time to do: we pulled the whole event-inquiry history into one place and looked at the full picture for the first time. It was clear, and it was not a demand problem.
The leaks were silence, not price. Most of the leads that slipped away were not lost to price or to a competitor. They were lost in the follow-up gap, inquiries arriving faster than a personal, manual process could keep pace with, before there was a system to make sure every one got a second touch.
The best leads were easy to miss. Corporate and repeat inquiries were far more likely to become booked events, but there was no visibility into that pattern, so no way to spot those leads and prioritize them.
The knowledge was fragile. The know-how for running events lived with a few experienced people, right as the business was growing and the team was changing.
That is the most common turning point for a growing business. You succeed your way into more than any one person can hold by hand. The fix was never more marketing. It was the operational foundation to scale.
The Solution
We built it in three layers, in order: Foundation, then Simplification, then Systems Enablement. Operational clarity first, tools last. And we did it inside the tools NUDAE already used, their point-of-sale, their team chat, their existing workspace, so there was nothing new for the team to learn.
Foundation — the know-how on paper. We captured how a cart event actually gets set up and run into clear, versioned operating guides, including Mobile Cart Assembly and Setup and Water Pump Management, anchored to a two-operator working model. The expertise that once lived with a few people now belongs to the business.
Simplification — friction off the daily workflow. A branded first response now goes out automatically the moment someone submits an inquiry, with the brochure attached. Ready-to-use two-day and five-day follow-up templates give every lead a real second and third touch. And there is one shared way to record why a booking closes or does not.
Systems Enablement — one source of truth and leadership visibility. Every inquiry now lands in a single shared view within minutes. A short operational digest posts to the team's chat every weekday: new inquiries, anyone still waiting on a reply, and the state of the pipeline. Once a week, a plain-language leadership read surfaces the trends and the recurring loss reasons worth acting on.
One deliberate boundary: we did not put any AI between NUDAE and their customers. The one small piece of AI reads their own data once a week and reports to leadership. It never talks to a customer, never sends on NUDAE's behalf, and never makes a decision. The system surfaces the information. The people decide.
The Impact
The pilot moved NUDAE from a one-or-two touch habit to a four-touch model, and from a pipeline nobody could see to one in front of the team every weekday afternoon, all at almost no ongoing cost.
Continuity protected. Execution no longer depends on any single person. Documented SOPs and a two-operator model mean a growing team can run a flawless event without one key person in the room.
Owner dependency reduced. The co-owners no longer triage every inquiry by hand to know what came in today. The system does the first touch and the daily brief; their posture shifts from triage to oversight by exception.
Visibility, where there was almost none. Daily operational visibility and a weekly leadership read replaced a pipeline nobody could see. Leadership can now see which inquiries are most likely to book and prioritize them, and every lost booking has a recorded reason, so patterns surface instead of disappearing.
One source of truth. Event details that were spread across notes, text, and email now live in one shared view the whole team works from.
The follow-up system and the visibility are live and running. Whether it lifts the booking rate is exactly what NUDAE is now watching, month over month. We are not going to claim a number we have not earned yet. What we can say is that no lead goes quiet unseen anymore, and the team can finally see the whole picture.
Phase 1 was the beginning, not the end. NUDAE and MILA are working together through Phase 2, continuing to build as the events and catering business grows. They own everything we built, and they chose to keep building.
In their words
“Working with Kristine at MILA Co Advisory has been one of the best investments we’ve made for our business. She helped us streamline our events process, build detailed POAs and SOPs, and create systems that made our team more efficient and accountable. Everything she implemented was customized to our business and immediately improved the way we operate. We highly recommend her to any business looking to create scalable, organized processes!” -Trisha & Linh, co-owners, NUDAE Coffee