Cafe Operations Director Ashley Anna Tuttle at Community Matters Cafe. Photo courtesy

Ashley Anna Tuttle fell in love with baking when she was in the Army. She baked nostalgic treats for fellow soldiers and, at the suggestion of her Captain, pursued the passion after she completed her service. She earned an associate’s degree in baking and pastry at Johnson & Wales in Denver before moving to pursue a bachelor’s in business at the school’s Charlotte campus. She worked with Ashley Bivens Boyd at 300 East and Heritage, and with William Dissen at Haymaker before joining Community Matters Cafe as pastry chef. With a knack for leadership honed in the Army, she quickly worked her way up to cafe director.

She sees some similarities between the military and kitchen cultures. “You have the same kind of grind and, somewhat, of structure. I would like to see more structure in the restaurant industry that you see in the service, and support. That’s one thing that our military is really amazing about, that it is one big cohesive unit,” she says. In the kitchen, “we can care about each other. There can still be the grind, and there can still be the ‘work hard’ and all of these things that are old-school industry, but we can have a level of compassion and love for one another.”

Here’s what a day in her life looks like.

6 a.m. “I get up at 6, and I’m out the door by 6:10,” Tuttle says. “I roll out of bed. I brush my teeth, I throw my hair up, and I roll.” She commutes from south Charlotte — “almost Pineville” — to the cafe in Uptown’s Third Ward.

6:30 a.m. Once she arrives at work, Tuttle’s first priority is coffee. She greets her colleagues. “I have a competition with our executive chef — we’ve been doing it for about three years — of who can say ‘good morning’ first,” she says. “It can get a little crazy sometimes.” Before the cafe opens at 7 a.m., Tuttle and her team make sure the dining room is ready. The cafe team includes about 15 staff members, like Tuttle, and about 15 students in the cafe’s life skills program, an extension of Charlotte Rescue Mission’s 120-day addiction recovery program. On Monday mornings, staff and students gear up for the week with a 10-minute stand-up meeting.

8 a.m. With operations underway, Tuttle retreats to take care of administrative tasks. She processes invoices and works closely with the human resources and accounting departments. “I have a passion for leadership, so I spend a lot of my time doing one-on-ones with our staff members,” she says. “The men and women in our program — our clients, so to speak — we’re really pouring into them a whole lot and helping them learn life skills, so looking at conflict resolution, communication, things like that. Our staff spends a lot of their time pouring into and training their students, so I like to spend most of my time pouring into our staff.”

Tuttle traces her leadership experience back to her service in the Army, where she was an explosive ordnance disposal technician until 2012. She says the leadership aspect of her work fell off after she went to culinary school, but those skills and interests remained: “In most of the pastry jobs that I’ve had, I think they have emerged pretty quickly.”

11:30 a.m. During the lunch rush, Tuttle says, “I’m running food and just walking the floor and making sure all the staff is good to go and seeing if there’s anything that they need.” When the dining room quiets, around 1, the staff start prep on their second family meal of the day. (“We have family meal twice a day because of the students in our program,” Tuttle says.)

“I’m really intentional about making sure that I eat,” she says. “At a lot of other jobs that I’ve had, that kind of break gets coasted over. I don’t take a full break like our other staff members, but I am very intentional about eating breakfast and lunch. Always.” She eats at the cafe, typically the same meals every day: two pieces of bacon and eggs for breakfast (“I’m really picky about my eggs”), and a salad for lunch.

2 p.m. “We close at 2,” Tuttle says, “so my day flies. By the time I get here and after I’ve had a couple cups of my coffee, I feel like the day is almost over.” She works for 30 minutes after closing — an eight-hour day. But within the predictable schedule come unexpected challenges. “Something that’s unique about this job, especially with our student program, is that nothing is ever the same,” Tuttle says. “We always have somebody brand new, and that brand-new person is usually only four months into their recovery, and then the people that are graduating are almost a year into their recovery, so you see a big difference in that. Sometimes handling that, managing that, can bring up some things.”

4 p.m. “I read almost every day,” Tuttle says. “I come home, and I sit on the back deck, and I read for at least an hour.” She’s tried to get into management and business books, but, she says, “I can’t do it. I mean, that must be my release time — so crime fiction is my way to go.” She also runs a couple of times a week, including with a neighborhood run club on Thursdays.

6 p.m. Tuttle and her fiancé, Trevor, walk their two huskies, Leila and Sage, and share a healthy dinner. “He does most of the cooking,” she says. “He’ll be happy to see that I said that. I put up a fight to everybody else, but it’s true.” The pair is planning their wedding in Greece this May. “It’s got its own challenges of being really easy because there’s not really a whole lot for me to plan,” she says, “but then also really difficult because of the travel.” But she thinks the challenges will be worth it. “I really didn’t want the traditional wedding. I wanted something a little bit more different and more of an experience.”

8:30 p.m. “We’re in bed by 8:30,” Tuttle says, laughing. Sometimes, they watch TV, but not many shows have captured their attention lately. “We just kind of hang out with each other.” She bought some cards that are designed to spark conversation, so the partners of seven years are still learning things about each other. “Some can be really intimate. Some are very general, like a story of your childhood or what TV show did you last quote,” she says. “My favorite one that we had was, ‘What is something that you’re good at that’s really bad?’” Before long—and before 10—she’s asleep, maybe dreaming of Santorini.