mobile office

When you're starting a business and don't yet have an office -- and especially when you were notorious in your first career for not being very good at working from home -- you often find yourself set up at Starbucks in the mid afternoon with a laptop, a hot beverage, and a pile of paperwork. As I've quickly come to learn, Starbucks in the mid afternoon is a WEIRD place. I'd like to recount 4 recent encounters at 3 different locations.

#1 (LAKA!) I'm at a long bar, 2 seats away from a nice enough girl that looks to have downs syndrome. She's wearing headphones, and flipping through some kind of binder...oh yeah, and she's in a relationship with some imaginary dude named Laka. They flirt, they fight, they're a couple. She's vocal, and loud. "Yes Laka I will marry you!" She's hopeful. "Oooooh Laka, you a bad boy Laka!!!" They're playing imaginary slap & tickle. "Laka, you hurt my feelings Laka!" Laka's in the dog house. You get the idea.  It's a very passionate relationship. You feel bad for her, but come on!

#2 (Crazy Crystal Lady) Some sort of spiritual healing was taking place right in my line of vision. Lots of deep conversation, lots of holding both hands across the table, raising hands in the air, holding up a pendant on a chain to check for vibrations or something, the occasional huge outburst of tears.

#3 (Troop Dysfunction) Anyone who frequents Subway or Starbucks at Taylor/Coleman, surely know about the rag tag band of developmentally disabled kids that storm these stores most afternoons, and awkwardly splay themselves about. Totally in their own worlds. I think they're excited to be in public, but don't know what to do with themselves. I was set up in an armchair one day, and they sort of circled me with their weird antics. One was to my left, both of us seated around a coffee table. He started rocking, sort of cradling himself, and eventually was craned so far forward holding a pose, that his forehead was grazing the top edge of my laptop. I seriously started looking around the room for a Candid Camera producer.

#4 (Privacy Corner...this was today). Directly in my line of sight, and about 2 feet away, were 2 comfy armchairs. First it was a duo that I'm pretty sure was having an affair. Both wearing wedding rings, but whispering and clearly stealing a private and sort of uncomfy moment. You could tell there was sexual tension for days, but they were people who weren't really used to touching each other. They eventually left, and were replaced by 2 women - one quite socially awkward, the other very well put together & seemed to be taking a break from her busy day for this meeting. I thought they were just friends getting together, but soon after they sat down, Fancy pulled out a white envelope with chicken scratch on it & announced she was giving Awkward this sum of money. Not a gift, but payment for cooking classes she needed. Rice, vegetables, whatever! Awkward protested briefly, then burst into tears. Times are tough, after all. They shared some heavy moments, then Fancy reviewed some letter Awkward had written, and had heavy edits. She wasn't feeling it, dog. Now, we all know TonyP needs cash & for someone to review his work, so maybe I should hit Fancy up.

build dept...the pay off

Well not a pay off in terms of having an approved building stamp, and that's the end of the story thank you very much. And CERTAINLY not a pay off in terms of greased palms - though that sounds very funny. It's the least exciting of the three - a pay off to the story I left dangling in the last entry. And the pay off basically is that we headed down to city hall like a good little trio of owner/architect/contractor, submitted all the drawings, answered all their questions, and then TonyP had to pay A LOT of $ in fees. Apparently SJ is the most expensive city in the area in terms of building permit fees (more expensive than SF according to my architect). I had a ballpark figure in mind, but it was a whole hell of a lot more than I anticipated....and most importantly, way more than I'd budgeted. That sticker shock was followed about 30 minutes later by a meeting with my contractor where we talked real numbers about construction. Um, let's just say I need to play the lotto and leave it at that. It's a scary and stressful time.

building permit

So I think I mentioned a week or two ago that we were ready to submit for the building permit. We weren't. BUT....our appointment for the permit is tomorrow at 2:15. Sort of exciting. Just wanted to keep you posted. And to recap, the city supposedly wants 2 to 3 weeks to review the plans, and then we can start construction in earnest.

recipe cards

On the back burner for the last couple weeks, and then on the front burner in the last few days, has been building recipe cards for LWT. Part instruction card for staff to make my food, part tool to determine the cost of the food in each dish. It's an interesting, but time consuming exercise.

First, I had to write the recipes (mostly from odds & ends in my head). Next I had to determine quantities for scaling up the dishes to serve A LOT (hopefully) of people. Then, supply the food distributor with a list of ingredients I'd need to order so I can get a cost from them. Now, the task of breaking down a 10 pound block of cheddar ($32.16) to the cost per 2 oz, which is how much you'll find on the Apple & Cheddar Press. It's .40, if you're curious. So, .40 for cheese here, .95 for some sliced bread there, 1.30 for turkey, and before you know it you have the true food cost of a sandwich....which partially dictates the menu cost. So you can see how important of a process this is. Just thought you'd want to know what's going on.

Oh also, and pretty unrelated...my rock design team has generated first drafts of the website, to-go menu & in-store menu. They're DYNAMITE. More to come...

day after the auction

I headed up to Oakland to claim my prize. It was the most disorganized shit show I've been part of in quite a while. There were maybe 4 people in front of me in line to handle their paperwork, and I waited over an hour. Very inefficient office staff and lots of bidders squawking  about anything from not wanting to buy the thing they bought, or wanting to scoop up more stuff that others didn't want or didn't bid on. Confirmed what I already knew - that the large majority of bidders were just resellers. That's annoying at first pass, but figure they're out there actually doing leg work and scooping the stuff up, so who can begrudge them reselling it at a premium.

So I finally made it through and scooped up my press. Hot damn.

Afterward, I had a meeting with the contractor and building management (my dad) to get on the same page about the ramp up of construction. It was an annoying meeting, and I sort of just feel like leaving it at that.

This is a long and expensive endeavor.

auction.

So, every day in the land of "starting your first new restaurant in the world's worst economy" is interesting. Some days terrifying, some frustrating, some enjoyable....but all interesting. Today ranked high on the "interesting" scale, as I attended the liquidation auction of the company who(m?) I'd hired to handle interior design for me.

As you may know from reading a few inches lower on this page, they closed like thieves in the night, and left many of us high and dry. On the Screwed spectrum, I had survived relatively unscathed as I was into them for not terribly too much money, and they really just owe me names of materials/paints, etc, which we're presently trying to shake them down for. Other poor people had literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory on hold in their GIANT warehouse. So that leads us to this morning, as professional auctioneers set out to sell off all this equipment, as well as basically anything not bolted to the floor. I've never seen something like it. Anything from a couple pretty huge freestanding walk-in refrigerators, to dozens of pro kitchen appliances, to pots/pans, to desk/filing cabinets (for days!!!)/highlighters/binders/paint sample books/buckets of cell phones (weird)/horrible (but oddly, fantastic) 80's wall art. You name it. Equipment was all in the showroom and warehouse, but right off the showroom are all the cubes & offices. All the office supplies, desks, etc. were basically left as-is when employees were laid off, though now everything had an auction lot toe tag. As the auction got underway in the showroom, my consultant (yeah, I roll like that) and I combed through the rubble of the offices. It sort of felt like a weird movie set that we probably shouldn't be poking around through. Though, we were totally allowed, because they wanted us to buy stuff. So with some time on our hands, and carte blanche, we sifted through piles of project drawings trying to find any of my stuff. Sadly, many had professional stamps & were ready for submission, but will now be lost for good. Our searc was funny, and also fruitless. I checked almost every filing cabinet (again, fair game since they were toe tagged for auction), and found files for everything from small claims court cases to full employee time cards, but no LWT material lists. The walls were covered with hooks holding small material samples. I found 2 that looked familiar & pocketed them. SO SUE ME!

Surreal is the best word that comes to mind.

The auctioneers moved at a fast clip. There were roughly 1400 items. I got there at 9, and left at 4. They were about half way through when I finally said "uncle". I'd done a good job pricing  new equipment (though pricing varies widely by manufacturer), so set clear-headed limits for myself as items of interest came up. Unfortunately (for everyone except the auctioneers), many attendees were very stupid. The best examples are of off-brand meat slicers going for what I'm pretty sure OVER what you could buy it for from a gleaming showroom. Weird. Chalk it up to auction fever. A small group of us chuckled in disbelief. I really wanted a slicer, a mixer (think kitchenaid stand mixer, but on steroids), and possibly an ice maker. I didn't get any of them. SILLY bidding on the first two edged me out, and I lost patience in the whole affair just as they were moving to ice makers.

About 10 minutes (which in this world was a blink of an eye, yet somehow FOREVER) before they were to be auctioned, I realized there was a stack of panini presses sort of hidden. All were in boxes - nothing on display - so they were easy to miss. I quickly inspected, and wanting to get in on the action, committed to bid. This was at 3pm or so, mind you, so my brain was pretty mushy. Long story short, I paced myself & won with a bid of $600. The company I'm buying most of my equipment from spec'd a better known brand press out at $3,000. With quick iPhone research, I found out the one I bought retails for $1200. Victory, if you ask me.

So the way I look at, I got a good lesson in the world of restaurant auctions and got a panini press on the cheap (basically recouping the $$$ I lost to them in the first place). Weird day. Time to make soup.

No more designer

Yeah, they're totally done-zo. Still trying to figure out if there's any recourse, since there were some deliverables I was waiting on, and we had a contract. I'm guessing no, but you never know. What's frustrating, is that we were basically locked into a concept & I have all the colors, materials, fabrics in my head - just don't have that company as a conduit to actually get them ordered (and who knows from where??!!) These guys have (had, I guess) a jacked policy that you don't get to physically take any samples until you actually sign a sales order for the job. So all the while as we were working through the concept, I was able to visit the samples/swatches at their office, but now don't physically have anything. So, we'll see if all that is scattered in the wind. Am I making sense?...I'm tired. Anyone want to drive up to Oakland with me and ransack what WAS their office?

I forgot to blog a little less than a week ago that we got approval from the planning department at the city. Really great news. Next we move to the building department for our actual construction permit. Can't wait to finally get in there and have some work done on the building. ;)