The Year(s) In Review - Part III

So at this point we’re getting new customers and some are becoming regulars but we’re still below what we need for the business to support itself. But you see, I’m the type of person that believes that the best things come with time. The Café will be known and will eventually support itself. But again, time “isn't really on our side and most bills are 30 days. Labor was a weekly challenge that I had inflicted on myself. And through it all we mostly (I mostly) neglected the growth of the catering company. The Café needed just about all of my attention and efforts to help it grow, it is really your proverbial baby is what I realized.

What I hadn’t realized is that the catering company was also my baby but that it had grown from all the efforts I had put in the years before. It had learned to walk a bit on it’s own. Despite my lack of attention, The Spice Rack continued to draw business from word of mouth and from some of the previous events we had done. It was our saving grace. It helped quite a bit with the Café location expenses.

It was a good thing, but I really wanted the Café to support itself and I knew that would only come with time (there it is again). So, could we wait it out? I think so, or I did at the time. And then it happened.

We hit 2014 with new vigor and passion. I just needed a new plan for the Café. Better marketing, a change in hours, a revised menu geared around the farmers market (which I had start doing a few months before). January had quite a bit of cold snaps and I was in an old building.

First, I had a pipe burst under the building which ended up being piped into the next building (I did say the building was old right). So we got that fixed, then the hot water pipe froze. I had the cold water on a slow drip but not the hot. Never occurred to me. Didn't matter anyway. The reason it was cold was because someone had stolen our outdoor unit for the heating as well as the outdoor unit for the walk-in.  It happened over the course of four days where there was snow and we had the Café closed.

Turns out the HVAC for the Café was also ducted to the small unoccupied apartment upstairs! So, as the temperature dropped outside to in the 20’s it got down to the low 30’s inside the Café. We had space heaters, but we had a large space and they just weren't working. It was way too cold to have customer in there. So then, a day or two later a pipe behind the wall in the upstairs apartment burst and flooded the Café. It was so cold that the water froze in place and I had icicles hanging inside the Café, huge ones!

It was all disheartening. We had put so much work into the place. The kids had painted, spackled and even helped on the register. Broke my heart to look it that way. The insurance process was a slow one and we lost business during this process. There’s a lot I could say here, but I’ll only say that as a tenant it’s important to have an understanding of how things should proceed and work in certain situations.

By this time, our lease is almost up (we only signed a one year lease oddly enough in case things didn't quite work out). My spirit, my pride, the Brooklyn in me says to rebuild and hit the ground running. But is that thee right “business” decision or is that the “emotionally attached” decision?

To Be Continued…The Conclusion (finally!)