To remember it now, 2017 was just a blur. It was a constant barrage of questioning, “when are you gonna open?”, “what kind of pizza are you gonna make”, “what kind of beer will Zac make?”….but mainly WHEN ARE YOU GONNA OPEN. And a spring passed, and a summer, and a fall, and I was thinking to myself, you cannot open a restaurant in the winter!! In December? It couldn’t be a worse time. But as summer passed, into the fall, another Octoberfest passed by, and then Thanksgiving….it just was what it was. It took what it took. We had so many details to attend to. So many pieces of trim, so many doorway thresholds, so many permits and licenses, so many many details. And it was just one foot in front of the other. In total chaos. All the while, the kids are in school and doing kid school things, we were still gigging as musicians, and all home repairs and personal matters were put on hold. Comfort didn’t even register, it was just work work work. We were on a travel ban, meaning we were missing weddings and life events, because every time you leave town, it takes days on either end to get back in the groove. People would advise, JUST OPEN! But, until we were ready, we just weren’t gonna do it. There were menus, dishwashers, point of sale computers, dusting, lighting, tables to assemble, bars to finish, ice machines to install, glassware to order, a staff to hire, things needed to be tested. It was a right mess. But then, the day came that we just turned on the open neon and waited to see what would happen. Lets start with the Dixie Cafe closing down. The Dixie Cafe was a regional diner chain, and in early December, with little warning, they gave their entire corporate chain their pink slips. I heard about this, and I was like, well, wait a sec! There is a whole staff there, and now they don’t have jobs, and well, I have a whole restaurant and no staff, how do I just get them to come here? I put it out to my Ben E Keith rep, Laura Crabtree, and she conveyed the message. Next thing I know (this was December 13th) I had one applicant after the next coming in, and I hired them all. I think we originally had 14 Dixie Cafe employees, and then a mix of other people. Right off the bat we had about 30 employees, and as I made my “ideal” schedule, that seemed to be what it was gonna take. This is with me on as the every day open to close as manager. I could not even imagine letting someone else run the ship as we tried to figure out what was desperately broken and what was a perfectly envisioned design.
I don’t remember much from those first weeks, I know the day we opened, the beer was flat from the brewery, so while it was gaining carbonation, we poured a lot of our premium New Belgium gluten free beers. No one cared. By dinner service, the beer was fine to pour. We also had an internet troll come in and not like his pizza. Swear to goodness, it was one of the first pizzas we had cooked, and there was no process. Days after opening, we were cooking directly on the stone in the oven, but the opening day, we were still cooking them on a pizza pan. He thought his pizza was undercooked. He left us a bad review online. Literally, within the first hour of opening. Another table noticed their spatula had a sticker on it, that started Sticker Gate, which ended with actual stickers made, and hundreds of people fighting for us or against us online. What a ride. I was completely traumatized, staying till 1 or 2 in the morning most nights, and getting there at the crack of dawn the next day. There were not enough hours. I didn’t know how to close out a server, or run the nightly reports, I had inadvertently left the keys in the cash drawer for the first two weeks. The money was always off! DUH! I had servers accusing other servers of stealing tips, so there I am in the office reviewing camera footage, proving that in fact no one stole the damn tip. It was a roller coaster. I was learning so much, so fast, and I was so tired. Within a few weeks of opening, I got the true blue flu, and had to stay home for several days. I don’t even ever wanna know what happened in my absence. It was a mess. But, it was also a raging success. We had customers! And every day we had money coming in! There was the first payroll. The first schedule. The first menu. The first wine list. There were the scam calls. There were the visits from other distributors. There were customer complaints, there were customer compliments. I don’t even know how we survived that.
There was the night I couldn’t get the forklift back in the kitchen, and it high centered on the door threshold. It was midnight, it was freezing, and I was there all by myself. That was the first time I cried. I called Zac, come help me now I can’t get this thing to budge. It was the real deal breakdown. I was just so tired.
All this while my kids still needed rides from school, or to piano lessons, or after school activities, and they needed dinner and parents. I stepped out, but Zac stepped up. He was there for the kids, and took that on seriously. I don’t know how busy people do it without a Zac. He is amazing.
I’ll treat you to some final ramp up pictures. Enjoy!!
