The Best Thing We Never Did

At the risk of being repetitive, good food was important to me. We added salads, sandwiches, chicken breasts, smoothies, and fresh-baked brownies and cookies. Anything that had to be heated was put through the oven. We had to experiment a little but it was worth it to avoid the fryers.

Opening a restaurant is expensive, so we didn’t buy any equipment until we found we needed it. Which is definitely a good plan as many vendors will supply equipment if you buy their product. Again, I thank our Sysco rep, Mike, for helping us with all of that.

So we never bought a microwave. As we added new menu items, we were able to make them with the equipment we had and just never found a need to purchase a microwave. I liked it better that way, as we had no plans to reheat food and sell it. You’d think that would make our customers happy, too.

To this day, I’m so glad we didn’t have a need for a microwave. You would not believe how many people have the guts to bring their own food and coffee to a restaurant and ask us to warm it up for them. One woman even brought a fried egg in a baggie and wanted us to warm it for her. First of all, we’re in business to make money and how dare they even ask. Second of all, taking outside food into our sanitized kitchen is a major health code violation and how dare they even ask. Third of all, if our microwave rendered their food inedible they would expect us to replace it free of charge. How dare they! People don’t care about any of that so it was great to be able to say we didn’t have a microwave and therefore couldn’t help them. Still, many people got very angry. Go figure.

We also had a lot of people bring in outside food and expect us to supply all the ketchup, plasticware, sugar, creamer, and cups they forgot to grab where they purchased the food. Really? How many restaurants do you go to and ask for a table to eat food you purchased somewhere else? My mistake here was that I seriously underestimated other people’s actions.

Worst Managed Rink in the World

Pierre taught lessons in this building at least once a week, so I trusted him when he said opening the cafe was a good opportunity and this was the best facility in the chain. He also reminded me regularly that Todd was never around and certainly not trustworthy. Like I have said before, I had no idea how bad it could really be.

It’s true Todd wasn’t around much. I was there all day everyday and I hardly ever saw him. On one side, that’s a good thing because he was very disrespectful of me, his tenant. However, there was also a downside to his absence. During the day, he had some women running the show. They may not have smiled a lot, but they were very professional and knew their jobs. Evenings and weekends, the kids took over. They may have looked like adults, late teens and early 20s, but calamity reigned. These guys sat with their backs to the front desk and chatted most of their shift. This band of miscreants wasn’t welcoming or helpful. They didn’t enforce the rules or take care of business – and many of them stole from our cafe.

Max, the ringleader, would call me names and tell parents not to buy from us because I was such a bitch. I don’t think he ever stole from us, but not sure about that. (Your landlord should never campaign against your business.) I brought this to corporate’s attention, but Max was not punished and later he was promoted, and the harassment continued. One night someone vomited in the lobby and there was a trail leading into the bathroom. People had to step over it all evening because the employees didn’t feel like cleaning it up and there was no adult working to teach them to do the right thing. I brought this up with corporate, but it continued to happen. Who wants to buy food when there’s vomit on the floor? And some of the boys stole from us after we closed for the evening.

It’s truly heartbreaking when you give people free leftovers almost everyday and a discount on everything they buy, just to be treated like dirt. My mistake here was not hanging out in the lobby at various times of day and talking to people who were there regularly. At this point I felt trapped in hell. How can your landlord be so dedicated to your failure?

Be a Good Example

From the very beginning, we gave our employees something to eat on every shift. We wanted to make sure they tried everything. Many customers ask about the different menu items and we wanted our employees to be able to describe and recommend our food. That is especially important when you’re cooking food in a non-traditional way. Most people have never had baked French fries so we wanted our employees to honestly say they are good. And they are – especially when you dip them in the nacho cheese.

We also made a rule that our employees could not bring in food from another restaurant. It’s very hard to build a restaurant when people are allowed to bring in outside food, so we couldn’t risk customers seeing our employees eating outside food.

The only person not on board with this plan was, of course, Pierre. We tried to tell him how important it was, but he still brought in food. How can anyone go around telling everyone that they own the cafe and then not eat there??? Sometimes, I wonder why in the heck Pierre ever wanted to do this. He never seemed at all engaged in making the cafe a success.

What is Marketing?

The dictionary says marketing involves promoting and selling goods and/or services. Pierre told me over and over that he was Marketing. When we first opened, Pierre spent some time taking free pizza to the businesses around us to let them know we were open for lunch and dinner. Since we were in a relatively undeveloped area, that didn’t take much time. Pierre gave free coffee to coaches and parents to let them know our coffee was good and encourage them to buy from us. That was definitely a good start. After that, we saw little evidence of him doing anything.

Our building was right next to a bunch of baseball diamonds. I took pizza to the owner one day and told him we would like to advertise to their teams. He invited Pierre and me over for a tour and gave us 3 options – give him flyers to put in the tournament packets, pay to put up banners, or take over their food stands. Pierre never did any of these. We did get a little business eventually but not much. I also researched online and found a list of local clubs with their phone numbers. I gave it to Pierre and asked him if he would call one a day to let them know we could do club meetings and parties. He said he would call at least 2 a day, but I don’t think he ever called any. He did bring in 1 private party in 2.5 years and he paid for a bunch of his friends to come watch a football game once.

We finally got our liquor license in October, 2015. Kyle was all gung-ho to get the bar hopping, but not much happened. Kyle got Pierre to spend about $200 on some signs, but Pierre never got the city permits to hang them. It was clear Pierre’s idea of marketing meant to doing nothing. I got the sign permits in less than 2 weeks. Kyle and I partnered with the Allen Americans so our name would be on the banner during their games. Kyle and I started finding places to list our bar online. Kyle and I started contacting groups to let them know we could hold meetings and parties. But it’s hard to do all the day-to-day business and marketing too. Pierre could have done all of this from the comfort of his own home at times convenient for him and yet he did almost nothing.

Every once in a while, Pierre would man the cafe so I could do something else. If I came in that day, I would find him sitting in the bar talking to students and parents. He didn’t set up for business by turning on all the machines and prepping the stations. I guess he made a few sales because people would come to me later and say they needed to pay for some food because the cash register wasn’t working when Pierre was there. Who knows how many people didn’t come back and pay, as Pierre made no list or notes. Nothing was broken, Pierre just didn’t want to remember his training on the equipment.

Pierre told me over and over, that we just didn’t understand his role. He was Marketing. Obviously, that didn’t involve sales. And if you ask me, it didn’t involve promoting either. I partnered with a guy who didn’t put in his seed money, didn’t work in the cafe or bar, and didn’t promote our business. Mistake, mistake, mistake. I’m an idiot.

Does Everybody Steal?

When you’re in a position to hire people, you know once in a while you’re going to get someone who steals from you. You set up procedures to make it difficult for them to steal and cameras are a good idea. In this case, I had no idea I was truly entering a den of thieves.

I went to work at different times each day depending on errands and what time I got home the night before. Regularly, I would open the door to find Todd, the building manager, helping himself to whatever he wanted. He never offered to pay. I didn’t say anything because I wanted to keep a good relationship with him and I didn’t think he was taking much. He was our landlord and he was supposed to be recommending us to everyone in the building and to those who called to rent the party rooms, so a good relationship was important. I told Pierre that Todd was stealing from us, but I don’t think Pierre said anything to Todd either. Eventually, we figured out that almost all of the guys that worked for Todd stole from us. The head of Operations was a great guy and we never saw anything that made us think he stole and we never saw anything that indicated any of the women stole from us.

When we rented the space, no one told us every employee working for Todd would have access to a key to our space. Apparently, all Operations employees in all the rinks have a master key that opens every door in every rink. Many of the Ops people are teenagers or young 20’s. That’s a lot of responsibility for a young person – keys to locker rooms, tenants’ spaces, the local hockey team’s autographed memorabilia, executive offices, etc. And the ones who don’t have a master key, have access to tenant keys that are kept behind the front desk. So everyone who worked for our landlord could enter our space when we weren’t there and take whatever they wanted.

Our contract stated that our landlord could only enter our space by appointment or in an emergency. The catch? We had the only ice machine in the building and they needed ice when someone was injured. That’s an emergency, right? Not necessarily. The rink’s procedure was to get a big bowl of ice and divide the ice into small ziplock bags to be kept in their refrigerator/freezer in their office. That way the ice was easy to grab when they needed to treat an injury. It’s very easy to schedule this procedure when we are in the cafe, but some of their employees needed emergency ice almost daily.

As the stealing escalated and we asked our landlord to help us stop it, we found there was no help. And why would there be? You know the employees have seen Todd help himself, so how could he punish them for doing the same thing? We were told the camera security system didn’t work and they had no intention of fixing it. No surprise there. So we had to invest in our own cameras. We finally caught someone on camera and filed charges. That made all his ‘friends’/coworkers hate us. These were people we gave free leftovers almost everyday and discounted everything they bought from us. It was a horrible situation.

I’m a senior citizen and almost everything in the cafe was paid for out of my retirement savings. So basically, these people are stealing from an old woman. Not that they care. And really it doesn’t matter – stealing is WRONG no matter what the circumstances. When the stealing didn’t stop, I finally went to my corporate contact, Damon, to get some help. His response was he couldn’t do anything without hard proof. I wasn’t asking him to fire everyone, just to have one-on-ones to let their people know this was not acceptable and there would be serious consequences when caught. Instead, everyone working for the local hockey team treated me like I had lost my mind and was totally overreacting. And still, Pierre did nothing. Oh yeah, he’s just marketing and he doesn’t have much money invested. I felt so alone.

Baby, Bye Bye Bye

I can’t read minds, so I have no idea what Pierre and Robbie were thinking when we were planning the restaurant. Now, it sure seems like they both thought we would stock the restaurant, hire a bunch of people at $10/hour, and sit back to rake in the dough. So it’s no surprise Robbie decided he wanted out not too long after we had our fight. I was pretty disappointed because I thought sure Robbie was our ace in the hole. He was young and had the energy to really make things happen.

Robbie didn’t say much to me, just that he thought working more hours would make him feel burned out and he didn’t want that. It was Pierre who told me Robbie wanted out. Of course Pierre’s idea was for me to give Robbie his $12,500 back and I would become 2/3 owner of the restaurant. He thought that was fair because I was doing most of the work and would reap more benefits when we started making money. So, I gave Pierre a check and he got Robbie to sign away his partnership in the restaurant for the return of his money. I went along with it because I thought our finances would turn around when we got the liquor license and eventually I would make my money back and more.

That’s when I learned how vengeful Robbie could be. His friend, Dawnell, had already quit. Another friend, Dan, had just started working every other weekend. After Robbie left, Dan didn’t show up for a shift and then said he was quitting because he was only working to help Robbie. We owed Dan about $150 and he wanted to come by and pick it up in cash. I told him he would have to turn in the payroll paperwork so we could take out withholding and report the earnings. Dan never came back. Robbie said some mean things to me because I didn’t pay his friend. I had every intention to pay Dan, I just wanted to do it legally. I don’t know why Dan didn’t want to get a regular paycheck. Before Dan quit, Robbie sent me another friend and her daughter. They didn’t show up for their interview, so I called the Mom. She said Robbie told her not to come because the restaurant was closing. Their family really needed the money and we really needed the help but Robbie made her feel like a traitor if she were to take the job. Really? We didn’t do anything to hurt Robbie and yet he sure wanted to hurt us.

My mistake here was refunding Robbie’s money without question. We had a fight and Robbie quit, Pierre attacked me verbally, Pierre hadn’t put in his seed money, and I was killing myself working all the time. Restaurants fail even in the best of circumstances. With all this crap, we didn’t have a chance.

Our First Fight

I started out working 6am – 10pm everyday, midnight on the weekends. However, as soon as it became apparent the figure skaters weren’t going to support us, I started coming in around 9am or so. I got to go home at 4-5pm some nights when I had someone to work the evening shift. I did all the day-to-day activities including food prep and sales, ordering, stocking, cleaning, hiring, accounting, and working on getting a liquor license. Robbie worked when he felt like it. He still had his full-time job, so he didn’t come in very often. Pierre only worked in the cafe in an emergency. He went to the bank and the store for us when we needed help. Granted, I was the only one pulling a paycheck, but I couldn’t do it all by myself. And my paycheck wasn’t much. It didn’t pay all my bills, just helped me survive until we started making money.

So it’s no surprise we had a big fight after a couple months. I told Pierre and Robbie I didn’t feel they were pulling their weight. Pierre responded by verbally attacking me – saying I was too old and he wasn’t sure I could even do the job, etc. I was shocked considering I had been doing almost everything so far. Pierre did say he expected Robbie to put in at least 20 hours per week to help us get the restaurant going. And once again, Pierre reminded us that his job was marketing.

You’d think between the money (or lack there of) and Pierre’s attack, I would have walked out that day, but I didn’t. I still believed our restaurant had big potential. I drank Pierre’s kool-aid and continued to pursue the dream. Big Mistake!

Kyle Joins the Team

The best thing that Pierre did was introduce us to Kyle. Kyle was the bartender at the Farmers Branch rink. He had a lot of restaurant experience and was a hard worker. We offered him a job, but he turned us down. It would have been a much longer commute to our restaurant and he was still going to college.

Fortunately, Kyle was willing to give us some much needed advice. We opened the restaurant in such a hurry, we didn’t have adequate procedures in place to protect our inventory and our money. Kyle was instrumental in designing our bar setup, recommending food prep procedures, and creating more money handling procedures.

During all this, we lost our first employee. She quit the day we told her about the new money handling procedures. Turns out she was robbing us blind and padding her time card. I was already suspicious and this confirmed my fears. I was really bummed because she was a great worker when she was there. Dawnell was a good friend of Robbie’s and even lived with him and his family for a while. I couldn’t believe he didn’t warn us when he recommended her for the job.

As luck would have it, the Farmers Branch restaurant and bar gave Kyle 2 days notice that they were closing and he didn’t need to come back to work. We scooped him up in a heartbeat and paid him whatever he asked. He was worth every penny, and still is. Even though Kyle no longer speaks to me, I will always think of him fondly. He was my only saving grace for 2 years.

I Am the Stupidest Person On the Planet.

While we’re talking about money, let’s go back to the beginning for a minute. Before we opened, I paid for the Hunt Brothers startup out of my own pocket – over $4,000 for the new oven and supplies. I also paid some City of McKinney fees, $500 to open the checking account, and some other needs itemized on an expense report with receipts.

I told Pierre and Robbie I planned to deduct these expenditures from my $12,500 seed money and deposit the difference into the checking account. Pierre suggested I talk to the CPA before I did that, as the CPA would probably want us to deposit the entire $12,500 and then get reimbursed later. I called the CPA and he said to put in all the seed money. So I did. And I reported his wishes back to Pierre and Robbie.

Robbie deposited his $12,500. Pierre put in NOTHING. Not one penny. Yes, Pierre bought the fancy coffee machine – which was under $5,000. Pierre also supplied the Keurig, but he got that back once the fancy coffee machine was hooked up and working.

So here I was, a few weeks into opening the restaurant. One of my partners has not deposited his seed money and had to be pushed to give us our unverified credit card money. Looking back, I am the stupidest person on the planet for staying. It’s embarrassing to think I still thought we would be successful and make some money. You will see as we continue on with the story, Pierre never did put in his seed money. He always had some excuse when I asked him for it. After about 1 year in business I told Pierre we needed money for payroll – it wasn’t the first time I told him that. He deposited $2,000 into the checking account. Two weeks later, he wrote himself a check for $2,000 and took his money back. I just feel so stupid for trusting him.

Trust Your Partners, But Verify

Because we opened in such a rush, we didn’t have a POS system for the first couple weeks. Pierre lent us his iPad that he used for his businesses, already set up to accept credit cards and everything. He said he set up a separate account for the cafe and showed us how to use it for our sales. It wasn’t as good as a cash register when you have a line of customers, but it worked.

Choosing a POS system was easy. HarborTouch was the only one to call us back. Getting set up is straight forward but it takes some time to add your entire menu, even when it’s small. Then you have to set up your employees and train everyone. It was a good system and did what we needed. It’s amazing how many companies do not respond to your inquiries, but hound you months later to switch to their system – meaning they expect you to switch out your system, reenter all of your menu, retrain your people, and somehow merge your sales figures for the year.

We returned Pierre’s iPad, but didn’t see a deposit from him. I checked several times and finally asked him when we were going to get our credit card money that had gone through his iPad for the first couple weeks. After a couple reminders, I finally saw a deposit for $900+. It seemed like we had made more money than that, but every time I asked Pierre, he said that was it. He never showed us the figures in the iPad. He never gave us a report. He never gave us anything to verify this number. Was it correct? I have no way to know. I do know we made more credit card sales than that on every single tournament weekend after that. For us to make less than $1,000 in credit card sales for 2 weeks of business including a tournament weekend feels wrong.

My big mistake here was not seeing the writing on the wall and leaving the business right then. If your partner has to be reminded to deposit money into the checking account and doesn’t provide verification of the figures, there is something very wrong and you should cut your losses and get out. Run away as fast as you can.