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.

Some Employees Need to Go

Even though I’ve been fat most of my life, I’ve always been very active. I used to work full-time, and then go home and participate in all sorts of activities – tennis, softball, bowling, camping, horseback riding, etc. I was only home long enough to eat and sleep. It was great!

So, it’s no surprise I thought I could open a restaurant. I’m no stranger to hard work and was ready to give it my all. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize my all was somewhat less than it used to be. Getting old is hell. Your brain feels the same as when you were younger, but your body takes hard work a little more personally and punishes you if you do too much. I worked all day, 7 days a week. Some nights, I could hardly walk when I got home and still hurt when I got up in the morning.

We hired people of all ages and in the beginning we paid them way too much. The pay rates were set by Pierre and Robbie and I trusted them to know. With more experience, I learned our pay was way out of line. And the people we overpaid didn’t even appreciate it. Some that we overpaid even stole from us. I could tell you a million stories about employees. Once I figured it out, the starting pay was a lot lower. It was still good money compared to other restaurants because we paid regular minimum wage. Customers don’t tend to tip in a snack bar type environment and we compensated for that.

I lost 35 pounds while eating pizza everyday. So you know I was literally working my a** off. I needed employees I could trust to give me time off, as a snack bar can often be run easily by 1 person. It was very hard to find people like that and sadly I trusted the wrong person more than once. And I kept employees longer than I should have just so I could go home. My recommendation is to let people go as soon as you see they are not going to respond to your personal improvement talks. Keep everything in writing and count the money and inventory often.

Do Your Employees Understand the Purpose of Plastic Gloves?

At the time we opened the cafe, Texas regulations said you could wash your hands and put on fresh plastic gloves or you could wash your hands twice and prepare the food with your bare hands. That may have changed in the last couple years, to push people to always wear plastic gloves when preparing food for public consumption. Sadly, that doesn’t insure that your food is protected.

I am shocked at how many people don’t understand why they are wearing gloves. If you watch closely, you will see what I mean. Some food handlers treat the gloves more like the gloves are protecting their hands rather than the food. As instructed, they wash their hands and put on their gloves. (Sometimes, they don’t even wash their hands they just put on the gloves.) Then they prepare some food, put their hands on their hips (contaminating the gloves), lean on the wall with their hand (contaminating the gloves), brush their hair back (contaminating the gloves), handle your money (contaminating the gloves), and go back to prepare more food still wearing the same gloves. I have seen this a number of times at national sandwich chains. Even the Hunt Brothers men who trained us, did these things.

You must instill the importance of protecting the food when you’re training your food handlers. If your employee touches ANYTHING other than food or sanitized dishes, no matter how briefly, they MUST CHANGE INTO FRESH GLOVES! Often, you have to watch them closely and start pointing out these movements as they do them, as many people are unaware of these subconscious habits or unaware of the significance of these habits.

Of all the mistakes I made in my restaurant endeavor, I believe this was a good catch on my part. A small but very important success. It’s one thing our restaurant definitely did right!

We Appreciate Your Support!

While the figure skaters didn’t seem to care if there was a food source in the building, there were lots of hockey families who totally embraced us. The after-school crowd patronized us frequently. It was so handy for them to come straight from school and eat while at the rink. Many families were there from 3pm – 8pm (or later), so it was great to be able to feed their children at the exact time it fit into their child’s hockey schedule. We got tons of compliments on our menu. Many families are trying to reduce the amount of fat in their diets and none of our food was fried. Their kids could carbo-load on french fries and chicken nuggets all day and none of it was cooked in grease. And of course we had plenty of ketchup and ranch dressing.

We did our best to be accommodating because these families were in the rink several days a week, week after week. We had 1 or 2 families whom we carried a tab for – but that was unusual because you don’t want to get stuck with people owing you money. We had many families with multiple kids in multiple sports, so sometimes they would pay ahead for their child to have dinner while they went to the football field for another child. When their child came off the ice, we would cook their meal fresh and hot. We also had a meal deal, especially during hockey camp, 1/4 pizza, fruit cup, squirt water bottle, and a cookie for $5.25. You can’t beat that.

The hockey families kept us alive. I think they supported us because we were handy and reasonably priced, and also because many of them are business people and know a business needs a lot of support to get started and keep going. If you want a business to be there when you need them, you must support them other times as well. I will always be grateful to the people who supported us, figure skaters and hockey players alike.

People Say They Want Healthy Food and Good Prices

Pierre said he had talked to lots of people and they all said they didn’t patronize the snack bar because it was never open and the food was expensive crap. They wanted yogurt, string cheese, smoothies, and salads. I loved that. I wanted to provide decent food at a decent price. We added all those things and more. Yet, we got almost no business from the figure skaters. There were 2 or 3 parents that were wonderful to us, but the rest just ignored us.

I finally told Pierre we just couldn’t cater to the figure skating crowd. We were eating so much expired food, we had to stop carrying yogurt and string cheese completely. Even Pierre’s friends and students didn’t support us. They bought from us maybe once every 6 months. The rest of the time, they would send someone to make a Starbucks run – and there wasn’t even one close by. So much for our fancy coffee machine. They would leave and come back with fast food fried chicken nuggets and then complain about being on a diet, when we had very good chicken nuggets from the oven.

Our 8 ounce coffee was $2.25 and 6 ounce chicken nuggets was $3.25. And they didn’t have to burn gas or time to buy from us. Still, they didn’t support us. It was brutal. And I was really starting to understand the importance of a ‘No outside food or drink’ policy. We were very reasonably priced for an arena environment. And yet, people who were in the arena for hours everyday didn’t support us, not even Pierre’s closest friends.

People say they want healthy food that’s reasonably priced, but do they really? Try filling a vending machine with healthy choices and see how much you sell and how much you eat yourself. I was so disappointed that we weren’t more popular. My mistake here was believing Pierre without talking to people myself. It might not have changed anything as people often say why they don’t do something but don’t change when that obstacle is removed. But talking to people may have given me a different perspective.

A Coffee Machine Costs How Much?

You must have coffee and hot chocolate in an ice arena. We opened the restaurant so quickly Pierre brought in a Keurig so we would have hot beverages. The Keurig was ok, but we needed something better long term.

There is one major coffee machine dealer in the Dallas area. Pierre, Robbie and I took a field trip day and headed over there to look at coffee machines. On the way, Robbie found one on craigslist for $4,500.00, if I remember correctly. It was barely used and sounded like it was in good shape. We looked at similar models at the dealer, which listed for $10,000-12,000. Talk about sticker shock. It’s coffee! Well actually, it’s coffee, espresso, latte, cappuccino, and hot chocolate. I guess Starbucks really has changed the world. I don’t drink coffee so I don’t get it.

It was very important to Pierre that we offer good coffee. I’m sure a lot of the parents wanted it, too. There are some people who are so stuck on Starbucks that they will never be your customer no matter what you do, but I’m sure there are also people who just want a good cup of coffee without having to get in the car to go get it. So we decided to buy the used machine. Robbie was sent to pick it up and try to get it for $3,500 + a bunch of Dallas Stars tickets. He took the coffee machine straight to the dealer for service. When they delivered it, they taught us how to use it and how to clean it every night. I have to admit it was a fabulous machine and we made the best hot chocolate in town. I can’t speak for the coffee but we did get a lot of compliments. We did not spend $1,000 on a milk refrigerator for our coffee machine. We bought a used Red Bull fridge and drilled a hole in the side for the milk tube.

It was also our goal to attract daytime customers with good coffee and a quiet place to work with free wifi. It was Pierre’s job to get the word out that we were open during the day for lunches, parties, business meetings, and people who just want to hang out and drink coffee while working on their laptops. After all, why pay rent on a big space when you only use it about 3 hours per day. The way to make money is to utilize your space to the fullest, not just expect the parents and skaters to eat there everyday. And honestly, only small children want pizza everyday.

Pre-Contract Discussions

I would like to tell you this story has a happy ending, but it doesn’t. At least not for me. Even now as I share my story, my heart aches and I have bad dreams from all the feelings that come to the surface as I type. I still truly believe if Pierre had engaged and done the things he said, we would have been successful and made some money. You’ll hear more about that in future chapters. Right now, it’s important for me to share a conversation with Todd, the general manager of the building.

Once Robbie and I had a copy of the contract and were deciding whether to sign, I was looking at the space one more time. Todd and I were walking across the lobby towards the snack bar. He encouraged me to follow the instructions in the contract about how to pay our rent. Todd explained that it was best to mail a check to Damon at the corporate office as the contract stated, rather than handing our check to Todd as some tenants had done. Todd went on to say that paying him was an inconvenience as he would have to carry the check over to the corporate offices himself and he preferred not to do that. It made sense. Why wouldn’t you follow the instructions in the contract?

Once again, I brought up adding exclusive food rights to our contract. Todd adamantly refused. I wasn’t happy, but Pierre had assured us he had talked to a lot of skaters and they would buy from us if we carried healthier food. So I felt we could win over the skaters to buy food from us. It’s my understanding the rinks enforced ‘no outside food or drink’ when they were in charge of the snack bars, but once they contracted out the food space they didn’t want to be bothered with policing the food situation. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds likely. Continuing with the cafe without exclusivity was probably the biggest mistake I made and you will hear more about it later as we continue with the story.

Todd also told me that he would add our cafe to his letters to the hockey teams when they were coming for a tournament. He said some teams might want to schedule a party or team lunch while they were here. Todd also said once we got our liquor license we should offer a deal to the adult teams to have pizza and beer in the locker rooms at the end of their games. These sounded like great ideas and good support from our landlord.

Pierre warned Robbie and me over and over that Todd was not to be trusted. I believed Pierre, but I wasn’t overly concerned because I didn’t think we would have to deal with Todd much as long as we paid our rent on time. Another huge mistake on my part. That will become quite clear as we continue on with the story. I lost so much in this endeavor – money, dignity, friends, confidence, time, health, etc. To this day, it takes everything I’ve got just to walk into that building. Thank goodness I no longer have any reason to go there.

To Fry or Not to Fry, That is the Question.

In most rinks, there are two distinct groups – Hockey Players and Figure Skaters. Hockey players tend to be carbo-loaders. They are usually male, play hard, and eat hardily. Figure skaters are always on a diet. They tend to be female, practice obsessively, and eat like birds. And of course, you have a lot of moms hanging around the rink and they are often on a diet, too. Previous food service at the rinks had been pizza, burgers, and a lot of fried foods. Mostly junk food. We wanted to change that.

I have been fat my whole life. I have probably lost the weight of several people in my lifetime and always gained the weight back. It’s a horrible struggle, so it was extremely important to me to offer healthy choices in our cafe. Pierre said he had talked to a lot of figure skaters and they all said they didn’t eat at the snack bars because the snack bars were never open and never had healthy food they could eat. I made the decision not to use the fryers or the grill at all. We would cook everything in the ovens, even the burgers and fries. Pierre and Robbie thought that was a great idea.

Since we opened in 2 short weeks, we only had pizza, wings (Hunt Brothers also does chicken wings), and a few other choices. After the big hockey tournament, we could add more menu items. And we did, but everything had to be cooked in the oven. I thought the oven french fries were great and we had a lot of people tell us how happy they were that we didn’t have fried foods. Parents didn’t have to say ‘no’ to their children when they wanted wings or fries because our food was virtually grease-free.

There is a big down side to this plan. The ovens can get very backed up when the restaurant is busy. We were only using 2 ovens and there were days we could have used 3 or 4 to keep up with business. We had asked the rink to pull out the fryers and grill to give us more room, but they refused. I’m still glad we chose to forego the fried foods. After all my struggles with weight, I want to help others make healthy choices.