Secrets Are Not Good for Business

I don’t know when Pierre decided it was ok to start telling everyone he was a partner in the cafe. In the beginning he was concerned about conflict of interest, because he worked for corporate and was partnering with Robbie and me to open a business inside one of the corporate owned rinks. At some point, small children started telling me their coach owned our snack bar. So it became public knowledge. When people know you are part of a business, you have to conduct yourself appropriately.

Normally, I would think raising your children would not affect business. However in this kind of environment, people recognize or know you and your children. If people see something they don’t like, they may decide never to do business with you. So what you do at the rink reflects directly on your cash flow.

As an animal person, I know the importance of observation. We watch our animals all the time, to see how they feel and think. So I was surprised that Pierre didn’t seem to do that with his 3 adopted children. It’s important to assess where they are and guide them. Sadly, these kids came from a bad home and had to be seized and put up for adoption. They were truly lucky to be adopted by someone who could keep them together.

Pierre would show up at the rink with the kids (and sometimes with someone to watch them) and head off to coach his students – you know, the ones he said he was going to stop coaching so he could dedicate time to grow the cafe. If he brought someone to watch the kids, they would encourage the kids to do their homework and stuff like that, especially since they needed a lot of tutoring to catch up to their grade level. When Pierre didn’t bring a babysitter, the kids would run wild in the lobby. That wasn’t necessarily unusual, as many parents ignored their children at the rink and havoc would ensue. The problem was, Pierre’s kids had no idea how to act in public. They certainly hadn’t learned anything from their biological parents. Pierre’s kids would go to tables where the people had food, touch their food, and ask if it was for them. I’m sure that’s how they survived before they were taken from their biological parents, but it was certainly inappropriate at the rink. One day, Pierre’s daughter picked up someone’s baby and dropped it. These are all things Pierre should have been present for; he should have brought the kids to the rink when he wasn’t working so he could observe how they acted and teach them appropriate behavior, rather than be mad when he heard what happened and scold them.

My mistake here was not walking away the day Pierre told me he was adopting children. I should have realized his lack of discloser in the beginning was a sign there were more secrets, and secrets aren’t good for business.

Ice, Ice, Baby

I want to talk about the ice machine in more detail. It was the only ice machine in the building. I don’t know if the refrigerator in the break room behind the front desk had an ice maker or not. We didn’t have access to that room. The rink employees used that refrigerator to keep ziplock bags of ice to use as ice packs when people were injured. I didn’t think anything about it until I saw Todd’s employees helping themselves to ice. Once, I came in and saw one guy reaching into the ice chest with his bare dirty hands to fill some baggies. We used that ice for drinks. So I had to dig out all the ice and throw it into the sink and wait for the ice machine to make more ice. Some days later, I came in and saw one of the women dipping a big plastic bowl into the ice bin. You and I both know that bowl had not been sanitized. So once again, I had to toss out all the ice and wait for the machine to make more. These actions are totally unacceptable in a restaurant environment.

Todd told me he came from a food service background. In fact, he told me he was in charge of the food service setup when the big FC Dallas stadium was built. What kind of food service individual doesn’t train his people on food safety? The McKinney rink had been open for 5 years and some of Todd’s employees had been there the entire 5 years. Have they been contaminating the ice that goes in peoples’ drink cups for years? Are they still doing it? That’s the scary question – Is the cafe in the McKinney rink a health hazard today?

I went to Todd every time I saw these things. And who knows how many times it happened when I wasn’t there. The women who worked for Todd became pretty good about bringing their bowl over for ice when I was there. I used our sanitized scoop to transfer ice into the bowl and handed it back to them. They used their bowl of ice to fill baggies and store them in their freezer. That’s the perfect solution and yet I couldn’t get Todd to enforce it. While the women embraced it, the young guys continued to get ice when we were closed so they could use ice as an excuse to steal from the cafe, from me. No matter how many times I brought it up, Todd refused to require his employees to get their ice from us. He did’t care that his people were contaminating the ice and he didn’t care that his people stole from me.

Todd always used the excuse that they needed ice for an emergency. Injuries are a known by-product of an ice rink and the front desk should always have plenty of ice packs on-hand. So when I caught one of the young guys on camera, in an area off the beaten path of the door to the ice machine, Todd said he was getting ice. There wasn’t any ice where this guy was. So I asked to see the injury report that required an emergency ice pack when the cafe was closed. I never got an answer. Being a tenant to the local hockey team was a living nightmare and an uncontrollable health hazard.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Sans Restaurant

The rink decided they didn’t want to rent the restaurant space to us. They didn’t say why. Rumor had it, Todd, the General Manager of the building, had a friend who wanted to rent the space. I heard his friend only offered a third the rent we were contracting. I have no idea if any of that is true. So I sent Todd and Damon (our contact at corporate) an email stating we were still interested if they changed their minds.

I had already paid for my certifications, so I decided to go ahead and take the tests. I got my TABC, Food Handler, and Food Manager certifications and sent the links to Robbie and Pierre in case they wanted to take the tests. It was the holiday season so we didn’t meet to discuss alternate plans. I was starting to think about going back to a computer job. Merry Christmas.