Tag: inventory

I’m Confused

Posting my story is getting harder and harder. It hurts to dredge up these memories and sometimes it gives me bad dreams. My saving grace is to believe I will save at least one person from getting screwed like I did.

As I said in an earlier post, it surprised me when Pierre expressed interest in buying me out. And when we started discussing it, I became even more confused. He wanted time to check out some things, so I agreed. First, he wanted to meet with Todd and/or corporate to verify they were interested in extending our contract. We still had over 3 years of a 5 year contract and that wasn’t enough for him? I totally didn’t get that – the one person who showed little to no interest in the cafe wanted to make sure he was set up for another 10 years? Why? There were rumors of adding another sheet of ice, but the 2 that were there were virtually empty most of the time so how much more business would a third sheet bring? I’m sure Pierre was hoping Todd would confirm the third sheet of ice during the contract discussions. Next, Pierre wanted to have someone inventory the restaurant and look over the financial reports. Evidently, one of Pierre’s former students was a restaurateur in NYC. So, Former Student inventoried the entire cafe and bar and sat with me to discuss the business and finances.

Pierre also wanted to find another partner to help buy me out. No shock there. Pierre is good with other people’s money. And time. And hard work. An obvious observation from his lack of performance during the first 2 years. I think Pierre really wanted Former Student to partner with him. I guess Former Student was too smart to get involved with Pierre. Maybe he knew better from past experience. Of course, Pierre wanted to confirm Kyle the Bartender would stick around. Kyle and Pierre started barhopping to check out options for building the bar business. More confusion for me – why hadn’t Pierre been doing this during the last 2 years?

I don’t know if all this crap is a stall tactic or what. Funny, if you consider Pierre was just using me and my money to front his business, all the confusion goes away, doesn’t it? All I know for sure is, I’m sitting on pins and needles during all of this because I have to be prepared to sue a hockey franchise if Pierre doesn’t buy me out. At this point, I have no idea what will happen next and I don’t know what to do.

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.