My Biggest Mistake

I violated the cardinal rule of business, never start a business in an area you have no experience. If I had worked in the restaurant business previously, I might have recognized Todd was blowing smoke a lot sooner, maybe even before we signed the contract.

Every time we talked to Todd, he mentioned he would set us up with all the adult teams so we could offer locker room setups of pizza and beer when they played. Robbie was young so he probably didn’t know that was BS, but Pierre had been involved with the local rinks for years and should have known this wasn’t possible without planning ahead.

Here’s how it works in Texas. When you apply for your liquor license you have to supply a diagram of the space governed by the liquor license. Todd gave me a diagram of the snack bar and bar, which included a partial diagram of the lobby. To license the entire building, including the locker rooms, we would have had to provide a diagram of the entire building. Pierre could have gotten a diagram of the building when he worked for corporate. I’m sure he knew we needed it because he drinks and you have to stay in certain areas of the building when you drink alcohol. It is against the law to serve alcohol outside of the licensed area. At the very least Pierre should have said something when Todd was telling us we could provide liquor in the locker rooms. I had no idea you couldn’t walk around the rink with your beer.

You can’t see the rinks very well from the bar in the McKinney arena. That’s why we wanted to put a camera in each rink and hook up to TVs in the bar. Parents like to watch their kids practice and play and we like to sell alcohol. If I had known Todd wasn’t going to allow us to put in cameras, I would have at least licensed the tables next to the snack bar in the lobby. That way parents could sit at the tables and watch one of the rinks.

This whole thing was one giant mistake. I broke the cardinal rule, I believed Todd when he said he was going to help us, and I trusted Pierre to lend his knowledge and expertise to guide our business to success. Pierre was the skating expert and he said nothing to let us know Todd was leading us astray.

Cease and Desist

Fall is the busy season for hockey. We were anxiously awaiting our liquor license. The paperwork was done and turned in. Waiting for approval is hard, especially when the rink is busy. So we decided to give away beer. Two beer limit, but most people just asked for one. Some of the regular customers were really good about tipping well, even when they didn’t have a beer. But I got the impression they were tipping more than usual – maybe I was imagining it, but that’s how it felt. There were many families who really appreciated our effort in trying to take care of them and they rewarded us for it.

The next thing I knew, I got a Cease and Desist letter from our landlord. The letter stated that they heard we were selling beer without a license which is illegal. They never asked us if the rumors were true or if we had received our license, they just had their lawyers send us a letter. I couldn’t see where any good would come from fighting it, so I immediately packed up all the beer and took it home. Then I sent them an email saying I had complied but that I wished they had talked to us before believing some rumor and taking such drastic action. Later, we found out we had a liquor license during that time. We never received our approval letter; a wine salesman showed us our license on the website. Either way, we weren’t breaking the law and some very lucky customers got free beer.

The question here is, what happened to our liquor license letter? Did it get lost in the mail? Was it sent to our rink address and the rink employees thought it was junk mail? I don’t know. I do know we had to pay a penalty for not reporting liquor sales during the time we didn’t know we had a license. You have to file a report even if your sales are zero. This incident, along with previous encounters with our landlord, made me feel like our landlord would do anything possible to hinder our success.

Liquor License

Getting a liquor license is very precise and time consuming. TABC is great about guiding you through the process. You have to get just the right signatures in just the right order and everything has to be notarized. I took far too long to complete this process. I’m not making any excuses. Yes, it’s hard to run a business, work the counter, do your partner’s job, and work on a liquor license, but I should have made it a higher priority. Oh, and I sold my house, bought a new house, and moved all during the same period.

You may wonder why I was still building the business after all the crap I’ve told you about so far. Well, the liquor license was that one ray of hope that the business would make a complete turn around for the better and all the torture I had endured so far would just melt away. Pierre, Todd, and Kyle all said it would make a difference and I believed them. During this process, I learned that Todd had lied about helping us set up pizza and beer in the locker rooms for the adult league. Once we got the liquor license it became a violation to have liquor on the premises outside of our space. We would have to change the liquor license to cover the entire building and Todd said he would never agree to that.

The liquor license did double our business almost immediately, but it didn’t turn the world around. Sadly, things continued to get worse. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it as the saga continues. One thing I want to say here, I couldn’t have done any of this without Kyle. He is a hard worker and honest person. Even though Kyle no longer speaks to me, I will always be grateful to have worked with him.

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!