Tag: prepare

Clarity

The rose colored glasses are gone. The world is a dull gray, at best. My hope for the future and seeing the best in the human race is gone. My vision of a group of people working together to build a successful restaurant has been stomped into the ground.

The General Manager of our rink and many of his employees are thieves. My contact at corporate has made it clear, he is not interested any issues we are having. Even after agreeing to start over and work together, Todd and his cohorts continue to sabotage our business. My partner doesn’t have my back. It almost seems as though he and Todd have been in cahoots to drain me of my savings before continuing to build the cafe and bar into a viable business. I can hardly pay my bills and definitely cannot invest another penny. My body is falling apart from all the hard work.

No knight in shining armor is going to gallop in and whisk me off on his mighty steed. Chef Irvine and Jon Taffer will not be calling to help me get back on track. Not even a wonderful philanthropist like Ellen DeGeneres can save me now. It’s time to quit.

After letting Pierre’s email sink in for a few days, I replied, ‘Buy me out’. He acted surprised. I don’t know why. After reading this blog, I know you’re not surprised. You’re probably more surprised that I stayed so long. Me, too, now that I’m looking back. It was truly a mistake to believe things would work out once these issues started presenting themselves. I was very sad. I really did love having a cafe and bar.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should not believe in your vision of starting a business. All I want you to do is think way outside the box about what may go wrong and plan for that. After reading about the issues I encountered, you can see there are a lot more hurdles than drawing people to your doors and fixing equipment. Be prepared and make your dreams come true.

Why Am I Telling You This?

After reading through my blog, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this. My hope is that it will inspire you to think past Murphy’s Law and be prepared for anything. So many horrible, unforeseen things happened with my restaurant and I don’t want that to be your experience. If I save even one person by helping them see a red flag before they sign their first contract, I will be thrilled. And it will make all my tears and embarrassment fall a little softer.

Sometimes the smallest thing can be the most inconvenient. Dr Pepper was a sponsor. Their name was on the side of the building and in the arena name and logo. So we were required to sell Dr Pepper products. I can’t tell you how many people got angry because we didn’t have Diet Coke. Even when I reminded them it was a Dr Pepper arena, they didn’t get it. Other people just said “duh”. And even though Dr Pepper expected us to comply, they didn’t take care of us. You’d think they would want to look good to the public when their name was on the building, but they did nothing to help us. We didn’t even get a good break on cost. We were supposed to use their styrofoam cups, but it got to the point where they let us run out all the time. We would order cups every week and they wouldn’t send any. Or they would send cups but no lids. So I finally started ordering plain cups from Sysco. You can’t sell fountain drinks without cups and when you ordered something from Sysco, you got it. The only problem we had with Sysco was sometimes they would send expired products. They didn’t have a very good system for rotating or return-to-vendor or something. So we had to look carefully when we checked in our orders.

Before you start a business, make sure you look at each piece and think of a backup plan if that piece doesn’t go as expected. Watch for red flags as you proceed. Make sure you have plenty of cash. Have a bailout plan. Talk to as many people as possible in as much detail as possible. Be prepared and knock ’em dead.