Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome

I thought all Canadians were nice people, but I guess every group has their bad apple. Max and his brother both worked at the rink. His brother was a wonderful, supportive guy, but Max was a young 20s, full of himself goalie who thought he was king of the dome. When I first met Max, I liked him. We gave him free leftovers almost everyday. He bought from us regularly and we gave him a discount. We even named a pizza after him – the Max Special – which was all the meats with extra bacon. I thought we had a good thing going. Then, he started calling me names – Aunt Jemima, Harriet Tubman, etc. I certainly was in good company with these names but it was the idea of saying them with disrespect.

Pierre booked a private party, the only outside party he booked in 2.5 years. It was a lawyer running for Judge. It wasn’t a campaign party, just a get-together with his volunteers to buy them dinner and pay for their kids to ice skate while he signed up the volunteers to distribute signs and pamphlets over the next few weeks. We had to be careful about these things as our building was owned by the City of McKinney and had to remain unbiased. The lawyer had gotten permission from the front desk ahead of time, but the people working that night took exception to the party and Max even threatened Kyle if we didn’t shut it down. Max and other employees kept saying ‘Todd said’ whatever and Todd called Pierre, but neither one of them showed up to help sort out the issues. The solution ended up being to close a see-through gate about 10 degrees. It was the stupidest thing ever and I’m sure the private party members never came back after all the to-do. The party went well after we moved the gate a little. The fallout came later. Parents started coming to me, individually, telling me Max was telling them not to buy from us and that I was a bitch. Max and Pierre were close, so I told Pierre. Pierre said he would talk to Max, but I don’t know if he ever did or what he said because the bad-mouthing didn’t stop.

When we reported Will for stealing, the impudence got worse. None of the male rink employees would buy from us anymore and they were horrible to me. And worst of all, Todd would leave Max and some of the other young guys in charge at night. They didn’t keep the lobby clean, even when people vomited on the floor and tables. The male employees stole from us after we closed at night, except I don’t think Max ever stole from us. These young guys weren’t mature enough to run a business and shouldn’t have been left in charge. And they should have been taught to respect the tenants and help us build our business as it means money for all concerned.

Kyle and I both mentioned to Pierre that he should stop hiring Max to work at his seasonal ice rinks. You can’t reward someone for bad behavior, Max disrespected our business and me, Pierre’s business partner; how could Pierre hire him for anything??? So it’s no surprise when Pierre hired Max once again, that I texted Pierre asking how could he hire someone after being disrespected like that. Pierre sent me an email, offended that I would send a text instead of an email – I still don’t know why a text is rude and an email isn’t. And Pierre pretty much told me it was none of my business. Once again, no support from Pierre. This whole restaurant was Pierre’s idea and yet he didn’t have our best interests at heart.

Is That a Threat?

From the very beginning, I wanted the cafe to make money in a lot of different ways. Diversity is the key, so you aren’t relying on one cash flow stream. One of the things I decided to do was sell boxes. All of our food and supplies came in fresh clean boxes. People are always looking for moving boxes and some people pay moving companies a lot of money for boxes. So I posted our empty boxes on craigs for $2 or less per box. We sold exactly 0 boxes. I was shocked. So we finally just started throwing them away. What a waste.

Another idea was to sell mini-bottles of toiletries. People travel to rinks for competitions, tournaments, and to train with a specific coach. They often forget something, like a toothbrush or shampoo, and could buy from us instead of looking for a store. Customers also need tissues and lip therapy in an ice rink. We were asked for hockey tape several times, so we sold some tape too. We didn’t sell this stuff everyday, but it was handy when customers needed it.

Todd went ballistic. He told me he couldn’t compete with us. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I reminded him that he competed with us everyday. He had vending machines all over the building that sold the same stuff we did – coffee, hot chocolate, soft drinks, candy, chips, granola bars, to name a few. (Another problem with not having an exclusive food provider rule. Not only could people bring in food from another restaurant, they could buy from vending machines rather than spend money with us.) Todd went on to explain that we could not sell sundries as our contract only allowed us to sell food. I didn’t remember that being in the contract so I said I wanted to see that in writing. Todd said, “I am not someone you want to go to war with.” Was I just threatened? I should be able to discuss anything with my landlord and see it in writing without being threatened. In the interest of good relations, I decided to ignore it and just comply. So now, I’ve allowed this man to steal from us, allowed his people to steal from us, allowed his people to disparage our business, allowed him to dictate what we could or could not sell, and even to threaten me, all to keep good will with our landlord.

I shared all of this with Pierre. He kept saying he would talk to Todd, or talk to Max (the main rink employee disparaging our business), but nothing changed. I don’t know what Pierre did or didn’t do, but he didn’t help our business. Like I’ve said before, Pierre never put in his seed money, so he probably didn’t care that these people were affecting our bottomline. It wasn’t his money we were losing, it was mine.

And Baby Makes 3

Pierre wanted to bring in a third partner. I was fine with that. Robbie joined us for several lunches and discussions with the rink and Great Outdoors. He was young and I thought that would be our ace in the hole. We needed someone with more energy and the ability to do the heavy work I couldn’t do.

Pierre, on the other hand, would do marketing and only work in the cafe in emergencies. We knew we would have to spend a lot of time reaching out to the neighborhood because no one thinks to go to an ice rink for a good bar and grill. We had to build some outside business along with the skater families who come to the rink regularly in order to have a thriving business.

Robbie had $12,500.00 to invest, so we decided we would all invest that amount. At this point, I was feeling pretty confident in our endeavor. Even if it didn’t work out, I could recover from losing $12,500.00. And I really thought we had some great ideas to make this restaurant a success.

Now, I’ve made several mistakes. Restaurants are known for a high failure rate and I dove in anyway. I didn’t have a strong restaurant background so I relied on Pierre and Robbie for that; and of course we would get some excellent training from Great Outdoors. I have a very high work ethic and I assumed career skaters had the same work ethic or they wouldn’t have gotten where they did. At this point, I’m totally screwed. I just didn’t know it yet.