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.

An Ice Rink is a Handicap

Operating a business in an ice rink is a bigger handicap than you would expect. Before we opened, I was sure we could win over skaters and their families by offering healthy food at reasonable prices, despite the rink’s refusal to support us with a “no outside food or drink” policy. Pierre assured us he had spoken to many skaters to find out their needs in a cafe so we could fulfill them.

The rink was situated in a relatively undeveloped area. There were empty fields, baseball diamonds, soccer fields, a few businesses, and some apartments. The only other eating places nearby consisted of 1 restaurant and a gas station – and the sports venues had snack bars that were open during tournaments. Once again, I thought we could win over the neighborhood and become their favorite bar, especially since we were close enough for them to walk home if need be.

When we opened the bar, it doubled our cash flow almost immediately. So I thought I was seeing the turn around I had assumed would happen and success was just around the corner. But we were still floundering. And it became quite clear Pierre’s marketing plan was non-existent. So Kyle and I started exploring the world of marketing. It’s hard to do everything, but it was make or break time so we had to try. Kyle worked with local breweries to have Pint Nights in the bar. We did coupons, flyers, and cold contacts. We searched for websites to list our business, whatever we could think of. Still Pierre did nothing.

We got some new, outside business but it didn’t last long. People just don’t think of going to an ice rink for dinner and a beer. And part of the problem was the kids. We didn’t allow kids in the bar without their parents, but not all parents watch their kids or respect the adult environment of a bar. Plus the kids were running wild just outside the door. Siblings of skaters have nothing to do during practice or competition so they use the entire lobby as a screaming playground. I once suggested that the rink put in a playground for the kids, but that went nowhere. I thought it was a great idea, since it would cut down on the chaos and destruction in the lobby.

I truly believed the numbers were turning in our favor when we opened the bar. I knew the last ditch effort to market the bar would tell me everything. And it did. Business did not increase enough for our cafe to become a viable entity. My biggest mistake here was not realizing the extreme handicap of being in an ice arena and insisting on a “no outside food or drink” policy to even sign the contract for the space. I listened to Pierre and Todd as they painted the the glistening future of this business opportunity. I believed Pierre and Todd as they promised their support in this joint venture. After all, they were the resident experts. I was Taken, and Liam Neeson wasn’t around to save me.

Not a Friendship Membership

When we opened the cafe, Pierre went to Sam’s to buy a membership but they made him mad so he got a membership at Costco. It was handy and cheaper than Sysco for items like candy and water bottles. We got a business account that was enabled for tax exempt purchases since we were buying most things for resale. Pierre was good about making Costco runs for us when we were getting low on water, but he always bought sanitary wipes while he was there. I told him we didn’t need them because we already had sanitizer in squirt bottles for cleaning counters and equipment. He continued to waste our money buying the wipes, which tells me he didn’t watch the Food Handler videos or just didn’t care. Like I told you earlier, it wasn’t his money so I guess it was easy to waste.

I went to Costco and got my membership card. For the account we got, 2 people get membership cards and you have to pay extra if you want to add more people. Pierre wanted to add Nick to our account. I didn’t like the idea, because Nick wasn’t part of the cafe. Nick was a former student of Pierre and now a skating coach. I love Nick, but he’s not part of the business and really didn’t even support us much. He hardly ever bought anything from the cafe. Mainly though, Nick wasn’t qualified for tax exempt purchases and I didn’t want to be involved in any kind of sales tax fraud.

So one day, I went to Costco and when I got to the checkout they told me my membership was no good. Turns out, Pierre had put Nick on our membership even though I wasn’t in favor and when Nick was added Costco took me off. What the Heck! This is a business, not a friendship membership. I don’t know if Pierre and Nick are more than friends, but I sure don’t see any reason to have Nick on our account. It’s cheaper for him to have his own account anyway since personal accounts are cheaper. I had Nick taken off the account and got everything straightened out. I did find out later that Pierre paid the extra money for Nick to be put back on the account as a third member. I told Pierre he better make sure Nick was paying sales tax on his purchases.

This is the kind of crap you shouldn’t have to deal with when trying to build a business. I don’t know where Pierre’s brain was, but it wasn’t on building a restaurant. It’s a bad sign when your partner goes behind your back on business actions. I should have run away as fast as possible.

Sexual Harassment?

Today, I watched a movie/documentary of the gymnastics scandal. I have been appalled from the very beginning and thought the Karolyis should have left gymnastics as soon as the story broke. How dare those people take children from their parents care and not protect them! At that time, I had no idea coverups led all the way to the USOC. Now, I’m really mad. Not sure why I’m mad. I’ve seen stuff similar to this throughout my entire life. I’ve posted numerous times that people talk about discrimination and harassment like they’re bad but when it comes down to it, no one really cares. I have brought issues to management’s attention numerous times and almost every time I was the one to lose, my job or my voice. It’s sad but true. I’m so glad these gymnasts were finally able to be heard and save others from the same fate. They were brave and I admire them. I’m also impressed with the judge, who was able to see through this abuser and punish him.

This brings me to one night at the rink. I was training a new employee. She was a cute 15-year-old with a lot of energy. We didn’t usually hire anyone under 16 but her friends worked for me and she really wanted a job. At one point a young boy – maybe 12 or 13 – came over and I asked if we could help him. He was embarrassed and said the guys at the front desk had sent him over to check out the new employee and radio back how hot she was. I was offended, mad, etc. These 20-something men gave a young kid/customer a radio and sent him over to harass a young girl while they watched from the front desk. The next morning, I reported the incident to Todd, the General Manager. He informed me that this was not sexual harassment because we didn’t work for the same company. They are our landlords and have power over us. So just like Todd didn’t punish his people for stealing from us, he didn’t punish them for harassing us and their own young customer. Clearly, these young men needed a mature adult to work with them at night but it didn’t happen. This incident seems minor compared to the gymnastics story, but no one should be treated like a piece of meat especially a 15-year-old.

Every Penny Counts

Kyle the Bartender was a Godsend. His experience brought us many timesaving and moneysaving procedures. One of our best decisions was changing our pricing system. When we opened, we set prices and let the POS system calculate the sales tax and total sale. Making change was time consuming and sometimes challenging for the teenagers we hired, leading to long lines at the counter.

Kyle’s idea was to round off prices to the nearest quarter. So, I sat down and calculated every item’s price plus tax and then rounded to the nearest quarter. We changed the POS system to handle the new pricing. It was amazing how much time we saved when we didn’t have to count pennies.

One glitch. Hunt Brothers was great about providing signs, flyers, and handouts. However, most of their preprinted materials had their suggested retail prices on them. Hunt Brothers doesn’t require that you charge their prices, but they won’t print your signs with different prices. So I trained our employees to give change to anyone who complained that our prices didn’t match the signs. I think there was only one item that we charged 9 cents more than the sign price. I highly recommend this pricing system, especially in an arena environment.

We Appreciate Your Support!

While the figure skaters didn’t seem to care if there was a food source in the building, there were lots of hockey families who totally embraced us. The after-school crowd patronized us frequently. It was so handy for them to come straight from school and eat while at the rink. Many families were there from 3pm – 8pm (or later), so it was great to be able to feed their children at the exact time it fit into their child’s hockey schedule. We got tons of compliments on our menu. Many families are trying to reduce the amount of fat in their diets and none of our food was fried. Their kids could carbo-load on french fries and chicken nuggets all day and none of it was cooked in grease. And of course we had plenty of ketchup and ranch dressing.

We did our best to be accommodating because these families were in the rink several days a week, week after week. We had 1 or 2 families whom we carried a tab for – but that was unusual because you don’t want to get stuck with people owing you money. We had many families with multiple kids in multiple sports, so sometimes they would pay ahead for their child to have dinner while they went to the football field for another child. When their child came off the ice, we would cook their meal fresh and hot. We also had a meal deal, especially during hockey camp, 1/4 pizza, fruit cup, squirt water bottle, and a cookie for $5.25. You can’t beat that.

The hockey families kept us alive. I think they supported us because we were handy and reasonably priced, and also because many of them are business people and know a business needs a lot of support to get started and keep going. If you want a business to be there when you need them, you must support them other times as well. I will always be grateful to the people who supported us, figure skaters and hockey players alike.

People Say They Want Healthy Food and Good Prices

Pierre said he had talked to lots of people and they all said they didn’t patronize the snack bar because it was never open and the food was expensive crap. They wanted yogurt, string cheese, smoothies, and salads. I loved that. I wanted to provide decent food at a decent price. We added all those things and more. Yet, we got almost no business from the figure skaters. There were 2 or 3 parents that were wonderful to us, but the rest just ignored us.

I finally told Pierre we just couldn’t cater to the figure skating crowd. We were eating so much expired food, we had to stop carrying yogurt and string cheese completely. Even Pierre’s friends and students didn’t support us. They bought from us maybe once every 6 months. The rest of the time, they would send someone to make a Starbucks run – and there wasn’t even one close by. So much for our fancy coffee machine. They would leave and come back with fast food fried chicken nuggets and then complain about being on a diet, when we had very good chicken nuggets from the oven.

Our 8 ounce coffee was $2.25 and 6 ounce chicken nuggets was $3.25. And they didn’t have to burn gas or time to buy from us. Still, they didn’t support us. It was brutal. And I was really starting to understand the importance of a ‘No outside food or drink’ policy. We were very reasonably priced for an arena environment. And yet, people who were in the arena for hours everyday didn’t support us, not even Pierre’s closest friends.

People say they want healthy food that’s reasonably priced, but do they really? Try filling a vending machine with healthy choices and see how much you sell and how much you eat yourself. I was so disappointed that we weren’t more popular. My mistake here was believing Pierre without talking to people myself. It might not have changed anything as people often say why they don’t do something but don’t change when that obstacle is removed. But talking to people may have given me a different perspective.

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.

Cannonball!

Open a restaurant in 2 weeks? We decided to cannonball right into the deep end. I started googling pizza. Hunt Brothers came up in every search. Even though I had never heard of them, I finally decided I should try them. Then I noticed they were only available in convenience stores near me. That couldn’t be good. I never think of getting good food at a convenience store. So one day I headed to the store nearest me that had Hunt Brothers. I looked in the frozen foods and refrigerators and didn’t see anything labelled Hunt Brothers. I had no idea it was something the store cooked and sold fresh and hot. I finally asked the attendant and he said they have it but their pizza oven was broken. I asked him if they were planning to fix the oven or if they didn’t sell much pizza and didn’t care that it was broken. See, I had no idea Hunt Brothers pizza was a thing. He said they planned on fixing the oven because the pizza was actually good and sold well. I couldn’t wait so I looked up the next closest store and headed there. The girl at this store said it would take about 45 minutes because the oven wasn’t on and would have to warm up. I ordered my favorite pizza and sat down to wait. I was shocked at how good the pizza tasted. Robbie and I scheduled a demo at the rink.

Robbie liked the pizza, too. While we were watching the demo, one of the hockey dads came over to the cage and asked when we would be opening. He said they couldn’t wait for some decent food in the rink. And beer, of course. I had never met Brent before, but he became a great customer and I appreciate his support during the time I had the cafe. We decided to be a Hunt Brothers pizza store. Rocky put up banners before he left and we scheduled training and opening with him. Rocky and John came to the rink on another day to test the ovens in the cafe. They were old and had not been cleaned and serviced regularly, so we would have to buy a new oven to cook the pizzas. I signed the contract and paid for the oven and supplies out of my own pocket.

Choosing a food supplier turned out to be easy. Sysco was the only one to call me back. And how fortuitous that turned out to be. Our rep, Mike, was a terrific mentor and got us all set up. He gave me good advice the whole time I ran the restaurant. Dr Pepper had their name on the building, so we had to carry Dr Pepper. Another easy decision and setup. Robbie had a friend draw our logo and make t-shirts for us. I had to call quite a few insurance agents before I found one who does restaurant liability. Got that done.

Robbie and I went to the bank and opened a checking account. Pierre was too busy to join us that day, so Robbie took Pierre another day so Pierre could sign a signature card and get a credit card. Robbie had a friend who needed a job, so we had one employee already. Everything was falling into place.

The rink did nothing to service the restaurant equipment or clean the space. There was grease from the fryers on the walls and especially on the big vent. Pierre had a friend come in with a power washer and clean the restaurant. It looked so much better.

Should you really open a restaurant in 2 weeks? Probably not, but we did it. One thing I want to point out here is, of the 3 equal partners who is doing most of the work? Me.

Get It In Writing

Surprise, surprise, the rink called to see if we were still interested in opening a restaurant. The big food service company had moved out on January 1, 2015 as planned and now the snack bar was empty and closed. Pierre, Robbie and I talked and decided we were interested. Pierre suggested we use his CPA because the CPA would do our books and payroll for a reasonable monthly fee. All 3 of us met with the CPA and discussed the plan. We would each put in $12,500.00 to start the restaurant. We agreed upon a name. The CPA suggested he set us up as an LLC.

The rink gave us a 5 year contract. For some reason they had put in the contract that we had to open as a Great Outdoors franchise. I was surprised that was in the contract. We explained we would be a pizza and burger place like all previous food providers. The rink was hesitant at first but agreed. I don’t know why they cared. Pierre still wanted to remain invisible, so Robbie and I would sign the contract. The rink had one stipulation. We had to open in time for a February hockey tournament. If we signed the contract, we would have 2 weeks to open a restaurant.

I had researched retail space in 2008 so I believed Pierre when he told us the rent was a good deal. It looked like a great deal. For a monthly fee, all utilities were included and we could use all the equipment in the space. There were 2 pizza ovens, 2 fryers, a burger griddle, an ice machine, refrigerators, a walk-in refrigerator freezer, a full bar with 2 stations and 2 taps, about 20 tables with 4 chairs each and bar stools, a Dr Pepper soda fountain, lots of shelves and cabinets, a 3 compartment sink, hand washing stations, and plenty of work space. No build-out would be needed.

Then we committed the ultimate sin. We didn’t put it in writing. Everything was happening so fast, we didn’t draw a contract with our plan to put in $12,500.00 each and each person’s responsibilities. The CPA would set up our LLC with each of us as 1/3 partners and I’m sure he put something in his hard-bound notebook as we described our plan, but we never wrote down our plan and signed it. WE NEVER WROTE DOWN THE PLAN!