Tag: support

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.

Pre-Contract Discussions

I would like to tell you this story has a happy ending, but it doesn’t. At least not for me. Even now as I share my story, my heart aches and I have bad dreams from all the feelings that come to the surface as I type. I still truly believe if Pierre had engaged and done the things he said, we would have been successful and made some money. You’ll hear more about that in future chapters. Right now, it’s important for me to share a conversation with Todd, the general manager of the building.

Once Robbie and I had a copy of the contract and were deciding whether to sign, I was looking at the space one more time. Todd and I were walking across the lobby towards the snack bar. He encouraged me to follow the instructions in the contract about how to pay our rent. Todd explained that it was best to mail a check to Damon at the corporate office as the contract stated, rather than handing our check to Todd as some tenants had done. Todd went on to say that paying him was an inconvenience as he would have to carry the check over to the corporate offices himself and he preferred not to do that. It made sense. Why wouldn’t you follow the instructions in the contract?

Once again, I brought up adding exclusive food rights to our contract. Todd adamantly refused. I wasn’t happy, but Pierre had assured us he had talked to a lot of skaters and they would buy from us if we carried healthier food. So I felt we could win over the skaters to buy food from us. It’s my understanding the rinks enforced ‘no outside food or drink’ when they were in charge of the snack bars, but once they contracted out the food space they didn’t want to be bothered with policing the food situation. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds likely. Continuing with the cafe without exclusivity was probably the biggest mistake I made and you will hear more about it later as we continue with the story.

Todd also told me that he would add our cafe to his letters to the hockey teams when they were coming for a tournament. He said some teams might want to schedule a party or team lunch while they were here. Todd also said once we got our liquor license we should offer a deal to the adult teams to have pizza and beer in the locker rooms at the end of their games. These sounded like great ideas and good support from our landlord.

Pierre warned Robbie and me over and over that Todd was not to be trusted. I believed Pierre, but I wasn’t overly concerned because I didn’t think we would have to deal with Todd much as long as we paid our rent on time. Another huge mistake on my part. That will become quite clear as we continue on with the story. I lost so much in this endeavor – money, dignity, friends, confidence, time, health, etc. To this day, it takes everything I’ve got just to walk into that building. Thank goodness I no longer have any reason to go there.