Friday, March 27, 2009

Tea too

Our focus is pastries and coffee, not tea. We will have tea, though, and it will be good tea. Kindra's been in communication with Matt, the owner of Townshend's Tea Company. His teas are fantastic and locally made (hardly a dozen blocks from our shop, actually). We will offer eight teas to begin with, but if we get mass requests for more, or different kinds, we will adjust that.

The loan is still in the works, but I have seen evidence (communications) of its forward progression. This is good. More evidence of successful certainty is that Shawna ordered a "Coming Soon" banner for the store front. That should get there in less than a week. Then everyone can drive by and say, "Hey, I know that place!"

Also, Marty, our fantastic chef wanted to be trendy and miles ahead of the curve, so he has looked into possible ways for us to offer our customers nutrition information on our products. His actions (and emails to the right people) has landed us the opportunity to be interviewed by the AP. The reporter wants to research eateries that offer nutrition information when they aren't required to by law. We need to get back ASAP about this lest the reporter dredge up another exciting start-up to question. Hopefully, though, national exposure will be ours.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

This sure is fun...

We have a lease, yes. For proof, there is a picture of the draft below. We currently have two experienced lease people giving it the once over to assure that those of us not well versed in legalize did not miss something significant. But, as of the moment, it looks perfect. The location also has begun to look like an inhabitable building of late. If you drive by, you can see people working, and we recently noticed the building actually has windows in it now! Fantastic.

At the moment we don't have any problems. We have finally managed to rummage together all information required for business loan requirements. That was nothing to scoff at. The rigmarole required for such would make climbing mount Everest look enjoyable. Sadly, though, I shudder to think that our dealings with bureaucracies has just begun. Thankfully, Dina (our manager) has experience with such insanity. That fact is most wonderful and welcome.

Martin (our chef) has been hard at work creating menus and prices. He is very experienced and very talented. He knows what he wants and he knows what he needs. With such precision on our side we cannot fail. We have become anxious to open if for no other reason than to be able to sample his wares on a more regular basis. =)

Our menu will not be immutable—several things about it will cater to the excitement of mystery. The main idea has been the consideration of world holidays—we plan to make specials associated with world holidays. We aren't settled on a frequency for this plan. It could be hectic to have a new recipe every day when we are just starting up, but perhaps as we become more established the frequency can increase. Each special will be texted to customers the morning they are made, and once they are consumed it's, "sorry Charlie," for the late comers.

The exciting part of this plan is there is pretty much a holiday for every stinking day of the year. How could it not be fun to make something for a, "Mother Goose Day"?