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| | Three weeks of madness! I would have blogged at some point in that stretch, but I never had a single spare moment!
All right. A quick recap.
Last weekend of August was grm s wedding in NC. Fun trip. Wedding 3 of 3 for the summer. And best of the bunch (sorry Schaef.. no soul crushing chicken dance). The trip was a lot of fun. Good food. Good times. Got to hang with grm a lot (surprisingly) to both catch up and reminesce. His wedding was great. It was not only a great departure from traditional weddings, it was openly and explicitly scornful of them. Nice. The reception was great... well at least the food was excellent and there were no songs that make me die a little inside (electric slide, YMCA etc) thanks to grm s stern blacklist. It was decidedly gay, but that s to be expected with a lot of theatre people and disco music present! grm s lovely bride, Tamara, was very nice and I wish them the very best. Hope we see them in the future when they make any ventures north of the Mason Dixon line.
The week after was a blur. Ramping up and trying to prepare for the coffee shop. Nothing could properly prepare us. Friday the 31st we took over and signed the papers at 5 pm. Then we were there past 2 in the morning trying to get ready. We did a complete revamping of the interior decoration. Curtains, pillows and valances were sewn. Cupboards and shelves were cleaned out. Walls were painted. It was madness.
On about 2 hrs of sleep we opened at 8:00 on Saturday the 1st. A huge thanks goes out to all the friends who showed up to lend their support. Friends and family made up a significant portion of that first day s clientele. We really appreciated that guys!
The regulars that we had met in the days leading up to the changeover all hailed us as saviors of the coffee shop. Slowly, details of the previous owners earnest attempts to run the place into the ground leaked out. So we seem to be very successfully rebuilding the customer base.
After a slow holiday weekend, we started to worry about the profitability of the place, but the following workweek asuaged all fears. Our minor style and menu tweaks seem to keep winning people over and the till grows heavier each day.
The only real issue remaining is that we greatly expanded the hours and people don t seem to realize it. So things are pretty dead in the evenings, but that should slowly pick up as word gets out. Overall we are very pleased.
Now... the earth shattering consequence of this whole endeavor is the sleep schedule! Holy Shit! Meghan rises before 5 (previously it wasn t unusual for her to be heading to bed thereabouts). I m up before 6. That s 6 in the friggin AM!! I didn t know a 6 existed in the AM before this! It s madness. It s like we had to become grown-ups in the course of a weekend. That sucks. But we are adjusting... though only with much lamenting and gnashing of teeth.
Like I said, overall it has been very good. Working for yourself is definitely different. I like it. It feels wrong not to be there during business hours...
Also... I m there (here) now...
-bampf
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