- We battled problems with the steam tables all day. This meant that at breakfast we had to cook most everything to order, including grits and gravy, which should have been hot and ready to serve. I'm not sure why they wouldn't stay hot but they did not. We will look into this today to see what's going on.
- My business partner sliced his finger open, requiring five stitches. This put him out of pocket for quite some time. As our primary cook (and I definitely don't know my way around a kitchen), this hurt us bad.
- At 11:00, we had virtually nothing ready for lunch, and a swarm of customers showed up. By noon we had half the food ready to serve, but many people left without eating. We lost around $200 in sales because of this.
- As if that weren't bad enough, because we were so far behind in the kitchen, my dishwasher was completely overwhelmed. There were times when we needed something that wasn't clean. We didn't finish washing dishes until 2 1/2 hours after we closed.
- My goal was to do $1,000 in sales. We ended up with $724. I'm sure we would have reached our goal if we would have been prepared.
I'm usually a very positive person, but yesterday was a trying day. Fortunately we had some very strong employees who took the initiative, and for this I am proud. We lost a lot of money on our first day, so we'll have to get things turned around quickly or come up with additional funding.
Wish me luck! I know we will pull through this. I refuse to fail.
Oh man, that sounds like something out of a Reality TV show - I'm SO sorry things seemed to domino so badly! Especially the chef/partner slicing open his finger. Nothing like opening-day stress combined with large, sharp knives and hungry customers.
ReplyDeleteIt will get better. It will get better. Repeat often!
Opening days can be tough. Even with everything that went wrong you still almost hit your goal. I'm sure things will go better today. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteI'm So Pretty - thanks for your thoughts. It felt like a reality show for sure. I guess another positive that came out of it was I barely ate anything yesterday and burned a lot of calories. I really need to lose some weight so this will help.
ReplyDeleteAndy - thanks for wishing me luck. We're going to get the kinks worked out slowly but surely.
Ouch! Sorry things didn't go well. Hopefully you offered the customers who left without eatting a coupon or some incentive to go back? Can't wait to hear day 2!
ReplyDelete