Thursday, December 6, 2007

Money Makes the World Go Round

In the midst of trying to finish my business plan and talk to investors, the owner of one of the hot restaurants in town came and asked me to train his bartender behind my bar. He claimed that the reason he couldn’t do it at his bar is due to the fact he is closed for the month to do a remodel. His second overhaul in less than two years. Completely unnecessary if you ask me since he has one of the most beautiful restaurants in town, I’m not quite sure where he gets the money.


Obviously, I wasn’t going to train his bartender because he claims that in his remodel he is redesigning to be the adult version of our bar. Which we aren’t really quite sure what that means, since the average age of our guest is probably 45 (although I have the sneaking suspicion that most of them like Jell-O and play with tinker toys in their free time). Anyhow, he asked and I didn’t say anything but that I’d have to think about it. I figured if I had a day, I could figure out a better way to phrase, “You coke-sniffing scum sucker who calls himself a chef because he knows what julienne vegetables are, what are you fucking nuts, we are not training your bartender for free so you can steal all of our drinks, systems, and ideas.” He had the audacity to send this poor kid in and tell him that he was going to “help” me behind the bar. I got a phone call from the opener at 4 p.m. telling me that some guy was there for a realistic. I haven’t hired anyone in months and I am not hiring anyone, so I was baffled. Then I figured out it must be the scum sucking chef’s little henchman. When I got to work at 5:30, he was having dinner with coke-sniffer who was so delighted that I was going to train his bartender. I called him the next day and said as flattered as we were to be asked to train him, he needed no training since bartending is just really glorified dishwashing.


So I met with an investor last week who is looking to get out of the business he is in now. He is in his early 30’s and has always dreamt of owning a restaurant. He came to me, I didn’t go to him, which felt good. But his ideas of what a bar should be differ from mine and I don’t think I want him to be my soul partner. He is a nice guy, but extremely boring with absolutely no sense of humor. I found myself explaining tidbits of sarcasm most of our lunch. I don’t know how he feels about being just being one of many investors; I have the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t like it because he really wants to be a part of the restaurant, which is exactly why I want to have more than one investor. Nonetheless, he is very interested and sounds like he could put the money together. So it is a start, made me start thinking more in the money terms and less in the concept of a restaurant terms. It also made me see that the first step is to see if I can buy the bar I manage now and then if that doesn’t work to move forward from there. On Thursday, I have lunch with one of my regulars who absolutely adores me and when I asked him to have lunch with me because I was looking at buying the bar he told me what an idiot I am to want to invest in that business because the entry was too low, the success rate is minimal, and the return is low. And I agreed with him on all of those things, but it wasn’t what I was expecting and definitely a blow to my ego and a shock nonetheless. But I feel better now, still ready to go eat lunch with him on Thursday. I’m taking my best friend, who I also work with, who is positive she can sell him on the idea.

So maybe it is the beginning to something bigger for me. For the meantime we got a write up in the local food magazine for our winter cocktail list. I just got photographed for another local magazine and Sunset Magazine is doing a piece on the bar. I’m supposed to talk to the woman writing the article tomorrow. Hopefully it is very glamorous and enticing.


Excited for the weekend. We are going to do hot buttered rums with cinnamon nutmeg compound butter, homemade caramel, and spiced rum. I’m also making eggnog from scratch with Myer’s and brandy. I have a crème brûlée martini with vanilla cream, Navan Vanilla Liquor, and Vanilla vodka with a handcrafted vanilla sugar candy that I made that’s been killing it. I drizzled the candy when it was drying and all of the candies look like beautiful pieces of artwork. I’m also doing a gingerbread martini with a gingerbread man hanging off the rim of the glass for First Friday. I think it will be really cute.


Cocaine

Cocaine is God's way of saying you earn far too much.