SWEET

There's a guy here in Johnson, Mark Woodward.. used to be our state representative and owns a ton of real estate that he rents out to college kids and old folks. Good guy. Lives on a back road, works hard, has some livestock, reads good books and I guess he cleans out people's estates for a living. He spends the year cramming all the stuff into his barn three doors down (and probably barns all over town considering the amount of stuff he has out there for sale) and then, once a year he holds this huge lawn sale for two days at the end of the summer. That sale, sidled up with it being the weekend all the kids return to Johnson State College, proved to be quite the lucrative day for this little coffee shop.

The sale begins at 9am and people start flooding into town and cluttering like cattle on the sidewalk by 8am. Folks come from two hours in every direction. Directly across the street people are eyeing the digital bank clock and, as soon as the numbers blink to 9:00, some old lady rings a cowbell and it's like a scene from Christmas in 1985 when moms all over the country were beating each other up in department stores for the last Cabbage Patch Kid doll.

Ok... well, maybe that was just the funny little town of Wilkes-Barre. I'll have to look into that fact.

Anyway, the shop was full of new faces all day and I kept the pastry case crammed full of good lookin' goodies, the fridge full of iced tea, iced coffee and chai and the sandwiches just kept being ordered. I had a pack of twelve ladies on a bicycle tour come in mid-day and order lunch and when I came in to the living room to check on them...after they'd all gotten their food and had a chance to dive into it... they clapped. THAT felt good.

And when I Z'd out at the end of the day, what I read on that register tape and what I counted in my drawer definitely broke the record of all my nightly deposits thus far.

The next time Mr. Woodward stops in for a cup of coffee it'll definitely be on the house. I wonder if I can convince to him to hold his annual lawn sale on a weekly basis.......

Closing up Shop

Minutes after that last post, Annette came strolling into the shop. We were supposed to have a little milk frothing gala after closing tonight... experimenting with the degree and type of foam on various coffee drinks. I was trained a certain way when I came on here at the shop and, as it turns out, my foam has been a bit "off".

There's a great video out there about how to master the foam thing and the guy who presents it looks a little like Napolean Dynamite's brother... so needless to say, it's pretty entertaining. With Annette's help, I was going to practice getting the technique down and, if time and energy allowed, maybe even master the "Rosetta Latte" ~ a pretty little latte decoration made out of the foam on top of the drink. If I get really good, I can make a little heart on the top of the lattes.... how very appropriate for the cafe's name!

I had to cancel for tonight though. Bill is sick at home and I was way too wiped after trying to understand all that tax bullshit. Not to mention the fact that my head was still spinning with the register confusion that I learned about tonight... how, for some reason, the register is programmed with Virginia's tax rate instead of Vermont's tax rate.. which leaves the numbers off by a handful of dollars every night and lends alot of confusion when it comes time to decipher exactly what I need to paying out for quarterly taxes.

But there was Annette, hand on her hip, standing behind the counter like the old days and it was just such a wonderful sight to see. She pulled up her sleeves and dove into my two sinks full of dirty dishes while she talked to me about going through the menu and costing everything as we go along. She even offered to make her fabulous scones for three months for free... provided I buy the ingredients. I love you, Annette!

She also reassured me that Lisa, her partner in this business three years ago, knows my register on an intimate level. The two of them have been instrumental in building my confidence in this venture and I'm convinced at this point that I have the absolute best coaches and support team I could ever ask for.

I still don't know how I'm going to keep track of all the tax payments I need to make or why the hell the state and federal government take so much god damn money from small business owners but....... it's pretty validating to have this kind of support. Especially minutes after I felt like I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth.

Annette... that Rolex you left above the sinks.... you better come get it early in the morning or else I'll be out there selling it on the street corner. Life's tough for a business owner these days... gotta get it where I can, you know?

Bookkeeping

I just spent five hours with my pseudo-bookkeeper. She managed the previous owner's books and has signed on to help me get started doing my own payroll. We started at noon, sat for three hours plugged into the computer and re-arranging things as they should be according to this business. We went into Quickbooks Payroll and plugged in the employee's information and all the necessary tax stuff....

Then I had to jump behind the counter to relieve the morning staff so we tackled plugging in the nightly deposits, broken down between actual sales and Rooms and Meals taxes, in between dealing with customers. If I wasn't totally and absolutely overwhelmed already, I certainly am now.

I keep reminding myself that it'll be second nature eventually. I'm just taking a long, slow and arduous business class, that's all.

Rural Vermont

I stayed open late tonight to host an old fashioned ice cream social for a grassroots organization called Rural Vermont. Rural Vermont is a great group that works to raise awareness and support for local and sustainable agriculture. They speak out about the ramifications of corporate farming and have been working closely with legislation at the state house, in Montpelier, in support of the hemp bill everyone is working so hard on getting passed. It felt really good to be able to contribute my space to a worthwhile effort.

The milk they used to make the ice cream came from Warren's farm.. where Bill spent years working and where most of our cows at home have come from. Most nights, around 4:45pm, Warren and his boys come in... smelling like the barn or fresh cut grass and they order their single shot maple lattes in the tall glass.

The place was buzzing with alot of new faces. I've spent the past few weeks hanging flyers all over the place and it was nice to see that it's paid off. It was between 6:30 - 8pm so alot of folks came in for sandwiches and salads before the ice cream was dished out. There were tables set up with information and door prizes and raffle prizes.

The speaker was a local woman who started a non-profit a few years ago called Salvation Farms. Volunteers for Salvation Farms gather the extra produce that farmers won't use and deliver to places like Meals on Wheels, elementary schools, and food shelves. It's a pretty righteous thing she started and it's been amazing to watch it grow and take on a life of it's own.

There were kids running around and families in the grass in the yard out back. Roo, who has the health food store across the street came in and handed me a bowl of maple-vanilla ice cream... which I immediately dressed in a bit of iced coffee. Nothing better that coffee ice cream and here we seem to have a perfect marriage....

So, it was a great night. And hopefully some of the folks'll come back around in the days to come.

I gotta go to bed now.

First Week Over~ How Much Longer To Go?

The spans of time between my posts these days are a pretty good indication of what this first week in business has been like. I can't even believe I pulled myself to the computer tonight to make it happen. It's getting on midnight and I'm bone tired and I've run my course with the five cds in the player closing up shop, sweeping, mopping, counting the drawer and doing inventory. Now the place is quiet and the sky is dark and the bushes outside are blowing around in the wind.... tap tap tapping on the old windows in front of me here.

The first few nights of this first week in business were full of anxiety about the financial end of things. Would my nightly deposits add up to enough to pay all the distributors? Would I have enough for payroll? Oh shit, I didn't take out any working capital... looks like all the pretties I wanted to get for the shop will have to wait... some of them, anyway. What if... what if... what if...

Now, though, after seven days of making sure that orders are placed, pastries are on the shelves, chai is brewed, the drawer is balanced and the floor is mopped.... my hands are dry and crusty from bleach water and I'm way too fucking exhausted at the end of the night to lay awake worrying about my numbers. I have no choice but to save that anxiety for my waking hours.

People ask me how it's going and I smile. I remember asking a friend that question years ago when she was going through a tough time. Her response was "Do you want the honest answer or the polite answer?" I could respond similarly now.

"Precisely how much detail are you looking for exactly?"

I meet tomorrow with the previous owner's bookkeeper... the one who usually makes me see stars from absolute confusion. We're getting together so she could walk me through doing my own payroll. I spent time with my dear Annette the other night, loading Quickbooks Payroll into my computer and plugging my invoices, deposits and written checks into the program. I feel a little more on top of my game now and I might actually be able to follow the bookkeeper when we sit down together tomorrow. Maybe.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have some dinero left over after my pay my girls.

Bloodbath

Four days in as owner. Four settled drawers, four deposit slips, one Costco run, alot of urns of brewed coffee, even more drawn espresso shots......lots and lots of steamed milk. Lots and lots of steamed milk splattered everywhere.

I finished at the shop yesterday afternoon around 2pm, sat at the bar for a little while sending off an email and then went home to enjoy an hour or two of downtime before we drove up the road to have dinner with friends.

One of my employees was still at the shop, due to close at six and so I left her the number where I'd be since I knew I wouldn't get cell reception that far north. It was her first night closing the shop with the new credit machine and I wanted her to be able to get in touch if she had any questions about how to settle the slips at the end of night. Around quarter to seven, right before the southwestern eggrolls were plated up, I got a call.

"I don't want to sound like a wuss but..... I broke one of the espresso shot glasses and cut my hand and it..... it kind of won't stop bleeding. I've been trying to close up and count the money and sweep the kitchen but I don't want to get blood on everything...."

Yeah. Bad idea.
My first thought was....man, I'm glad I got that workman's comp policy lined up this week. I told her to hold her hand above her head for a while, which she probably already knew, and to go get stitches if she needed them and to not worry about settling the drawer or wrapping stuff up.

Then I started wrapping my head around the following morning. Sundays are kind of sweet in that we don't open till 9am... which allows for one extra hour of cherished sleep on that day. I started to realize that I'd be coming in at 6:30 am to finish the sweeping, take out the trash, mop, settle and then re-open the drawer. I thanked myself for opting to drink seltzer water and lemon instead of wine.

For the first time, maybe ever, I was the one who was gearing up to head home before 10pm last night. I was gathering Ella's many layers and lost socks and shuffling she and Bill out the door.

Until there's an oven at the shop, I've been brewing the chai and baking off the frozen, par-baked, kind of "shwag" baked goods at home. Ham and cheese croissants and spinach and feta croissants. Not all that bad but not entirely great either. It's what we've got till my new baker is on board.

Pulling up the driveway, I realized that, on top of waking up early to come in to the shop, I also had two trays of croissants to pull from the freezer, let proof through the night and bake before I came in.

In our mudroom we have a tall, upright freezer that holds all the meat from the farm. To make room for the boxes of croissants last week, I transferred all the meat from two shelves in the freezer onto the racks on the door. Coming in the door last night, I dropped the load of Ella's shit onto the kitchen floor and then dragged my exhausted ass out to the mudroom, wax paper lined baking sheets in hand, to load up the trays with baked goods that would need the night to proof.

I opened the freezer to find a whole door's worth of thawed packages of beef and pork, the bloody ooze having dripped out of the packages and then frozen in the goopy drip journey to the freezer floor... leaving chunks of bloody ice like a funky massacre all over the god-damn freezer.

My first reaction was the desire to shut the door and pretend that I hadn't seen a thing. Fight or flight? There was a warm bed upstairs that had been calling me for hours and now I had a Nightmare on Elm Street scene to tend to... and Bill's bitterness of having lost all that meat.

Ella took one look at my face as I walked back outside and followed me. I stood with one arm on the closed freezer and one arm on my hip, head down, bone-tired. She put her arms around me and made the world a better place for that minute and a half. Thanks Bean.

I loaded all the meat into a cooler with intentions of having a little beef and pork Christmas at the shop today... giving it away to all the meat eating customers I could find.... but it turns out (chef's advice) that we could pat it dry, repack and refreeze it. All has not been lost.

Surprisingly, my dreams weren't loaded with blood and gore but I will be getting a first aid kit for the shop and I will be eating a hell alot of tenderloin this week.

The Nightly Z

Ten minutes till closing time on my first day as owner of The Lovin Cup Cafe.

I came in early this morning to make sure that everything was prepped well, to give my head time to acclimate to being owner, and to kind of savor the calm before the storm. Ten minutes before 8am, I ran across the street to the grocery store to grab a newspaper, a bottle of seltzer and a couple of bags of ice. The sky was gray and overcast and by the time I'd made my purchase and came through the automatic door, it was dumping rain. I had a choice of taking my brown corduroy shirt off and wrapping it around my head but I thought twice about opening the shop on my first day as owner and looking like I was hosting a wet t-shirt contest. So I stuffed the newspaper into the shirt and buttoned it up and sprinted back to unlock the door. All my favorite bachelors were on the porch, some of them vying to be the first dollar spent on the very first day in business.... only because there's been talk of building an alter to it.... a bling frame....the works. For now, it's nailed to the wall above the espresso machine. Thanks Bob Wright! I knew it'd be you!

During the one lull of the morning, which was just amazing and supportive and encouraging, I decided to clean my cash register. I scrubbed months of funk and grime off the sides of it. I turned it off for a bit so that I could clean each key. I made a sort of sweet love to my money machine in hopes that she'll respond accordingly. All day, every time I had a transaction, I noticed how good it felt to be working with a fresh, clean register. It being my first day as owner, I enjoyed every dollar I filed into it. In a few minutes, I'll pull it all out, count it and see how this how coffee shop thing is gonna swing.