Our bakery journey rounds the corner

Maybe one day years from now someone in our situation will read this and wont feel as alone as we do.

The installation of the grease trap in the bakery took longer than expected, but overall it went well. The biggest problem was the day after they sawed and jackhammered the concrete slab--the ENTIRE bakery was covered in concrete dust. Every spoon, cup, painting, bowl... even under the toilet seat. We spent 6 hours that morning, starting at 6am, cleaning and washing every inch of the bakery.

That aside, we are again compliant (interesting how complaint and compliant are spelled so close to each other) with the City. We had our health occupancy inspection today and the final building inspection is scheduled for Monday Tuesday.

We have listed the bakery for sale. We met with a broker as well to help the process. Over the course of the year, this place has beat us up. This month, we are en route to a projected loss of $8400. This month. Again, I am *trying* not to take it personally. But come on. What people tell me about the bakery/how good it is/whatnot and the bottom line/customer tickets are two completely different things. Setting the niceties aside, this is the point where we look up to the sky and scream and ask what we possibly did to deserve everything constantly being against us.

So we are actively looking to sell. And planning for the event in which we dont find a buyer, we had to make another awful decision tonight. We had to let our entire staff go. Cutting the wages, payroll taxes, and worker's comp insurance (not required in Texas but required by our landlord) will cut our monthly expenses by about $3,000. The price paid for that decision, though, is a big one. Not only will Ann now have to work by herself all day, but we lose our front staff and our cook, who has worked at the cafe since it started with the previous owners in 2004. It is the most upsetting thing we've had to do. They are friends to us. And we fully know this may be the beginning of the end.

Oh.. and speaking of the beginning of the end... did I mention we had another dead bird in the back yard AND a dead possom hanging from our fence yesterday? Are you kidding me?

Construction begins after a FANTASTIC day!

Ann did a great job today. I mean really great. Today was our 4th highest sales day since we began in August 2007. We introduced a new cookie flavor, Green Tea Cookies, and look forward to holding our first kid's cookie decorating class this Saturday at the bakery. Today was the only the 6th time we have broken a specific sales threshold and it couldnt have come at a better time. I really appreciate everyone who came by the bakery today.

Tonight, we began our latest required construction endeavor -- the installation of a grease trap. We re-hired Roman from Roman's Plumbing and Gas to do the install, which should take several nights. Roman is a good guy -- and when we wake up tomorrow we should have a massive hole in our kitchen floor with (hopefully) a big ol' grease trap sitting right in the middle of it. Fun times!

July 4 2008

I turned 33 yesterday. Somewhere along the way, I stopped looking forward to birthdays. At some point I lost who I thought I'd always be.

I've been struggling with this post for quite a while. For the most part, I had it written back in May but held my tongue until the quarter actually ended on June 30. The state of the bakery is mediocre.

I don't feel it is being overly dramatic to suggest things aren't going well. They aren't. Business is excruciatingly slow--at times, hours go by without a hint of a customer. The cost of goods sold (butter, milk, flour, eggs, chicken, bread, etc) are all going up faster than any reasonable chance of sustainable profit. (The price of one-gallon of milk went up $1.03 YESTERDAY at Sams.) Customers on the whole are few and far between. Morale is low.

We've been told by customers, and believe it ourselves, that our product is good -- better than something that should only be seen at Christmas office parties and neighborhood potlucks. In fact, we hear more positive comments than negative in any given time period. But it is hard to not take it personally when at the end of the day, when I enter the daily totals into the computer, the cost of opening the doors is more than gross sales day after day after day.

It does not make for a sustainable business, nor does the resulting stress make for a sustainable marriage. There are dozens of reasons, all valid and operating at the same time, that businesses fail. We can, and have, pointed fingers to many things: the big chain eateries pushing local family-owned places out; a rapidly worsening economy resulting in customers spending less; rapidly rising gas prices resulting in less drive by traffic; rising cost of goods forcing independent stores like us to charge more because our volume is so low compared to the big boxes... Then, inevitably, the fingers point to ourselves. We aren't doing all we could. We don't know the magic marketing outlets we should. We aren't taking advantage of opportunities. We aren't motivating ourselves, our staff, and our customers enough. WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO IMPLEMENT SUBSTANTIAL BUSINESS CHANGES TO SURVIVE IN THIS ECONOMY. We aren't even capable of running a business.

It really doesn't end, and I don't have the answers. I only know we aren't making it.

Efforts made seem to be in vain. We've made environment changes, opening the kitchen and painting the floors and walls; We've made product changes, adding in bakery items and varying flavors and sizes; We've added supplemental sale opportunities, working with more local artists and selling both Thai trinkets and cookie jars; We've embarked on a marketing campaign, including an e-mail newsletter and weekly coupons. If all that has us where we are, I really am not sure I'm the right person to do this.

It would not surprise me if our doors close in the next 6 months. I believe it would be a mistake to keep pushing personal savings into a business that has yet to reach a break even point, just hoping something changes and it becomes profitable. Businesses don't become profitable by chance. It takes smart business sense and a lot of capital to make it. And when you're already $130,000 "invested" in a drowning business, it doesn't seem rational to keep going. It seems more rational to walk away, head hung low, and try to recover lost time with my wife.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just trying to express my frustration, and disappointment, and uncertainty from the eyes of someone trying to succeed in something that started with nothing but a dream. I know business people and long time restauranteurs laugh at all this nonsense. I wish I could.