I’m still recovering from my three-week exile at Chevy Court (you can read about that HERE), but sadly I can’t spend much time catching up on sleep – I’m diving right back into Listening Room projects.
No rest for the wicked.
We seem to have made some progress with our city permits. We got a letter last week from the zoning office letting us know that the Planning Commission has scheduled our public hearing for September 17. We’ll have to present our project to the planning committee and answer any questions they have. We’re not trying to do anything the building isn’t already zoned for, so we’re hopeful it will be a simple process – but who knows. Nothing about this has been simple up to this point, so we’re bracing ourselves whatever they throw at us.
We also got a letter from the code enforcement office that our Certificate of Use has passed the initial reviews and now requires an inspection from both code enforcement and fire prevention. Unfortunately, we cannot schedule the inspections until we get our plumbing work done – one of the walls is partially opened up to allow access to the basement. Plumber #5 (who we have very high hopes for) went on a 2-week vacation right after he looked at our project. He’s back in town this week, so we’re doing our best to get that work scheduled as soon as possible.
In the meantime, we have equipment and supplies arriving daily.
The kegerator showed up first:
Then our under counter ice machine and cooler:
And our cold prep table:
Our bar/work area is starting to take shape:
Along with the big stuff, we’ve got boxes of small wares arriving every day – a French press, a handful of Chemex setups, filters, scales and water kettles along with our water purifier. Not very sexy or exciting, but definitely necessary.
Now that the major equipment is in, we can start thinking about our workflow.
We’ve got it set up so that our bar supplies are on one end and the coffee making and food assembling equipment is on the other. I’m not worried about mixing drinks and pouring beer – I feel confident that our compact area will make a fairly efficient bar. I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants, and a small footprint is actually a good thing because it eliminates unnecessary steps. I’m more concerned about the coffee set up because it’s not something I’m familiar with and we’ve got a lot going on in a very small space. I know speed is the name of the game with coffee service, so we’ll be spending a lot of time making sure we’ve got it right.
Next up – now that the equipment is in place, the boys will start mapping out the storage shelving project that I have taped off on the back wall.
