Where did the year go?!?
As we wrap up the rest of our projects and await our last few permits, it feels like 2018 flew by in the blink of an eye. We thought for sure we would be opening in September or October, but here we are heading into December.
December is not a great month to open a business, and January isn’t any better – but it’s not like we can wait it out until spring. We’re busting our asses to get everything done and my best guess is that we’re about 3-4 weeks out once we get everyone trained. Since that puts us to Christmas week, I’m thinking the first week of the year makes more sense.
So…January 7, 2019 is our official target date.
We had our hearing with the Zoning Board of Appeals last month to get a waiver for our stage, but they won’t pass the resolution until their next meeting on December 6. And somehow, all the other permits are being held until that happens. I spoke to the business licensing office last week and they tell us everything will be released on December 7 – our certificate of use, special permit, and entertainment license, along with all the waivers our project required. It doesn’t make any sense to me why a resolution specifically about the stage would affect everything else, but I’ll be beyond happy if we have everything in our hands at the end of the week. The only other lingering potential problem is that we’re still waiting for the city engineer to approve our plumber’s plan for a valve that needs to be installed in our basement.
In the meantime, we’ve boxed in the front of the stage:
We’re leaving the sides open and we’ll cover them with skirting of some kind. We want to be able to stash instrument cases and such underneath.
Did you know that commercial trash cans are obscenely expensive for some reason? Yeah, me neither…so we were stoked to find these heavy duty cans on Craigslist:
They are the perfect size for our room, plus they are great shape and very clean, so we grabbed all 6 of them.
The rest of our equipment has been delivered, including all the coffee grinders, a pair of soup re-thermalizers, the toaster and the panini press.
Remember the 48″ pastry cases we found on Craigslist a while back?
We knew we probably didn’t need both of them, but they were only a few years old, in great condition and a good deal. We thought we could make at least one of them work, but after a lot of brainstorming, we came to the conclusion that they are just too big for our space. They really are the kind of the thing you have to build your bar or counter around, so we’re putting them back up for sale. We’re sad we couldn’t make them work, but recouping the money we spent on them isn’t a terrible idea either.
Because we’re pretty much just shooting cash out the door with an air cannon at the moment.
It’s not stressful at all. 😉
Our back bar was installed last week:
There is lighting in all of the shelves, but somehow I didn’t grab a pic when it was all lit up.
Our espresso machine is finally back!
The machine was a generous and completely unexpected gift from the awesome ladies of Laci’s Tapas Bar, which is located behind us on Hawley Ave. Because it was a used machine that had been in storage, we took it to someone who services this type of equipment a couple of months ago. We wanted to make sure it was in perfect working order before we attempted to use it. Luckily, it was in great shape overall – he told us it has barely been used.
We’ve ordered all of our glassware and placed our small wares orders. I’m sure there are some odds and ends we’ve forgotten, but the bulk of it is on its way. The list of items we still need to buy is dwindling, but we’ve still got our opening food, alcohol and beer orders to contend with – GULP!
Things are moving along at a pretty good clip, and I know January 7 will be here before we know it.
