Biz Details

Everything's been going real well. Re-organized the partnership and its just my cousin and I now. For those counting, this is the 3rd time I've had to re-group haha. But, its final now. We put in an application on a location. I'll disclose location hopefully by Wednesday if we can close (fingers crossed).

This blog has become more about recipe/menu development than anything, but this post, I'd like to share some insights from the last few months trying to get the shop open. Obviously, having a partner that has a similar vision and different skill set is key. The first two go-rounds, I had tried to partner with really talented people, but they were cooks as well. My cousin is a cook, but a full-time lawyer and willing to do more business aspects. The key is to find a balanced partnership where people bring different skills. For instance, the Cleveland Cavaliers are idiots. You have Lebron, you need people to spread the floor, get a shooter, not a giant person to clog the lane like Shaq. Ditto for baseball, you don't want a bullpen with no lefties.

Second, landlords are assholes. We dealt with one that bold faced lied about the offer he originally made us even though we had the printed offer in front of him. Long story short, he asked for a certain amount of cash in our biz account, we got it in the account, and he asked for more denying the original number. Initially, we were very responsive to his requests and the things he wanted in a deal, but once he started back tracking and altering the offer, we realized he was going to continue pushing the envelope. I find that in this situation, playing a hard line with the property managers works. He tried to talk us down as low as possible so he could play good cop/bad cop with the actual landlord who calls the shots. In my opinion, let the property manager eat shit. He's the landlord's battering ram and the less you pay attention to his bush league tactics, the better off you'll be. Make an offer, stick to it and force the landlord to make a decision. Its hard to walk away from a good offer so wait for him to blink. At least that's what I think works.

The business posts will begin to pick up. We got a location and we're going to start getting into permits, etc so should be interesting! Stay tuned.