Sneak Preview a Success Despite Massive Equipment Failure

So Saturday was the big day; we served our first paying customers (though to call most of the customers "paying" is a little bit of an exaggeration; coffee was free and lattes cost a buck) and there were no significant hangups. Okay, there were some pretty significant hangups.

On Tuesday of last week I plugged in the coffee machine. It has a normal looking plug, except one of the prongs is positioned sideways. That often means that the machine doesn't run on a normal current, but requires a more beefed up 220 electrical line. This particular machine, however, does NOT require such a powerful amperage. And if there's one thing I know about electricity (and in reality I know maybe five things), it's that if you plug something into a really powerful outlet and it's designed for a much less powerful outlet, you will, to use the technical term, fry the shit out of it. Which I did. Let's hear it for ignoring the directions. And the tag on the plug. Let's hear it for literacy. Fuck. On Thursday I got a new circuit board from the manufacturer and on Friday I got an additional (but different) circuit board. Both were installed and now the machine can make hot water but it won't brew coffee. Which isn't so helpful when you're a coffee machine. So it needs some professional servicing which I hope will occur tomorrow. But we made do on Saturday and used French presses and we were covered for coffee.

The espresso machine is in a world of hurt. I've had two licensed technicians charge me nearly a thousand bucks to "fix" the thing, yet by 4pm yesterday after a mere five hours of use, she was down for the count. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do about this situation. I suspect I'll end up returning her to the place I got her. And then suing the guys maybe? Ah, we'll see.

Other than the equipment going to crap, I think that Saturday was really successful. More than a hundred people came in, and dozens of those people were total strangers. People seemed to like the coffee and the atmosphere, and I've been getting a ton of positive feedback from the neighborhood. Thanks to everyone who came out yesterday, it was a great feeling to get so much support on the first day.

I expect the we'll be open for real on Wednesday morning.

So check us out then.

Or before if you like, I'll probably be around.

Holy Christ

The past week has been ridiculous. I think I've worked like a hundred hours. Yesterday was a seventeen hour day.

The good news: The Health Inspector came today. I'm approved to go get my food license. Assuming everything goes okay tomorrow morning at L&I, the cafe will open this Saturday.

Until then, I'll be working on the place most of the time. Stop by. Say hey. Have some coffee.

Lies, Excuses, and Complaints

I strongly oppose laying flooring of all varieties. I spent about five hours today laying vinyl tile and I covered about a quarter of the floor. It's not so much the floor laying that gets me down, it's the fact that my hands and arms were sticky with floor glue and now they're less sticky but smell more strongly of turpentine. Tomorrow I'm going to lay the rest of the floor. Maybe.

Oh, what I said the other day about opening on June 2? Total crap. I've moved my appointment with the Health Inspector to Monday, so I won't be legally able to open until Tuesday. Figure I'll have the place open for limited hours toward the end of next week and the grand opening celebration will take place on June 9. This is, for those keeping track, not Cinco de Mayo. So sue me. Unless you're the city of Philadelphia, in which case I'd really rather you not sue me. Thanks.

In other news, the place is half red and I've got a big pipe running through the ceiling.

Oh, and as of last night the Beauty Shop Cafe is air conditioned. Please don't tell anyone that the a/c unit is held onto the building with seven screws. It would probably make them nervous, which would be needless.

Pictures coming soon. And I mean it. Probably.

I've definitely had a splinter in my palm since Thursday...

and I just pulled it out.

Oh, and we're going to be open a week from today.* Just thought I'd let y'all know.

* This is assuming that there are no unexpected hiccups involving the good people who run Philadelphia. Just thought I'd add that little hedge.

Working hard, or hardly working?

Wow, I've been remiss in sharing my progress with the world. Sorry Jenn.

So I'm at the cafe pretty much all the time these days. And things are moving in, like, big ways.

I built a bar (with much help from Josh W., without whose help I'd have been pretty much screwed, and some additional help from my Dad). Pretty much all my walls are built, the plumbing is done, to a large extent. In fact, the bathroom is pretty much all the way there, with the exception of silly details like a paint job and a door. I laid a rubber floor behind the bar (which was entirely terrible), built a window seat, did some serious painting (well, priming, really), and got a bunch of my equipment. My espresso machine was in the back seat of my car for a few days until the guy who's servicing the thing picked it up the day before yesterday. Apparently, my La Marzocco needs a little love.

Oh, and my massive binder of crap for the health department got approved. So there's some seriously good news.

There are only a few possible pitfalls that could really hold me up at this point.

1) There's too much work to do and not enough hours in the day (which, of course, is backed up in a big way by the fact that I'm sitting here typing crap)

2) The plumber has to run a pipe through the ceiling, through the apartments above the cafe, through the roof. The second floor apartment might become a problem because my landlord doesn't want a pipe sticking out of the floor and going into the ceiling in the place. He says it's not aesthetically pleasing. Don't know what he's talking about. So I need to figure out a way to get that pipe through that place without having to move a door. Which could be costly.

3) The good people at Licenses and Inspections could decide that I shouldn't be building stuff without a permit and shut me down until I get said permit. That would be inconceivably bad. I hope to deal with that situation tomorrow. Wish me luck.

4) I melt while working. It gets f'in hot in that place. And no, I can't put in A/C until I get some/most/all of the dust outta there.

Moving right along.

So much to address.

I got me my money. I feel like the Hamburglar after that time he broke into McDonald's and ate seven dozen hamburgers. That's to say, I feel very satisfied, but the experience has given me a lingering case of indigestion. Ye, let it be known far and wide, from mountaintop to valley, that dealing with banks, in general, sucks, like, a whole lot. There, now that it's out there, I'm feeling much better.

Construction continues to crawl along. I've spent a lot of time in the bathroom this week, laying a subfloor, laying tile, cutting a toilet hole in the floor, perfecting the kind of half-assed drywall, etc etc etc. Did I mention that the only light in the bathroom is a halogen work lamp that goes from zero to one thousand degrees in fifty two seconds? So it's warm in there. But it's moving along. Plumbers are set to come in early next week, which is great because it means that I'll be able to, for example, wash my hands while working. And maybe pee. I'm pretty excited.

I think I'll lay the subfloor in the rest of the space in the next couple of days. And finish that dastardly spackling effort. And figure out my logo, build a bar, build a couple more small walls, buy an air conditioner, paint the place, solve the crisis in Iraq, eat a sandwich, buy $15,000 worth of coffee equipment, install it, take a nap, think of all the details I've not yet considered, deal with them, and open my doors. Should take, say, two or maybe three days.

See you at the grand opening on May 19th (???)...

Nineteen Days?!?

According to my original time line, I'll be opening the cafe in nineteen days.

I spent six hours drywalling and spackling today and somehow feel like I didn't make so much progress.

I still don't actually have the cash I need on hand (next week or I'm going to burn down every bank in Philadelphia).

I still have not submitted my massive pain-in-the-ass plan to the Health Department.

I keep getting distracted by things like baseball games, underwhelming hipster dance parties, and Myspace.

Cinco de Mayo's not looking so good.

Now I'm thinking maybe Doce de Mayo?

Which would not necessarily preclude hiring a Mariachi Band, for the record.

Hangin' it old school

For those of you who were wondering, it is, in point of fact, much easier to hang drywall with 1 5/8" screws than it is to hang the stuff with, say, 2 1/2" screws.

Because I know that many people wonder about these things on a Wednesday morning.

That said, my drywall is about 50% hung. Check back soon for additional updates on just how hung my drywall is in the next few days. Things could change at any moment...

Sweating...

It's been a tough week. For a couple of days, it was looking like all of my financing was going to fall apart. Completely. As it stands, it's looking like it won't be falling apart, but it's being continually pushed back instead. Figure by the time I open my doors, I'll maybe get my money. It's only through an obnoxious amount of persistence in getting people who I'm depending on to get their acts together that I'm even feeling as good about this situation as I am. Today. Tomorrow, we'll see.

I've built me some walls. I now have framed out a bathroom and an office and I just have a couple of soffets (soffits? sofits? Is there a proper way to spell this word?) to put up, then some drywall, some tape, some spackle, and we're good to go. Okay, I should probably build a bar at some point, submit my plans to the health department, and get a fuckton of plumbing done while I'm at it. I got a couple of plumbing estimates this week and they were about 400 percent higher than I budgeted. Remind me, why am I going into the coffee business instead of the plumbing business? Hell, Mario had a collection of video games made in his image. Name one coffee person who has that honor. Eh? That's what I thought.

Maybe I'll put up some pictures this week. That should satisfy the interested hordes.

And today started out so well...

You know how sometimes you have a to-do list, and you cross something off because you've taken care of it and it's a pretty important thing and you feel really good that it's taken care of and it's kind of a load off your mind?

And then, without warning, that thing that you crossed off of your to-do list some time ago with no small amount of relief reappears in your life and you have to worry about it again and you might as well never have crossed it off the list in the first place?

Yeah, I also love when that happens.

A non-update

Because Rosa asked, here's a picture of the exterior of my place. Ooh.

Yesterday morning I met with the contractor who will fix my floors. He will, in addition, be putting a couple of additional sheets of drywall on the ceiling, so that everything is up to code for the good people who enforce the fire code. He estimates that the work will be done by the end of this coming week. So I guess pencil it in to be done sometime around the end of April. If I'm lucky.

I'm ready to talk about Zoning. I needed a couple of days to get my head together and work through the rage, but now I'm ready to spill the beans. I went before the ZBA on Wednesday and I can say without any doubt that the Zoning process in this fair city is fucked, more or less. Well, more than less.

My hearing was scheduled for 2pm and I arrived around a quarter 'til. Nb: Since I went before the ZBA as an incorporated entity (well, technically as an LLC, but that's close enough as far as the ZBA is concerned), I had to appear with my attorney in tow. When I saw that I was 7th on the agenda, I was a little bummed that I would likely have to wait a little while to go before the board, but figured it was better to be 7th than 15th. And there was another hearing scheduled for 3:30, so how bad was this really going to be? Really bad, it turns out. See, after I came into the room, a steady flow of muslim-looking folks started streaming in. By the time the first case was being heard, there wasn't even standing room left in the place. There were maybe two hundred people in this room with 80 seats. My only hope was for the case that all of these people were there to support or oppose was being heard after my case. No such luck.

The Liquor Control Board wants to move their West Philadelphia Wine and Spirits Shoppe from its current location on 40th and Market to a former Rite-Aid on the 4200 block of Walnut St. There's a mosque across the street. The mosque is pretty strongly opposed to this concept. The other neighbors seem to be more or less in support. An hour and forty five minutes (and a few hundred dollars) later, the board cut off discussion on the topic. And I'm sitting there next to my attorney, who I'm paying by the minute and who's barely recovered from a stomach flu. Fabulous.

Maybe eight minutes later, my case number is called. I have a letter from the neighborhood association showing their support. I have a letter from the President of City Council showing her support. This should be really easy. Nope. Three people from the neighborhood have waited around for a few hours to protest my variance request. They say that they don't want any businesses in their residential neighborhood. They say that they have enough of a chance to mingle with the neighbors at the award winning community garden. They say that the landlord doesn't pick up trash that's often strewn in front of the property. Three people. Who really cared about their neighborhood. Who had every opportunity to bring these issues to the table at the SOSNA meeting (that they didn't attend). And you know what? The ZBA listened to them. And made this my problem. So I have a variance, but in two years, it expires. And I need to go back to the ZBA for approval for the variance. Again. So now I have to be on the lookout for any person who I might offend in the next two years who could come out to the ZBA meeting and ask to have me put out of business. Great.

I could rant about the system in this space, and I could go after members of the ZBA on a personal level, but that's not going to do anyone any good at any point. So I'll just say that the ZBA has really helped me out a lot. Thank you, ZBA. Thank you very much.

Fuck.

Nonplussed

Went before the ZBA yesterday and things were not as easy as I'd hoped.

I got my variance, but it was a painful process and there are some frustrating limitations. More specifics to follow when I'm less annoyed.

Like Siberia

Things are unchanged this week at 2001 Fitzwater. The good news is that the landlord has agreed to repair the floor joists. The bad news is that I don't know when that work is going to commence or exactly how long that work is going to take. And the additional bad news is that I can't really do anything in the space until that situation is resolved. According to countless small business books, DIY books, and small business DIY books I've read, it's apparently a poor choice to attempt to build walls on top of busted floors. This might be one of those times that I listen to what the books say.

In the meanwhile, I've been working (so very slowly) on my presentation for the health department. Right now, I'm drawing, to scale, the exact locations of my equipment behind and under the bar. I'm only a little concerned that I have no idea about where this stuff should go, ideally. Perhaps somewhat more of a concern is that after I present this plan to the health department I'm pretty much locked into this setup forever and ever. Unless I want to spend thousands to reroute the plumbing and electric that I'm going to spend thousands to route in the first place. Fantastic.

Still on for my hearing before the ZBA on Wednesday. Had the pleasure of going to City Council President Anna Verna's office last week to get a letter of support from the Councilwoman. Usually when you have a hearing scheduled at the ZBA, the Zoning Board passes along this information to your local Councilperson and someone starts a folder with your name on it to keep up on your situation etc. Except Verna's office never knew about me. So I had to go over there and hand deliver the notice I got from the ZBA regarding my hearing date and time along with the letter from the good people at SOSNA. And now I'll be getting my Verna letter on Tuesday. Good times. Good, efficient city we have here. Those different departments sure can communicate well. It's like fucking Babel over here.

Anyway.

Oh, and in case you weren't paying very careful attention last week, it's still winter for another three days. And we apparently live in New England. A snow and ice storm? After several days in the sixties and seventies? Whatthecrap?

The building is (possibly) falling down

Construction has begun. Without a permit.

In a perfect world, I'd be doing this project entirely by the book, pulling permits and doing things exactly as the arcane laws of Philadelphia demand. Unfortunately, the reality is that the laws in Philadelphia are indeed arcane, thus making careful rule following an unattainable dream. As far as I can understand, I'm not technically allowed to do any work in the space until after my Zoning hearing (3/21, 1515 Arch St, if you'd like to come by and cheer me on with homemade signs and extra-large foam #1 hands. You could make a clever sign like those ass kissers who try to get on television by using the station letters in an acrostic to show support for their team. Zany Brilliant Adler would be acceptable, but maybe you can do better). But since I've gotten the thumbs up from SOSNA, the ZBA hearing is sort of a technicality anyway, and it's pretty much in the bag that I'll be getting my zoning.

So according to the "rules," I'm not allowed to pull any permits until this zoning crap is dealt with, but I don't have the patience (or the financial flexibility) to wait another week to get started. In addition, I'm not entirely comfortable with the demands that would be placed on me if I were to try to pull permits for building a couple of walls. Again, according to those pesky rules, I'm supposed to submit architectural plans for any partitions that I wish to build, even if they are not load-bearing. And then I have to wait a couple weeks for an examiner to check them out, then get the local inspector to do her inspection thing. In the time it would take for the city to give me permission to legally build three walls, I think I could probably have the cafe up and running. So in this case, I'm just going to come out and say it: "F the rules." (Incidentally, should L&I slaps a 'Cease and Desist' on me in three days, I'll probably change my tune)

My first order of business in the restaurant was to figure out why the floor slopes down three inches in the back of the place. With that in mind and a crowbar in hand, I pried off like 25 square feet of the floor yesterday. I found that one (or maybe more) of the floor joists is kind of rotted out. Water damage, I think. So it seems that there's a slim chance that the building will collapse at any time. I'm meeting with my landlord tomorrow to go over options and hope to convince him to pay a professional to fix this issue. Since it would seem to be a bad situation for everyone if the building were to collapse. I guess it's a good thing I put down a premium on liability insurance the other day...

In (entirely un)related news, I believe I've secured most of my financing. I might not see most of the money for another few weeks, and the process of acquiring said financing has been a major roller coaster/pain in the ass, but I'm sleeping better knowing that it's coming. Someday.

Plans

I've been writing this f'in business plan for a month and I finally finished it tonight. 40 pages long. Fantastic.

Tomorrow I'll be sending it along to my friend the loan office at PNC Bank, who will be sending it along to his friend the underwriter at PNC Bank, who will be sending me some cash real soon. I hope. I really hope. Because if not, things are about to get a little tricky.

In other news, I spent a couple of hours at the space today, hanging paper in the windows and taking some "before" pictures. Can't wait to take some "in process" pictures or some "after" pictures. Or some "naughty" pictures. Espresso machines gone wild!

Also on deck this week: Building some walls, illegally, to make life difficult for the handicapped. But as my father taught me from a very young age: Screw the handicapped.

Signage etc.

I signed my lease this afternoon.

While this is very exciting, it probably means I ought to be committed.

Right after I signed, I went over to the space and took down the "Space Available" signs.

Tomorrow morning I'm going in, taking the wood planks off the windows and doorway, and putting up paper instead. Much more aesthetically pleasing.

And then I'll figure out where the bar's gonna go, and how big it's gonna be.

And then I'm gonna find a bag of money in the basement.

Fast Times at L&I

Despite the fact that I'm going to be waking up at 5am every day pretty soon, when my alarm went off at 6:51am yesterday morning, it felt awfully early. I dragged myself out of bed and was dragging myself into L&I around 8am. I had to go to L&I to get a business license and appeal my zoning rejection.

Step 1: Get a license to do business in the city of Philadelphia. In order to get a Business Privilege License, first you need to get a city tax number, which is procured in the tax section of L&I. I was treated to the experience of waiting in a seat so that I could wait on a line so I could get a number so I could wait in a seat again until some city employee was able to help me. Wasn't too bad, maybe 30 minutes of waiting, all told. Actually, now that I think about it, that might be a new record for efficiency for my friends at L&I. I should send them some chocolates.

Once my number lit up, I was escorted into the bowels of L&I where I met with a dude that works for the city who entered a bunch of information into a computer and generated a tax number for me.

So next I had to go to get another number and wait in a different area for someone to actually issue me the license. Fifteen minutes and $250 later, I am officially licensed to do business in Philadelphia, and more importantly, the city is ready to start carving taxes out of my hide.

Step 2: Appeal my zoning variance rejection: $200 later, I have six-eight weeks until my hearing. Um, can't they see me next week? Or maybe the weekend after? What the hell, are things so busy they can't squeeze me in? I did learn that for the low low price of 500 bucks I can be guaranteed that my hearing will be in 4-6 weeks. Fuck. So what can I do in the space between now and then? Um, I'm not sure.

So I dropped $450 today on the right to be taxed and the right to (someday) appear before the zoning board to request that they overrule my rejected variance. Which is sort of going to be a foregone conclusion, since I have neighborhood approval. Sigh.

In other news, my financial situation is tenuous and almost all of my startup capital is kind of up in the air at the moment. Good times. Good times indeed.

Sign this!

It appears as though I'll be signing a lease in the next 48 hours...
At which point, it'sa gonna be go time.

Adventures in Zoning, Part I

Just about everyone agrees that doing business in the city of Philadelphia is terrible, and the zoning process is just one reason in a lengthy laundry list that this reputation is pretty much deserved.

I'm fortunate, to a certain extent, that the space that I am intending to lease is zoned commercial. But it's not quite so simple. There are at least five zoning classifications in Philadelphia, and unfortunately, the zoning at 2001 Fitzwater, though commercial, isn't the right kind of commercial zoning for a cafe. So. What do you think you gotta do to change the zoning? It would seem reasonable that if the zoning isn't appropriate for a business a person wants to start, then there is someway to modify the zoning such that a business can open and commerce can thrive. Not exactly.

Turns out that the zoning is what the zoning is and it will continue to be the zoning until we're all dead (Nb: There are currently plans to have a committee rewrite the city's archaic zoning code and rezone the entire city so that the zoning makes fucking sense. We'll see if this project is ever completed. Or started, for that matter). Since I can't change the zoning, I need to get a variance to allow a different use than is allowed under the current zoning. And here's the ridiculous process.

1) Go to L & I and apply for a permit to use the space in a way that it's not zoned for. Meet with a zoning examiner, explain your plan, and have him tell you it's not allowed. Pay $100. When you pay this hundred bucks, you know that you're going to get rejected. But you need to get rejected to move on to step two. Wait a week until you get a letter from the examiner, explaining what you already knew, that the zoning doesn't allow the use you desire. Stab self in retina.

2) Bring refusal letter from L & I to the local neighborhood association and get yourself on the agenda for the next neighborhood zoning meeting. Go to the meeting, meet the neighbors, assure them that you're not going to ruin their neighborhood, and get approval from them (or don't, but if you don't get their endorsement, you're pretty much fucked.).

Incidentally, I've heard from a number of sources that the SOSNA zoning meetings can be bloodbaths and screaming matches. I was on the agenda tonight. I spoke to around 40 people and the response was fairly positive. I answered a few questions, only a few of which were somewhat ridiculous, and I'm pretty sure I got approved. Great success.

3) Go back to L & I and file for an appeal hearing with the Zoning Board of Adjustments. Pay $250. Hang posters in the windows for 12 days. Appear before the zoning board and present to them, making sure your attorney is present, though he probably won't say much of anything. You're paying your attorney by the hour, by the way.

Step three is happening in about two weeks.
In the meantime, I've got a lease to sign and a fuckton of money to raise. Wanna lend me some cash?

More updates to come...

What the hell am I doing?

I'm opening a cafe at 2001 Fitzwater Street in Philadelphia.

And this is my story.