So... How's Business?

Well, we have completed a second month of business.  Two binders worth of daily cash register balancing, two months of daily sales tax calculations recorded in the ledger and we are still learning something new every day.  Some of those lessons can be painful when you are operating on a shoestring budget like we are.  So now I’m getting asked every day, “How’s the Business?”  I realized that we are so busy trying to run the store now that we have forgotten to document it the way I intended when we started this blog.  So let me catch you up…

We opened October 8^th to the public after a ‘trial run’ the Friday before with friends and family.  We had 4 employees, two that worked during normal business hours with Jimmy while Tiffany and I are at our paying jobsJ, then two others that alternate evenings (my son and niece).  We started off rocky because we had decided on a ‘soft’ opening.  That means that we didn’t advertise it and hoped that word of mouth would drive people in but not rush us on the first day.  In that way, we could all get more comfortable in our duties without the pressure of having 10 people standing in line.  It was a good theory.  The problem was that we had almost no business.  That was really scary.  We now had payroll to consider.  We were paying labor and weren’t generating sales.  We had to send employees home early on several occasions.

So a couple of weeks later, we had our Grand Opening, where the Chamber of Commerce came out and we did the ribbon cutting.  The local paper took pictures.  We were excited because we thought that once it got in the paper, we would start seeing more customers.  Well, it took weeks for the paper to print the notice.  By this time it was November and we were more than a little frustrated.  So it finally came out and we did see more folks come in, and then it just seems to have died.  We were doing less in daily sales in November than we were in October.  So what’s up?  Frankly we aren’t sure.  We did really good business the day before Thanksgiving with people ordering whole pies and cheesecakes but the lunch sales were way down and dinner sales had all but dried up.  The word we’re hearing is that the sandwiches are good, the cheesecake is good, the cookies are good, the soup … well its hit and miss.  Some are more popular than others, which is fine, we’ll learn what works and settle on a solid selection.  So then, why the drop off?  It’s hard to say. 

As I said earlier, we are operating on a shoestring budget here.  What I mean by that is that all our money went into getting the business open.  There is no stash of cash in the bank accounts of the business, Tiffany or Jim and me to keep it afloat.  It has to make money every day to pay the bills, and payroll, etc.  Neither Tiffany nor I take a salary and Jimmy doesn’t either at this point.  So the company is not paying us anything , and it’s very difficult for either of us to add any additional funds to the business to keep it in the black right now.  So every day is full of stress.  We finally sat down and gathered all our bills, including rent, utilities, insurance, credit cards, packaging, and food costs, etc. and worked out how much per business day a month on average that we would need to make to pay those bills.  Then we added our expected daily payroll expenses.  That gives us a target every day we are trying to exceed.  I think it’s a great tool.  Some days we are over that magic number but more often than not lately, we are under it which is not good at all. 

So, how do we hit the magic number or God willing, exceed it?  WE DON’T KNOW!!!  Maybe it’s just the economy, everyone may be feeling the same tightening of the financial belt that we have recently, maybe it’s just the holiday season and everyone is cutting back because they have so many other things they have to budget for, maybe we don’t have enough variety of lunch items to keep them coming back, maybe our menu is too confusing, or maybe our pricing is not in line with what our customers want to pay. 

So, we had to do a very tough thing and layoff one of our employees.  It's now just Jimmy and one other handling it during the work day.  That was really hard but we couldn't support the expense.  Also, today we introduced a new sandwich to the lineup, a Turkey Bacon Swiss Panini which has mushrooms, fresh spinach leaves and avocado slices which has already become the favorite of Tiffany and Jimmy (I’m still holding out for the Chicken Zucchini).  We’ve also introduced two new cheesecake varieties, Eggnog and Peppermint for the holiday season.  I think the eggnog is wonderful but I’m told by my 10 year old daughter, that only OLD people like eggnog.  So I guess that tells you how old I am.  And finally, we adjusted the pricing on several of the items including the pie and cheesecake slices.  Lets hope these changes will see an improvement to our daily sales.  Maybe we can hit that magic number more consistently.

Well, this is getting too long so I will stop here.  Next time I will fill you in on the total dollar cost to get this thing up and running, and talk about finding payroll software.

(PS:  My daughter denies the eggnog comment)

M