We reached another milestone last night when we served our first orders of food in Ducky's bar, next door to the Olive Branch. We are starting to make food available there between opening and midnight, every night of the week except Sundays. Depending on demand, we might eventually extend the hours on Fridays and Saturdays so that we can serve until 2am, when the bar closes.
The menu for Ducky's is limited. We thought about it for quite a while. We needed to pick items that retain their heat well, are suitable for "delivery" packaging, and which are good snacking food for typical bar patrons. To start, we decided to include nachos, bruschetta, pizza, garlic fingers, salads, and oven-baked subs. Salads seem a little bit out of place on that list, but I want to have a healthy alternative available, especially for when business groups come in for drinks after work on Thursdays and Fridays. If there are eight or ten people in a group like that, chances are high that one or two would like to stay away from fattening foods. My guess is that the most popular items will be nachos and garlic fingers. I'm hoping that our bruschetta proves to be pretty popular too, because I think we make a fantastic bruschetta, while our pizzas and garlic fingers are only average (although we're practicing with those a lot, and quickly getting better). Ultimately though, my goal was never to be a pizza shop (especially since there are four others in town - and our town is so small that we only have two traffic lights). We have pizza on the menus because so many people ask for it, but it isn't something that we'd ever focus on as a core product.
Anyway, getting food in Ducky's will be simple. We have laminated menus which will be left on all the tables. When someone is hungry, they just order the item from the Ducky's server and pay for it right there on the spot (which goes into our separate cash register), then the server calls the order over, and our staff deliver the food right to the table once it's ready.
The only slight confusion right now is that our prices have HST added on top, like most businesses. However, Ducky's customers are used to "tax-included" prices on drinks, like most bars. Hopefully the distinction is pretty clear on the menus, and people don't get too confused.
