We've gotten a lot more small tasks accomplished in the past two weeks.
Last week, we had the provincial Health Inspector into the restaurant. I did a walk-around with him, and he had a number of suggestions to improve our operations. Since a number of rules and regulations have changed over the summer, the visit was very helpful. For instance, he said that he didn't want to see us storing jugs of bleach on the floor, and they should be on a raised shelf, at least six inches above the floor. He also suggested additional shelving in other areas, and gave us some documentation templates to help improve our organization of our regular cleaning schedule. He came back to visit us again, five days later, and said that he was quite impressed with all of the changes that we made.
Here's a brief list of some of the things that we've accomplished in the past two weeks:
- New spray head on dishpit sink.
- New shelving in staff washroom.
- New "collection rack/holder" for notes and paperwork that gets left for the Manager and myself.
- Extra order rack in the kitchen to hold the servers' meal orders.
- New six-inch shelving under the dish pit, for the bleach and floor cleaners.
- New six-inch shelving in our dough-making section, for the canola buckets.
- New six-inch shelving in the recyclables area.
- New six-inch shelving in our back dry-goods storeroom.
- New six-inch shelving for the kegs in our walk-in cooler.
- New brass coat-hanger installed on one of the pillars in the main dining room.
- Staff washroom door lock replaced.
- New painting of some sections of back dry-goods storage area.
- Minor equipment rearranging in the kitchen to permit a third large garbage can.
My list of "things to do" is getting smaller. Right now, there are only about forty projects on it, so I hope to have almost all of those completed by the end of October. I am looking into selling the restaurant, now that it is running much more smoothly and with higher revenues than at the old location. Before I do that, I want to get everything "ship shape" in the coming months. I'm not in a rush to sell it, but because of changing circumstances in my other job at Mount Allison University, I am looking into moving back out to the West Coast eventually to take advantage of a job opportunity there.
