Licensing Headaches

The guys from K&D Glass came in yesterday and replaced all the hardware on the side Fire Exit door, so it has an emergency "panic bar" opener which is standard in fire exits. Also, Scott Refrigeration came in and got our walk-in cooler up and running in the new location.

I spent quite a bit of time on Wednesday afternoon trying to sort out forms and applications. We're in the process of getting Fire Marshall approval, so I needed to get some forms together for him (sprinkler inspection report, floor plan, etc.). I'm also trying to get the food and alcohol licenses transferred over. The food license probably won't be too difficult - the food (Board of Health) inspector was already in, a few weeks ago, and we reviewed all of the steps that needed to be taken to get the new premises up to provincial requirements.

The liquor license is going to be more of a problem. I was under the impression that it would simply be transferred to the new location, by submitting a new floor plan and having the inspector come do a walk-through once the Fire Marshall submitted an approval report. Well, that does have to happen, but so do a whole lot of other things. Essentially, they have to cancel my old license and I have to apply for another one, brand new, from scratch. The only thing that is even remotely helpful is that they already have my "personal history" report on file, but I need to submit all kinds of other things over again, even though the corporation is unchanged, and the menus are unchanged. The drawback is that the process of getting a new license may take as long as three weeks at the best of times, and with the holidays, it could be even worse. Hopefully though, I'll have everything together and on the desk of the right person in Fredericton by Friday or Monday, and she'll be able to process it fairly quickly. It would be quite sad if we couldn't serve alcohol on our grand reopening night. This may delay our re-opening until the middle of January, unfortunately.

The Hardest Day

We have now passed what I consider to be the "half-way mark." I don't mean that in a chronological sense, or in the sense that half of the moving jobs are finished, but we just got "over the hump." Yesterday, we got the hardest jobs done of the move:
- We moved the pizza room equipment, including the dough mixers, the pizza oven, and the sheeter.
- We moved the last of the office equipment, including the safes.
- We moved the washer and dryer.
- We moved the stove and propane tanks.

The stove and propane tanks in particular will go down as the most challenging part of the entire relocation. I had Will Russell, Travis MacLellan, Scott Chamberlain, and Jeff Coull to help me, and even with the five of us, we barely made it happen. The two propane tanks weighed around 400 pounds each, by my estimate. That isn't that heavy - any two of us could lift that weight if it was properly distributed. However, the tanks were in a recessed shed in the patio, and had to be lifted straight up and out. It isn't easy lifting shiny tanks like that, with nothing to grip, in the snow. However, by removing part of the shed and attaching some chains, we eventually got them out, and rolled them over to the new restaurant.




When it came to the stove, there were certainly more places to grab, although the stove probably weighed about 500 pounds. However, the problem with the stove is that when we originally put it into the restaurant, we brought it through the front door. And after that, we built a wall between the stove and the front door. We thought we should be able to just go out the back door instead, but it wasn't nearly wide enough, so we ended up calling Peter and Ralph over for help (they were doing some minor carpentry for me in the new restaurant). They quickly removed the door frame entirely, and after all that was pulled out, we had a quarter inch to spare. We got the stove out with all seven of us working together, and brought it over and into the new restaurant. Luckily, the door going into the new place was bigger.

Who needs a boom truck when you have a couple of football players and a couple of rugby players?

Excellence in Business

Yesterday was an exciting day. Alison, our restaurant manager, found out that she won a Frank Sobey Excellence In Business Award. This award goes to someone with an outstanding performance in studies in commerce, combined with extra-curricular and volunteer activities. This is a very prestigious award, so we're all pretty excited that she won it. Congratulations Alison!

As for the restaurant, we spent several hours moving more equipment out of the old restaurant. At this point, about all that is left is a dozen pieces of the heaviest kitchen equipment. I also spent a few hours yesterday evening and got the first couple of videos cameras installed, to provide coverage of all the doors for security purposes.

One other really important accomplishment yesterday was that Darren from Brunswick Fyr & Safety came in to make sure that all of our extinguishers, exit lights, and other fire-prevention related equipment was in good shape. Now we can call the Fire Marshall's office and schedule an inspection. As long as we pass that, we'll be able to transfer our food and alcohol licenses without too many hassles.

Storming Again

There was a major storm forecast for yesterday evening, but I wanted to drive to Truro to borrow my mother's sewing machine so we could make some slipcovers for the new sofas. We looked at the forecast at lunch-time, and the snow looked like it was going to hold off for a few more hours, so I headed into central Nova Scotia for a quick trip to pick up the machine.

When I got back to Sackville, later in the afternoon, it was just starting to snow. That was fine by me - I intended to hole up inside the new restaurant and try to get several more hours of work done. We finished re-covering the vinyl chair bottoms last night, and that was about the most significant accomplishment.




Other than that, I moved some shelving and doors around and painted some of them, and did some cleaning and organizing, but not much else. I wanted to try to get home before midnight for a change, so I could be up early on Monday morning. The drive home was a bit of an adventure - this winter is already shaping up to be worse than most of the ones that we've seen in the past several years.

Four More Sofas

We reached our sofa/chesterfield quota on Saturday, with a quick trip to the Salvation Army discount outlet in Moncton. We picked up four sofas for a total of $201, which is pretty cheap. We ended up being able to pack two of them up with the Echo for the trip back to Sackville, and we'll have to pick up the other two later this week. After we got the couches, we went to Fabricville and bought a brace of cloth so Alison can spend a couple days making slipcovers for the sofas, so they all look the same.

We also went to Kent Building Supplies and looked at bar stools (we want two for the front counter area), track lighting, bulletin boards, and other lights. Kent is my favorite store to visit, except for maybe MusicStop. I definitely have to stay away from Kent as much as possible, or the budget will be absolutely destroyed.

Security System Installed

The first visitors on Friday were the installation technicians from ADT Security, who set up and activated our intrusion alarm system. While they were working on that, an agent from Advanced Plumbing arrived, to do some looking around so he could provide an estimate on some work that we wanted done on the staff washroom.

My next visitors were a welcome sight - they were the guys who were sent by Irving to look after the propane setup. These guys were very good to work with. We disconnected the old tanks, then looked at requirements for moving them to the new location and getting them hooked up properly, and filled out an application for a license to make everything legal, since New Brunswick just started a permitting process for this kind of thing a couple of years ago. The biggest issue was with the removal of our old tanks. They were located into a sunken shed within the patio of the old restaurant in such a way that the tanks couldn't just be pulled out easily and moved. The guys suggested that they'd have to bring in a crane to pull them out, which sounded pretty expensive to me. I told them that if they could give me a couple days, I could get them pulled out by hand with the help of a few of my friends on the MTA varsity football team. They said that it would take a few days for the permit to be processed, so that would work for them. In the end, we decided that they would come back next Friday to move the tanks, replace some gas piping going into the new restaurant, and do the final hookups to our stoves. I was pretty happy to get this all sorted out, even though it was going to take another week before everything would be working.

During the afternoon, Tiffany worked on some of the tough cleaning work in the old basement, while Jeff and I brought more loads of stuff from the old place to the new place. We are definitely running out of room to put anything in the new location. Lois-Anne MacGregor arrived in the afternoon with some vinyl fabric, and she and Alison spent several hours doing re-upholstery work on the old chairs that were left behind from Remy's Bistro, the previous restaurant. The old chairs are the same style as the chairs from our restaurant, so we just have to spray-paint the metal black, and re-upholster them, and everything will match nicely.

Missed Meetings

On Thursday, Amanda and Tiffany spent several hours moving truckloads of supplies and small equipment to the new location. I had cleared out the Upper Dining Room area the previous evening, and they started filling it up. While they were doing that, Jeff worked on removing pieces of equipment that were temporarily fixed in place, like security cameras, and coffee makers.




It is starting to become painfully obvious that although our dining room and kitchen and office areas will all be several times as large as the old restaurant, we are going to be far more cramped for storage space in the new location. There are only a couple of small storage rooms, whereas we had an enormous basement for storage at the old location. It looks like I’ll be building a lot of shelving in the next few weeks.

I was supposed to have several early-morning meetings on Thursday. ADT was supposed to install the intrusion alarm system starting at 8am, but they called to say that there had been a mixup in communications and wouldn’t be able to show up. Advanced Plumbing was supposed to show up for a consultation at 9am, to provide an estimate for some work in the staff washroom, but they called to say that they had been diverted by an emergency repair call.

I spent the afternoon and evening doing random jobs:
- Bringing paperwork and files from the old office.
- Getting supplies for repairs at Home Hardware.
- Buying an ice sink for the bar counter at Happy Harry’s.
- Testing three different types of paint on some metal chair frames.

Propane Progress

Yesterday’s adventures started out with headaches because of the propane. Irving still hadn’t called back to let me know what was happening with the moving of the propane tanks, so I decided to start investigating elsewhere. I called Kevin Munroe, the manager of the Superior Propane outlet in Moncton, and explained the situation. Although he knew that I already had an account with Irving, and wasn’t necessarily going to switch suppliers if I could things settled with Irving, he was extremely helpful and answered a lot of questions that I had (which was more than Irving had been able to do up to that point). He told me that he could probably get someone down to help me within a day, if I decided that I definitely needed their assistance, which was good news.

After talking to Kevin, I called Irving back and told them that I had called three times without any satisfactory answers about when the tanks could be moved. After explaining quite clearly that I was going to get Superior to do the work if Irving couldn’t resolve things quickly, I finally was told that Irving would send a contractor down on Friday to take care of the problem. I’m still not holding my breath that this will go smoothly, but at least it sounds like things are finally in motion. However, knowing what I know now, if I had to start over, there’s no question that I’d set up an account with Superior.

Jeff spent most of the day packing items up at the old restaurant, and removing the cabling for the old security system, POS terminals, ethernet lines, and that sort of stuff. He filled half a dozen milk crates with cables and connectors and equipment. It’s going to be a challenge to reinstall all of that stuff in the new restaurant. While he was doing that, Alison did a lot of painting and touchups. I spent most of the afternoon running errands and “facilitating” activities, and got the office set up so the computer and printer can be used again.




Finally, Amanda and Tiffany moved all the patio furniture from the old restaurant to my house. I now have the best equipped patio on my street. In fact, I could probably have a “patio party” that fills my front lawn. Not having a patio at the restaurant next summer is going to be a major problem. Sackville is a very tough market in the summer, when the students at the University have gone home for a few months. With the US dollar being punished, our tourist traffic is probably going to be decimated next summer. Add the loss of the patio to that, and I am very concerned about our ability to function effectively in June, July, and August. Without question, I am going to have to seriously scale back operations this summer, or possibly go back to being a seasonal operation. The only possible thing I can think of that might keep us open for regular hours in the summer would be if the town would permit us to set up a sidewalk patio like the Bridge Street Cafe has, but I don’t know how receptive they’d be to that idea.

Old Dining Room Emptied

Again, yesterday was a very busy day. Tiffany and Amanda started their day helping Alison paint the stalls in the two washrooms. After that, they spent all day packing kitchen equipment and supplies, and using Amanda's truck to move tables and chairs into the new restaurant. While they did that, Alison finished painting the trim in the upper room (I need to come up with an official name for that room). Tiffany also stayed later in the evening and scrubbed out all of the freezers and fridges.

I finished the rough coat on the ceiling tiles, sort of. There were about twenty tiles that proved to be a big problem. To paint most of the tiles, I just took them down and used a roller on them on a table, and then let them dry overnight, and reinstalled them the next day. However, the twenty special tiles were in place before the building's sprinkler system was installed, so the sprinklers were cut through the tiles, rather than tiles being put up in separate pieces around sprinkler heads. I was too nervous to pull down or cut out those tiles, because all of the sprinklers have glass heads on them which burst in high temperature. If I had accidentally broken one, it would have set off the sprinklers. I presume it would have only been in the one I broke, but I wasn't positive, and I didn't want to risk setting off the sprinklers in the entire building (including in the apartments of the 27 students living upstairs). Therefore, I had to paint those specific tiles while they were on the ceiling.

The drawback, of course, is that the tiles are porous, and it is impossible to use gravity to get the paint to run "up" into the holes when a tile is upside-down (on the ceiling), so I taped off each tile and spray painted them brown. The brown doesn't quite match the brown latex that I used on all of the other tiles, so they still stand out a bit, but I'll brush a coat of latex on them later this week to make them match a bit better. Anyway, the long and short of it is that the ceiling is NOT done yet, but at a quick glance, it looks like it is finished.




Nick finished painting the final coat on the bar area, and then finished the trim in the rest of the restaurant. I'm glad that we can finally clean up most of the painting equipment and supplies. While Nick was finishing the painting, Jeff did dozens of odd jobs, including removing all the lights and signs and stereo system/speakers from the old restaurant, and also disassembled the old office. The old restaurant is already looking very different, now that it is starting to get emptied out.

Busy Start to the Week

For the first time in several days, a lot got accomplished on Monday. I had originally hoped to be completely finished painting by Sunday evening, but that fell apart on the weekend. However, yesterday I spent a lot of time working on ceiling tiles whenever I had a few minutes free, so that major task is finally almost finished. Also, Nick added a few more coats of paint to the walls and counter of the bar.

Tiffany and Amanda Purdy started to help move equipment, and Jeff and I worked on heavier items throughout the day. First our two upright freezers were emptied into a large chest freezer, and then Jeff and I got them out of the basement and moved over to the new location. After that, he and the girls packed up a pretty significant portion of the stuff in the old kitchen and serving area, and then he spent a few hours disassembling the portable equipment such as the metro racks, wine racks, and similar items.

One problem that we've run into so far is with Irving Propane. I've called them a couple times now to inquire about when they are moving our propane tanks. They keep saying that a contractor is going to call back to arrange an appointment, but the problem is that until the tanks are moved, we can't make an appointment to move our stoves, and I wanted to have the stoves moved and certified by this Friday, so I could start working on staff training for the week or so before Christmas, while there is lots of "free time." Well, it's not really free time, but at least we aren't open to the public, so that's as good a time as any to work on cook training. If I don't hear from them soon to at least book an appointment, I'm going to start making calls and see if there are any other propane companies in the area who will respond more quickly.

ADT Security came in and did an inspection of the place and we laid out the blueprints for the security system. We also got all of our recycleables out of the old restaurant, and did a major garbage collection.

It doesn't really sound like a lot got accomplished, but it was a good start. The time-consuming stuff isn't moving the equipment and loose items from one place to another, it's just trying to finish the painting and get the kitchen ready to receive equipment. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we'll be completely out of the old location by the end of this week. The tricky thing to consider is that our new kitchen is quite a bit bigger (as you can see from the "before" photo below), but I want to move things in an orderly manner and set equipment up as I go, to make the transition happen more smoothly.

Day of Rest

Again, not a lot got accomplished yesterday, a Sunday. I spent most of the day trying to catch up on some music projects, but I wasn't able to do much at the restaurant itself. However, we start moving kitchen equipment today, so I suspect there will be a lot to write about here in the coming week.

Saturday Progress

There was not much progress on Saturday. Although Friday was our last night to be open to the public, last night was the last night of operations at 28A York Street. We finished things off by hosting a private Christmas party for one of the businesses in town.

Other than that, Nick got some more painting done in the bar area, but I didn't get much accomplished because I had to spend most of the day doing some work for one of my other jobs.

Friday Confusion

Yesterday afternoon started to get tricky. We don't start moving equipment until Monday, but I had a number of questions to answer yesterday afternoon. We were trying to get our hot water working, and ADT came in to check out the layout of the restaurant, and I was trying to run errands and get painting done at the same time. It wasn't that confusing, but I'm pretty sure that was a forerunner of next week's fun.

Tonight was also the last night at the restaurant. Last night was our last night being open to the public. It didn't seem like it was the "last night," but probably that was because we're so focused on the new location right now.

Painting The Bar Area

Yesterday was a solid workday. We looked at the bar (& cash register) area for a while, and decided that rather than keeping it in dark blue colors, we'd paint it to match the theme of the dining room. The alternative was to pull all the tiles off the counter and walls (which is still possible), but we thought we'd like to try painting them first. We primed them with a BIN primer product, then started to apply a heavy melanine paint that supposedly dries into a nice countertop finish. The process was very time-consuming, and Nick worked on it all afternoon and all evening. By the time he was done, he finished all the priming and then finished the first coat of brown on the counter, which looks ok today. However, the second coat will tell the tale.

The first coat has slight ripples in it, and we want the counter to look like real tiles. When we apply the second coat this afternoon, we're going to lay it on fairly thick and apply a hair dryer the whole time behind him, so the heat and gravity should smooth the surface out better. Hopefully that will give us the effect that we want. The walls are less of a concern - if those surfaces turn out to be rough, I can live with that, so at the very worst, we'll only have to install new tiles on the bar countertop.




Also last night, the strangest thing happened. At 1:30am, we had our first customer. Now you have to realize that at the time, there were about 50-60 ceiling tiles spread around the restaurant, covering all of the visible floors and tables. And there were about 14 milk crates of old tools in the entryway that had to be navigated to get into the restaurant. Add several trouble lights, newspaper on the windows, a missing ceiling, and paint buckets spread out everywhere, and you are probably starting to get a good mental image. The restaurant looked like a cross between a construction site and a war zone. Anyway, the gentleman that came in looked around for a minute, then he looked at me and said, "Are you open?" I was slightly taken aback, and said, "for what?" He said, "Can you make me a pizza?" I laughed and told him that I'd love to, but it would be about four weeks.

The only other notable thing that I got accomplished yesterday was talking to some of our major suppliers to arrange times and dates for changing services, ie. NB Power, Aliant Communications (to move our phone lines), Irving (to move our propane tanks), and ADT Security (to set up a new alarm system).

Today is the last day that we're open to the public in our old location at 28A York Street. We have a private Christmas banquet tomorrow evening, then we can finally start moving equipment into the kitchen next week to start the second phase of our move/expansion.

Tour of M&S Foods

Again, yesterday was another day without a lot physically accomplished in the restaurant, except a few more ceiling tiles painted. I do still hope to be finished the ceiling by Sunday night.

Yesterday afternoon, Alison and I went over to Amherst to take a tour of the M&S Foods distribution center. M&S is the Atlantic Canadian subsidiary of GFS (Gordon Food Services). We have predominantly used Sysco as our major supplier for the last few years, and only use M&S occasionally, but we have noticed that the quality at M&S appears to have been improving over the past couple of years (they have only been in business in the new distribution center in Amherst for about four years). Although we didn't plan to switch suppliers, it's good to keep informed about what's available in the marketplace.

We started with an office tour, and while doing so, ran into a friend from MTA (Rory Faulkner) who is now working in the accounting office there. After the office tour, we spent about an hour walking through the warehouse and looking at various products, which was the most important part of the visit. It quickly became obvious that their inventory system and product quality has come a long way in the past few years. While we didn't find any compelling reasons to switch suppliers just yet, I certainly feel more comfortable using M&S more frequently in the future, based on what I saw of their food quality control systems (especially on produce). I think I will monitor comparison pricing quite carefully in the next few months to see which company has the overall advantage for us in terms of minimizing food costs.

Cell Phone Problems

Yesterday, due to the snow storm, I didn't get a whole lot accomplished. I did spend a little while painting some more ceiling tiles though. I wonder if I'll have them finished by the end of the weekend.




One thing that I've recognized as a major problem in the past couple days is the fact that for some reason, I can't get proper cell phone reception on my Aliant cell phone when I'm in the new restaurant. We're located in downtown Sackville, so for a company that bills itself as having the best cell coverage in New Brunswick, that's a major problem. The cell phone will work fine in some places on the street outside, but other times I have to walk up or down the street to receive a call. That will be pretty annoying after Christmas if I start spending a lot of hours down here (although I do dislike getting constant phone calls, so maybe this is a blessing in disguise). Anyway, I currently have my house phone forwarded to my cell phone when I'm out of the house, so maybe I'll also have to forward my cell to the restaurant line when I'm at work (although I don't know if the phone network can handle that double-forwarding). That's something to look into tomorrow.

One other small but important thing that I did manage to accomplish yesterday was that I wrote letters to about thirty of our most important suppliers to let them know about our change of address for mail and deliveries. However, there are still seven of them that I want to call and talk to in person tomorrow, just to be safe (Sysco Food Services, Pepsi, NB Power, Aliant Communications, ADT Security, Irving Propane, and our debit/credit group). This is kind of a slack week for the renovations and move, because now that the majority of the painting is done, I have to wait for next Monday before I can start moving equipment. I am going to try to get that schedule planned out in the next few days.

Snow Day

It's amazing how much work a person can get done in a day when you start working early in the morning at 4am, and keep working until well past midnight. Unfortunately, most of the work that I got accomplished wasn't at the restaurant. I spent most of yesterday catching up on paperwork for my other job at the university.

I did manage to sneak up to Moncton for an hour in the afternoon though, and picked up a couple of black sofas. And late last night, I got a couple dozen more ceiling tiles painted. By the time I left the restaurant, at 3am, Sackville was experiencing a raging snow storm. We were expected to get 40 centimeters of snow between last night and today. University classes are cancelled today (it was supposed to be the last day of classes for the fall term), so most of the students are probably lying in bed studying right now, or getting ready to go out for drinks this evening.

Ceiling Tiles

Sunday was another day without a whole lot getting accomplished. We had another Christmas banquet last night, so I ended up helping out in the kitchen for that. I haven't been cooking much since last Christmas, but that will change when we re-open. I'll be working nearly full-time hours in the kitchen again, to improve quality control and to start working on eventual menu improvements. We don't want to make a lot of changes to the existing menus when we initially re-open in January, because there are too many other things to keep us busy right now, although we will have some minor changes and additions. Essentially though, I'll be working a lot of night-time hours throughout the week starting next month, and I'll basically be acting as the Kitchen Manager. That way, Alison (our overall Restaurant Manager) can focus more on the dining room and make sure that our servers are providing the best possible table service to our customers.




So anyway, last night I got the lights fixed in the emergency exits, and worked on painting of ceiling tiles for a while, and made some revisions to our budget forecast.

Christmas Banquet Season

Saturday was a busy day at the old restaurant. We had two large Christmas banquets at dinner-time, back-to-back, so we didn't actually get anything accomplished at the new restaurant.




One of the banquets was for about forty people, which (as you can see) is about the maximum number of people that the old restaurant can hold. The new restaurant will be able to hold about 45-50 people in the lower sections, in a much more comfortable environment, without having tables uncomfortably close to each other. For a banquet, we will probably be able to accommodate as many as 65 people in the lower seating areas. We are going to use the two lower sections as general dining room seating which is always open to the public. The larger of the two sections will be tables only, and the smaller of the two sections will have a couple of couches, coffee tables, and a few regular dining tables, so that it can be used as an informal area for people who are having casual coffee in the afternoon, or drinks before dinner in the evening.

In addition, the new restaurant has a special raised section in the back which can comfortably accommodate 20-25 people or more. This section will not normally be open to the public on a constant basis, but will always be available for large groups (15 or more people) who want to reserve it for special occasions. We'll probably offer permanent happy hour pricing to large groups in this upper area, so I can envision it being used frequently in the evenings by groups wanting to have corporate dinners, or for special family oriented events, and also by groups of students at Mount Allison who want to have residence floor dinners and gatherings like that.

I would also like to try to have a projector and screen available for this special room, both for corporate events that involve presentations, and also so commerce and other faculty groups at the university can schedule meetings in the afternoons for classes or presentations. We will have some heavy theatre drapes on the main side of this section so that it can be turned into a more private area at the discretion of the diners using it. We can even use this section occasionally as a stage for performances of live music, so we can occasionally feature local jazz musicians, or students doing coffee-house or acoustic performance events.

Painting Is Almost Finished

We got a lot of work done last night. The top layer of brown is finished and the washrooms are finished - they used to be a very boring sterile white, so we changed the top half to a light green that is a bit friendlier.

All that is really left is the trim at the top of the walls, the ceiling tiles, and repainting some chairs and tables. So actually, there is quite a bit of painting left to be done, but at least it feels like the dining room is almost finished.