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.

The Office Is Painted

The biggest accomplishment yesterday was finishing the painting of the office. It's now a dark brown, in fact, very dark. I'm sure that most managers would prefer the original white color that was on the walls, for being bright and getting work done. However, I prefer the really dark background, with some good lighting of all work surfaces, because I find that it makes it easier for me to focus on what's in front of me, instead of focusing on my surroundings. Besides, the walls will probably lighten up considerably once all the furniture is rearranged and I get some bulletin boards and fixtures installed, so I think it will be a pretty relaxing place to work once I'm finished. Here are the before and after photos:

Melissa Markovich and Tiffany also finished touching the up last few places where the brown trim needed a first coat, and started the first coat of paint in the two washrooms.

While the girls worked on those other sections, I painted another batch of ceiling tiles. The tiles are very time consuming. I can only do about one eighth of the restaurant at a time, because I need to take them down, roll them, and then spread them out on table-tops and drop-sheets to dry. The moisture from the paint gets into the tiles and softens them up considerably, so even though the surface of each tile dries within two or three hours, it takes about ten to twelve hours before they stiffen up enough to maintain their integrity to be reinstalled in the ceiling. So in other words, even if we get all the other painting done this weekend, I'm still going to have to be working on batches of tiles every day next week. The tiles also suck up an amazingly large amount of paint (these are the "hard" ceiling tiles, not the new type with the soft plastic surface layer). In fact, I've wondered whether or not it might be cheaper to replace the existing tiles with the new type, because the new type would use a lot less paint. But then I'd have to buy the new tiles, and the labour involved would be a bit more, so I probably wouldn't be any further ahead in the end. Anyway, despite the headaches, the ceiling is looking a LOT better where it has already been painted. Besides, the brown paint will hide the water stains where there have been minor leaks in the ceiling.

Wednesday Night's Progress

Pippa managed to remove the old wallpaper from the walls in the washrooms yesterday. We decided that the "toy fish" motif was not quite suitable to the theme of the restaurant. Hopefully we can start painting them this evening.

We completely finished the beige coats last night, except for future touch-ups, and we also got the first coat of paint on the office. As it stands right now, we might be able to finish the majority of the painting by tomorrow night or Saturday, depending on how many helpers show up this evening. The final coat of brown is going to be a very time-intensive coat - there is a lot of trim involved, and since the beige is "done," the final coat on the brown trim has to be done pretty slowly, to minimize touch-up requirements.

That's all that's new for today. Time to start painting again ...

Change of Address

We now have a new mailing address finalized. It is:

      The Olive Branch
      96 Main Street,
      Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
      E4L 4A7

Our old mailbox will remain open until December 31st, but we can start receiving mail at the new address starting effective immediately.

In other news, I also started to set up an advertising contract on the local Eastlink Cable community channel yesterday, which will run for a full year in 2008.

As far as painting goes, we didn't get as much done yesterday as most days. We did finish the final coat of trim for the beige, and did some brown trim too (we started the entryway) but that was about it for the night.

First Coat of Brown Paint

Well, the restaurant is finally starting to look like we had envisioned it, after a fairly major painting party last night.




The painting took quite a while, since we've having to be a bit more careful now that we're getting closer to being finished. Also, the wainscotting around the base of the dining room has grooves in it, every couple of inches, so it all has to be done with some careful brushwork.

Other than the painting, I didn't get too much else done yesterday. I did buy a car, but that's about it. It's actually the car I've been driving around for the past several years. The lease apparently ran out in October, so I went over to Amherst Toyota yesterday after to talk to them about my options. I had thought for a while about upgrading to a hybrid, but in the end, it just seemed a lot easier to buy the car that I already have (a Toyota Echo). At least it gets extremely good fuel mileage, and in the four years that I've had it, there has not been a single mechnical problem with it.

First Coat of Beige

Last night was a very productive night. We started and finished the first of the two coats of beige (the upper half of the dining room) throughout the entire restaurant. Jeff and Ali were here helping for a little bit, then Tiffany and Zach Ball and I put in a really long evening and got it done.




We also finished painting & touching up the iron railings, did some carpentry in the entry-way, and got rid of about a pickup truck load of garbage. That's about it, but I was pretty happy with getting that much done on a Sunday evening.

Budget For The Move

I put together a tentative budget yesterday for the move. As always, once I started writing things down on paper, I realized that the move is going to be quite a bit more expensive than I had initially envisioned (around $25,000). However, that includes some major upgrades to our equipment (vacuums, steam-cleaners, new cash register, etc.) and a much-needed training budget, so I think it is probably accurate. Here's a link to what I've come up with:

http://www.theolive.ca/budget_for_move.html

I'm going to try to keep that budget page updated fairly often as I come up with revised estimates for some of the costs, or as I finish parts of the renovations and can start inserting some actual amounts.

Aside from that, not a lot got done yesterday, as it was a Saturday. Sarah and Alison worked on some more of the trim, and John Kamau and Carolyn Dubois came in and did some of the finicky work on repainting the railings, which is a pretty time-intensive job.




At least I did manage to get a bunch of shopping done at Home Hardware, so I think we now have all the supplies that we need for a major painting party today and tomorrow.

Priming is Almost Done

On Friday, I finished doing the minor carpentry work that needed to be done in the dining room, although I still have a bit of plastering and caulking to finish up.

Shawn and Ali and Sarah helped me for several hours, and we now have about 95% of the priming done in the entire restaurant. The only parts of the priming that didn't get finished last night were a bit of the trim in one section where we ran out of primer, and some work around the entrance canopy. The priming is the easiest of the three coats that have to go down, but at least the dining room is starting to look a lot different. Hopefully I can round up a whole lot of helpers for a major painting session on Sunday, and I expect to be working in here from about 2pm to 2am tomorrow.




In the meantime, today I'm going to see how much I can get started on the first coat of the finish paint.

Renovations Begin

The Olive Branch is moving. After about six years in the original location at 28A York Street in Sackville, I'm moving the restaurant around the corner to 96 Main Street. I've wanted to expand for some time, but opportunities in our current building have been limited, and I was unable to purchase that building outright. The restaurant's dining room space has been one of its biggest weaknesses for years - it's been too small during peak periods, with a cold and uneven floor, and with poor lighting, sound, and ambiance. Last month I decided that I had three options: to wait for an opportunity to expand in the York Street location, to find a new space in town, or to close outright. After several weeks of deliberations, I decided that the restaurant had too much potential opportunity to close, and I decided this past weekend to move into a larger facility.

The chance to finally have the kind of dining room space that I've always wanted is very exciting. I've always considered the Olive Branch to be a "work in progress" rather than a mature business, and over the past few years, my focus has been on areas which I had some control over, ie. the menus, marketing, making operations more efficient, and basically trying to make the business run smoothly as a small and lean organization. Although there are still improvements to be made in all of those areas, I have been mainly happy with our accomplishments to date. However, the chance to finally have a large venue is going to turn the restaurant into a much more impressive dining destination in our region. This blog will give me an opportunity to provide regular progress updates to the staff, our families and friends, and our well-wishers in the southeastern New Brunswick region. I hope to make almost daily updates to this blog over the coming six to seven weeks, as we wind down operations in the York Street location and start operations in the Main Street location.

So far this week, there hasn't been a lot to talk about. My restaurant manager (Alison Starratt) visited the Main Street facility with me several times early in the week. We moved in a bunch of tools, tried some sample paints on the walls to pick a color scheme, and walked around and started to make some tentative plans. We taped up the front windows so we wouldn't have so many curious onlookers, and started to paint. In the past two nights, we've had help from people like Kasie Morris, Cathy Cowe, Shawn Calhoun, Pippa Elliot, Sarah Milligan, Amanda Purdy, and Jeff Coull. Shawn especially is proving to be invaluable since he's got a lot of painting experience, and he isn't taking courses (almost all of our other helpers are students at Mount Allison University, so with exams coming up in two weeks, a lot of our potential helpers have to worry about academics). We've got one section of the dining room almost completely painted (so we could get a better feel for the color scheme) and the primer has been finished on about 50% of the entire dining area. We're concentrating on that before we start to worry about the kitchens, since we can't start moving equipment into the kitchens yet anyway. Also, the former color scheme in the dining room is pretty scary, so we want to cover up the bright reds, yellows, and oranges with a more conservative and tasteful beige/brown scheme.









My goal is to have all of the painting finished by November 30th. We have several Christmas banquets booked in the old restaurant during the first week of December, but we will probably be open to the public until about December 7th in the York Street location. After that, our goal is to have all of our equipment moved into the new location in the following two weeks, so we will have vacated the York Street location by Christmas.

As mentioned, I'll try to make regular posts on this blog, to keep everyone informed of our progress. Consider this to be our "Restaurant Makeover" blog!

- Jonathan (Scooter) Clark, owner/operator
The Olive Branch of Sackville