Getting Close

I'm not sure why I've gotten out of the habit of taking pictures of the store as progress continues, but it's probably because it's a mess in there right now. It won't be for much longer, but until today we had everything scattered everywhere, with contractors tripping over each other and people regularly sliding equipment out of the way to get where they were going. The weather is not inspiring me to take the last of my unused wood back to the Home Depot, but I'll have to get on that shortly.

In the meantime, the Pepsi guys came and did their install early this morning, which meant that Mark and friends (the contractor's guys) had to scramble to set our counter in place just in the nick of time so that the machine would have somewhere to sit (the counter was supposed to have arrived last Thursday, but of course didn't arrive until this morning). Thankfully, the Pepsi guys were patient while we ran around like headless chickens putting it all together; if they hadn't been, I wouldn't have had soda until next week at the earliest.

I also discovered another unpleasant cost of doing business - it costs $437 (!) to apply for a permit from the Health Department. It makes someone think very carefully about going into foodservice in this town, that's for sure. But it's not like I can back out now. In any event, the Health Inspector is now cleared to pay us a pre-final inspection visit on Wednesday; if he likes what he sees, I will have orders ready to be placed within minutes of his departure for Thursday delivery.

Of course, that's also assuming that the building inspector stops by before then - I know he's coming by this week, but no one knows exactly when that will be. As I learned in Wayne's World 2, it's nearly impossible to pull anything off without an occupancy permit, and the building inspector holds the key to that.

In other details, we should be good to fire up the ovens as early as Thursday, so long as I can get the people who know how to do so out around then. The rest of our equipment will be coming in on Tuesday, including the ice machine to sit atop the Pepsi dispenser. We will be madly scrambling to paint the dining room after the water service gets turned back on once the Town of Normal finishes installing our new water meter. Other than that, the main work remaining involves some touch-up of the drywall and the hookup of the outdoor walk-in cooler, as well as the roofing and sealing of the enclosure connecting it to the rest of the building. Most critically, the plumber still has to bury the grease trap behind the store, which won't be easy given the weather; the grease trap is fitting snugly between the gas line and the edge of the property, so they want to be extra careful and wait for the best weather possible - which in this case will be 32 with 3-5 inches of snow cover. Worst...winter...ever.

Anyways, I'm trying to be better about keeping people informed - mostly because I'm tired of telling people we'll open on a given day, not having it happen, and then fielding phone calls about why it didn't. On that vein, more soon...