friday's trade was pretty solid, saturday and sunday were busier. overall, it was a big weekend, but, to my thinking at least - it still wasn't the mega-huge trade that all the local businesses said it would be. in spite of the stimulus package talks, people are still tightly guarding their pennies.
anyway, we did enough over the three days to cover our stock, staff and running costs. monday was to be all profit, earmarked to go towards our mounting personal debts - car payments, phone, credit cards etc. monday morning was misty and drizzly, perfect mountain cafe weather.
then the gas mains died.
we're still not certain what actually happened, as we're waiting for someone to come and examine the lines, but the pilots simply wouldn't stay lit. the stove, grill, fryer and oven - all out of action. we have a couple of electric appliances, but it was simply impossible to do full breakfasts for the dozen or so orders on the docket rail.
the only thing we could do was switch to what was doable with the benchtop gear. soups, toasted sandwiches and salads were about all. and as such, we ran out of those within an hour or so. the cappucino machine sprung a leak and we'd had enough. we flipped the closed sign and shut down, watching dozens upon dozens of people walk up to the doors and away again.
to fix all this, we'd need to dump a whole ton o' money into repairing the place. part of our deal with the owners was a 12 month exploratory lease on the proviso that any repairs or maintenance is to be our problem. two big problems with that solution: a) we don't have any money; 2) we're still not convinced that there's ample trade here at this time to make it all worthwhile.
so we're deep in discussions. at this point, we'll likely hold out until the great train weekend (another much-touted busy event) at the end of may, then... we shall see.
rebecca hancock and john sandow performing:
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