A koo koo kachoo good day to each and all, and an always warm welcome to this beautiful new day, today, which in our case has tried all day to get the best of us, but with just hours to go it looks like it will not succeed this day, this today.
We got set up up! Happens all the time. We were told one thing and it turns out the reality of the situation is far, far worse than we were made aware of.
We were chilling in Vegas as happy as could be. Warm weather, clients all happy, getting to know some good folks around us, walking every day, taking the bus to the strip and walking around there, we were really taking a liking to Vegas. Things were awesome!
Then the phone rang early one morning, we don’t even remember the day, but figuring in the two days straight of driving and arriving at our destination on the 1st of November, the call came in the wee hours of Tuesday, October 30th, 2018.
It was an emergency call! Two restaurants were about to have to close their doors and either file for bankruptcy or be chased into it by their creditors, and we were the only thing that could stop that, and would we please, please not let that happen. What could we do? Life of service, either we walk the walk or it’s nothing but talk! We could not say no! Although right now a part of us, granted a tiny part, wishes we had or at least wishes we were unable to help when that phone call came.
What a mess! We were told the situation and were supposed to be sitting chill in a hotel room telling people what they needed to do to get where they needed to be. We knew it would be cold, but this is ridiculous! We left the cold weather and planned on never returning to it except to visit. We figured it would be too cold to stay in the rv so made a deal that we would come for 30 days, stay in a hotel, fix the mess, and then run for the warm weather again. We could not have been more wrong! Hahahahahaha…
Two owners, absentee owners at that, the most ridiculous thing ever heard of when dealing with non corporate restaurants, purchased two cash cows, really, five (5) years ago, for whatever they paid for them. These two (2) restaurants were making a combined 30-50k profit each month. PROFIT! Certainly a good investment if at the right price. They were awesome!
The absentee owners then hired the then chef / cook to run and operate these two cash cows for quite a good bit of money, so a good deal all around. The owners figured the chef would take care of things and they would just sit back and collect the profits of their purchased investment, and the chef figured he wouldn’t have to slave in a kitchen any more and could just run the two cash cows and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Everyone thought things would be fabulous for many, many years… Silly, silly humans. We are all just silly, silly humans… lol
The chef, an absolutely awesome chef when it came to the menu and the kitchen, had no freakin clue how to run or manage a restaurant! Not a freakin clue! Then, just to add more fun to the equation, one of the absentee owners managed to make a very good new friend, opiates.
The restaurants managed to survive for the first two years, into 2015. The revenue dropped consistently as the, we can’t call it mismanagement because there would have to be some sort of management in order to be mismanagement. This was a case of throwing bodies at everything and everyone in charge. There were actually four (4) different companies being paid to clean the =grease traps at one of the restaurants when we got here. Really! The money dried up fast and the two restaurants were barely breaking even by 2015, three (3) years ago. Three (3) FREAKIN YEARS AGO!
Since then, apparently everyone has just been drinking this crazy chef’s kool-aid! The owners have been borrowing money, as if a start up, for the last three (3) years. Borrowing money they can’t afford to borrow. Unable to qualify for legitimate financial products they were driven to the Merchant Cash Advance industry, where they borrowed more and more money, paying 15k for every 10k borrowed, it was only a matter of time…
While the chef / manager of these two (2) awesome restaurants continued his fraud, telling the absentee owners that it was the employees and telling the employees that it was the owners that were driving the restaurants into the gutter. What a charade!
Instead of admitting he had no idea what he was doing, he was smiling and lying to everyone while he pretended he knew what he was doing. Pride is sometimes our greatest ally and sometimes our greatest foe. For this chef is was a horrible thing that could have very serious consequences for so many good folks.
If we didn’t know that everything is as it is exactly supposed to be, always has been and always will be, well, this would be all over here, close the doors at both locations and wait to either file bankruptcy or be chased there. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it is supposed to be! That’s what we have here…
There is only one person we know dumb enough and capable to even attempt to fix the situation we just found our self in, just freakin one, and it’s typing this ka-ka right now. We could not be in more of a mess with this right now…
We have been here now fourteen (14) days….
We have been on the phone at 4:00 am almost every day dealing with our east coast clients or on the phone with Ed. We have been on the phone or back and forth with texts most nights past 1:00 am. we have been a machine since the moment we arrived.
We’re staying in a hotel less than a half mile from one of the restaurants and we are never there. We have fallen asleep many nights sitting right here in the office of one of the locations, the consequences too great, We are in mission mode and that’s all we know how to do under the circumstances! We are barely eating and barely sleeping. We can thank Uncle Sam for spending the funds to train us how to handle stressful situations, Although, we were in trouble long before then so already had some experience. lol
Where we are? Holy Toledo…. We are neck deep in survival mode! We have already, in fourteen (14) days that we have been here, put in 17k of our own money! Really, really… It’s a disaster!
There are good people here who will lose their jobs, good jobs, and we can’t let that happen. We won’t let that happen! These are cash cows that should be awesome community restaurants that provide good food at good prices and provide good jobs,, and we have to make that happen, and we are on it…
Now back to the show…
Peace