The image above is a reminder of where we started with the renovation… who know there was brick behind all those shelves?

And another angle (from in my neighbour’s store before the wall got closed back in).

I was barely on the floor yesterday. I popped in before lunch and then left (bought beer and a shed for the back parking lot). Then I assembled the shed and stuck around in the evening to get some administrative work done. This consisted of sitting in the staff room with my Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’ pizza and promptly falling asleep. Time to go home. Did I go to bed early? No. I got a bunch of administrative things done and I got caught up on Breaking Bad. Still, I did get 8 hours of sleep.

SIDE NOTE: The most recent episode of Breaking Bad is among the most powerful, moving, and difficult bits of filmmaking (TV or film) that I have seen. Phew. What a show. I have watched almost no TV in 25 years. I watch Saskatchewan Roughrider football games and that’s it. But, I got on to Breaking Bad and have watched it all. What a remarkable, magnificent show. Difficult. And I doubt that there is any kind of happy ending coming our way…

Today is our first actual management meeting since we opened. The first time that we have all sat down together to take stock of where we are and to decide on what we want to focus on in the coming weeks. I know that we are already making massive improvements and that we are all getting better at what we do. Yesterday we had 10% more customers than we did on the day that we opened and we managed to serve everyone in slow motion with less staff. Yes, we are getting better and faster at what we do.

Things that I think we need to focus on:

- General cleanliness. We do an OK job but not as good as we should be. Clean as you go. Little messes (bits of things on the floor, for instance) are left sitting until the morning or midday full clean. I would like to see us cleaning as we go.

- Precise duties by position. Some of our service shortcoming are rooted in the fact that nobody knows who is responsible for what (minor stuff but needs addressing)

- Staffing levels. We do not have a good grasp on how busy we will be and when but we are starting to know. Fri and Sat, for sure, require a full compliment. Sunday evening and Monday are much less busy and we can certainly provide great service with less than a full complement on the floor.

- Service and food quality. Always working on these. Be a lifelong learner. Work every day to get better at the basic stuff. Using a sports analogy – top professionals in every sport still practice the basic skills every single day. Never stop focussing on the basic things that we do.

ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: I have returned to the iPhone. I was an iPhone guy. When Blackberry Z10 came out I returned to Blackberry because I always liked BB and because it makes me feel good to be a BB guy. I am sad to say that I have gone back to iPhone because it works. All the time. It does what I need my phone to do. Try as I might, I cannot get consistency from BB nor can I get the aps that I need.