Repentant and exhausted but still babbling

Did you ever lose contact with an old friend. You were supposed to call them back and then you forgot and then it became really uncomfortable and still you didn't respond and the longer you take the more difficult it becomes to make a simple phone call? That defines me and this blog. I dropped it when I finally became overwhelmed in the final stages of construction. Keeping a blog seemed like such a fun and easy idea at the time but its amazing how lack of sleep and extreme stress subtley redefines your priorities.
Anyway - we opened our humble little restaurant thanks to months of hard work by Chrissy and me, but just as much credit goes to the EXCELLENCE of our entire staff and the stunning loyalty of the RigaTony's faithful, and in the end the opening was an enormous success. I can't overstate how big the opening was. I don't normally talk about numbers because it feels like I'm devaluing the what we're really all about - serving great food. My philosophy has always been to serve great quality at a great value and the numbers will take care of themselves. But lets break that rule and talk numbers for just this once! Before we opened Chrissy and I did a business plan and endlessly debated what our sales numbers would be. My position was that we would lose about 25% of our business by moving from the Chandler location. Some people might feel it was too far away, others may not discover our move etc… I hoped at the same time that we would make new friends in our new neighborhood that would make up for most of that loss so that in the end I felt we would be doing 90% of our old business. Over the course of a year I felt we could make up the 10% difference and even build on that eventually. Chrissy, my lovely and always optimistic wife thought we would be busy from the get-go and forecast an immediate 10 to 20 % increase over last year's numbers….. The envelope please…….. The actual opening numbers are; Week One- 50% increase from 2009, Week Two - 60% increase, Week three - 70% increase. (I'm not kidding!) After week three we leveled off and now continue to hold at around 60-70% more sales than last year. I have always found that the busier we are, the better job we do. Everyone is energized and focused and after nine weeks of business we are doing an outstanding job - if I do say so myself. I love to brag on my crew because I think they are truly remarkable.

The first two or three weeks of our opening were nerve wracking because the waiting line was so long and it is painful to tell good friends they have to wait for an hour or more for dinner. Since then we've made adjustments, added seats with the opening of the garden terrace, purchased a paging system, increased the kitchen capacity, and in general have become more efficient. As a result our waiting list is rarely more than 30 minutes now.

Ok - enough numbers. I think what I want to do now is to finally finish this blog, or more accurately bring it up to date. During the opening at different times I lost both my camera and my cell phone so I don’t' have all the images I was hoping to post here. (are you beginning to feel how out of control I was?) But I did save some images and some funny moments which I will add to this blog. In the meantime I apologize to those of you who kept checking back for updates on the restaurant just to see this site frozen in time, but most importantly to those of you who helped make our opening the most exciting experience of Chrissy's and my professional carriers. We are now settled into the wonderful and comparatively relaxed routine of serving lunch and dinner to our friends every day, but that last couple of months was an "E ticket" ride we will never forget.

Here's a link to the first part of the final tour of the finished product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRjFv4XVP3o

Mike