Tearing it up

Huge pieces of lumber falling randomly and dangerously from the sky. Finally some fun!
Lots of activity today as we tore away the front of the building, our plumber readied our kitchen ditch for inspection, our contractor readied the framing crew for work next week, the water treatment company came in for testing, our upholstery company (Cannon's Upholstery) reviewed our entire project and hauled away about 20 booths to their shop, two exhaust hood and duct companies surveyed the job for last minute measurements for their bids, and our designer spent hours going over details with Chrissy, Chris and me to get us to where we need to be right now. As a review… because now it will get complicated, Chrissy is my wife and partner (sounds redundant but you get the idea) and Chris is Chris Stage who is a newcomer to this project.

About Chris: I met Chris doing volunteer work for a political election campaign. Since then she and her husband Roger have become friends with Chrissy and me. They are both industrious, bright, creative and have a dangerous streak of adventure to them. She has worked in radio and TV, been a government research analyst, a Peace Corps volunteer, a Rodeo Queen, a beach bum, pursued a doctorate in Communication, taught college classes, and directed a local non-profit organization.

Seems to me that would be enough for a lifetime of experiences but she and Roger have always had this irrational urge to do something creative on their own in the hospitality business. Chris came up with the idea of spending time with me on the project as a sort of "intern" and I jumped on the idea. It’s a win win fo both of us - or at least for me. I love the idea of having someone with her creative and organizational skills on the team and its always good to have someone from the "outside" to give us a fresh perspective on our efforts.

As a matter of fact, speaking of perspective, I have asked her to contribute to this blog and hopefully you will soon be hearing from Chris directly.

Darkest before the dawn

Chrissy and I couldn't get to our daily south mountain hike until evening yesterday so we strapped on our headlamps and started up the slopes in chilly darkness. While we climbed I summed up the current status of our project. We are in the middle of the plumbing project from hell, illustrated with a 30 foot trench in our kitchen, the air conditioners we contracted for are out of stock, we are furiously juggling the demands of the fire department, health department, liquor board, environmental services, and the City of Tempe, I keep changing my mind and tweaking our kitchen layout and therefore delaying our equipment orders almost to the point of impossibility, and every project - our design team and contractor are well behind schedule and frustrated. We are supposed to open in 11 weeks. We plodded silently for a few moments in our tunnels of light when Chrissy asked me "How does anyone open a restaurant anymore?" I knew what she meant. I have been associated with about 20 openings in my career, four of them my own. With my experience this should be smooth sailing but it was anything but. The good news is that we FINALLY got a permit today. The interior permit at least, so we can proceed to actually build something. Hopefully we'll get the exterior permit next week so we can start work on the new look of the building and the patio. Today we also had a marketing meeting with our management staff, Ruthan our graphic artist and Chris Stage. We are still making the assumption that we are still opening in mid-late March and our big challenge is to communicate our move to thousands of customers before we leave. We put together a great campaign which kicks off this Friday. In the meantime back to the trenches.

Digging deeper

My crack team of architects and engineers have submitted plans to Tempe (almost a month late) and even more impressively delivered a set to me! For a while now we have had a permit for demolition but soon we can actually start building. But only after demolishing more than we expected however. Last week we had a visit from City of Tempe water department. Everyone I've met at the city so far has been extremely courteous and has gone out of their way to be helpful…. until the visit by the water department. Bottom line, without the gory details, is that we have to dig up about 25% of our kitchen floor to re route drain lines that are buried up to five feet deep. We have a giant jacuzzi-sized grease trap buried behind the building and certain pipes need to be routed to it to collect excess grease so it doesn't end up in the city sewer system. Unfortunately for us the code has changed as to which drains need to go there. Some of the work is reasonable and logical, but when it was pointed out to me that I have to spend thousands of dollars to plow up a perfectly tiled kitchen floor to install drains to collect the greasy residue from an ice machine and a lettuce washing sink, well its mindless bureaucracy at its worst.

That set me up for an unexpected inspection visit from the Tempe fire department. My jaw tightened when I drove up and saw the truck in the parking lot, but his demeanor was the polar opposite and he was nothing but helpful and constructive in helping me understand exactly what needed to be done. A smile and a handshake later I felt good about Tempe again. Now that I have plans I am scrambling to line up subs for concrete, wrought iron, a good technical guy to help with the electronics of the building (surveillance, phone, pos and sound systems) an upholsterer, and a welder (for stainless work) If anyone knows someone who fits the bill have them email me at AZjobpost@aol.com.

From the ground up

Let me tell you about the beautiful wood floors in our dining rooms. Well, actually they used to be beautiful many years ago. They are the genuine thing; thick natural strips of oak laid plank by plank, sanded smooth and finished in place. Its almost impossible to find a floor like this anymore outside of a private home so we were shocked when we peeled up the carpets and discovered them. Now to refinish them. I've complained about money before so it won't surprise you to know we had no money in the budget to bring in a professional to restore them. It takes peeling off the carpet, scraping off layers of glue, endless hours of sanding through the old varnish and stain, and finally restaining and varnishing. JVG convinced me that he and our crew could do the work ourselves. Looking back I realize it was the tightness of our budget talking to me and not his prowess as a finish craftsman. JVG has an unbelievable range of skills but fine finish work is not one of them. (He also has almost zero technical savvy so I can feel free trash talking him here where he will never know it) Anyway, after a week of dousing the floor with random solvents, scraping and mostly gouging the wood I put a halt to the action and placed an emergency ad on Craig's list and begin weeding my way through the 20 or so craftsmen who applied for the job within 24 hours of placing the ad. We settled on Earl from Winslow. More about the unusual nature of Earl in later posts, but after all was said and done he did an amazing job at an amazing price. He is finished with 75% of the floors in only a week and is coming back this weekend to finish the job (fingers firmly crossed) Pictures don't do it justice but the floors are gorgeous, maybe too gorgeous for humble old RigaTony's - but we'll let you be the judge.

A rewarding Thanksgiving diversion

Just a quick post to acknowledge my crew for their excellent work in helping to provide a Thanksgiving feast to needy Chandler residents at the Chandler Boys and Girls Club. Iguana Mack's and RigaTony's has been providing food for this event for 12 years and this year was special because it represented the christening of their new facility. We had a huge turn out - over 700 people were fed who otherwise would not have the benefit of a holiday dinner.

A moment of calm

Today feels like the eye of the hurricane. Weirdly I have no appointments today but every upcoming day for the next week will be building to chaos. Monday alone I have 4 meetings, one with my technical guy to review the wiring plan for the restaurant. We need to wire for surveillance cameras, sound equipment, telephone locations and point of sale locations. Then a meeting with our retail group to launch our new retail campaign which I will explain later, another plan review meeting with architect, designer and contractors, and then a tour of the brand new Boys and Girls Club facility where we will be feeding close to 1000 needy people a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday next week. So today is left to planning and making preparations at home here for the 60 -70 friends and family that will be joining Chrissy and me for thanksgiving, which is by the way our anniversary (any creative suggestions for that shopping duty are welcome!).

Through all of it I have to push my architect to get his work done and get these construction plans into the city. We can't start construction until the city approves our plans and its getting very tight. Our lease ends in Chandler on March 30th of 2010, so we must be open before then. According to my plan there should be only be three days in March when Baked RigaTony is not available. Its up to my architect to make sure that doesn't turn into a month or more. (Are you reading this Todd?!!!!)

I have been emailed a question through this post as to when we are opening in Tempe and my best guess is March 17th. The new location is something I neglected to document here as well. It is at 1850 E Warner Road on the NE corner of McClintock and Warner Road. It used to be a 3 Margaritas Restaurant.

We can't do any construction yet but here's some destruction of a fine looking fireplace that was in the entry of the restaurant.

I have discovered that I am not a natural blogger. I was never one for journals or photo albums either so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Nevertheless I am going to regroup as we enter the complex construction phase and post at least several times a week to document the evolution of this project.

Here's a brief recap of what we've been working on in the last few weeks.

We've completed our exterior elevation plan and submitted drawings to Tempe for approval. They initial reaction seemed positive, but we'll see when we get comments back hopefully in a few days. Our landlord had to sign off on the plan as well, and they were very enthusiastic. I'll post the actual exterior elevations as soon as we get approval.At the same time we've completed our construction plans and are fine tuning everything before turning them into the city as well. We're behind about two weeks on this and I have to admit that I'm nervous about being behind on something that we had so much time to do. The construction plans include a complete revamp of our heating and ac system, a total redo on the kitchen, all new surfaces in the dining rooms and bar, and of course the construction of a new building facade and a patio.I've continued to purchase equipment for the kitchen and bar and recently scored on an awesome 30 gallon steam jacketed tilting kettle which to our chef is like moving up from a bicycle to a Masseratti. We have also been interviewing trades to select who we want when we start building. Sign painters, concrete, paint, electrical contractors etc....Another interesting development is the addition of a Doctor to our staff. More about that later.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures. One is of JVG and Greg gingerly moving the old Mesa RigaTony's neon sign from where its been stored in my backyard to the repair shop. (note: I've never used "JVG" and "gingerly" in the same sentence before). The next is a shot of what happened moments later. No just kidding, but its a funny sequence. The truck turned over in front of the restaurant the other day when we were doing demo inside. No one was hurt.