It's All on Us

I have an item on the schedule for tomorrow.  When I made the schedule, I figured we'd be ready for it this weekend; the weekend before our opening day.  It was "Panic."  Well, as of last night, we were ahead of schedule; we had a panic last night with our water heater for the bar not working.  But, a quick run to Lowe's solved the problem.

And, among the other items for this weekend was "Address Health Department concerns".  That's something else we don't have to do.  The Health Department inspector was satisfied that we had met all her requirements and signed off on a "Temporary Permit to Operate".  And, combined with the earlier sign-off on our building inspection, we have finally cleared the last Magical Hoop™ to opening.

We.

Are.

Done.

Now, it's all on us to get the bar ready for Monday at 4:00pm when we fling the doors open and welcome the patient throngs of people at the door.  (Ok, there will probably only be one or two at four pm...)  And there's much to do.  There's a lot of cleaning and putting up televisions and assorted A/V equipment and getting all that inventory sorted and properly tagged and probably a few more things I'm forgetting after today.

The tremendous feeling of unfathomable relief after so much consummate anguish is often overwhelming.

DNI

I think I'm pretty good at solving problems with (sometimes) unique solutions.  One of the things I'm bringing into The Phoenix is an inventory system that (I think and hope) will work for everybody.  Needs to be fast enough for a bartender or barback to use and it's also gotta be easy and efficient enough for Karl and me to make sure we order what we need when we'll need it.

Over the past several months during the periods of boredom and patience that happened in between the bouts of panic and terror Karl and I have hammered out what this process will be.  It involves smartphones and barcodes and scanners and spreadsheets and color coded tags.  And, believe it or not, despite that list of things that may seem complicated, we think it'll be all the things we need it to be for everybody who has to deal with it.

(FYI, DNI = "Do Not Inventory"; often used for displays in retail stores like Costco.)

Ooh, My Bleeding Brain

Yesterday, I got the work I needed to do on the inventory list done.  I would have written yesterday that it was done but, well, I was tired of looking at the computer screen.  I know it's not terribly exciting to read about but I'm glad it's done.  It was a lot of looking at the list of inventory we already have and comparing it to what the supplier catalog had and getting the right information into our financial software.  We only have an order catalog from one supplier so I'll have to do this again at some point for the others.  And all of this is so we can keep reasonable track of what is selling and what isn't.

Of course, if you have a favorite (or hated) beverage be sure to let us know on our website's Suggestion Box so we can make sure we carry it (or get rid of it).  Really.  I mean it.  If we get enough suggestions (or hate mail) for a certain beverage, we'll go ahead and get (or dump) it.