i saw this in a warehouse the other day… i don’t know anything about it as we were looking at the warehouse as a place for one of my employees to rent to open his own bakery and this was the current tenants project. i thought it was pretty cool though. hope i’m not leaking any major secrets here, ha.
we have vaulted the ceiling in our kitchen. soon we’ll have skylights and solar attic fans taking out the heat. i’ll post better photos once the project is complete. vaulted ceilings and skylights in the kitchen, how nice is that?
sorry. my bad. the table did not walk out on the large tab but our staff made a mistake. i am actually so relieved to know that it was our fault and not a dishonest customer.
we have a new computer system and the large parties are expected to pay with added gratuity. some employee took the money, put it in the register, and forgot they had done this. also, they never “cashed out” the bill on the computer. so, 15 minutes after the party left we noticed they were not cashed out and we asked the employees if anyone had taken the money and they were all 100% certain they had not. i was bummed. my GM says, “just wait until tomorrow before you get bent out of shape… see if the money works out..” did i do that? no. i was depressed. bummed. how could they get away with this?
then the next day? we were $1.86 short. and this after we had “cashed out” the order as if they had paid. so they did pay. someone put it in the register and just forgot to close out the table. anyway, it’s our bad. i jumped the gun. i shouldn’t have worried about it before i knew. i feel bad.
we have had tables leave without paying. not many. in 8 years maybe a dozen tables. usually 2 tops that sit outside and slip off. a few times i think people just forgot, maybe because you have to go to the register and pay at our place…. anyway, i’m sorry. it was our fault. no one skipped on the bill. i forgot that i had even blogged this until i saw the comment today.
we’ve been slow. september is slow for restaurants in general i think. but i’ve got a thousand projects i’m working on and i’m working 10-14 hour days lately. not every day, but a few days a week. i’ve got so many fun projects planned for the place. wish i could tell you all about them but maybe not a good idea…. always better to come in and look for new stuff…
cheers. gotta run….
it seems a table walked out tonight on $179 tab. mistake on their part? our part? intentional? we don’t yet know.
we are about to have a championship bocce match. this is one of the losing teams who may be a winning team too. how? well, danny invented the “most flair” award to the team who has the most flair, duh. this team is in the running for the award. what is the award? oh- you will see dear people. i will post a picture here. blog readers will know what others do not know and will never know. blog readers gets good photos and the most insidest scoop.
i know you have not seen a picture as cute as this which is why am sharing it. not only that but my blood and genes run through one of these angels. kids are cuter than even kittens.
see? what did i tell you. kids can sleigh you. all i have to do is throw in a couple cute kid pics and you are riveted.
in other news at work we had the best 3rd week of august ever and one of the slowest days in 4 years… business is booming and business is slow. it’s a roller coaster and we are trying to figure it out. too many people on the clock. send one home and then we get slammed and not enough… wow. let me tell you for the first time in my life i am typing this and not looking at the keyboard. i am looking at the screen and typing and the words are coming out right… wow. this is so cool. i have now learned where the keys are by hunt and peck and i feel as though i’ve just learned a new language. i am typing and only looking down every tenth word…. i am in the 4th dimension now;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
love you all.
machine precision, one of the contenders in our current bocce championship.
sorry if you watched that video of a bridge and hated it. it’s probably a personal story more than one to share. eddie is one of my very best and oldest friends in the world, and i was lucky enough to hang with him for a week this year before he left for nepal, where he wants to explore around for the next 500 days… his music always speaks to me which is what i wanted to share more than the visual. the visual was me trying to hold a flip video while driving at 70 across a bridge so it’s bound to be shaky…. but we were so amazed at the bridge, the nuclear plant, the huge crane and the port, and i was so glad to hear eddie’s music, that i decided to try and record the scene. i thought i could at least maybe pull the music from the scene for listening to later. but eddie has now sent me loads more music he made on thumb drive so i didn’t need this bit of film. my phone rang while we were driving and i scrambled to shut it off.
amazing that a photo exists of me doing yoga. not only that, but eddie, my daughter and me doing yoga on the beach. i will admit i have been to 3 bikram yoga classes in the last month.
hats, visors, and coffee cups coming …. soon?
hats: mesh back with satchel’s pizza logo in orange red and white.
visors: i won’t even try and describe the visor, i am afraid i will spoil it. lets just say i am wishing for the world’s best visor so we can all “bring back the visor.” just think: you’ll be one of those people saying, “i was wearing a visor before visors were so cool.”
coffee mugs: ” i eat my pizza in a van.”
if i told you any more secrets the enquirer would be calling me so let’s leave it there.
i took my good friend Eddie to the airport recently and we listened to some music he made while driving. here is a quick shot of me driving, while making a video of a visual to his music. watch it.
here’s a mural i painted on a house at the beach.
my nephew and niece are visiting from colorado. my kids love no one more.
my mother bought the kids surf lessons one day.
my friend aloe took this photo in our backyard.
so, i bought a raft a week ago. we call it punchy. because some friends had a similar raft when they were young and it had a hawaiian punch advertisement on it and they figured it was something you could get if you turned in enough hawaiian punch labels and some cash. it’s a canvas raft that’s blue on one side and red on the other. you might remember having one when you were a kid.
so, when we were out late one night and found a beach shop still open late, we ended up buying a punchy raft for $15 and said friend got a sharpy marker and made me write the date on the raft when i bought it to see how long it would last. i thought it would last a long time, others were saying it would be popped in no time.
punchy’s a week old today and has been patched 3 times already.
so while i was complaining that you just can’t find a decent made raft anymore, and they always get holes in them and seem hardly worth fixing… and while i was trying to think about how i could start a factory that was able to produce high quality beach products… and fretting about how hard it would be to start a factory that could make beach chairs that would last and rafts that were decent and umbrellas that would last forever…
while i was stewing over all of these thoughts, i actually discovered what seems to be a way to patch a canvas raft. i had to try 3 times to patch the first hole and 3 patches then followed for subsequent holes and finally i think punchy is patched… for now… and i decided that if i am ever at the beach, maybe i could just hang out a sign that says, “SATCH’S RAFT PATCH” and for 5 bucks i could patch your raft ( maybe expensive but what do you have to lose?) and instead of trying to start a factory i could just repair rafts which would be practically as good as creating the new awesome beach stuff company.
and then i figured that i could also hang a sign for “SATCH’S CHAIR REPAIR” and “SATCH’S FIX-U-BRELLA.”
so, if you want to get high quality beach stuff that will last the season, just buy some cheap ole whatever and when it breaks or pops, look for my stand. it will have 3 signs and a few simple tools.
the pizza box van project is starting to bear fruit. folks are slowly bringing in vans they have made from their pizza boxes. here’s one. these folks won a medium pizza.
what a busy week it’s been. real busy. maybe because school is out and the locals are out as well. while most gainesville businesses worry about how to survive the summer without college students, we seem to manage pretty well. thanks to all the locals who are coming out.
i’m going to take some days off and hang with the family. i’m always nervous about not being at work all the time, but i’m also planning to design a new bumper sticker, some hats and mugs and maybe a t-shirt on my “vacation” and maybe re-write the employee training manual. does that count as taking time off?
i saw this van at albertson’s recently. i had to snap a picture. it’s not often you see a van that is so packed with crap there is barely room for a driver….
we’ve got our new POS system in full swing now. it has it’s benefits and pitfalls but mostly it’s good. i mean, all the tickets come straight to the kitchen from the table and we can read them without calling the server back and asking is that a bacon or broccoli? things are better at the register, quicker and smoother. danny taking orders in LSE keeps 30 people from coming into the dining room TWICE…. once to order and once to pick up. now we run it to them back there and they never have to come up. the long lines that we used to have seem to be happening much less….so all that is good. i guess the main complaint i have is that it takes longer to take an order now than it used to…. we really need an app that is more customized for us to improve the order taking experience… that’s something i am hoping can happen in the future… something i am looking into…
it was a slow weekend… steady but not as busy as usual. life has finally almost returned to normal for me this week, after months of long days and nights and short visits with the kids.
right now my house is filled with the smell of boiled peanuts. i’m getting them ready for tomorrow. tomorrow is a trip with the family to itchetucknee, to the great outdoors cafe, and to pick blueberries in alachua. after that to my mom’s house for dinner which is always the highlight of my week as my mom spends all day preparing the best meals and desserts imaginable. for those of you who may not know this about me, itchetucknee is my favorite place on the planet. c and i used to go every week before we had kids. we’d just get a whim and go…. drive the van out there, doors propped up on a tree at home, boiled peanut shells flying out the doors like a trail, and a bubba keg of sweet tea to balance the salty peanuts…. tomorrow we re-live that but now with kids… they love the peanuts…. the van is retired but the camo truck will do. i’ve got the sweet tea ready and the peanuts are smelling oh so good right now…
people never stop asking me to open another place. they ask like i could just snap my fingers and there it would be – cranking out killer crispy pies day and night. tonight a customer said his sister lives in indiana and when he texted her where he was she instructed him to kidnap me and take me up there to open a pizza place. last week i got an email from a couple in austin texas asking me to please come to austin and open a pizza place. every year i get an email from someone in high springs asking me to come consider high springs for a new place. in lowe’s on wednesday the paint counter lady asked me to open a place on the westside of town…. but you know? it’s having 2 full days off that keeps me going as it is. and if i am working around the clock in the one place after 8 years, then where is the time to open the new place? don’t the kids need a papa? my 6 year old girl has me wrapped so tightly around every finger and toe… when we are in the pool she says, “throw me up and catch me!!” and i do. “throw me up higher and catch me!” she yells again. and i do. “throw me into space and catch me!” this game never gets old. never.
i came home early tonight, what with the rapture expected and all that. no, we were much slower than usual so i’ll use the extra hour to blog tonight about nothing and boil peanuts and finish my latest painting.
i looked at an article trying to figure out how this old man had decided today was the rapture and it explained about these 3 magical, special, biblical numbers and how when multiplied together they give a number that when added to the calendar starting at christ’s crucifixion, add up to today. wow. like this wingnut could actually calculate the actual day of the crucifixion even…. and it amazes me that i heard so many people talking about this. of course, people love to think about the end of the world and the rapture. it’s intriguing for sure but no person will ever predict an event like this. i don’t doubt that a rapture may one day happen but i can be certain that no human will predict it.
and in an effort to alienate a portion of people out there i should mention that obama is a bad-ass. i happened to hear some of his middle east speech while driving a couple days ago and was impressed. i only wish that words could be transformed into actions and that middle east peace was actually tangible. gotta go stir the peanuts. kina, i bet you’ve never even had boiled peanuts because you aren’t a southerner at all. you don’t know what you’re missing. boiled peanuts and itchetucknee are the definition of heaven to me so it IS like the rapture for me.
so, we get asked all the time about rehearsal dinners. our dining room only seats about 40 and people usually have about 40 or 50 and want to have a rehearsal dinner on a friday night. we can’t do it. we don’t take reservations and we can’t have one big party take up our whole dining room all night and make all the regular friday night customers mad right? i wish we had a huge extra dining room and a bigger kitchen but it is what it is…
now, often people want to “reserve” our back lounge area for a party but we don’t reserve that either but try and explain to them the times when it would be likely empty and they could use it. if we have a long wait for a table we need that area to entertain the guests that are waiting. we provide live music and people get a drink and watch a band and the wait goes by quickly….
however, all of that being said, we also cannot tell people not to come. we explain the situation and try and steer them in the right direction. that’s all we can do, our restaurant is first come first served…. so, we’ve had parties that took up the lounge for the whole night instead of 4 or 5 different groups coming through and using the space to wait and we’re not about to kick people out, we’re in business so people can have fun…but in the back of my mind i know that when one table sits for 3 or 4 hours, it means 3 or 4 groups have to wait longer for a seat……. it’s part of the challenge of being a busy place. “it’s a good problem to have” is what i hear when i try and explain to anyone some of the tricky situations we find ourselves in….
now we have a large group that is going to bring their wedding party in on a saturday night and enjoy the lounge. their party will likely take up the whole lounge for some duration and since they are arriving early enough to physically occupy the space it is theirs to enjoy. on the same night, at the same time, there is another equally large wedding party that is coming but want to sit “inside” for the A/C… hmmm.
so, let me explain… it’s a saturday night, a large group has gathered in our waiting area to party and eat pizza. an equally large group is gathering at the host station looking to get sat in the dining room and the host will likely be spending 30 minutes to an hour trying to get them all sat as tables become available… and if they need to wait for a table, they can go to the lounge area where…. there is another huge wedding party…. and then there are the regular crowd that come on a saturday night… they will see a long waiting list and go back to the lounge area to wait and see a huge party and possibly parts of another huge party all looking for somewhere to wait….maybe 85 people between the two parties…. but between the 2 areas we can seat 140 so it’s not impossible…..
as i said, we aren’t in the business of telling people not to come. we want them to come. i’m not upset that we have 2 huge wedding parties coming on the same night, i’m just trying to fathom how we can manage the people… the food is easy, i can manage the food…. but i just hope everyone that night is flexible and friendly and ready to enjoy whatever happens… you know, it might even work out just perfectly and the group in the back will be done before we get busy and the group in the front will get sat quickly and be done before we get a regular rush… one thing is for sure, if i try and explain to either group that it’s going to be crowded and crazy, if i try and discourage either group from coming at all, THEN we’re sure to be hauntingly dead that night and wondering why on earth we didn’t promise the 2 wedding parties the moon.
i love this job.
here’s a screen shot from one of our ipods… why? i don’t know.
so, kickstarter is a place where people can ask for money to fund stuff they want to do. my old friend john wants to put out a new album with his band holopaw. see the kickstarter campaign HERE.
saturday night were those 4 ladies with 4 mediums. well, it looks like a trend… wednesday night another 4…
and here’s a van someone brought us… only the 4th so far…. c’mon people- make your vans….
here is the second image we have received for our photo contest. actually, it is the first, but i got a picture from a customer who had some pizza frozen and shipped to…(indiana???) and so i made that photo the first entry and now we got the first “official” entry, although the “rules” say to be wearing a satchels or LSE t-shirt but hey, this is a great photo. cheers.
jrestaurant is the name of this crazy software we bought to attempt to take orders with the ipod touch and iphone. tonight we may have had 95% of our tickets taken by ipod. for being brand new it worked pretty well. now, there were some problems. 1. there were 2 takeout orders that never arrived in the kitchen. the folks arrived to pick them up but we had no ticket. ouch. 2. there was a table that waited an hour and ten minutes and there was no ticket for them in the system. double and triple ouch. 3. at one point we lost our wireless connection for about 30 seconds. not so bad but everyone was a bit panicky…
now, the good news. as for #1… we actually figured out WHY those orders never made it to the kitchen so we can solve that in the future. as for #2… it was a server error because they had a different table “open” than the table they were at and so the pizzas got made but when they couldn’t figure out where they went they were set aside…. so, now we know ways to keep this from happening again. (and said table got their entire meal for free… 2 pizzas and drinks and cake… and fortunatley they were very nice and understanding.) and as for #3. it was only 30 seconds and then we got connection back so not the end of the world at all…. something we have to learn to deal with if it happens.
so, all in all i am pleased. now, in the middle of the stress of making those 2 takeout orders over, and the table that never got their food, and the internet stumble (all happened within 20 minutes of each other)… in the middle of all that i got this crazy migraine where i was seeing lines and colors (called an AURA.) so that wasn’t good… but i must say that i was very excited when i looked at the “open dine-in” tickets on my ipod and noticed that every single table was opened by ipod and the kitchen was humming away… it was working. despite my migraine and the problems. it was working on a busy busy friday night. thanks for all who were part of this experiment.
by the way and FYI: jrestaurant is a programmer i found who lives in Malta. we tell him via email what problems we are having and he send us updates. i send him an average of 6 emails a day. he probably hates me but he is always professional and never lets on. sometimes it takes days to fix something small. sometimes we get several fixes at once. he’s my new frenemy.
and delurking: this is word i learned the meaning of yesterday thanks to a comment on my latest post. first of all i didn’t think anyone read my blog and secondly, no one ever comments. so it was a pleasant surprise to not only get a comment that wasn’t spam, but someone actually saying how much they liked the place and cheering my blue self orange. even tonight in the midst of the madness a customer would comment to me of how much they loved the place… this happened twice tonight when my head was about to explode. i’m thinking… if they only knew how much crap is going on right now… they might not act so dang happy….
the bottom line is that change happens. we learn new words…. we take on new challenges… and sometimes if we are really brave, we enter a contest. bad days beat me down like the armadillo i want to bludgeon that wreaks havoc on my wife’s garden. good days come too and people are nice even when they wait too long or something goes wrong. other people delurk to try and cheer a brother up. it’s a good world really.
thanks for tuning in. here’s another random picture from my photos….
finally i must squarely admit and explain: none of this POS would have ever been possible without the new GM, WADE. wade has been working triple time to help me make this happen. he said to me tonight..”just don’t email me on sunday this week…” i said, “i wouldn’t email you on sunday would i?” he says “you emailed me 3 times last sunday.” … damn. poor guy. i work him so hard. when he comes to your table to apologize for something, be nice to him. he’s taking on the most stress of all….
well, i thought i was so smart detouring around the “traditional” POS and going straight to the cutting edge. it’s working, sortof. i knew we would be facing an uphill battle and it is. some employees are fighting against it. the system is still getting the bugs worked out. every time we get an “update” from our programmer, it’s like taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. the update today helped some but suddenly the ipods wouldn’t print a bill. but it is much better than it was 2 weeks ago, and can only assume in 2 more weeks we’ll be even further along. the new ipods all have gps tracking in them in case they get “lost” or stolen. i’m not sure how it would work, i guess i would gather a few big guys and drive over to the location of the ipod and knock on the door and ask for it. hmmm. last night one of the servers “set her ipod down” (she guesses) and when she went to look for it, GONE. it was one without tracking, of course. this had me highly depressed all day.
on a brighter note, a farmer came by and is going to sell us his tomatoes which will save us a good deal every week. maybe even enough to buy a new ipod in a couple weeks….
tonight i got to work to a disaster zone. pies were taking 45, 50 minutes to get to the tables. takeouts were taking an hour or more. after 8 years i still cannot understand why they don’t just dial me up. i could have been there an hour earlier and saved all the grief and unhappy customers. i tell them over and over to call me. i tell them if i get there and the rush is passed i won’t be mad but happy. i tell them if it is getting crazy just get me there. “we kept thinking you would walk in any minute…” sigh.
then, in the middle of the chaos, a deep dish gets taken to the wrong table and they eat it. now the table that ordered it has to wait for another one and they had already waited an HOUR!. i swear i lost it. i can’t believe that when these hour long pizzas come out that someone can carelessly take them to the wrong place. what’s wrong with my restaurant? what is my problem? we are going to get killed next week during graduation at this rate.
anyway- if you consider the stress of the new POS, the constant trying to convince employees about the benefits and the reasons we need to do it… add the stress of the devices not working properly, or more often than not the “user error…” that always comes with something as new and complex as this… then think about the stress of 16 hour days, late nights, returns of stuff i don’t need, trying to get stuff i do need…. and then the working on my weekends… add up all those stresses, and the rental house i’m working on cleaning and fixing up, and the pool pump that i’ve been trying for 10 days to fix… do the math and it all = internal combustion.
it’s nearly midnight and i’m getting up with the kids to get them off for school. thursday is my day… hoorah!
do i have any new photos for you?…….
so last year we had this check fraud happen. we realized that someone had stolen checks from our mailbox, made copies and then sent people in to cash these “fake checks.” when we explained to compass what we thought was going on and the new security measures we were taking, they didn’t care one but and told us to find another bank and they weren’t covering our loss. i won’t get into all the details again. anyone interested can read THIS POST.
well, we bugged the detective and never found out anything. it didn’t seem like anyone was doing anything about this. well, then a woman gets arrested, as her name was on one of the checks. she’s from tampa, as were several of the people cashing the checks. she’s 23 and had no previous record. it’s in the court system still and may take months for anything to happen. but i want to find out what she knows? who put her up to this? who is behind this? i had a meeting with the state prosecutor on the case and explained the story. he was shocked that compass didn’t cover this. there is no reason.
well, last week there was an orange and blue game in town and we were quite busy. someone left behind a tampa paper and my GM noticed a headline on the front page about a check scam where people were taking checks out of mailboxes. turns out this guy has been doing this since the 90′s and there are several spin off organizations. they buy homeless people and crack heads ID’s for $50 and then travel around and send runners into banks with fake checks they have copied from stealing them from mailboxes. this HAS to be the same group as got us i thought so i contacted the detective mentioned in the article. he said he started surveillance on this group in 2007 and followed them to gainesville, tallahassee, south caroline, georgia. he has 800 cases of check fraud connected with this crime ring. he currently has 125 people in jail and has put a couple of the ring leaders behind bars for 10- 15 years. anyway, i told him my story and he wants me to take the witness stand at a trial soon, tell my story and explain how much damage this has caused us. he said he has 800 cases and every single one of them the banks covered the loss. we are the ONLY business he has ever heard of that the bank chose to bail. he was pissed. he was really pissed, especially since WE caught it and reported it 24 hours later.
anyway, i wish he was putting compass bank on trial. i mean, i’m glad they are catching some of these criminals but compass bank is equally at fault here as far as i’m concerned. they stole our money and wanted to blame US for it. they weren’t interested in our theories of a thief stealing our mail, they just wanted all the info on our employees and when they worked. we cooperated with them but we explained that we HAD the checks in our possession. someone had stolen checks from the mailbox and made copies. (we knew this because we later found out that checks we were sending out were not arriving.) this was obviously not an inside job. anyway, i will have a hard time ever forgiving compass bank. i will hopefully continue to slander their name as much as i can. use a local bank. the big banks don’t care. compass bank doesn’t care.
SEE STORY HERE
i’m always so excited to see the blogs of my co-workers when they’ve added posts. teresa is doing a great job of posting about some of the places we spend our ATM and grant money. check it out HERE.
john has archived photos of beautiful old flyers we’ve made fro various things (john made all of them but one..) see it HERE.
judy is always posting about the artwork that is up or about to go up at satchel’s. checking her blog gives you a peek of the work if you can’t make it in. see it HERE.
and of course danny posts once in a while and his latest is a short video of the kids dancing…HERE.
so, as some of you may know, we are in the process of changing to a POS system. that stands for point of sale. we currently use paper tickets for everything, we put our name and time on there, make a salad ticket, price them, and turn them in. we are changing to a system where we use an ipod touch at the table, and send immediately from the table to the kitchen. it’s challenging because it’s different and our staff has to get used to doing it a different way. but we’re on our way to figuring it out and it’s exciting too. i’ve been working 16 hour days for weeks now… i’ve been going in on the days we are closed to wire printers and change lights and add shelves and plugs… i’m so exhausted from it all and we are still at the beginning. anyway- no time for videos and photographs and all that. just lots and lots of real mind boggling work.
so, that’s where i’ve been. trying to wrap my head around getting this system up and running… i’ve bought a bunch of the wrong stuff and had to return 4 or 5 boxes in the last week. no fun. in the long run it is the right direction i have no doubt about that.
so, now you can go into lightnin salvage and order your pizza and salad at the counter and we’ll bring it to you. danny is taking orders on his iphone. now you will get your salad before your pizza if you eat on the property someplace. now if you are lucky enough to get a server using the ipod, you will get a printed bill at your table to take up to the register. that’s new – and nice. finally we are like a real restaurant and give you a chance to look at your bill. and also, the server can take your drink order and send it to the drink station, take your salad order and send it to the kitchen, all while still at the table. you might even get drinks delivered while they are still taking your pizza order. well- let’s not get too ambitious.
so, if folks eating in LSE are ordering back there and getting food delivered, that’s less traffic in the dining room. these are just a few of the obvious benefits, there’s a lot more for the record keeping but i won’t bore you.
come get some pizza, someone tell me we are the first restaurant in gainesville to use ipod touches to take your order? anyone know of a place in town that does this?
