The Hood.

Ok. I agree, not the most impressive photo in the world, but..... This is the extractor hood that deals with the heat from the ovens. It is all an equation of temperature, air coming into the building via the HVAC and air going out via the extractor hood. It's not a subject that will make your day reach a crescendoof excitement, but to me this week it was very important.

That's hood over there on the left, at least the bit you see inside the shop, and yesterday it passed it's code inspection.

Hip Hip Hooray for the hood, or rather Jose and team who put it all together.

That code inspection is a major tick in the box on the schedule towards opening. So a big sigh of relief from me.

Next we have electric and plumbing, before the highly important health inspector.

The food warmer display unit, has been the subject of many headaches for the front of shop solutions. I had eventually had to settle on one that was a ready made option, rather than the bespoke idea I really wanted. Then when I ordered it, I nearly had a heart attack. At first the distributor company said all was fine and took the order. Then proceeded to tell me 4 days later there would be a 98 day delivery time. So I looked elsewhere and other places said it was in stock at the manufacturer, (nobody keeps stock themselves). Eventually it boiled down to confusion on their ordering dept regarding part numbers. The original manufacturer was Anvil and it had changed to Vollrath (aren't they a heavy metal band?) causing a change in id numbers and the sales people got confused and caused me a minor panic attack.

Panic never lasts long thankfully.

So onward and upward.

We have our shopping list for all the goodies that go into a pasty. So now let's go shopping.

Ohhh look at the shiny Cart

Now it's time focus on the project within the project. THE FOOD CART. It has always been a very large part of the plan to get on board with the gourmet food cart revolution that is becoming so popular in our cities.

I had been busy from day 1 highlighting the g

eographical areas to start this retail arm in. It was decided at a very early stage that the Ballston area in Arlington was an excellent location. The Arlington authorities are very much in favor of this street scene, and there a some very successful enterprises proving that the concept works.

So, having checked out the code and spoken to the nice people in the Arlington police department (Pilar is a star) I new exactly what I was looking for. It was a Custom Cart DC650. I visited their factory in New Jersey early on in the year to see what they could do. Jay Celona gave every confidence, being the kind of person that will find a solution to make anything work.

Since then I was lucky with a find of 2nd hand cart in excellent condition. It was totally clean, it had never even been cooked in. All it needed was the addition of an oven with a warm display unit. Plus in U.S terms it wasn't far away, West Chester PA. So after a couple trips up I95 I had bought it, then moved it to Jay's factory in NJ to have the necessary ovens fitted. Friday was the big day to tow it back 4.5 hours down the wonderful I95, finishing with welcome home of the rush hour traffic on the DC beltway.

Eventually we had it parked up in the lot outside the shop, and it's just waiting for the Pure Pasty logo make over, courtesy of the Banana Banner (signs with appeal - great strapline) people.

So the plan is we open the bakery, get the pasties rolling off the beautiful marble pastry tables, then the cart opens up in Arlington (Ballston to be precise) for lunchtime service. Later we'll open the cart up to weekend events, sports, music and wine festivals. I'm guessing a twitter account is going to come into play to let everybody know where we are going to be. This seems to be the communication method of choice in the gourmet cart world. So pasty lovers, you'll have 2 locations to get your hands on the UK's greatest food to go item.

In Vienna we are still aiming for September 10th. You can see from the picture, there are improvements everyday. We have now started the joinery on the counter area. This week we ran through the sign offs that we require leading to the big target of 'Certificate of Occupancy'. At this stage the date is still achievable, but it really does do depend on gaining those sign-offs. I think each one will be met with a cheer and probably a glass of something to celebrate with. Paul has done a great job with the plans, and Jose has been equally good at converting those from paper to a tangible premises. So I'm confident any problems won't be in the way for long.

This next week, it's all about finalizing the menu for the promotional material, and internal signs/decor. Plus - Business Insurance, burglar alarms, fire alarms, internet and phone access ..... the list goes on.

A hive of activity

The build out is all coming together nicely. Jose, the main man has it all under control. The main point being we have knocked the two big openings into the central supporting wall. In fact it was more than a supporting wall, it was previously the external wall of the building. We even found a dated signature, drawn in the cement of with a finger saying; 'Nicky A 08-23-1964'. This was the current landlord aged 8! I was just 3 and summering in my hometown of Nantwich, Cheshire. The openings for the new bathroom and the retail area had a few minor issues, but the project is more or less on time, potentially being around 5-6 days behind. Still pretty good.

As you can see from the picture; we called in on a Friday evening and the team were still hard at work. The back of the kitchen was even getting a coat of paint, so everything is starting to look like it will when we are in production.

I then left the guys to it and went for a week back home in the UK, despite Delta airlines efforts to bungle as much as they could on my travel plans. Anyway it was all in the name of market research, tasting pies, pasties and sausage rolls. I can confirm that they all still tasted as good as when I left. It gave me all the more determination to match them over here in Virginia.

While I was away, we had our proposal for external signs approved by the Town Hall in Vienna. First problem here was we wanted to hang a swinging sign outside, but for some reason we aren't allowed to do that on our area of the street. Seems odd that it's allowed on the main part of Church St but not our part that is set back a little. So there were last minute amendments for that. The people at Banana Banner we really good about all these last minute changes, as I stood in the Town Hall making amendments with only minutes to go before the submission deadline.

The second problem was that somewhere in the discussions it got a little lost that I was supposed to present the proposal in person to the Board of Architectural Review at their next meeting. Paul the architect who is on the BAR phoned me while I was in the UK to see if I was coming along. Thankfully the BAR people were fantastic and allowed Paul to step down from the review board for my proposal and present. He wouldn't have voted anyway, having a vested interest in my project.

Anyway with one minor caveat it was approved and we can proceed.

Tomorrow, we go over the final stage of the schedule in detail. That's the all important final sign-offs from the various inspections. All mid term inspections have been good, so nothing has raised it's head yet. When we have satisfied all the final inspections i.e. we have done what we said we would. Then we get our certificate of occupancy and business license. That means party and pasty tasting sessions and open doors.

We have a target date written in pencil for September 10th for the opening. Let's see if tomorrow will prove that to be a realistic date.