It's pasty crimping in Virginia, being conducted by a Brit who is now part Aussie. I now admit to the full public audience, Nicola (alias the Queen of Dough - she is so good with our pastry) crimps pasties better than me. There, I've said and won't take it back.
Now we are 2 months in and everything is getting much smoother as we find our feet in the shop and solve all the little problems. We still have an issue with the HVAC. It wasn't working well for weeks and we thought it was just us not setting the controls properly. Then one of the pipes iced up, so we had an engineer look at it. The cooling coil was a complete block of ice. So we defrosted it, which wasn't simple. Then we had it serviced, then it did the same thing 2 days later. No it's affected the heat side, the furnace blower rumbles like a plane taking off.
Nick the landlord is now looking at quotes to replace the whole thing.
The funny part is, that even in the current cold weather, the problem we face is that the kitchen gets too warm. This affects the dough and makes it too soft to with, for now we just open the door and let some cold air.
Otherwise everything is doing fine.
Mike Smith is handling all the issues to get the cart on the road and down to Ballston for lunchtimes. This is one of major projects and will be a big step forward when we launch. Winter and freezing weather makes the cart work hard but it will be worthwhile in the long run.
Josh has the kitchen running really smoothly, so supply and demand is now nicely balanced. We have gone live with new soups, Prosciutto and Potato, this weekend we produced a stunning Chili. We have also answered the loud British demand for Cheese and Onion pasties, and contemplating an original with Rutabaga (Swede for Brits).
I have managed to get permission for a small amount of seating, so that's one tick in the box. Meanwhile I'm pursuing a solution for both local delivery and shipping. The shipping part will probably need a new website with an online store etc.
My biggest challenge is Quickbooks and the accounting system. It's starting to make sense now, but to start with .... let's just say it's a friendly package.
So lets see where it all goes next month.
