So it took us 8 years to put walls in our kitchen.
I laugh because this wasn’t even a hint of a possibility last year this time. We have never had investors. We’ve never had cash injections. We’ve had the ability to save a little spend a little. It only gets you so far though.
COVID hit as we were starting to get busier in our café and then it didn’t feel like we were going to make it through that whole debacle never mind trying to expand our business, or even save a little to do some improvements. Things got progressively better after that mess. We’ve been getting busier and busier. We decided to formalize the business and separate it from ourselves. If you own your own business you’ll know what a massive step that can be. We started focusing more on our goals and less on the present worries
My situation personally dramatically changed. I had just come out of a very toxic relationship where it felt like every penny I saved would be used for bettering their situation and never mine. I met a person who has a business mind like mine, who insists we split every cost in half. He’s been a a huge catylist in changing my mindset, he’s helped me become grounded. Being told you are worthy and can accomplish big things helps you to believe in it.
Stepping back and looking at what me and my mom have accomplished is pretty great. I’m not trying to toot my (our) own horn but we’re proud of our place and we thought it was time to give her a fresh coat. The walls on the kitchen have been in the pipeline for a very long time. The walls around our scullery were planned from the beginning, but other costs were always prioritized before that. It’s a small thing but the anxiety that comes with a noisy scullery and a quiet café is quite immense
We had become a little famous for changing our store around and hearing customer after customer walk in and say “you’ve changed it around again!” became commonplace. We don’t mind, it’s awesome that people notice those things. So to appease everyone, this is the store layout forever now, may the ever-roaming furniture take a bow. We have a plan for a display cabinet coming in, a lovely glass box that holds all of our cakes and pastries. A real counter that wraps around the coffee machine and till. Then we have some clever furniture coming in as soon as we have a bit more to spend. It’s really exciting and we’re thrilled that you can be part of all of this. We can only make these goals real because of all of you and your continuing support. This is stage one of two but this was the big one and ,oh boy, I’m so thrilled its nearly done.
Many tears were shed, of happiness and stress in this last week. I don’t think building is fun for anyone. I think it’s always a thing that tests your patience ( and as some of you know I have very little of that) It’s like a painful state you have to go through in order for it to get better. It’s not exactly as I wanted it (one room is smaller than it should be) insert rolling eyes here. But we’re thrilled she came out prettier than what she did going in and that’s a huge win in 6 days.
We look forward to this new chapter with you and we hope you spread the word about our fancy new place. We love it and we hope you do too. Onward and Upward!
PS. I’m sorry for the lack of blog posts, you can’t write when your head isn’t right <3