Part 66 Cool For Cats

The hiccups, a void and the alcohol license.

Hey, if you put a Like at the end of this, your Greggs cheese and onion bake will never burn the roof of your mouth.

Good day to you lovely people. And good day to you not so lovely people.

OK, we need to tell you something quickly, don’t worry, we’re not selling car insurance. On these Posts we deliberately focus on some very small and possibly insignificant points. Points such as blocked drains, broken toilet seats, dodgy builders and stupid delivery people. And that’s because we want to tell you about those tiny little incidents which you never hear about, those little hiccups which affect, and infect the whole day. The real bits.

Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein have told you about seasonal ingredients and locally sourced carrots many times, but running restaurants is about much more than that.

So on that note, air conditioning.

In last weeks Post we told you that the air conditioning was sending sparks around the plant room. This needed sorting, this system also provided heating to the building, so we couldn't ignore it. But who could help us.

Fortunately there was a sticker on the control panel of the system, so we called them.

“I’ll have to come and look at the system mate. I’m in the area tomorrow, is that OK?

“Yea great, see you tomorrow.”

And sure enough the aircon guy turned up the next day. So while Donna and I decided where tables and chairs needed to go, and Lozza organised the kitchen, this bloke huffed and puffed at the control panel. Then he disappeared downstairs. And he was gone for ages. Probably huffing and puffing at something.

“I’m gonna look for him Donna, he could have electrocuted himself.”

But he wasn’t in the plant room, where could he have gone?

Then I heard some banging, and more huffing and puffing. It was coming from the staff toilet, that little room in the basement which we had only looked in once, that was enough. I opened the door, but he wasn't there.

“Hiya mate,” I shouted, “You OK?”

“Yea, I’m behind the door.”

“Door?”

And sure enough there was a door on the back wall, we hadn’t even noticed that it was there. So I climbed over the graveyard of washing machines, industrial deep fat fryers and glass washers. I opened this door and poked my head out. It was weird.

I found myself in a space, a void between our building and the restaurant next door. And because this was the basement, there were three storeys above us. So it felt like being in a dark room, but with beams of light coming from the sky, high above us. And there was no way out of this void, only the door, which was now behind me, or the frosted window of the neighbouring restaurant.

The floor was dusty concrete and the walls around us in this three metre by one metre room, were crumbly Edwardian red bricks. It was an area which the public would never see. Even our team would probably never see this. It felt like a little boxed world under the streets of London which nobody knew about. And towering above were the extraction pipes from our building and the restaurant next door, but they didn’t go straight up, they passed through external filters and motors. And old air conditioning units were stacked against a wall, those which had given up but were too heavy to dispose of.

It was actually very eerie.

But the eeriness was soon seen off by the aircon bloke, who I’d nearly forgotten about.

“Bad news mate, they don’t make these units anymore, it’s a whole new system for one side of the restaurant I’m afraid.”

“What, isn’t there anything you can do?”

HUFF PUFF HUFF PUFF

“Maybe I can get a second hand unit, a reconditioned one.”

“Yes that would be good. Thank you.”

He called later that day to let us know that he had found a reconditioned unit and would fit it in a few days time. And he did just that. See, just ask.

Two guys turned up, one was called Darren, can’t remember the name of the other one. And they were both cockneys.

Actually, they weren't cockneys, but to our northern England ears, everyone south of St Albans sounded like a cockney.

If you think that we deserve a £3 for writing this, that’s the button right there.

Darren and Thingy were struggling to get this boxy aircon thing through the door. Luckily Donna had a good idea.

“Help them Andrew, it looks heavy.”

“Brilliant idea, I love carrying heavy boxy things.”

Jesus this thing was heavy, I decided that helping wasn’t a good idea.

Anyway, we took it downstairs and they fitted it. And it worked.

After that Darren became our air conditioning service man. Darren Aircon would come along twice a year, every year, and clean the system, tap the pipes and talk about R32.

R32 is a refrigerant gas, Darren Aircon would often talk about R32 as if we understood what it was all about. In the same way that my Mam talks about ‘Joan from down the shops’, who I have never met.

“Errr, yes Darren, R32, it’s great, we love it”

PLUS. Darren loved my game of Shockers. That game where he’s completely focused on putting a filter back in place, he has no idea I’m behind him, it’s totally silent and he’s quietly humming a song to himself.

Then I grab him from behind and shout “Arrrrrgggg” in his ear.

Darren Aircon jumps up and down on his stepladder a few times and drops a few screwdrivers. “Bloody hell mate, R32.”

Is this one of Darren’s screwdrivers?

Donna wasn’t too sure if I should play Shockers on too many people.

And another thing. Alcohol license. If you have been reading these Posts from the beginning you’ll remember that a premises which wants to sell alcoholic beverages to the public has to have a license to do so, and there has to be a designated Premises Supervisor.

We knew that the premises had a license, we just had to contact the council and tell them that I was the new Supervisor.

“Yes we can make that change for you, there’s an admin fee of two hundred and fifty pounds though”.

Oh really, people want money from us, that’s unusual.

“Yea no problem, do you need anything else, any more information?”

“No, just your Premises Supervisor number and the two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“OK, but don’t you want to know what we’re going to do with the place, our opening hours, number of covers, stuff like that?”

“No, as long as you stick to the guidelines on the Premises License, that’s fine. We just need the payment.”

“Fair enough, please could you send the Premises License, we don’t have a copy.”

We didn't have a copy because, although there were about fifty ring binder folders in the little office, there had been a major situation.

Someone must have taken a high powered weapon, let’s say a military assault rifle, and blasted the ring binder files at close range. The paperwork was a mess.

So when the Premises License arrived, there were some interesting details on it.

We were allowed to play live music every day apart from Sunday and we must stop the live music by 11pm.

We wouldn't be needing that piece of permission. Just because we were a vegetarian restaurant, it didn't mean that we would have a hairy geezer in the corner strumming his twenty three quid guitar and singing Blowin’ In The Wind.

And, we were allowed to open every day and serve alcohol. Useful.

And one other thing. From Monday to Saturday we were allowed to open and serve alcohol until one in the morning.

Most restaurant would have been chuffed with this, but we weren’t. You see, we would be working in the restaurant, unlike a lot of restaurant owners. So no way did we want to still be working at one in the morning when we’d been there since eight in the morning.

So from day one we put a procedure in place. If it got to 11pm and a diner asked for another bottle of wine, we told them that we weren't allowed to serve alcohol after 11pm due to the residential flats above us. We never used that 1am license.

We saw it like this.

Lets say a bottle of wine costs us £8 to buy in, and we sell it for £25.

But immediately take off a £5 for VAT. So we’re left with £20.

Now take off the cost of the wine, we’re down to £12.

Next, lop off £6 for, staff, water, rent, electric, telephone, insurance, council tax, rent, refuse collection, laundry and we’re left with £6.

So there is absolutely no point keeping the restaurant open another hour for £6. When you take into account another hours wages, lighting and heating, it’s not worth it.

“But what about customer satisfaction?”

Sorry Jim and Jean, we’re tired, our team are tired, and some of the team have another 45 minutes on the tube before they get home. Which means they’ll probably fall into bed by 1am. And selling you that extra bottle of wine will probably result in a financial loss. So what about our satisfaction Jim and Jean? Would the supermarket stay open for another hour while you browse the aisles Jim?

Get yourself a bottle of plonk on the way home.

An example of a bottle of wine.

And another thing. We finally had a full team who were ready and waiting to start working. They were like tethered Pit Bulls, straining on their chains to get to that Bonio treat.

When we opened the restaurant in York we just weren't ready. There was Donna, myself and Our Keanu. We got hammered, customers were lined up out of the door, it was so difficult.

But not this time, no no no. Donna had a restaurant manager and three waiters. Front of house were ready.

In the kitchen there would be myself and Lozza. And fortunately, a young guy from Leeds had moved to London. He used to eat in our York restaurant and heard that we were opening in London, so he asked for a job.

We won’t give his real name as he was a bit wild back then, and now he isn't, so lets call him Phil. And we had a kitchen porter also, so we were ready.

But before we opened we needed to do lots behind the scenes tasks, staff training, menu tasting, wine tasting, stocking the fridges, setting the dining room and making sure the toilets had toilet rolls.

We had to sort out menu pricing and wine pricing. How much should we charge for coffee, do we add service charge?

These little bitty tasks had been pecking our heads for a while now, they needed attention.

So join us next week for more fun and joy.

Thanks for reading, Donna and Andrew.