The End of An Era

For a period of time, as we looked around for an opportunity to grow our restaurant empire, we worked hard on our business plan. A key element of this plan is the ”Vision Statement.” The Vision Statement is comprised of three parts. The Purpose – the star we follow; the Mission – the mountain we intend to climb; our Values - the guideposts we use to find our way. When we did the work on writing the values statements, “Striving” rose to the top of the list. Janet will never say, ”That’s good enough for who it’s for” and she will never settle for anything but the best ingredients. We are always working on improving our service and we spend every spare dime to get what is needed to improve restaurant operations. If we hire somebody who hopes to ”just get by” they simply do not fit in and soon drift away. This all sounds great until we learn that the shadow side of striving is overreaching. It happens.It happened with The Table. We held back nothing, but simply could not pull it together. We started with a budget of $600,000. We had $200,000 and needed to come up with an additional $400k. We did it. We raised the $400,000 but the final estimates totaled $1,000,000. We were $400,000 short. All of the design work had been completed. Building permits were ready to issue. Contracts were ready to sign. The stress was enormous. It began to feel like we were pushing a large rock uphill and our angel was on the other side pushing back. We had held back nothing in our attempt to achieve the objective of opening The Table. Almost a year of work and a six-figure investment, but we had to walk away. It was the right decision.As you can imagine, there are innumerable stories inside the macro-story outlined here. None of these change the bottom line: we made the right decision. Perhaps if we had anticipated the process differently or more accurately estimated the costs we would have produced a different outcome. But the way events unfolded cannot be changed. And when it didn’t come together, and time clicked on, the risk curve, which was steep enough already, went vertical. We didn’t want to be one of those stories.In the words of Elder Joseph Bracket who wrote the song “Simple Gifts:”

'Tis the gift to be simple,'Tis the gift to be free'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,And when we find ourselves in the place just right,'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

Now it feels like we have been training with leg-weights on. Even while we work on building the new restrooms and expanding the kitchen we find a little extra spring in our step. We owe a debt of gratitude to so many of you for your support and encouragement. We are around a bit more than we thought we would be – and that is a good thing – so we hope to see you on your next visit.