It's noon on Sunday morning and I'm sitting on the couch watching the rain with my cat on the left and my dog on the right of me. Even though I love to work, it's quite nice to be relaxing after a very long first week.
After a busy week of stocking the fridge with various prep items (pastry cream, scones, brioche dough, etc.), it's finally here, our first day open. It's the first time in a long while that I've been up at 4:45am and I can tell you for sure I'm not a morning person, which I suppose will make for an interesting life I've chosen.
By 7am the case is full and me and my assistant baker are whizzing around in our minimally organized kitchen trying to keep up with a list that keeps growing every time we finish something.
By 10am we start on the sandwiches, which neither me nor my baker have ever done en masse. We decide to do only half that first day and see how it goes. We're working at the speed of light, and get a little buzz from all the excitement. Meanwhile, my husband's running the front with one of our barista's that we've barely trained. We're out of cinnamon brioche and blackberry oat scones so we quickly pop a few more in the oven. We're trying to keep a list of things to do and buy so we can be better in the future. It's like we have all the planning we've done, plus what's actually happening, plus what we'd like to do in the future all whirling around in our heads at the same time. It's nearly impossible to keep it all straight and not overbake the brownies.
By noon we've already worked a full 8 hour day, but it doesn't stop. We sold out of sandwiches by 11:30am so that was that. The bell on the door keeps clanging. We're whipping up new types of cookies over and over and watching our very inconsistent oven like a hawk. I'm helping out in the retail section when the line gets long. Our friends are stopping by so we're trying to chat with them. All in all everybody is so happy that we're FINALLY OPEN and they want to chat with us about what we're going to offer in the future.
By mid-afternoon, I sigh that I still have 4-1/2 hours to go and even more new employees to train. On very little energy, it's super tough to be a strong leader, but we power through it and keep saying, "once things settle down we'll do THIS or THAT". It will have to do for now.
At the end of the day, my husband runs the sales report and shows me the total. It was a very successful opening day, and we hug each other, mostly holding each other up. We kiss and both agree that Sugar will be a success. After such a long haul it's great to think that we are finally able to enjoy the community of people, employees and customers we've worked so hard to create. It feels good to be home again.