Abandon Ship!!

The Titanic has hit the iceberg and she is sinking fast!

There was a tiny gleam of hope for about 2-3 hours last week and then poof!! All gone! The owner truly has no clue how to run a restaurant.

• The head chef quit as well as two other main "people" that have been at the restaurant forever. Now the guy running the kitchen has little experience and keeps horrible records, not to mention, he's not that great of a chef.
  
• Still no manager to run operations.
• The "head server" is now writing the server/bartender schedules and doing the liquor orders. He let me know that we were out of a few different liquors and that we wouldn't be getting them in anytime soon because the liquor supplier hasn't been paid.
• Oh... did I mention that there are only 35 wine glasses in a restaurant that can seat 300+ guests and another 200+ in our venue. 35!! I had a group of 75-100 call about a wine and appetizers party... yeah right! "He" says "we'll rent more if we need them". IDIOT!!

So, now.... I have "resigned" too. There's no point to sticking it out. Truly, "He" has no bleeping clue how to run a restaurant. Say la vie!!

Off to bigger and better...

I have an interview for week at a local country club to be their event planner. I'm excited and curious about this position. Hopefully it'll be something fabulous that "fits" with me and visa versa. I also have two other possible opportunities to investigate this week. So, wish me luck!!

I'll keep you posted!

Kitchen Nightmares in Denver

Gordon Ramsey, Help!!

About a month and a half ago, I landed a job at a local restaurant as the Director of Marketing and Events... are you impressed? I was sold the vision, the potential, and the endless possibilities of this new exciting opportunity. Well... plluugh to that! Couldn't be further from reality.

The owner of this restaurant, we'll call him "He", was originally the silent partner, but due to the asinine behavior of the active partner, "Y", "He" took over. The reputation of this restaurant is in the toilet because of "Y". On the flip side, "He" is an incredibly successful businessman that owns several software companies around the world with connections any self made millionaire would envy. The catch is.... he has very little knowledge about how to run a restaurant.

He fired the manager that hired me... the man that HE hired to turn this disaster of a restaurant around; hence the Kitchen Nightmares reference. Then, the ONLY other manager quit due to all the chaos!! His last day was Saturday. So, we have nobody to run the restaurant at this moment. The head chef, sous chef, and cooks are all out interviewing for jobs elsewhere. I know that the head chef and sous chef both have an offer on the table... so we'll see.

It has taken me 6 weeks to nail down a banquet menu for this place simply because it's taken that long to sit down with the head chef. Don't even get me started on the restaurant's website! Ugh! As I've been out "marketing" the new vision of this place (aka lying my ass off), potential clients often ask if I can send them a menu, or a banquet menu with our policies, or if they can get our banquet menu from our website... the answer to all of the above is NO!

Oh! Did I mention the comment from our head chef last week that Sysco Foods has " cut us off" because we haven't paid our bill? Oh yeah... that was good for a belly chuckle.

Oh! And we only have 3 servers. Funny right! I mean, are you kidding me?

So... with that very brief insight into my new job... you can only imagine how confident I am booking events for 50 - 100 guests for this restaurant. We'll see how it goes. In anticipation of the day I show up to work to find a "business closed" sign on the door, I am, of course, open to any other opportunities that may come my way.

Though the direction, stability, and future of this restaurant are completely unknown... One thing is for sure! It provides me continuous humor and sometimes the absurdity of the whole thing has me laughing so hard I have to wipe my eyes.

By the way... last week, the fleeing manager assured me that Mr. Owner will give us some notice that he's shutting the restaurant down. However, in the case that I do go to work and discover that "Business Closed" sign, I'm keeping good records of the events I'm booking so I can call them on my way to happy hour to let them know that... "So sorry to tell you that your event has been canceled because the restaurant has shut down."

I'm not even sure Gordon Ramsey can fix this mess!!

Keep you posted...