One of my dreams is shortly going to become a reality, I always wanted to own my own restaurant, and in a few weeks "CHARACTERS" bar and restaurant will open it's doors. When I was 14 years old I started to work in a steakhouse called the Salt & Pepper, it was some of the greatest years of my life. I worked for a greek man named Andrew who became like a second father to me, he is unfortunately not on this earth anymore to see my dream come to life, but I hope that from Heaven he is looking down (with Mom and Dad) and is proud of me and sends me all the luck we are going to need. I fondly remember starting off as a shy waitress but soon I realised that in this business your personality had to shine and I came out of my shell and became the english/afrikaner/greek waitress, I think he fired me at least 50 times in the years I worked for him as we both had very strong personalities, but one of us always came back to the other only to start all over again. Eventually I was his right hand person and was entrusted with sometimes running the whole show. We opened a second branch and this little restaurant became very succesful and the main thing I learnt was just as important as good food is great service (sometimes more important). I hope that our place lives up to the excellence he taught me.
So how after all these years did it eventually happen, well like most things in life, unplanned and completely by mistake, at the start of this I had very little thought that I would be involved to the degree that I now am, my idea was to do this to aid someone that meant a lot to me, but as fate would have it, their problems got sorted out and I decided to continue with the venture with a very good friend and someone with the same dream as me. And so "CHARACTERS" was born. After much negotiation (of which my current boss Adam would be proud) a deal was struck and we had signed the lease. So here we were, so many years had past since I was involved in this type of business, was I and am I capable of making it work???? On the outside everything looked so easy, well how wrong I was (as usual)! So let's have a look at what we were dealing with....................
Once we had the keys we got to have a closer look at what we were dealing with in the "shop" as we like to call it. The filth was indescribable, from the floor that u stuck to as u walked on it, to the pots and dishes that still had food in them although the place had been standing empty for over two months, the kitchen had a oily film from top to bottom, the stoves, toasters, and walk in fridge were so full of dirt it was hard to believe that food was ever served from there, let alone that there were no law suits for food poisining, I am sure whoever ate there would be absolutely shocked if they had to see where their food came from. Well there was at least one bunch of happy campers the 100's of bugs and cockroaches that had now made it their home. So this was not going to be just a case of moving in and setting up shop, there was a major clean up to be conducted and some renovations to be made.
So on went the rubber gloves to save the manicured nails, well that lasted all of 10 minutes, it is not easy to clean with those horrid things on, we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and it looked like a never ending job, every cupboard you opened or nook and cranny you came across had a new challenge. Weeks passed and it looked like we were never going to get there, but we were and are determined to make it spotless and only to open once it is perfect, so the opening would not happen as quickly as we thought. Along with the cleaning came the decisions of colours, menus, layout, staff, clothing, etc etc etc, everyday new things came to mind that needed to be done. We decided to build a bar and so that mess also began, making one feel like all the cleaning you had already done was just a waste of time as layers of dust from the building started to appear, this meant that everything we had already cleaned would just have to be cleaned again............grrrrrrrrrrrrr, let's just say I wish my Mom was still here, this was the kind of thing she was great with and even in her older age she would have outshone and outworked all of us put together, but now we were on our own. So let us leave the builder to build and we would work on other things in the meantime.
So let's get moving on the colours we decide, we started off with a fugly (yes I meant it to be spelt like that) orange and blue, our choice of colours were decided - Black, Silver (or Grey) with a dash of red (apparently the red makes people want to eat - let's hope so). We got going on the painting, of ofcourse to save money we decided a great way would be to do this ourselves (again maybe not the brightest idea), three days of bending and stretching, waking up hardly able to move and painting myself more than the walls, but at the end you stand back and admire your work, overlooking the bad spots and focusing on what looks good. I overcame my fear of heights eventually getting right to the top of the ladder and impressed with my acrobatic skills on it. Wisely Tim decided we get a professional to do the ceiling, else it might have looked like a blotched job at the rate we were going.
Painting accomplished, now we are ready to open right, ohhhhhhh no WRONG, let me give you a short list of what we still needed to accomplish, licenses to get, not just one, to open this type of business you need a liquor license, a business license, a entertainment license, a music license, the list is endless and the red tape that goes along with it the same, so much for wanting entrepeneurs to open their own businesses they make it very hard. Then we need to get a jukebox, a pool table, a ciggie machine, a ATM, a credit card machine, wi-fi access, fire inspection, pest control, meeting with suppliers, and so the list continued and we had not even started on the menus as yet. And at the same time we are keeping our normal 9 to 5 jobs, so basically we are working 24/7 at the moment. Anyway got to go now as I have a bar menu to do today, flyers to be made, cleaning to be done, jukebox being put in, again the list is endless. What you can be assured of is that at the end of this all, you will be welcomed into our CLEAN, funky, friendly, place and I will surely be having the first glass of "CHARACTERS" wine to celebrate and then probably fall into bed with exhaustion. The next blog will show you what we have accomplished and the new look, remember this horrid picture below and wait for the new look. Looking forward to seeing you all there.
