Happy? Damn right we’re happy. We’re happy to be alive, and it’s not just because of Covid. It’s because (as you may have already noticed in the news the past few years), this has ALWAYS been a brutal business. Look, there are good cooks everywhere. Mitch and Steve were good cooks, and had decades of industry experience as cooks, chefs, sous chefs, and Executive Chefs. But it’s a quantum leap from being kitchen warhorses to operating a restaurant, and yup, we fell right into that “Hey! Let’s open a restaurant” rabbit hole.
The rabbit hole. Yeah. Back in 2000, Cyn Gerdes, who founded a $14M group of indie Twin Cities toy stores in 1982, met and married a chef called Mitch. This imposing, 6’4” 270-lb man was charismatic, creative, and talented enough at his craft to win multiple awards while working at notable restaurants in the area. He was also wild, untamed, and unafraid of anything. The wild part got his Executive Chef ass fired numerous times, though. So one day when Mitch went home, plopped on the sofa (which moved 3” whenever his hefty body dropped into the cushions), and declared, “Goddammit, I’m done with this business.”
“Lose another job?” Gerdes asked kindly (really! Cyn adored Mitch no matter what). “Yup, but I can’t blame them…the restaurant was sold, and every new owner has EVERY right to immediately replace the team. I’m just tired of winning awards for them and then having to move on.”
“Well, why don’t you just open your own place?” she said, trying to keep up his spirits because situations like this often caused Mitch —who was bipolar and suffered from bouts of depression— to quickly spiral downward. By this time, Cyn had already learned that that kindness and gentle understanding would avoid another trip to the emergency room. Vs all the “WTFs?!” she would exclaim earlier in their relationship.
“Cyn, I know how to cook, but I don’t know jackshit about running a business,” he said between mega size gulps of red wine (an entirely different upcoming True Story from Hell). “Ah, but that’s where I come in!” Cyn happily exclaimed. “What if I help you open a restaurant? I’ll get all the business admin end of things set up and you can run the kitchen. We can do this, Mitch! Besides, how hard can it be?”
“HOW HARD CAN IT BE?” Let that critical comment sink in. Cyn planned on helping out for “the first few months,” but had NO idea just how hard it is to run the back end of a restaurant’s operations. Marketing. Legal. Insurance. Invoices. Payroll. Signs. Trademarks. Copyrights. Worker’s Comp. Liquor License. Regulatory compliance. Secretary of State updates. W4’s. Point of Sale systems. Daily checkouts. Bank deposits. By the end of the first 3 months, Cyn realized her future would require 80 hour workweeks running both her toy stores (Creative Kidstuff) as well as Mitch’s new baby (Hell’s Kitchen), so she sold the former and signed up for a lifetime in hell.
And that Life in Hell doesn’t even include the leg-shattering accident Mitch had when the restaurant was only 3 weeks old, but that’s another future True Story from Hell. Regardless, it’s imperative you know how damn HAPPY we are to still be around 20 years later. Under any circumstances, ANY restaurant would be happy to still be standing, but in our case, we should say happy AND genuinely astonished.
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