I’ve been watching the DJIA slip to -500 points today as Bernake and Bush spoke to prevent just that from happening. Everyone in the news is talking about the economy is going to go down even more. In my mind though, I wonder how much of our buying behavior in consumer goods will decline in the next 12-36 months. It’s unrealistic to expect that US consumers will just stop buying goods altogether, yet the people selling off are signaling that this is what they expect. Additionally, despite all the news about the stock sell-off, no one ever mentions that an equal number of buyers are getting stocks on the cheap. It’s not a market after all without sellers and buyers at the same time.

In order to try to foresee what companies will do fine during these times, it’s important to take a look at what consumer behavior will be in these times. What are the items that we won’t stop buying or will buy more of because of this slowdown? Will we eat out less? Will we go to Starbucks less? Will we buy less presents for the holiday season? Historically, one would expect that companies like Walmart (a discount goods seller) would do well in these times, yet even Walmart’s stock price is dropping. Is that a reasonable sell-off?

Identifying individual companies are secondary to identifying the sectors/industries first. I would expect that restaurants will suffer, for example. But if restaurants suffer, and assuming we all still have to eat, then that should push people towards grocery stores, right? Which stores are doing well? Trader Joes? Whole Foods? Safeway? I’ve noticed that Safeway has made a lot of changes to their store to put them at par with the look and feel of a Whole Foods Market, yet without the pretension and with familiar brands. I would think Safeway is worth a look. I think ‘joe-six-packs’ would stop buying organic if forced to choose between eating regular produce versus not eating at all.

One area that’s obviously hit hard is the financial sector. However, we should take a look at companies here that may fare better than others. One set of companies that may come out ahead once the economy does better are the credit card companies. During these times, people will be using their credit cards more because of lack of cash. Each transaction equates to revenue for a Visa, Mastercard, or an American Express. Then, when people payback their debts, the interest rates are additional revenue. In the case of Visa and Mastercard, the banks issuing the card get that revenue, but in the case of American Express, that revenue goes directly to the company. Furthermore, AMEX issues cards to higher income folks, so the likelihood of default may be lower. It’s probably worth a look to see how far AMEX has fallen in the last few weeks, as the fall may not be necessarily warranted.

Obviously, residential developers are not going to do well in these times. People are having difficulties with finding loans already, and there’s a ton of foreclosed inventory out there. People who wanted to move out may not be able to buy homes now. Instead, these folks may decide to upgrade/remodel their homes. Will that mean that Home Depot and Lowes will do well? Or is that extra spending that people will just stay away from completely? If it’s the former, can we expect that floor and carpet manufacturers will do well? How about furniture and kitchen stores (Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma)?

A few companies I will be thinking about in the next weeks:
1) safeway
2) american express
3) yum brands (taco bell, pizza hut, KFC)
4) starbucks
5) pfizer
6) genentech

any others come to mind?

Ok, get a life…why were people waiting 2 days in line in front of the Apple store for the new iPhones, when they could have walked up easily to an AT&T store and bought the exact same thing (and probably have it hooked up before leaving the store). Why must you buy it from the Apple store and waste two days of your life. Go volunteer if you don’t have a job. Oh, and thanks for buying…my IRA loves you.

I hate stupid ignorant people. Educate yourself please.

I’m reading reviews on Yelp and started reading reviews for 3 Bees Coffee, which is around the corner from us. In it, a bunch of Yelpers (at least 3) give them 5 stars for being a neighborhood coffeeshop, not being Starbucks, and for serving Torrefazione Italia coffee.

HELLO…Torrefazione got bought out by Starbucks like 10 years ago. So you’re supporting the same company. Of course on the Torrefazione website, they say “division of Seattle Coffee Company” — which if you search Seattle Coffee Company, it is the same as Seattle’s Best — which of course got bought out by Starbucks a few years ago. So yeah, they’re all in the same family.

Let me say though, I ain’t mad at anyone for supporting Starbucks. I like Starbucks, and I still do go to Starbucks at times. But don’t be ignorant and claim that you’re supporting neighborhood cafes and not starbucks in the same sentence that you’re touting Torrefazione Italia. Educate yourself first, stupid Yelpers.

I’m trying to get more things done more efficiently as of late. I feel like there’s so many projects, to-dos, goals, and objectives that I need to accomplish, yet I don’t have the time and energy sometimes to work on all of them. Lately, I’ve been on a hunt for tips and tools to do things better. Part of looking for tips and tools, of course, is identifying what it is I need and assessing where I fall short.

I know I procrastinate a lot. Part of the procrastination is that there’s always something else more fun to do. But recently, I’ve decided to list down 3 things each morning that I will accomplish before doing anything else. This is working for me now since my mornings are fairly open. The list of 3 items vary each day, and it can be as simple as ‘call so-and-so’ or ‘go for a run’, or it can be as long and tedious as ‘create a new wraps menu’. The latter happens when I’ve procrastinated on something long enough that it really, really has to be done that day. So far this has been working for me because I’m creating ‘pain’ before I can achieve the ‘pleasure’ of starting the day.

Another area that I’ve needed to improve is remembering to-dos, meetings, and appointments. I have a Treo, so it’s a little dumb of me not to be able to track these things when it’s as simple as typing it into the phone. However, there are times when I remember to-dos when I’m not quite available to type — like while driving. I found this website called jott.com where I can call and leave a message for myself or anyone else that I’ve previously made into a contact (like Cloudnihne), and my message is transcribed into a text message and/or an email, and the message is sent to me either or both ways. It even allows me to create a reminder so it will email/text me again at a later time. Interestingly, at first I used it 3 or 4 times a day; I’d remember something and immediately Jott it through my phone, but now I simply actually jot it down in my phone the first time I think about it so that I don’t have to Jott it later when I’m driving. See, it’s working already. Another interesting fact — I was telling my mom about this service (she’s forgetful too), and she says she does this already, by calling her home voice mail and leaving messages for herself that she will check later when she gets home.

Speaking of the phone…when I first got the Treo, I set it up to grab my email as soon as it came in. I was constantly looking at my phone for people’s messages. It was great. I realized though that I didn’t really like responding to people while I was on my treo, especially if it required a long message. Then later on, when I had time to email people back, I would forget that I had emails I needed to respond to. The solution — I switched my phone to check email only 3 times a day. That way, I can still see email if I’m away from the computer, but I can also set aside time to review all the emails at once rather than every other minute. I’ve also moved away from Yahoo email and I’m currently moving actively towards Gmail more. Given that I’ve had Yahoo mail since 1997 or even earlier (when did they start), I use that email address for most important accounts. To make the switch a little more manageable, I’m just forwarding all my Yahoo mail to Gmail, and also only downloading email from Gmail instead of from both. So Gmail becomes a funnel for all the email I receive and when I sit in front of a computer, I can check it all from Gmail. Even more useful, Gmail doesn’t mark it “read” just because I downloaded the email. I also downloaded a firefox extension for gmail called Getting Things Done that allows me to do a better job of labeling email for to-dos, projects, etc. It’s all part of a time/action management concept from a book of the same name.

There’s a cool blog called Lifehacker.com that writes about tips and tools just for this very thing, and I like finding new ways to get more things done with less time. Incidentally, and ironically, staying up until 3:30am is probably not a good tip.

I’m paying for the account, I might as well write something, right?

Yesterday was officially the 1 year anniversary since that first sunday that we opened the cafe. As I’ve told many people, it’s been a fun yet difficult road, full of learning throughout. It took us more than 6 months to get our beer and wine, and it’s taking us almost as long to see its promise fulfilled. I’d like to see the cafe turn more into a lounge, a place where people hang out before and after the movies late at night. I’ve found though that San Mateo’s not really a late-night town. People seem to be asleep by 10pm. At least downtown is fairly abandoned by then. I’m glad though that we’ve been flexible enough to make changes as necessary. I realize that we need to attract that all-important lunch crowd, since we can’t rely on the movie crowd to keep us afloat. This week, we’re introducing wrap sandwiches. Not exactly Italian, but what the heck. Neither is tea, chai, or iced lemon loaves. I’ll simply call it ‘fusion’ like all the other restaurants that need to deviate or modernize their menus.

I’m looking forward to the 1 year anniversary party this saturday. I wish all the people that have helped us out all year can be there. It would be great to see the artists, the performers, the suppliers, and the regular customers so we can thank them in person. There’s always the 5-year anniversary anyway, and I imagine that will be bigger.

That’s right. Howard Schultz was sitting back relaxing already, half-retired maybe. One year later, he’s forced back to being the CEO of Starbucks because they haven’t been doing well.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) announced on Monday the immediate return of founder Howard Schultz as chief executive and the slowing of an aggressive U.S. expansion in a shake-up that sent its battered shares up nearly 7 percent.

The move marks the return to daily management of the well-liked chairman, who is seen as the conscience of the company after he warned a year ago that Starbucks was losing its way.

Investors have nearly halved the value of the world’s biggest coffee chain to $13 billion in the last year in the midst of weak U.S. sales growth and encroachment by competitors.

Bacio Cafe opened up a year ago. Coincidence?

=)

New year sometimes means new beginnings, so I’m restarting blogging. I just recently made use of RSS readers, so I’m beginning to enjoy reading posts again. For awhile there, I was simply too lazy to visit everyone’s sites, so I became lazy to post as well.

This time last year, I had a big project just beginning — the cafe. Even though it’s off the ground, I’ve decided to focus on it with a bit more attention. I’m leaving my full-time job in a week and a half. Yes, scary. In one sense, I feel good about leaving and putting my attention on the cafe, since it really deserves and needs the full attention. On the other hand, I have regrets in not quitting outright this time last year. In hindsight I realize I’m exactly where I was last year in terms of not having any job satisfaction and wanting to leave, so I didn’t gain anything new out of that full-time job except an extra year of prolonging the inevitable. The scary part of course is the lack of short-term income and not having that safety net underneath in case things don’t work out. Even more worrisome for me, is that I have no definitive plan outside of the cafe, just ideas on what to do next — will I look for a job and if so, what kind?; will I open up a second cafe, and what location and where will I get the money?; or will I start something new?

This last year was quite busy. I felt like I was always putting things off for the sake of the cafe or for work. This year I plan/need to focus on prioritizing some of those aspects of my life that I put off. I need to get back into a regular workout schedule and train for something in the future. The only thing I did last year was the Tour de Peninsula, and I trained almost zero hours on the bike for it. I need to find an April half marathon and an August century. (any ideas?) I also want to cook at home more often — and inviting people to come over and eat with us. I realized that although I’ve lived here for 3+ years and Bern’s lived here for over a year, there are some close friends who’ve never been here. Eating at home helps us out too because it should be a lot cheaper than eating out. We probably ate out 15 days of each month last year with the other nights divided between eating at the cafe or eating at home. That’s a ton of money of which we’ll have less this year. Gladly, Bern’s bought us a Wii for Xmas that will make for some fun group nights.

One area that I want to improve this year (but will probably take much longer) is to find a balance between routing and “off-the-cuff”-ness. Let me explain. I am not a routine kind of person. I hate it. Methodical I am not. I like doing things differently the second time around. I realize (I’ve always kinda known, actually) that routine has its place in my life. For one, pushing for consistency at the cafe requires everyone to follow the same routine. I’ve established many of those routines already, but I need to be better at pushing the employees to follow them and I also need to be better at following them myself. At home, without routines, a lot of needed to-dos just don’t get done. The house isn’t clean in any regular fashion. The mail isn’t sorted or even read. The grocery items don’t get cooked and must be thrown away. By implementing some routines — dishes every night, vacuuming every week, eating at the table every day (instead of the couch, which invariable makes for the dining table being a utility table), etc. — then life should be humming. We’ll see how long this lasts or if it even starts. Routine in working out will make for a more even training schedule as well, instead of the start-stops that will lead to injury in my old age. I’m hoping too that this new found affair with routine will make for simplifying life when babies come at some point in the future. At the least, maybe it will mean regular blog posts.

So how does one go about accomplishing such a change? No more scrabulous. Yes, that’s right. I began turning down scrabulous games. Takes way too much time when you have 20 games going on at once. I’m starting to lose games anyway — I’ll quit while I’m ahead on my win/loss column. Naturally, having no money and no job will help out in the regular workouts and regular cooking/cleaning — at least theoretically. And being at the cafe more often will help me see the need and implement/enforce more of the routines for better consistency.

So there’s the first post for the year — just a day late — now I’ve gotta get to work since I only have 8 more days left.

I guess this NY Times article about the plight of Silicon Valley’s millionaires has been spreading around the blogging circles. Bern just told me Gary posted about this (but I can’t read his blog). A friend emailed me the link this morning and I started reading it in the car. Ironically, I was watching the Today Show while getting ready and saw the weather report map with Kansas City in the middle and I thought to myself, “Kansas City was nice when I visited there, lots of fountains, good BBQ, and a pretty downtown. Maybe we can move there and simplify our life.” Recently, with juggling the full-time job and the cafe, trying to spend time with family and friends, trying to keep the house clean and eating at home, trying to keep on the bike and workout (non)-routine, and still finding time to spend relaxing and chilling, a lot from this article definitely resonated and made me a bit depressed. Mind you, I’m in no means close to where these people are. My nest egg is non existent, I’m not retiring any time soon, and I don’t worry about how to afford the boat slip AND the boat cleaner for my yacht. Nonetheless, trying to keep up with the Joneses, as they say, in the Bay Area makes one lose a lot of perspective on what it means to be successful and ‘rich’ and most importantly, happy.

I’ve pulled out the quotes that resonated with me and summarizes what the article said to me.

• “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”
• “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”
• “I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said.
• “We could move,” Mr. Milletti said. “But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.”
• “You see how much money you have in the bank,” Mr. Koblas, the computer programmer, said, “and your eyes get really big.” He described it as “upsizing your life to your cash flow.”
• “You look around,” Mr. Barbagallo said, “and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.”
• To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.
• “Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.
• “You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”

At the end, I feel no pity whatsoever for these people as I don’t feel pity for my plight as well. I understand that I’m more well off than the overwhelming majority of the world and even the US. I have a home and a business. My family is healthy and most of us is doing just as well, if not better. My dilemma, many would consider, is a ‘happy problem’ in that I need to choose between a full-time job that pays me too well to leave it and my business that I would enjoy doing but not paying me nearly as much. Some would kill for the options. But these are similar ‘happy problems’ described in this article, albeit on a large scale. I understand all this. What strikes me as sad is that I am not, nor are they, yet willing to choose. I’m still chasing the Joneses and it’s definitely hard not to get caught up and give chase. It’s like we’ve all acknowledged the problem, but we’re too hooked to quit it. Sadly, it will take an ‘intervention’ for us to go into rehab — what’s that intervention going to be? A dead friend or family member who dies of a heart attack chasing the dream? Or one diagnosed with cancer with less than a year to live his/her life and not yet taken the time to enjoy ‘the more important’ things? Or one who decides to resort to drugs or crime to achieve that ‘dream’ only to be rebuffed later by going to prison? It’s going to happen inevitably but will you, or I, just continue to wait until it does before we do something different and stop complaining of this happy problem.

Thank you. Thank you for making the 49ers my team to watch and cheer for in the last 23 years. It was because of you that the 49ers were THE team to watch when I first came here from the Philippines. Naturally, as I was learning the game, I learned it from you. I learned to appreciate the West Coast offense, the scripting of the first 15 or 25 plays, the pass first, run second philosophy, the finesse, and the short drop back and quick pass. Ironically, it was less than a week ago that my buddies and I were splitting up our season tickets for the upcoming year, and we argued briefly about Joe Montana and his not-as-strong arm. I know that he didn’t have the super bombs that Jeff Kemp threw to Jerry Rice, but you knew that too and why it was all about the short pass and quick release. That’s why you and the 49ers made it necessary to make up the acronym YACs. Thank you too for sticking up for Eddie D. when it seemed like no one else would, and leaving the York’s to fend for themselves. Sure, it meant some ugly years recently, but that’s ok, Principle matters. Thanks for showing up to Jerry Rice’s retirement ceremony last season when I got to see you for the last time. It was great to know you and Jerry were there to see the 49ers coming back to life, defeating the Seahawks in a very exciting game. Thank you.

- A fan

Life magazine published its first issue in 1936, amidst the Great Depression in the US and brooding turmoil in Europe as Hitler takes control. By this time, the Chinese have been in the US for almost 100 years. The Japanese were also in the picture as the second group of Asians that came to SF. This is the height of anti-Asian sentiment too since the Depression has caused Congress to pass laws against Asian immigration and miscegenation. Filipinos are coming by the hundreds since the Philippines is under colonial rule of the US, hence Filipinos are not considered ‘foreign’ immigrants. (The racism is just as bad anyway.)

In that first issue, they had a spread about a Chinese Catholic School in San Francisco. It’s interesting to note the perception of Life’s editors back in 1936.

Seems like everyone’s on hiatus and not too many people are keeping up to date on their supposed daily blogs. Or people have changed their URLs and I’m too lazy to figure out where people went. Anyway, I thought I shouldn’t complain and add to the lack of posts at the same time, so I decided to give it a shot.

I just got done watching Knocked Up, third movie in the last couple of weeks, eighth if you count DVDs. That’s completely amazing that I found the time to do that, but I know what’s suffering — sleep, which is why it’s 2am and I’m still posting. Surprisingly, I haven’t had as much coffee as I once did, although I had a bunch today. I now vary what I drink, from espressos to iced lattes to Italian cream sodas, which are awesome (try raspberry or strawberry).

The cafe is doing fine, although we’re still in the red. We’re almost pink. Working towards black. Maybe next month if we ever finally get that beer/wine license. I am looking forward to making sangrias in pitchers for people suffering from the heat. And affogatos using mango sorbetto and grappa wine. There’s music every week, but I find that not very many people come out for jazz. I’m sure if we had hyphy music playing, there’d be a gang of folks (literally and figuratively) lined up out the door. But alas, it’s not my steelo and I’d rather lose money than get shot. Imagine, 70 years ago, people probably got shot at jazz clubs. Funny. Will we have ‘upscale’ hyphy lounges in 2077?

Work-wise, I’m in a very ambiguous position. I’m still working part-time in my old job, kind of just being a utility player until my replacement comes in August. But there was an opening at the company that fit me well, and I applied for it, only to find out that the company froze hiring the day after I interviewed. So my boss and the hiring manager devised a plan for me to do the job that I was interviewing for but with me reporting to my current boss. If the company decides to open up hiring, then I’d have a leg up on competition. But if the company doesn’t do that, then in August I’m assed out. To make things even more cloudy, I got a call from another director in the company to tell me he has a temporary job for me if I want it, but it’s only for 5 months. So the dilemma here is:
1. Take temporary 5 month gig that’s full time, knowing it will end. OR
2. Continue with part-time status quo, waiting to see if a job opens for me that will be more ‘permanent’ but risk not having anything by August.

Of course I put permanent in quotes, because what’s a permanent job anyway but a job where you don’t know when you’ll be fired or laid off.

Working part time has its advantages, like being able to work on the cafe more. But it also has the drawback of not generating a whole lot of income. I think I’m going to be even more Jamaican and take both of the choices above with the difference of asking if #1 can be a part-time so together they would be full-time. That way, I can fall back on #1 if #2 doesn’t pan out and I can have the full-time salary I need. The director might not be kosher with that though since if #2 does pan out, he’ll have to find someone for 4 or less months left.

Then there’s real estate, which I still want to get into but I don’t feel comfortable pursuing at this moment because it’s just like starting a business all over again. And starting two businesses at once is difficult and more importantly, costly. So that’s in limbo for some time. That said, I’m going to market myself to immediate family and friends to help people out if needed. I might as well use this lockbox key since it’s sitting at my desk waiting to open up someone’s house.

I am also considering moving out of biotech, but it’s very hard. Now that I spend more time at the cafe, I find that I actually miss the science, the innovation, and the technology. I miss talking to people about cool stuff that solves bad things like cancer or alzheimers. Of course working for a facebook.com or a cafepress.com would be quite cool as well, and those I’m definitely interested in, but I’m not finding tons of luck applying there. Maybe I need to send them my resume, huh? That’s this week’s goal, I swear.

The great thing about being completely busy and stressed is that I’ve lost some pounds without having to work out or diet. The diet comes in the form of not eating because I forget I’m hungry, but I’ll take whatever works. I’ve been biking here and there with Bern, but I’m not as consistent.

If there’s one thing I can say now about owning a business though is that time is not as free as I imagined. It’s hard to plan things out completely for the business because things pop up and just need to get done. So I end up being a slave to the needs of the cafe, which is actually no different from being a slave to the company I work for, and this definitely beats that, but it was still an interesting note for me. One thing I miss is having a weekend. You know how you feel good when Friday rolls around cause you don’t have to go to work for two days. I don’t have that feeling anymore. But the good side is that I don’t have that bad monday feeling that my weekend and fun have just ended and I’m back to the grind. Every day is work day, but I don’t have that dreary feeling. The only stress I have is when people (my employees) don’t do the work I need them to do and I feel like things are falling apart. But that’s mainly because I hate giving up control and I have a hard time delegating, something I am working on now. So yeah, no feeling of anything letting up, which makes it difficult to plan a break or a night out. But like work before, I need to force myself to take a break or else I never will. I’m looking forward to me and Bern’s trip to NY in September. Ready or not, the cafe will have to do without me for a few days.

One area I feel bad about is what I’m putting Bern and specifically my new marriage through. Not that things are bad, actually working with Bern is pretty good. Not too many arguments and fights there. About as many as we probably had while planning a wedding. But I think we’re missing out on that newlywed feeling, if there is such a thing, where you don’t do much but stare into each other’s eyes and silently wonder how things are going to be when you get out of that newlywed feeling. Nope, we’re smack dab out of that and getting things done. I suppose I could have made that last longer than two months before I got us into a new venture. But I’m restless and that wasn’t going to happen anyway. If it wasn’t a cafe, I’m sure something else would have come up that would put us into topsy-turvy. I’m just glad she hasn’t bolted back to single life with all this sh!t happening. (Thanks honey!!!)

Another cool thing about the cafe is being able to work with all these people I wouldn’t be working with in this capacity. Since I’m in corporate biotech world, I wouldn’t ever be able to work with my friends who are in other corporate worlds. But with the cafe, my friends and family are the investors, and by definition, they have a vested interest in this venture. So my mom does the accounting, which allows me to spend some time with her. Jerry, Ed, and my sister are somewhat involved with giving opinions. The only ones I don’t really get to talk to as much is my friend down in LA and my other friend who’s busy hustling other things.

So there you go, my thoughts in the last 40 minutes this late evening/early morning. Peace.

In this month’s issue of Inc Magazine (my favoritest magazine ever), they have a great article discussing the super rise and demise of Friendster (you know, the OG myspace). Well as it turns out, it was all because of Filipinos!!!

Meanwhile, scant attention was paid to Friendster’s users. Lunt remembers marveling sometime in early 2004 at how Friendster’s traffic would mysteriously spike at 2 a.m. Intrigued, he started looking at the site’s log. Oh, my God, he thought, everyone is from the Philippines. He worked backwards, looking for “patient zero”–the first American to “Friendster” a Filipino. He found Carmen Leilani De Jesus, a 32-year-old marketing consultant and part-time hypnotherapist from San Francisco, the 91st person to join Friendster. She was directly connected to Abrams as well as to dozens of Filipinos, who’d in turn connected to thousands more. In fact, more than half the site’s traffic was coming from Southeast Asia.

From a business standpoint, the revelation was devastating. Friendster, it turned out, was paying millions of dollars a year to attract eyeballs that were effectively worthless to its advertisers. Says Abrams: “We needed to make a tough decision”–either spin off the Asian business or become the No. 1 Filipino social network. But because the Filipino users had come by way of their American friends, there was no easy answer. If Friendster cut the cord to Asia–either by drastically cutting back on engineering resources or by kicking the Asian users off the site altogether–it risked damaging its American user base. The Carmens of the world might look for a less restrictive site.

Incidentally, I was #2832 on Friendster, and I didn’t add Filipinos in the Philippines until much later (when my cousins got in). But there’s a great tagline in that quote — “Friendster, the #1 Filipino Social Network, even better than the Cavitenos (or insert your barangay name here) annual picnic/reunion at the park.

The article is actually really cool as an expose into a failed dot com. The battle between engineering and marketing seems to be a root problem for many companies. Here’s the link to the full article.

Ms. Universe 2006 thinks to herself, “Orale, stop your crying, bitch, my boobs are bigger than yours!”

“What’s that smell, you didn’t wash your hair? I ain’t touching that hair even if I drop this $250,000 dollar crown.”

The Ms. Universe Pageant sees every young woman as an individual, we are not here to demean women and treat them as soulless dolls with no identity.

Finally! I can’t believe the tremendous effect of the Warriors games on our nightly sales. It seemed like the area was a ghost town during those nights, especially in the first round against the Mavs. Now that the playoffs are done, we’re seeing a pick up again. Last night was decent.

I’m looking for people to hire again. The supervisor at the cafe is taking a month-long vacation in June, and another is taking a week long one in the middle of June. A third is taking a week long trip to Vegas in July. And I’m still trying to work the cafe itself less so I can focus on the marketing and logistics. I posted again on craigslist, and I’m getting less responses from the last two times I posted. The quality of the people aren’t as good either.

Grand opening event is this Saturday. It’s going to be fun. I’m excited about having the trivia challenge and the coffee tasting. We’re bringing in 5 or 6 coffees from around the world so you can taste the differences between each kind. Isn’t everyone curious as to how coffee from Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia differ? Ok, well at least we have trivia challenge. And of course there is a coffee category. And Bern is hosting. Maybe.

What I’m really looking forward to is the live jazz. I like being an intimate venue for music I like. Heh! We’re working on live music every Saturday night, DJ music on Thursday nights, and a jam session on Wednesday nights. If I can get poetry on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, I think we’ll be doing well. I haven’t decided what to do for Fridays yet. Maybe I can have the jazz on Saturdays and the R&B/Reggae/Acid Jazz/Experimental (the non-traditional stuff) on Fridays. What do you think?

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a fairweather fan when it comes to the Warriors. Unlike the Niners who I’ll watch even when it’s painful, I haven’t stopped to watch a Warriors game until today. Sure I took a peek at the sports bar next to the cafe to see what the hollerin’ was about on each of the nights they played. But today I actually watched. From start to finish. And it was a damn good game. It had the dramatics — best player goes down, comes back hobbling, scored 11 straight points for his team, even a one-footed-falling-sideways-over-the-opponent’s-best-MVP three-pointer. So it goes, the Warriors beat the mighty Mavericks. With Snoop Dogg and Kate Hudson watching. Not together of course. Congratulations Golden State. After 16 years, WE win one!!!

Oh…the last time I watched a game live, it felt like this:
which was taken at the Arena box seats in 2002. Even box seats couldn’t get us excited at the time. If I remember correctly, Bern didn’t even want to go to this game, but I couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to go. As you can see in this album, we ended up just stealing things from the luxury box. If you look at the picture of Jerry sitting, he was watching the WB instead of the Warriors. Great fan he is.

We’ve been open for almost two months now under the ’soft open’ designation, and things are moving along. I haven’t done much in terms of marketing as we relied mostly on word of mouth, movie traffic, and some online links. In the meantime, we’ve made quite a number of changes all over the place. We’ve added and removed menu items, we’ve changed management a couple of times, and we’ve worked out many of the kinks that goes along with opening up a new cafe.

Starting tomorrow, we’re going to begin advertising in two local newspapers, the San Mateo County Times and the San Mateo Daily News. I really hope that advertising drives some lunch-time traffic to the cafe. As much as we have the movie traffic, the movies aren’t quite enough to get us to the black. Also, the March/April traffic shows me how the lack of movie traffic affects our daily sales. Of course traffic will increase starting on May 3rd with the Spiderman 3 opening and will continue throughout the summer, but then we’ll be in the same spot in September/October/November unless we get that other crowd going.

Speaking of the summer movie season, I’m really happy that we’ve started offering gelato/sorbetto. This allows us to serve all of our desserts a la mode — and who doesn’t like a brownie with a side of gelato. We can also make affogato for you — espresso poured over a scoop of vanilla gelato. How about a mocha affogato using chocolate gelato, doesn’t that sound good?

Look out for an invite to the grand opening party in May. We’re just about ready to get our entertainment permit, so we’ll be scheduling a weekend full of events to mark our official opening.

All the things I was waiting on for Friday panned out and we moved forward with the soft open today. The cash register actually got done by Thursday night and I picked it up on Friday afternoon. The fire department came by on Friday morning and gave us our permit. My friend also finished writing the menu on the chalkboard really nicely. With all that done, it was time to make a try at the public.

The manager scheduled two people to come in at 12pm and two others to come in at 3pm. The manager and I met up at 10am to discuss how the training/orientation will go down. We talked about how the cash handling will happen, and I realize that I need to work on it quite a bit more. We’re kinda jumbled up right now. Bern went to Costco and Albertsons to buy some last minute replenishments. Last week, we didn’t try out the Asian Beef Salad with Honey-Sesame Vinegarette because we didn’t buy the napa cabbage, the honey, and other ingredients. I did a run to Kinko’s to print out the employee manual for everyone. The manager started with the food prep. When I came back from Kinko’s, I began removing all of the brown paper covering the windows and doors. The cafe looked bright and fresh with all of the natural light coming through the windows. When noon rolled around, the two people showed up and we were ready to get started.

I did the orientation while the manager continued with prepping all of the food. We went over the employee manual, cash handling, food and beverage preparation, and sidework items. By 12:45, our first customers, Dawn and Dave came by. They took their time looking around, led by Bern. It was a good thing that Bern was around because the employees were still in the middle of learning how to use the register. A few minutes later, Glen and Mel came. They began to order and we instantly got backed up in the kitchen. We had some fine tuning to do with their orders, so it took longer than normal. For one, we decided to drizzle oil on top of the bread right before we grill to prevent it from sticking. Mel also did us a favor by ordering our fruit smoothie, which was something that I hadn’t yet tried to make at the cafe. I did try to make it at home with the free samples during salad-tasting night. But this time around, it didn’t quite work out. So now I need to find a different version of the smoothie instead of using the frozen fruit.

Once we took care of their orders, we had some people trickle in here and there. Mostly, it was a parade of friends and family. My brother came by and ordered a sandwich. Mark came and ordered his David Rio Green Tea Chai. I’m glad he came and tried it out since I basically chose David Rio Chai from his recommendation. Bern’s mom and, later, her brother and his family came by the cafe too. The kids had fun running around and eating three bags of chips. A few others came by later in the afternoon as we were about ready to close.

Overall, it was a decent day for a soft open. The weather was nice, people were friendly and patient, and the team was pretty good at filling orders. I spent the better part of the day taking notes on what to improve, and I think I’ll be doing that a lot in the next week. The food got some good reviews from people — the paninis and their dipping sauces are really tasty. I even tried out the pesto prosciutto panini and I actually did like it (maybe I’m a little biased).

Tomorrow is another day and chance to get more customers. If things work out well, I think we can have grand opening sooner rather than later.

Inhhhhhhhhhale…exhaaaaaaaaaale

It’s been a while since I updated ya’ll on the going-ons of the cafe. There’s been lots, but I’ve just been way too busy to update. Today though, I thought it’d be good to try to post so I can assess how things are going myself. Posting usually helps me put things into perspective.

After weeks and weeks of waiting, the city finally called me yesterday to say that our business license is approved. This was a huge hurdle and one that I started to tackle right in the beginning. Clearly if I had waited longer, I’d still be holding my breath. Now it’s a matter of getting the fire department to clear us for occupancy, and Bern has graciously allowed me to pawn that off to her, given that it’s her expertise.

My, my, how quickly February came and went. It’s now March 1, and all that above was written two days ago. The second month of rent is due today, and we’re still not open. Not good. I find that starting up is a huge exercise in cash management. What do you buy now or later? How quickly can you start generating revenues? We’re getting quite low on the funds at this point with more money still slated to go out before we open. I decided to open up a line of credit at the bank. I really tried not to have to borrow money at all, but it’s quite hard. I’m glad though that we still won’t need to use it for about a month, so depending on how well we do in March, we could still operate debt-free.

Speaking of which, there’s been big strides in the last couple of days. It’s interesting how nothing happens for the last week to week-and-a-half, then suddenly the balls starts rolling and things fall into place again. I can see now that you have to a pretty stable person not to get discouraged by the roller coaster effect. I suppose you could be bipolar too, as long as your swings are in complete sync with how everyone and everything else moves. Unfortunately, I’m neither and I was pretty frustrated the last couple of weeks at how slowly things were moving.

Luckily, things started moving this week and I’m feeling relatively more optimistic. On Monday, the business license was approved. On Tuesday evening, we had the taste-test night with the investors. Overall, I think that went pretty well, although some tweaks to the recipes must be done. Yesterday, I called the fire department and set up our site review for tomorrow morning. Also yesterday, I bought our insurance and workers comp package. I must say, workers comp is an expensive bitch. We also got approval for the sign permit, which means that our official sign will be installed on Monday. At the end of the day, I realized that we can now really open by this weekend if we wanted to…then I realized, ummm MENU and CASH REGISTER…

Let me back up. I hired a manager who started on February 19 to handle the day to day functions. Since he started, we went out and bought a bunch of food and inventory the past couple of weeks. Well that meant I couldn’t really try out making any of the menu items in bulk until now, which was basically what we did on Tuesday night for the first time and made the investors eat it all. The fact that feedback was decent was a good sign. But that means that it’s just now that I can create menu and just now that I can have the cash register programmed with the menu items. A friend is going to create our chalkboard menu tomorrow and I need to dust off my page layout skills and create a paper menu. I originally wanted to get a printer in the kitchen attached to the cash register so the kitchen person will know what food to make. I called the Cash Register Company (that’s their name) yesterday and realized that we can’t afford one right now. We’ll just have to write orders down on those Guest Checks and bring it to the back — probably not a bad idea considering that we don’t expect a bunch of food orders right away. This morning, I dropped off the cash register at the Cash Register Company for them to program the items into the keyboard and to allow us to track what’s being bought. The funny thing about this is that I had to bring the cash register to my car last night, and I was worried about what people who see me would think when they see some guy lugging around a cash register at 11 o’clock at night. I decided to empty out a box in my office and put the register in there, no sense getting double takes from people on the street. This should be ready Saturday.

This brings me then to opening day…our soft opening…will be on Sunday; God, city, fire department, and cash register company permitting. That day, we will tear the brown paper off the glass windows and open the doors. I asked the manager to schedule our workers in 3 x 3-shifts so we can get to know them, get them trained (or maybe tell us how things should be done, as they are more experienced), and get them working. Last Friday, we had our baristra training for 2 hours, but that’s hardly enough to really know how to make a proper latte or cappucino.

As I was writing all this, it hit me that February really rolled in and out fast. I suppose that’s a consequence of burying one’s head into all the details of getting open that when I finally popped my head up to breathe and assess, it’s now a new month. Sure, we got a lot of things done, which was necessary for the timeline I wanted to have, but it would have been nice to have more time.

Five months of marriage so far, and although it feels like it’s been a long time since our wedding, I know we’re just getting started. Sometimes I wish we had more downtime, but I also know that doing things together, even if it’s ‘work’, makes our time together more interesting. It also makes the down time that much more precious. It’s those times right when we wake up or right before we go to bed that I treasure most.

I have better things to do, I know. But I was looking around craigslist.org for restaurant supplies and coffee tables and got bored. I found the link on the left side that read, “best-of-craigslist” and clicked…here’s some for your reading enjoyment.

1. Rant: evil, evil digital weight scale
2. You - Me - The Enormous Booger Hanging Out Of My Nose
3. Trannies at the Gym