We had on Saturday our Comeback Party to open the dining Room and celebrate our return to Grantville Marketplace on June 1 . . . which included a Ribbon Cutting photo op sponsored by the County Chamber of Commerce of which we are now members. We had a very well written news article in the paper this morning, we sent flyers out on boxes for 2 1/2 weeks, sent out regular e-news announcements about the coming festivities, and we had very colorful posters in prominent places in town for a week+.
I personally had a lot of construction work to do to get the place finalized for dine-in service. Flooring, trim/baseboards, framing and finishing a 9x20 alcove/waiting area, paint, caulk, drop ceiling, building and installing 12 pendant lamps, AC upgrade (contractor), and equipment for server alley. It took every bit of 35 days to get it all done, but we opened the festivities on schedule at 1pm today, and had a pretty darned good turn out.
As would be expected, “no plan survives contact with customers”. We had activities starting at 1pm in the parking lot outside our place. Some of what went on includes live music from local volunteers (they were really good), door prize raffle, free face painting by really good artists, free pizza samples, free beverages, dunking booth featuring Nick’s staff as targets . . . Kim and I both spent a half hour in the booth. Final festivities were the Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting and unveiling of 20 foot wall of mural and another full sized portrait of me . . . 6 foot tall of not real pretty pizza guy. It is amazingly life-like.
Our server alley and dine-in process had been finalized that morning, so you can imagine there were some hitches to find and work through. We have 10 tables in the dining room and all were full for about 2.5 hours. Food was actually pretty quick getting out to customers, and the musicians had moved inside; customers loved the atmosphere and were understanding of a small delays on our maiden voyage.
No one knew that one of our cooks had no-showed for the second time in three days (left a voice mail on the other day saying he’d be late, and we didn’t check our home phone all day since we were working on the celebration). We made it work out, but it almost torpedoed the night since it pulled me more into the kitchen instead of trouble shooting the front of the house with my wife. He will not have a job on Tuesday when he comes to pick up his last paycheck. Sales were probably bigger than they would have been otherwise, but not a blockbuster. We picked up at least 5 new customers, and we all made a great showing for the papers and the attendees. The word of mouth we generate will be great going into August sales recovery. IF nothing else, everyone walking and driving by saw our 20x40 tent in front of the shop and bunches of people sitting around tables have fun with music.
I’ll get that video footage of the place hopefully this week so everyone can see the results of the shop. We didn’t put together too lousy a place to eat 
I can say that Phase I is very nearly completed, and will be when we paint and trim out about 25 feet of wall.