I Could Learn To Love Wal-Mart...

So, last night, we both attended the Columbia, Missouri food handlers class.  Did you know they give you a test at the end of the one-hour class?  They do.  But in good news, we passed.

And while I don't mean to make you super jealous, I would be remiss to not show you the payoff of watching horrifying undercover food safety videos.

In other important but mundane items, today we went to get our City of Columbia business license and it turns out you need a lot of information that we didn't have with us (primarily the Missouri sales tax identification number).  It also takes at least 10 days to get the business license once you turn in the application and fees (oh so many fees).

We started to mildly impact how this development would impact our Thanksgiving pie baking plans (no business license = no pie selling).  Then, we learned we only need a temporary business license for selling Thanksgiving pies since we will be operating out of a temporary location for our baking.  The Elks Lodge is actually in the county and not the city, and so that involved going to from the City of Columbia office to the Boone County Government office and starting over with a different application and different information and different rules.  However, once we have our tax identification number, it only takes "seconds" to get the temporary permit from the county.  (Someone at the city should talk to someone at the county about the 10 days vs. seconds).

Some entrepreneurial person out there should open a business based solely on completing all the forms a person needs to open a business.  That person should not be easily annoyed by senseless rules or get headaches easily.

Our other major accomplishment for the day was submitting to our potential future landlord what we envision for our lease as far as the term of the agreement and the amount requested for tenant improvement.  We flat out asked for the $19,516 from the landlord as part of the tenant improvement package in exchange for a 36 or 60 month lease.  We have ZERO clue what to expect in the way of a response.  I'm looking for an answer of "that sounds like a great deal and we accept" and then we start construction next week.  Is that possible?  I have no idea.  Stan Kroenke, if you are reading this and you accept our deal, I will seriously stop complaining about how Columbia needs a Target on the southwest side of town...

Let's all hope for an answer tomorrow that moves us forward.  If Contractor Steve can get the go ahead, then the permit train can leave the station, and eventually construction can start.   I also found out today that the health department has to do an inspection, as does the fire department.  My new hope for our open date?  December 11th.  The ball is in your court, Kroenke.