Seven Months.

Today marks seven months of PJP Buttonwood.  SEVEN months.  210 days.  5,040 hours.  302,400 minutes.  Here is what we've learned...

1. Being on the cover of a magazine is remarkably good for business.  It is remarkably bad for our humility.  We really can't stop talking about it.  Annoying, Party of 2.
2. I've read several stories during the past week about local businesses closing their doors after only a year in operation.  Each time I read one of those stories, a cold chill travels up my spine and I'm reminded that owning a business is a tenuous web held together with prayer and hard work.  And duct tape.
3. All that said, I wouldn't be above hiring a spider to write "SOME PIE" in its web, if that is what it took.
4. The 217 days that will pass between our opening day and the day before Thanksgiving will do little to squelch our anxiety about our first official PJP Thanksgiving.  A trial run at having several hundred pies baked, boxed, and organized for pickup would have been helpful.  Just saying.
5. I keep seeing an ad on television for startupny.com...apparently, if you open a business in the State of New York right now, your sales tax is waived for a certain period of time.  And well, I THINK THAT CONCEPT IS GENIUS.  I would guess that most people who give up on their business in the first year are just dehydrated from crying each time they write their monthly check for sales tax.
6. Jeanne practically laid down on the floor of the baking aisle at Hy-vee last week in order to reach all the stock of .88 cent cans of evaporated milk.  She wasn't embarrassed in the least and when she arrived back at PJP Buttonwood and told me she needed a dolly to get the cans from her car to the store, I wasn't embarrassed.  I was, in fact, PROUD of her zeal.  Proud.
7. During our construction process, our architect and mechanical engineer worried we would be too warm at PJP Buttonwood unless we installed a new air conditioning system that costs more than several years of college at MU.  We've been freezing during this recent cold snap and until you've seen 4 or 5 PJP employees huddled around an oven for warmth, you haven't really witnessed pathetic.  All that said, I'm not turning the heat on because I'm guessing that is really expensive and who needs heat in a bakery?  If you come in and we are all wearing Snuggies, well, don't laugh.
8. We recently had our second health department inspection and received zero demerits.  During our first inspection this summer, we received one because we didn't date the bags of fruit we receive from the food broker.  So now we date them, but this inspector said we didn't need to date them.  I think our plan moving forward will be to date every other bag in attempt to make some of the people happy some of the time.
9. The Kroenke Group hung up Christmas wreaths over the weekend.  And I would just like to let Silent Stan know that 1986 called and would like it's lackluster and worn down decor back.  Perhaps Silent Stan could put a Hobby Lobby app on his phone and use the coupon to purchase something that didn't look like it has been drug behind a van from storage to 3601 Buttonwood?
10. We know we say it a lot, but we believe it to be true more and more as each day passes...we simply have the best customers ever.  You believe in us and you believe in World Pie Domination.  Thank you.  Thank you times 210.