We Are Never Bored.
By now, you likely know that today was National Pie Day. And we were exceptionally busy for a cold Tuesday in January, which is always a delight. Actually, I'll take exceptionally busy for any day in January and call it a total win. While we were in the midst of working on a full baking schedule this morning, no less than 10 people called to talk to me. And for the most part of that timeframe, I was elbow deep in three pounds of melted butter...which always sounds like a lame excuse to not come to the phone, but in my case it is 100% true. Some poor soul keeps calling to see if he can come see me on Friday to talk about marketing, but he hasn't figured out that I exist in a pie baking vacuum. Or that I arduously avoid any sort of meetings that likely center around comprehensive marketing plans for the low low low price of $1800 per month. Or that my word of the year is NOPE.
So, after most of our baking was done today, I did the following...
- I caught up on our Quickbooks, which is just the most miserable task ever and thus, I rarely mention it. But I do it because someone has to and even when I try to ignore it, I know it is just sitting there mocking me until I tell it that the check I write every week for $32.58 is to Cintas for clean aprons.
- Then, I ordered a large number of snarky dishtowels to sell at PJP. If you remember the early days, you know that we often stocked these and regularly sold out of them. And then we stopped because we struggled to display them and we were so focused on just getting enough pie out of the ovens that dishtowels fell to the wayside. So I also bought a legitimate display unit from the company that sells the towels. Goodness, we buy a cooler and freezer and suddenly we are inspired to become ALL THE THINGS.
- And next I thought a bit about our gluten-free situation. On occasion, we make gluten free pies and sell them and on occasion we don't...primarily it depends on who answers the phone when you call and whatever in the world is going on when you call. So, I decided we should formally decide something, and here it is: we do gluten free pies in the nine inch size in a limited number of flavors. I wrote those flavors down and taped it to the front counter like I should have done three years ago. Is here where I remind you that I'm nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year? Ahem.
- So then I worked on writing contractual agreements for the weddings that we book. Look, the irony of being a former lawyer who now provides goods to brides and grooms on one of the most anticipated and stressful days of their lives without providing a signed contract is not lost on me. It is just that it takes a while for the enormity of what we do to finally catch up to the way my mind thinks, so we've always been pretty laid back on our approach to all of these events. Though, as our calendar is already filling for 2018 weddings, formal written agreements can only help, right?
- And then I took our recycling out to the dumpster and noticed this...
While we are accustomed to chicken wings and Sonic cups and random bags of trash from people who drive by and just dump their stuff, a dryer is a whole new level of surprising. (Though that flattened box is a chicken wing box, I know it by the bar code.) Jeanne swears the trash people will pick up the dryer and I swear they won't. I'm sorry to say that finding out the answer tomorrow may be the highlight of my entire day. Also, she asked me if I opened it and looked in it for clothes or dead bodies. I didn't, but that she asked is reason nine million that we never have a boring day at PJP Buttonwood.