A New Addition

Yesterday marked nine months in our new PJP Nifong location…which is surprising to me because it seems like we’ve always been here and I actually almost forget that we spent a solid 60 months of blood, sweat, and tears just 200 feet across the parking lot. (On a side note, it looks like Tiger Bounce installed new flooring in our old space and I immediately had a moment of silence for all the hours I stood on that concrete - and for the money we spent to have it buffed out to a flour-free shine before we ever baked a single item in that store.)

Often when people visit our new store location, they ask how the move was and we laugh and remind them that we actually rolled 90% of our store contents across the parking lot into the new store. We paid movers to do the other 10%, but I’m not sure they didn’t give up finally on the larger pieces of equipment and just wheel those too. I’m pretty sure at one point even our mailman mocked our moving style, but we had no shame.

While our storefront size increased by double, we really didn’t make any large capital expenditures in equipment because it takes a horrendous amount of cash just to make a spot NOT look like an Orange Leaf. Just about a year ago, Jeanne and I were in a tussle because she wanted a very large walk-in cooler that we very much couldn’t afford. I will give her props for the vision though because I just don’t see myself as the sort of woman who owns a walk-in cooler, but then she reminds me that we already own a grease trap, a three vat sink, four ovens, two refrigerators, and a floor mixer…so anything is possible, right?

It turned out that a walk-in cooler was never feasible due to space limitations, city permitting, the requirement of an extra HVAC unit, and goodness knows what else. But today we added the next best thing to the PJP family: a new double door commercial freezer. We are SUPER excited about it and not even embarrassed to have the highlight of our entire month be the box truck delivery that happened earlier this afternoon.

For dramatic effect, I wish I could tell you the process took the better part of the day, was arduous in all aspects, and fitting it through the door was a dicey proposition. (Hey, it is almost like I’ve been through an equipment delivery like that before. Ahem.). But this was completely fine. They unloaded the freezer, they tipped it a bit to go through the door, they wheeled it to the back, plugged it in, and it was cold in 10 minutes, so I signed the paperwork and they left. The delivery people weren’t even at our store 30 minutes.

Now PJP looks like she’s grown up a bit. Also, we’ve removed an obstacle - not enough freezer space - to all the annoying small things that slow us down. We will use this new space for all the chicken and beef we order in to roast for pot pie. Over the last several months, pot pie has consistently been in our top three selling items and on occasion, we just can’t store enough ingredients to make enough to meet demand. Watch out now…we have a veritable meat locker. We are women with a meat locker. Awesome.