Dear Feastlings,
In the interest of getting a simple message out that isn’t busting into flames of frustration in your inbox, I won’t go into details as to why running Feast is like this story of a rookie cop and a squirrel:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/510/fiasco-2013/act-three
Today’s been a series of miscommunications, broken promises, broken equipment and broken dreams, and rather than elaborate on any of it, I’ll say nothing at all about it. No need to write me, as I won’t tell you, and honestly, I’m so far behind in answering emails that it will only frustrate me more. Just know this- if it’s your dream to open a restaurant, don’t do it. And if you ignore my advice and still want to do it, please just buy this one. I’d sell it for a song today.
That said, I’m doing my best, after trying to soothe the stress with more sugar than I should eat in a day (thankfully, we trim the tops of those mesquite chocolate cakes to frost them, so there are a number of cake tops maxing out the glycemic load scale for me as we speak. I’ll regret it when I come down off this sugar high, but for now, all I want is more cake tops.
With the immediate problem of soothing myself with sugar resolved, I can now concentrate on how I’ll soothe myself on a grander, more mid-term scale: first, there’s getting things done. The credit card company has called back, and the point of sale people have as well, so the refund of the accidental overtip is resolved. The other customer complaint is resolved as well. There’s a used oven on order, which will arrive less expensively than repairing the existing one, and the other assorted issues are in vary stages of resolution. The wine tasting issues are resolved, so I encourage you to join us for one more Zoom tasting, though they’ll soon be hybrids of Zoom and in-person:
Now for the long-term stress resolution: let’s keep helping people out. Nothing is more grounding that feeling like you’ve done something productive, unless it’s feeling like you’ve done something productive AND kind. This week, we had out to Casa Alitas to help them through their own panicky stressbomb,
and we’re gratefully accepting donations toward meals for them while we try to help them tread water after being told that they have (had, really) a couple of days to restructure the way they’ve been helping migrants for years.
There’ll be more this week about another donation run or two to them while they work out their food production situation, and then we’ve got a few more, after much stop-and-go logistical difficulty, to Youth on Their Own.
Of course, there’s always lunch and dinner, and based on how many of you have joined us for lunch in the past couple of weeks, I should remind you: WE”RE OPEN FOR LUNCH NOW, and we’d be happy to see you.
I’m heading back to chip away at my other responsibilities, about which you’ll undoubtedly hear more soon, and with any luck, I’ll live to write another day. Still, if your dream is to buy a restaurant, I know a guy.
Love,
Doug