Dear Feastlings,
We’ll start with the thing that’s just a thing and get that out of the way: this Saturday, as per normal, we’ll have a wine tasting.
Like most of our wine tastings, it will be both in-person and virtual, so you can join us any way you prefer. Are we excited about it? Sure, but excited the way we always are about wine and tasting and shooting the breeze about the stuff: how it’s made, what influences grapes and the people who grow them, and on and on and on.
The thing we’re really excited about, though, is this: with our upcoming donation run on the 27th, we’ll be reaching a special milestone, and if you’d asked me two years ago whether we’d still be doing this and whether people would still be supporting our doing it, I’d have been heard pressed to imagine us at this point. In two weeks’ time, we’ll have fed, through the kindness and generosity of this community, and with a little of our own donations and a lot of our hard work, ten thousand people. It’s just a number, but it’s a number that means a lot to me as a symbol of your kindness and generosity, our tenacity, and the work of hundreds of volunteers. We’d have loved to have gotten to this point sooner, but we’ve been short-handed, and, like no small number of other people in short-handed businesses and industries, we’re burning out. We’ll have all hands on deck, though, for this:
It took us a little longer than we’d expected, but May 27th will be a day we’re proud of.
That will further push us to our limits, though, and while I’m grateful that we’ve reached this point, we’re still in the process of hiring and training new members of the Feast crew- more than we’ve turned over at any one time since we moved to this location and doubled in size. In fact, more than ever in our twenty-one years. So as much as I’m happy to report that we’re finally getting in a handful of qualified applicants, I’m sad to report that while we pull ourselves together, we’ll be shutting our Sunday service down for a couple of weeks. I’m crossing my fingers that it will only be a couple of weeks, and even if we do, I’m happy to sneak in here and still do a Zoom tasting on the last Sunday of the month if it comes to that, but this Sunday, the 15th, we’ll be dark, and likely for a Sunday or two after that.
This will allow us to concentrate the staff a bit more on the five days that we do remain open so that one person isn’t trying to do all the prep for the entire restaurant, and another single soul isn’t attempting to prepare catered food for three events in a day. And, God willing, when the dust settles, we’ll be back on Sundays to offer what we always have, this time with enough staff to execute it well and without collapsing or driving each other bonkers.
So thanks for all of it, and know that we feel bullish about a speedy return to Sunday service. Thanks for your patience as we get our sea legs back under us for the hundredth time in the past two years, for your contributions to the ten thousand people we’ve now fed, and for being our extended family, through thick and thin.
Love,
Doug