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Pistol dude may have won the prize but not the honor. I cant wait till the 2011 rematch.
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We just saw Exit Through The Gift Shop. “[…] the story of how one man set out to film the un—filmable. And failed” Great documentary movie. Incredible footage. Fascinating story. Funny. Thumbs up.
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City of Portland use an iPhone app for citizen reports →
City of Portland use an iPhone app for citizen reports. Very cool! #lovePDX #PDX
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Ride or nap outside in the sun? Tough choice… Hmm. Let’s ride. I’ll nap when I’m old.
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Betacup
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Cloud Seven - Part 4
It has been fun working through the conceptualizing of the business and the product, defining the strategy and creating the brand. Typical Corporate Strategy, Product Management and Marketing. For a cafe these things are defined by the location, the space, the interior design, the people, the menu, signage and communication. It’s been fun to learn about small business operations and collaborate with some very smart and talented people. It is the collaboration that I enjoy the most. It is what we intend to introduce with the cafe as well; a place where people could work, socialize, collaborate.
I enjoyed working at Level 3, in large part, because it was so highly collaborative. To a fault one might argue. There, it often led to indecision and blocked success. Chasing too many things with opinions of too many people in too many meeting with too many powerpoint presentations. It could have been the methods and the tools that were being used that worked counter-productive.
My experience in London was good in the sense that the person I worked for embraced social networking and social media more than anyone else I knew in industry. Years before, I had tried to introduce social collaboration applications at 360networks. The software wasn’t very good yet. It was too early. Even if it had worked great, the company culture wasn’t such that it would have embraced it. I had lost some interest by the time I made it to London. There, my passion to work with collaborative tools and leverage the power of community was renewed. We implemented some of it. I am certain it has continued after I left. It can be a frustrating process. Many people hold on to the idea that holding onto knowledge is equivalent to holding onto power - not too surprising in an environment of constant corporate downsizing. It is a paradigm shift. It will be resisted until it can’t be resisted anymore.
Taking it back to topic; about a month ago the issue of Exclusive Use first surfaced. Since then we’ve gone through many on, off, on-again, off again phases. It is off again. The competition is unwilling to sign a waiver to their Exclusive Use clause - who can blame them. The landlord wants to severely restrict our menu and shift all liability to us. It is not looking positive. We’re giving it one last go. If it doesn’t work out, it is back to the drawing board with some great experiences, new contacts and focused on collaboration.
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I have this faint memory of me as a 3(ish) year old kid making a protest sign and parading it around the neighborhood. I don’t remember the specific cause. I think it was something about polluted waterways. It was the mid 70’s. It could have been earth day related. Definitely something environmental. It made a profound impact on me. It must have considering I still remember 35 years later.
Then, earth day started because of highly visible environmental destruction. Rivers were on fire. Skies were saturated with toxic haze. Beaches were covered in tar. My childhood beach memories all include scraping tar of my feet. Since then some good has happened. Mostly though, environmental disasters just happened out of sight. And, out of sight is out of mind. We’ve been brown so long, it’s starting to look green.
At least 5,000 barrels a day, with some estimates as high as
25,00060,000 barrels a day, are now gushing into the gulf. Where just a few years ago the ocean depth made it impossible to extract the oil, now those same conditions make it impossible to fix the leak or at a minimum to apply a quick fix.Soon, the next generation will have the same beach memories that I have. Those that include tar covered feet. I remember using turpentine to clean it off. Then, turpentine was derived from tree resin. Now, it has been mostly replaced by much cheaper substitutes distilled from crude oil. Is it ironic to have to use oil to clean off oil. Sad.
My brother has a 3-year old. It’s time to go make a sign with him.
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I’ve got menu on my mind
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Cloud Seven - Part 3
Exclusive Use clauses are apparently pretty common in retail real estate lease agreements. With these clauses the landlord grants the tenant some sort of exclusivity on being able to sell something or use the space for something. After granting such exclusive use to one tenant, the landlord is restricted from allowing any other tenants from selling similar items or doing similar things. It prevents, for example, that there are multiple pizza places in the same strip mall. Retail operators commonly seek it. With relatively high retail failure rates, I guess it makes sense. Anything you can do to limit competition should, in theory, improve your odds. Landlords don’t seem to like it much. I don’t like it. It is protectionism. It goes against my ideas of free market and capitalism.
At the beginning of the year, a new business opened at the other end of the block. It is a bakery. It is a great place. They offer excellent bread and pastry items. Everything is made on-site and from scratch. It is a great addition to the neighborhood. They have a full kitchen and offer breakfast and lunch items. They serve coffee to complement the food. The coffee is okay; it is not their core business. It is also not a great place to lounge, gather or socialize. I felt confident that both businesses should be able to successfully coexist.
The bakery is owned by someone who’s got extensive experience in restaurant operations. He probably is very familiar with exclusive use clauses and made sure to include one in his lease agreement. A good one: Bread, pizza and decorated cakes.
The business we are looking to acquire has been in operations since 2006. It was primarily a coffee lounge, but it sold pastry items, soups, sandwiches, etc. We’re buying the assets and transferring the lease. The ‘use’ of the retail space remains the same. Because this business existed prior to the exclusive use grant to the bakery, its use should be grandfathered in. If not, then we’d be restricted from offering bread and cakes; two, sort of, essential items on a cafe menu.
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Cloud Seven - Part 2
Figuring things out with the landlord ended up being the biggest hurdle we encountered. It wasn’t that hard to create a viable business plan, get funding, and reaching some sort of agreement on the acquisition. Coffee houses are not complicated businesses. We signed a letter of intent to buy the business, at a price we felt comfortable with, contingent on being able to successfully execute a transfer and extension of the lease agreement with the landlord.
It happens to be a relatively large developer in the area and it deserves some credit for turning an old railroad yard into a ‘unique urban neighborhood’ (as they put it on their website,) but they haven’t done a particularly good job with retail, in my opinion, and they don’t have a particularly good reputation. I had dealt with them before as a home buyer and I hadn’t been impressed; we ended up buying elsewhere.
The space we were interested in is directly on a popular neighborhood park. It is hard to imagine that the space would be used for anything other than some sort of hospitality operation. We were surprised to learn that the landlord had different ideas. The space was never intended to be used for a cafe operation. It was envisioned to be occupied by a toy store or children’s clothing boutique (this made my giggle because this neighborhood has more children’s clothing and toy store than any other place I’ve lived and, in fact, in the last 2 years more have gone out of business than any other store in the neighborhood, but that aside.) As a result there were no accommodations made for kitchen operations. Most important, there was no ventilation and no opportunity to retrofit for ventilation. And, power was limited.
With a little creativity we figured out a way around the ventilation issue. Having limited power is not such a bad thing; it forces you to minimize your usage. We had it assessed by an electrician anyway and concluded it would be sufficient to make it work.
We were good to go. Or so we thought…
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“Drill Baby Drill” anyone?
