Sunday, August 14, 2011

Why Opening a Restaurant is such a special adventure....


So as regular readers will know, Stein and I found the perfect smoker last week! I'd been looking since February of last year with no luck. It has to be electric, it has to be a very specific to work in the space. It really basically had to be an Alto Shaam. Go US for finding the smoker!

This is one piece of equipment among 40 pieces of equipment I need to open my business.

So we move the Shaam into the space and check out the plug... which of course is this weird three pronged 220 plug. So now we need to find an electrician who can come wire a special outlet for the plug. Stein's wife is a boat electrician and she thinks she can probably install it, but it is not what she normally does so she asks for some guidance (the person giving her advice happens to be wrong, but we don't find this out until after it's installed).

So we get the outlet and install it. Then the bad advice comes to fore when we flip the main and their is a flash of ozone, and then darkness. So then we need to find out which of the breakers outside is ours. None of them are marked, it's Sunday and nothing is open and they all have ancient locks on them. Needless to say, it was a LONG day.

Then we go to plug in the smoker and... it is the wrong outlet. Apparently there are like 2 billion of these 3 pronged 220 outlets and we grabbed the C073 instead of the C073.25 and so... after all that, Alicia had to go back today and put in another one! Thank god for El Tapatio and their very strong margaritas. Which we did imbibe in after leaving TCS.

Today got this via text from Stein and his lovely bride. POWER WORKING To Smoker!!!

And this, my friends is why it takes 8 months to open a 720 sq ft restaurant. Every flipping appliance has a special outlet, or needs hot and cold water running to it. OR needs a special floor sink. OR needs to be hooked up to the grease trap. It's not like you can just buy a thing and plug it in. OH NO. Some appliances have TWO different plugs, and the two different plugs actually need two different shaped outlets and are different voltages. I kid you not. Your plugs at home... all standard. In a restaurant... a whole rainbow cornucopia of different shapes, sizes, prong counts, prong shapes and voltages.

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