The Juicebox/Soup Peddler Project V

When we last met, we were discussing my absolute joy with the architectural design process. The vision was beginning to focus, to cohere in my mind.

And then, The City.

The City gets a bad rap... it's very easy to complain about the dysfunction of bureaucracy. But I have to say that thus far, this has been a fairly wrinkle-free* process in terms of interfacing with the City.

But here's the thing: One wouldn't think, using basic analytical skills, that a takeout kiosk like the one we were planning would require a restroom for customers. After all, every mobile vendor and food trailer from here to East Pleasant Valley is free of that regulation. (For the record, I don't have the least problem with this.) You just apply a little

If a = b And b = c Then

a = c

End If

and you're good to go. Unfortunately, math only goes so far in the real world, so my excellent architect, Micah Land, received word that a restroom would be required for this concept. So we just lost 50 of our precious 213 square feet.



"It's definitely going to be a tight fit," said Micah.

In the first of a series of what is surely to be an oft-repeated joke, I said, "I think we should think outside the box here." If we have to put in a restroom, we might as well get a decent amount of seating out of it, and if we get a decent amount of seating, we're going to need all of that already scanty square footage to serve those folks. Micah went back to the drawing board with Michael et al and I began to walk away scratching my head.

"Oh, I also found out we're going to need a grease trap."

It was then that I realized that a new business venture is a lot like a new relationship. "This is going to be gangbusters! We're going to just be printing money!" is akin to "My new girl, you know, she's a supermodel. And she is absolutely crazy about me. But as various pesky little realities insinuate themselves upon the scene, it slowly morphs into: "Well, it turns out she's actually just a hand model, and she's also dating this other guy that she's pretty into."

It's not really that bad, and a grease trap requirement really isn't the kind of thing that ought to send someone to the medicine cabinet. But there is definitely an interesting psychological aspect to the whole entrepreneurship thing; an entrepreneur's cortex features a certain anti-negativity synaptic web structure that has to be cemented together with some very stout adhesive.

Entrepreneurs have to wake up each morning and write their own scripts. They write, act, direct, and produce. Some of us do the soundtrack and special effects too. It just takes a lot of gumption to wake up every morning and say, "Listen up, people. This is what we're going to do. I have no idea if any of this is going to work. Who's with me?" At its best, you're a ship captain. Grandeur, bravery. Slick uniform, epaulettes. At worst, you're Willy Loman. All noble artifice and a tired gray suit.

When I first began The Soup Peddler, I had a feeling of riding a conveyer, being constantly whooshed forward, and the ever-approaching series of doors would slam open in front of me. I hold that feeling close and always try to find if the world is being receptive and inviting to me or if it's blocking me at every turn. I'm not sure if that's very sound intuition, because some say the best things are worth the most fight. But who knows where the folks who say things like that actually end up? I do know that that sense is my weathervane. The winds may swirl, the readings change, but the weathervane generally gets it right.

Uh. Where was I?

I was rending my clothes in lamentation over the complexification of our little endeavor. I probably regained my composure with a little dip at Barton Springs. Soon enough, it was time to head back to the Hsu Studio and see what they had cooked up for me.




Oh. Okay. So you're saying... elegant, modern, simple, clean, breath of fresh air, bracing, stimulating, vital. Everything that screams soup and South Lamar. Everything that could scream soup and South Lamar.

I got my mojo back!

(to be continued)

The Juicebox/Soup Peddler Project (Zoso)

"Well, I figure... that is, I reckon... Well, let me look into that for you and try to get a number," I told my banker.

Over the previous few weeks, I had determined that the building in question, while incredibly located and laughably inexpensive, was essentially a glorified shed. Not even all that glorified. It's roughly 213 square feet, has no insulation, and has a roof drainage system that appears to be designed by someone who simultaneously had a lot of extra PVC and LSD on hand. An odd combination. And it has rounded corners. And it has these gawd-awful French doors. In fact, the Gauls and their descendents would shudder to have these doors even loosely associated with them. Bizarre vertical windows. No ADA compliance. No water.

You know, I dabble. I'm a pretty good little handyman. I can make stuff. I can handle a saw. I like a DIY challenge. But this, The Unglorified Shed, this was WAY beyond my capabilities. I called my friend Gregory Brooks, an architecture professor. I asked if he had any friends who could, you know, kind of on the cheap, help me with a nice little design.

He said, "You should call my friend Michael Hsu."

Pshaw. Michael Hsu. Uchi. Olivia. La Condesa. The Belmont. P. Terry's. Etcetera. Riiight.

I said, "I was kind of thinking someone more, like... I don't know, cheaper maybe?"

He said, "You should call him."

Like any good Lego-loving little engineerd, I am an architecture fan. When I was a kid, my folks took me to see Fallingwater.



I took architecture classes on Saturdays during middle school. I went to architecture camp during the summer. I used to carry a little pad and a hard pencil and a soft pencil and two triangles around with me. What ever happened to that childhood love of architecture? Well, I just figured I'd be able to pick up ever-more-desperate chicks in the engineering building at college, so I did that instead. Actually, that's not it. My parents advised me that architecture was a tough row to hoe and architects really didn't make much money, so I should go into engineering. I followed their sound parental advice. I do wonder what would've become of me had I chosen that path instead.

Eventually, once I had the space and time for it, I began to re-establish my love for architecture and design through little projects around the house.



So my first meeting at the Hsu Design Office was very exciting. The last time I had been in an architect's office, there were big tilted desks with those cool built-in T-squares. But the Hsu office, like I'm sure any modern-day architecture office, looks like an Apple commercial come to life. Neatly-groomed people pointing at things and discussing them together. The walls are covered with those inviting pastelly scribbly perspective renderings and everyone there has architect's handwriting.

Within moments of meeting Hsu himself, you realize why he's the man. He doesn't talk too much; in fact, he only talks when he has something substantive to say. He listens. He's warm and welcoming. Is he a genius? Tough to say... just like in a restaurant, it's hard to say if the chef is a genius or the people around him help create the illusion thereof.

We discussed all the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of the project. A big determination in the design was going to be the slippery eel known as City Code, and whether a restroom or two would be necessary for our intended use, a grease trap, what kind of seating we could get out of those investments. How the parking would work, etc.

With my banker in mind, I popped the question: "So, how much you figger this is gonna run?"

Hsu looked at me with a poker face to end all poker faces.

I gathered that he wasn't impressed with the timing of the question. I decided to let it slide until next time.

Next time, I got this:



My very own pastelly scribbly perspective drawing! Just like I always wanted! Just look at those humanoid blobs commingling over soup! Nothing makes ideas come to life like these drawings... as much of a spreadsheet nerd as I am, no pro forma could breathe life into the new business like this. No pie-in-the-sky imagining could do it either. THIS is the thing that I would show my banker. Bankers, spreadsheet uber-nerds that they are, LOVE renderings!

Unglorified Shed, I am beginning to love you... but how much will I have to pay for your love?

(to be continued)

The Juicebox/Soup Peddler Project III

The work on the pro forma business plan made me feel like this idea was something worth pursuing. My greatest fear about having a retail presence for The Soup Peddler was the lack of appeal of soups on warm days, of which we have at least a few. A soup tour of New York City many summers ago sealed the deal. Even the New York soup places closed in the summer. Our full menu delivery service mitigates the weather effect somewhat, but even then, summers are pretty slow. Having the juices and smoothies, particularly from the brain of a juice genius, would theoretically help matters greatly. The little bit of magic in this concept, from the business planning point of view, is a little business school concept called "Complementary Product Lines." Fortunately, business school theories are reliably correct 100% of the time except when they're not. I like to think of it as selling umbrellas and sunglasses. So that's what we called the new entity... Umbrellas & Sunglasses, LLC.



Yes, there was a new entity. There was lots of sitting, beflipflopped, at boardroom tables and discussing things with attornies--something which I swore off years ago. You can just feel the clock ticking. But I got through it and Matt and I got everything lawyered up between us. It turns out that this prophylactic lawyering is a whole lot more agreeable than the surgical kind.

Then there is the money issue. How is this going to get funded? Food service funding often takes the form of "equity funding." Since the cost of entry into restaurant is so huge... pregnant pause... let's amplify that statement: building a restaurant to code in the City Of Austin, or probably pretty much anywhere, is an ungodly expensive proposition. Oh, the water meter is 5/8" and needs to be 3/4"? That'll be five grand. Gosh, it looks like we discovered an ancient civilization while digging your wastewater line. That'll be eight, plus a four week delay. Grease trap? Ten grand. Walk-in? Twenty. Hood vent? Forty. HVAC? Fifty. Make no mistake of what you're paying for when you eat out. You're not paying for food. You're paying for the opportunity to eat that food in that place. You're pitching in for a 3/4" water meter, you're paying interest on the Ansul Fire Suppression System. You're paying the bill for Freon Systems to come fix the walk-in, and you're paying for all the steaks they had to throw out last night. Why is this pasta pomodoro $18? Look around you. Look at that tile work. Nobody's getting rich here. It's $18 because the chef/owner is trying desperately to swim up to the dizzying heights of getting his nostrils above water. Yes! You can cook it cheaper! But you can't eat it here and you have to do your own dishes.

I digress.

So about equity funding. An old joke: "How do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business?" "Start with a large one." Since the entry cost is so massive and the risk is so massive, it would be downright idiotic or next to impossible for one person to foot the bill for a new restaurant. The best restaurateurs in town have a phone list. You get on this list by being rich. When they're ready to open a new restaurant, they call person #1 and say, "I'm doing a new thing, it's going to be kind of a Borneo/Brazilian fusion dim sum tapas joint right on 6th Street. I'm selling blocks of $100,000. How many do you want?" If you, the rich person, say yes, you get to keep your spot on the phone list. If you say no, you drop to the bottom. After a few hours of phone calls, Monsieur Restaurateur now has $2.2 million and he's good to go. He calls his attorney, who is awarded equity in the restaurant instead of his normal billing rate, and says, "Paper it up."

It's arguably a great way to do business. Insulates the owner from risk, involves a lot of really smart people into the project, allows some great spaces and concepts to be created, contributes to the economy of contractors, designers, architects, service staff, etc. I don't really know what the down-side is. Maybe too many cooks in the kitchen? Too many hands in the pie? It's definitely how the big boys do it. I just know that's not how we're going to do this project. Maybe it's too much for me to wrap my brain around.

We're going the bank route. One of the reasons a lot of folks do equity funding is because they can't get it from the bank, because there's no demonstrable business history. You have to have three nice years of really well-documented numbers to look at to even sit down at the bank. Matt and I have that history. Plus you have to have that pro forma together. I called my loan officer from Frost Bank and invited her out to the site. To make a long story short (some might say, "too late for that," but then they haven't read this far, have they?), she bought it.

She said, "How much do you need?"

(to be continued) (we're mostly done with the boring stuff)