I was remarking to a customer at a company lunch yesterday that I had just seen someone I used to work with at the company I used to work for. He asked me what I had done there and then, after I answered, he asked me if I like what I was doing more now.
I was hot. I was tired. I was feeling stressed out more than I normally do because I was thinking about the fact that we typically lose quite a bit of money over the summer months.
The restaurant business is hard. Profit margins are so low it's silly. Employees come and go with the wind. Customers can be demanding and frequently don't care one way or another what it took to bring them that plate of food. Vendors and Non-profits come at you from out of the woodwork trying to separate you from as much money as they can.
All of that is true and yet my answer was simple and came quickly. "It's mine, and I like that better."
There is absolutely no doubt I could be making more money using other skills I've developed over the years while working for another company or even for myself, but the truth is, that work was never very satisfying to me. On the other hand, it is very satisfying to know the hard work I'm doing now fulfills a very basic need that all people have.
(It's even more satisfying to know I will be able to sell Thai food and sushi for bitcoin after the coming social collapse!)
It was never my dream to own a restaurant. I am not a "foodie." This thing started as a way to give my wife something that would be more of a challenge than she was getting working as a server in one restaurant after another. One thing that became very clear very quickly was that there would be no way for her to run it on her own and there would be no way to afford another person to manage it and so I have become more and more involved as we have gone along.
It was also very clear that I cannot do what she does. She is quite simply amazing! It would take pages and pages to list it all out but suffice to say, there is nothing in the restaurant she cannot and does not do. She is not a trained "chef". She did not go to any culinary school. She has no professional credentials. She grew up cooking for a large farming family in an outdoor kitchen in a little village in Northeast Thailand. Cooking for her is as natural as breathing and she does it effortlessly.
I have watched over the last couple of years as she has grown from someone who knew how to put together a dinner for friends and family into someone who can organize a commercial kitchen to provide great food quickly for 400+ people a day, day in and day out. I have watched her work deep into the night when she didn't have a prep cook to make sure the meats and veggies were ready for action the next day. I have watched her get up the next day and do it all over again, day after day for months on end.
I say all this and I realize I was wrong to tell the customer I like it because it is mine. It's not mine. It's ours. I like it because it's ours and I wouldn't be doing it if she wasn't a part of it.
Mrs Wife - I love you very much and I appreciate everything you are doing to make this work! It was wonderful to see you smiling when I came to the truck this afternoon and I hope to see many more smiles for years to come!
Mr. Husband