The Lesson of Proper Planning

Today, dear people, we are going to learn about planning.

Planning a restaurant/brewery takes a coordinated effort of many people working together and creating a realistic vision of the eventual product.

It takes a long-term vision to succeed.

The original plan for this location was to have 30 tapped kegs and all the food for a 300 seat restaurant in a single, 8x11 walk-in cooler.  Now, some of you might do MATH and say... golly!  In order to do that, you would... well... probably expect a complete and utter disaster!

Those people would be correct.

So we are now erecting an additional walk-in cooler, 3 months after we opened.  We had some equipment which wasn't working (yes, 3 months after we opened.  Actually, a month after we opened.  Sometimes buying used JUST doesn't pay...) and traded it for a walk-in cooler box and compressor.

In order to install the walk-in, it must be on a concrete "curb" or pad.  This means making a form, getting the concrete, finishing the concrete, and then allowing it to cure.  Generally this is a 3 day process.

Pouring the pad was done on Thursday, and here we are on Sunday.  The guys arrive at 7 AM to erect the walk-in box, and low and behold- the walk in is not 10x12 as the pad is poured to accommodate, rather it is 12x15 !

This means that we have to expand the pad.  So- go through the 3 day process again.  ON THE OTHER HAND, it is 50% larger than we had originally projected, so it will make life a WHOLE lot easier.

A little short term pain in delay, for a LOT of gain with the additional space.

Such is the continual and ongoing adventure of opening the brewery.  "ALMOST there!!!!..." If you are thinking about opening a brewery / restaurant combo, I would suggest that you would possibly work with a Project Manager.  Yes, that's an actual job title and some might even work for trade in kegs.