“You have to know that on the other side of your blog, you have so many people rooting for you guys.” These kind, encouraging words came from a former co-worker and friend, “B”, as we caught up with each other at the genetic counseling annual educational conference in late September. Those nine words, “…you have so many people rooting for you guys…” have echoed in my head ever since.
Back in April when we made the decision to uproot our lives in DC and move back south to pursue this dream of opening up our own place, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy and it wasn’t going to happen overnight. And although we are “on schedule”, it is so easy to feel like opening doors is taking forever! From looking at possible locations that are basically a shell of a building that need lots of TLC to move-in ready spaces that don’t quite fit our vision and come with a hefty sticker price to crunching numbers for 3- to 5-year projections. Those nine words served as a friendly reminder and knowing we have such amazing family and friends, who are encouraging us and rooting for us, makes those “can we really do this?” moments less daunting. So, thank you everyone!
Here are just a few things that we have been up to lately.
We’ve established ourselves as an LLC. The guys are deep into financial worksheets, determining start-up costs, and a whole host of other business must dos from our weekly team meetings to meetings with commercial brokers, architects and potential vendors.
Team meeting at Nola Brewing
Site selection continues with spaces in all areas of New Orleans. Each neighborhood has its own unique qualities that we love and the spaces, as I mentioned earlier range from needing a full build out to almost ready to move in. But we’re getting close!
Amy and Chris are continuing to bake breads, pastries and incorporating some of the local produce into delicious desserts that we hope to feature at the shop. Its been awesome to be the taste tester for their creations. Tough job but somebody has to do it!
In addition to working with Chris on business docs, Jonathan has been busy building his ideal coffee and tea program. I’ll spare you the details of water quality handbooks (wink).
Lots more to come from this crew in the coming months…
