How many?.......

Food trade in the pub has been slow, very slow, So slow in fact that I volunteered myself to cover both lunchtime and evening shifts in the kitchen yesterday............Hmmmm glad I did cause it went a bit looney tunes.

I hope I was more of a help than a hindrance to our other cook but I think I did OK considering the last time I did any kind of service like that was about 7 years ago with around 8 covers at most at the local boozer. This time we had around 30 covers and even though it probably wasn't the most well run of services with food going out at all different times the quality was good.

The customers don't know the situation the pub is in so we cannot afford to be so un-organised in the future. I hope those who did wait will be able to overlook that and be back next week. Most of them were ramblers and most had pre-ordered which makes it even more frustrating. I think we should greet them next time with a big hot mug of coffee and some bacon butties.

Plenty of drinkers here from around 4:30pm yesterday which added to the busy lunchtime so that made the overall business very good for a midweek day, we really want to be building on it and having every day like this at a minimum and I think that's a tough target to set but it's entirely achievable if we stick to our business plan.

Good thing about having a busy bar between food services is that I get to try out some of my new menu recipes on the punters. Yesterday I knocked up a couple of prawn cocktails which went down very well so they are definitely staying. I'll be doing a couple more today but spending a day in the kitchen has shown me that we only need a few regular dishes, maybe 6 starters, 6 mains and 6 desserts so what I have already will need to be trimmed. Even as simplistic as the current offering seems everything is just too fragmented, there doesn't seem to be any synergies. The specials board can offer a wider range and that way we can source even more locally and seasonally.

I'm back in the kitchen today, it's curry day too so I need to whip up a couple of them and I'm doing one of the services too...........WE NEED KITCHEN STAFF !!! HELP :-)