Boy have I gotten lazy…busy….overwhelmed….forgetful….What was I saying again?
The last blog was some months ago and I found myself with a couple of hours on a Sunday morning….Keith is finally getting some couch time.So what’s new with us? Well the rumors of a church coming into the empty old Safeway building continue…nothing confirmed yet. We aren’t waiting though!! We are plowing ahead with plans to open another location…we would love nothing more than to have a little diner in each little corner of our lovely Longmont, CO!! Building a small business with your husband, wife, partner, etc has lots of challenges….not the least in which we are also trying to raise some kids (2), help out my parents (2), keep all dogs (3) from killing the one cat we still have!! When we said “for better, or worse”….we meant it!!!
That said, its never been dull! Would you or your spouse (partner) like to run your own little diner like ours? We love our regular customers, that turn into family and believe its those relationships that make life worth living! Maybe its old fashioned to say this but we love what we do and where we do it!! To all our regulars out there….you know who you are….Bill (3 eggs), Sue (overmedium), Dick (no meat), Dorothy (hot tea, please), Ted (3 pancakes for the boy), Dan (French toast fan), Elaine’s church group (can’t forget the coffee!) and the list goes on and on… Thank you for all your patronage and we look forward to serving you soon!!
Have you voted yet? www.LongmontChamber.org/membership-celebration

What’s cooking you ask? Well, it turns out a lot….like a ton!! Thanks to some much needed printed press (The Times Call, March 3rd by Clay Fong) we have a bunch of new customers coming to see us. A very happy but tired Keith and Teresa. This brings me to my point…doesn’t anyone want a job in a family business?

I was recently at a meeting in which the unemployment rate was listed as 2.2% here in Boulder County. Thats outrageous and good for the economy but what about us small business owners? We’ve been advertising for partime help for over 6 months now, and not one applicant. This is where we envy those larger chains that can absorb these economic changes. We are too small to do that. Its a trade of making staff work longer than expected (and losing them) or owners working longer than the usual 75 hrs/week. Yuck. I understand why this industry is so difficult. All over our little town there are signs asking for help….I look on craigslist and almost every restaurant is advertising for help. Whats’ a business owner to do?

And yet I see the significance of our position in the area. There’s few places where you can go and get truly homemade biscuits and gravy or a green chili that we make ourselves. Its unusual and yet, its where we look to eat when we are traveling. I mean we make our own poptarts! Who doesn’t want that?
So we keep on plugging away and hope that someday someone will see our ad and need a few hrs of work each week.

Our family diner will be a little lonely in the next few weeks. Some of you may not notice but our regulars will….there’s going to be a little less bounce in our step.

We opened for business in May 2013, and very quickly realized we could not handle this on our own. We were much busier than expected and making mistakes that can cost a diner like ours a whole lot of customer loyalty. We didn’t anticipate the response we got and after several weeks and months of exhaustion, I got on the phone with the only person I thought could help us. My brother-in-law, Kenneth, he was a field tested pro in the food business. He knew all the regulations and food service guidelines that we were still trying to get on top of! The initial problem was that he was in Boston, MA….not Colorado. He had often talked about moving out west to be closer to his niece and nephew, brother Keith and his family. So what’s an exhausted wife and mother of two and diner owner expected to do? Beg and plead!!! I presented him with such a convincing argument that he had no choice but to sell everything, pack up and move out here to the west! After a few weeks of getting used to not having oxygen, he joined us in the diner and the customers were overjoyed!! Finally, someone to talk to!!! Kenneth has that easy going, friendly disposition that our customers just loved! If a customer wasn’t sure what to get, Kenneth would use his fancy Boston accent to talk them into trying something new. His high volume, bigger than life personality was what our regulars came to really enjoy.

He spent his off hours with his beloved dogs and pinball machine. Kenneth was a regular volunteer at the Longmont Humane society and after walking dogs, he would show up at 300 Suns for a brew. He loved riding his bike and taking pictures of the beautiful Colorado mountains. He cheered on his niece and nephew at all their sporting events and celebrated the holidays with lots of family and friends. He is a hard worker and keen to please the many wonderful customers that call Mac’s Place their diner.

When we took over the GE account and started their lunch service, I was convinced that he would branch out and make new friends. I hoped that a new workspace would give him the needed time off to get out more and assimilate…but alas….that was not the case. His heart was always back East…his family back East needs his help and just like moving out here to help us….he his moving back to be with them.

Although Kenneth’s last official day was yesterday, he’ll be around for a few weeks while he gets his house packed up and sold. So, please stop by and say hi and let him know how much he will be missed.

So life in a small town diner just took on a whole new vibe….like the kind of vibe that comes before an earthquake. A couple of months ago, we (along with several other restaurants) received an email from a large company here in Longmont requesting a quote for  their in-house food vendor. Not quite sure how many employees eat at their café, we sent out a proposal that we were comfortable with and pricing to match. We listed mostly selections that we serve here in diner, and crossed our fingers that their employees weren’t all gluten free, vegetarians with dairy-nut-wheat allergies!

A few days went by and life got back to normal…..kinda like the settling of your house after the initial quake. Just a little tremor was all it was!

Then they sent out another request for more details on the menu…and wanted to show us around their facility….gulp.

The lead buyer at this large, respected company was super friendly and easy to talk with…though I have to admit she looks young enough to be my daughter. If I had had her when I was 14….which I didn’t…..so that’s why I look older than I am….ooops, off topic.

Their café was spacious with tons of possibilities to do some amazing food choices for them and it was neat to see in person what they wanted their new vendor to take on. We walked away feeling like we had been shown a very large prize….one that we had been wanting since the inception of our little diner. Hopes were high but we still had a new dinner service to bring on. Back to reality and the normal rhythm of Mac’s Place.

Then an unusually quiet Friday came around and their lead buyer, her boss and a few others decided to come in for lunch!!! VERY LARGE TREMORS NOW. It was a beautiful day and a great time to enjoy their break outside on the patio.  Keith and I talked to them and it seemed they enjoyed their Reuben and a few lunch specials…it was sea scallops that day and they are always good when we do them on a hot griddle with our pineapple-habanero sauce. So we were in the running….how cool!!!

Several days passed and the excitement of their visit was just a distant memory…life had returned to normal. All I had to worry about was how to get dinner served in the diner and make it to the football game in time to see our son play! The dinner service was about to get going and there was a lot of work to do….menus to plan/print, etc.

Then the phone rang. It seemed to have a different ring tone that usual. Had my kids changed my ringtone again??? Nope, it was opportunity calling. That sounds different from all other calls. We had been chosen to become the new in house food vendor for a large company here in Longmont. 220 employees just waiting to taste some delicious Mac’s Place specials. 8.0 on the Richter scale!!

We’ve spent 10 days interviewing and hiring some well qualified folks to help out and design some menu plans that will work for their health conscious employees. Still a lot of work to be done, and yet I can’t help but think all our prayers and hard work are paying off. Mac’s Place diner @GE Oil and Gas is going to be a great opportunity for everyone and a chance to show our support of local businesses, both big and small. Tremors under control now.

It’s that time of the year again when we say goodbye to our faithful teen employees. They are a huge help to us during the week but alas, school comes first! This is a family diner and we are all aware of how important a good education is….and yet, we miss them when they aren’t here. We hear their stories of how much studying they have to do or how long a certain history report is and then we have to sit and wait till their next weekend shift to find out how it all went down.

If you read the papers or listen to the news, its easy to get discouraged about the youth of today. So many times, the only things you hear are the negative ones. Now, I don’t know if we’ve just been incredibly blessed or maybe just lucky, but our teenagers are da’bomb!!! They show up, clean up and for the most part; shut up. They put their heads down, crack jokes, and keep working. I like to think of our family business as the best first job you could ever have. There’s no late hours, the customers are friendly, and there is always a mom and dad on hand to fix whatever gets broken. We share out the tips so each walks away with a little cash in their pocket plus a paycheck when the month ends. They get to learn how to interact with the public and how to graciously serve them. When I was a teen, I had a job in our local pizza place as well as a certain country music fun park (Opryland). It was there that I learned how to make change, make pizza, and make nice when customers are having a rough time.

Our little diner just isn’t the same without these amazing young adults. One of long-time teen helpers, KC for short wrote a wonderful goodbye letter to us in our local newspaper, titled Good bye from the dishwasher. It was a creative writing piece that frankly….we could all use more of in our local papers. It was a thoughtful thing to do and cemented my statement that the youth today cannot be painted with the same brush…..they are unique, talented, funny and bring a little sunshine to our diner every time they walk in!!!!

So this whole small business thing is taking on a life of its own….and yet our family duties still sit waiting in the wings. The idea of a family vacation came to me 13 months ago. I realized our kids were going to be in high school in one year and a short 4 years later …..well, they’d be off to college. So, I put the Mom foot down! Every week I tucked $40.00 away. Gave each child instructions about how much they needed to work/save in order to hop a plane over the pond and go see my Dad’s family in the UK. It seemed insurmountable at the time…coming up with almost $5,000.00 just for tickets, but little by little we got there. A few months prior to departure time, our line cook left and the hunt for an experienced cook began. Well, we found him…and much, much more! Chef Mark joined the Mac’s Place family just in time. He and our brother in law hunkered down, learned the recipes and made our dream of two whole weeks away….a reality! It wasn’t easy but by all accounts things ran smoothly.

You have a lifetime to make money, but only a few years with your kids to make memories.

Ok, here’s a little information for how good it is to give. When I say give, I really mean give….like for free. No strings attached…unless you count a silent prayer that one day they’ll give you some business that you can charge for!
As a small business we get approached daily about donations and it not always possible but….we sure do try to make it happen. A few months ago we were asked by the Longmont Humane society about donating some appetizers to their biggest fundraiser of the year. We love animals and making some meatballs seemed doable….then they called back.
It turns out that they were expecting a big….well…turn out! They needed more than we could donate…like double-more. Gulp. Then it hit me that we have a great friend over at Frontiere Natural meats, Robert LaPoint and his has employees Richard and Jo Ann…so I gave them a call. Together we were able to make 300 Asian style meatballs with their Bison meat. It was a win for everyone and I think we were able to get the attendees a taste of something unusual and yet readily available. It was all for the animals and who is not a sucker for that line….speaking of lines….I had the best one all night! “Hi, my husband and I own Mac’s Place diner, would you care for some Bison balls?”