When the last customer had left, and our group started cleaning up, Pete and I moved outside to sit on the curb at the edge of the parking lot. We had that exhausted-but-satisfied feeling that athletes experience when they win a big victory. As we reviewed the day, we could hardly believe our success, and our anticipated good fortune.
“If all of these people showed up today,” I said exuberantly, “and hardly anyone knows we exist, imagine tomorrow!”
“They’ll all come back and the next time they’ll bring their friends. We’re going to do great. We’re going to be millionaires!” Pete said confidently.
Reveling in the glory of our opening day success we couldn’t help but think the customers loved our restaurant. All we had to do now was build more restaurants and attract more customers.
Of course, it wouldn’t work quite that way. There was a challenge around every curve, and the first curve was just ahead. We soon discovered that while we sat on the curb that day, we had committed the sin of counting our chickens before they hatched!
Monday Night Quarterbacks
Several days after we opened Pete’s Super Submarines, I entered the freshman class at the University of Bridgeport as a commuter student, and possibly the only student who owned a small business, although that meant nothing to me at the time. Even with a full load of sixteen credit hours, I managed to arrange my schedule so that I attended classes in the mornings, worked in the shop in the afternoons and early evenings, and studied at night. Some days it was possible to study in the shop, but I didn’t look forward to those days because it could only mean that business was slow.
Mine was a busy schedule, but not especially difficult. Every day presented a new challenge or opportunity. Mondays, however, became particularly important in my routine. Following our research trip to Maine, when there was a lot of work to be done, Pete and I began meeting weekly to assess our progress and evaluate our plans. Now that our shop was open for business, a weekly meeting continued to be a good exercise to monitor our development, review our progress, and plan for the future. Each week we met at the same place—World Headquarters—also known as my mom’s kitchen table.
On Monday nights Pete left work at about five and drove from Armonk to our co-op apartment in Bridgeport. Right after six he would walk through the back door into our kitchen where my mom was minutes away from serving a spaghetti dinner, including homemade sauce and meatballs. I was there waiting for him, anticipating his first question, which he asked religiously upon arrival: “How’s business?”
I always answered with the number of sandwiches sold by 6:00 p.m. that day. A few minutes before Pete’s arrival I would call the store for an update from our employee. Pete didn’t want to know dollars and cents, only the number of sandwiches sold. If the number was high, Pete smiled. If it was low, he frowned. After I announced the number, Pete joined my family at the table and we enjoyed mom’s dinner. We made a point not to talk about business while we ate.
After our meal, as the table was being cleared, Pete would open a three-ring binder that he brought with him to every meeting. Like the good scientist that he was, Pete kept a journal to track our progress. He charted our weekly sales on a graph in his notebook, and he recorded observations that he considered important. We talked about every aspect of the business—sales, products, customers, employees, marketing ideas, and even the bills we had to pay that week. My parents participated in these meetings because they were involved in the business, even though they had other jobs. My mom knew all of our suppliers and both she and my dad helped out in the shop, particularly when I couldn’t be there.
We didn’t know it at the time but we were at a tremendous disadvantage during these Monday meetings. We were like travelers without a roadmap, or scientists without measuring tools. The purpose of our get-together was to observe, calculate, project, and analyze the business. But we were painfully slow arriving at good conclusions. More sophisticated businesspeople would have had a variety of reports and an occasional financial statement from their accountant to measure their progress, and enlighten them. But we were years away from having these tools. We didn’t have an accountant. We kept our own books, and we didn’t know how to produce a financial statement. Without business experience, we really didn’t know what to observe, calculate, project, or analyze.
For example, when we spoke about serving the customer, or the quality of our product, we weren’t able to make a good assessment of how we were doing. Obviously we wanted to serve a quality product and keep our customers happy, but we didn’t know enough about what customers wanted to adequately discuss the components of those issues. We simply didn’t know the right questions to ask.
Funnier yet, none of us necessarily had answers! Pete didn’t show up on Monday nights with all the answers. Sometimes, frustrated by slumping sales, tight cash flow, or a problem we just couldn’t solve, Pete would jump out of his chair, run to the back door of our apartment, and shout, “What’s wrong with you people here in Bridgeport? Get over to our restaurant and buy some subs!” As business neophytes, we were all inadequately trained to understand the business.
Nonetheless we plodded forward, somehow sensing that we were doing a good thing by meeting every Monday night, taking a step back from the business to conduct these conversations. And, of course, we were doing a good thing. We didn’t make great strides from week to week, but over a long period of time the cumulative knowledge we gained about our business was invaluable. Without a network of savvy advisers, or even one who had owned a sandwich shop, these meetings yielded the information we needed to build our business. The meetings presented an opportunity to learn and to prepare, to try and to try again, and to continually improve. No matter what challenge we faced, Pete and I were proactive. We looked for solutions, and we were always ready to give it another try. That was another major benefit of the meetings. They fostered a successful partnership by giving Pete and me time to calibrate our thoughts. We didn’t always agree, and we were often frustrated by the various challenges we faced, but there was never tension between us personally. There were no loud, knock-down battles or arguments of any kind. If Pete’s Super Submarines was going to succeed, we had to depend on each other to come up with the solutions and get the job done.
The Plummeting Graph
After a month or two of Monday night meetings a pattern emerged on Pete’s sales chart. The shop was busiest on Fridays and Saturdays and slowest on Mondays and Tuesdays. Sunday was an odd day. Business could be dead until 4:00 p.m. and then we’d get a surge of customers until 7:00 p.m., and then it would be dead again until we closed. The more interesting pattern emerged after several months, however, and it was neither pretty nor encouraging.
With each passing week since the opening, we sold fewer sandwiches. In other words, our sales chart was headed downhill! That record of 312 sandwiches sold on opening day had quickly faded, not to be seen again. By November, 100 sandwiches sold was a big day, but it was far from adequate. All the more disappointing, and worrisome, the numbers continued to fall.
One Monday night in late November our “brain trust” decided the restaurant lacked exposure, so we invested in the Jingle Bell Special, an advertising promotion sponsored by a local radio station. It cost us $550, an enormous sum of money, but an insignificant amount if the special could improve our December sales. The radio advertising rep convinced us that people would be out Christmas shopping all month and they’d hear our promotion and stop by for a sandwich. Indeed, people were out shopping, and certainly they heard the radio spots for Pete’s Submarines, but they didn’t stop for a sandwich. Our sales continued to fall in December, and January, too. The low point didn’t occur, however, until one cold, dreary Monday in February.
“How’s business?” Pete asked when he arrived at World Headquarters on this particular day.
“Seven,” I said.
It didn’t take the genius of two Monday night quarterbacks to know that Pete’s Super Submarines was in trouble. Even at our top price of 69 cents, sales of seven sandwiches wasn’t enough