As of yesterday, the deli has officially been open for business for one whole month! It has been super surreal to have the whole project go from a hypothetical party topic to real thing that forces us to get out of bed every morning (EVERY MORNING). It has also been terrifying, exhausting, and so so exciting. Now time to force ourselves to sit down and review the good, the bad, and hold ourselves accountable for our future goals.

THINGS THAT WENT WRONG

Day One:
Our first transaction was a crushing disaster. No exaggeration here — complete and utter failure. One of the moments when you’re scrambling to remain calm while silently cursing yourself for ever thinking this was a good idea. Our side dishes were in half finished pieces strewn across the counter, we blew a fuse, and our register refused to cooperate. All in all it took a good 28 minutes for us to make three sandwiches. Luckily, it was family and we make a mean grilled cheese. And everything got a lot easier from there.

Signage:
Initially we planned on writing our menus out in white paint marker on heavy black illustration board. We lucked out finding an overhead projector at Construction Junction, and put together our oh-so-clever set up to trace out the menus. The projector didn’t work. Nor did our paint markers. So we started our first day with an impossible to read menu. We decided to shift gears and replace the illustration board with felt letterboards that matched the vintage vibes in the rest of our buildout and ordered some that evening. Which never shipped. Nor did the second order. So 4 weeks in, we’re still receiving bits and pieces to complete our final menu.

The blindness of strangers:
We make all of our corned beef in house, brining the beef for 7-10 days and then cooking it for 10 hours in a combi oven. Up to this point, we’ve been putting the beef in the oven Friday night and pulling it early Saturday morning so we have a fresh batch for the weekend. This past weekend, we got to the kitchen a little after 8am to find the oven turned off, 14 lbs of cold corned beef tormenting us. We panicked, questioned everyone in sight (it’s a shared kitchen), and tried to quickly sort through manuals online hoping there was a history feature on the oven. Eventually, we realized there was no hope to cling to. We tossed the beef and crossed Reubens off the menu for the week. On a positive note, now we know true agony and that you should always always always leave a note.

THINGS THAT WENT RIGHT
With everything that went wrong, this whole month has been an insane learning experience. In the months leading up to the opening, we had so many questions and only a foggy idea of what the expect. We’re still getting our act together, but its been a lot easier to map out our goals now that we have the space and the tools in front of us. Now we can focus on the smaller details with a clearer picture of what customers are responding to and also how our space is taking shape. Every day we’re able to make little improvements to the booth, tweak our recipes, and stock our shelves with new gifts we love.

We’ve also been really fortunate to get great feedback from customers.We’ve spent the last few years using friends and family as guinea pigs for our recipes, so it’s been doubly satisfying to hear a kind word from people that aren’t obligated to tell us everything we do is great. The public market environment isn’t always the most inviting for people eat and chat, so we’ve been grateful for those customer’s that opt to take a seat at our counter and share their stories with us.

THINGS FOR THE FUTURE

While we’ve been figuring out scheduling and invoices and recipes and not cutting our fingers off, sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees and remind ourselves why we started doing this to begin with. This week we’ve been forcing ourselves to get more creative and dig into to new projects. We have a 10lbs of tomatoes on order and are trying our hand at making mozzarella (!!!) to introduce a caprese sandwich special to the menu.

ALSO!!! We got a new little cat buddy and he is the greatest in the entire world!