This is the first post of the year and sadly, I have to begin with disappointing news. A couple of posts back, we were brimming with excitement while working on our new venture - a catering/take away business. We met with a lot of setbacks. While on the paperwork stage, we've had to wait longer for approvals and such since it coincided with the summer holidays. Somehow, everyone we needed to seek approval from and have contact with went on long vacations and so we had wait much longer than we expected.
Those delays meant that we couldn't do anything else until all the paperwork and approvals were given. Then, when we started to equip the kitchen, we were met with more delays. Delays in the deliveries and the installation of equipment meant that we had to push back our opening. And not only that, we discovered we had to install more equipment so that our small kitchen could meet the standard set by the health department of the the city. That meant more expenses that we didn't budget for.
We were already working with a small budget so that made things more difficult for us. We had to forgo putting up signs outside the building and printed menus. We had to be creative and made our own signs and put together own own menu displays for the walls outside our kitchen. In the end, we were quite satisfied with our efforts. The displayed menus and signs looked just the way I wanted - simple and welcoming.
When we finally opened, we got some customers - friends who read our Facebook post and some who worked around the area. But the number of sales were much fewer than we thought. That first week was dismal. We had some more customers, mainly people working around the area, but still very far off our initial target.
The worse part is the delays cost us at least 30 lunch orders a day. We managed to find a company that wanted to change catering companies. Their workers were tired of the poor quality of their usual caterers and were very interested in our menu. But because we started late, they couldn't wait any longer and stuck to their usual caters.
We also visited a lot of companies to market ourselves and met a lot of people who seemed very interested in our menus. But we took too long to get started and they lost interest or forgot about us. We even emailed our menus weekly but either the menus don't reach them or reached the wrong people. We kept on visiting other companies sometimes even with some samples, but the samples don't reach everyone in the company and the people we met didn't really spread the word about us.
We have regular customers, mainly those who work near our kitchen. They like our food, even the traditional Malay dishes, and some nice ones helped to spread word about us. But it's too slow and too late. Although we tried to find new customers, make changes to the menus, lower the prices and put up more signs, we didn't manage to turn things around.
After a lot of discussions, we have come to the painful decision to close the kitchen. Before we lose too much, it's better to cut our losses. This is really not something that we want to do. We really love our kitchen. It's well equipped and well planned, if I do say so myself. Every morning, we both are so excited and happy as we prepare the food. The wait for customers deflated us a bit but we both simply enjoy working together and I truly love cooking and serving customers. I still can't speak Swedish well, but I'll speak English with some of them.
This whole journey has been tough, with much more downs than ups. We've even shed tears and a couple of times, we even lost hope. The feeling of helplessness was the worst of all. We sometimes feel like crawling and curling up in bed and not wake up till all the problems are over. But we are each other's rock. When one of us fall apart, the other is there to be a pillar of support. And truly, that is the best thing that came out of this. Our relationship is as strong as ever and that is something we both treasure and not take for granted.
So on this first day of the year, with heavy hearts we have to admit defeat and close our business. But at the same time, we count our blessings and regain hope. "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope," said Martin Luther King. And that is exactly what we will do. We are going to keep our heads clear and think carefully about our future. Things might continue to be difficult, we most like will face more hard times, but with each other's support, and hope in our hearts we will get through everything.
And here, I would like to wish you all a happy new year and may all 2014 be good to you all.
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