RUMINATIONS ON THE VIABILITY OF SMALL BUSINESS IN SMALL AMERICA

 

As someone daily struggling to make a small business go in a less-than-humming corner of America, I often wonder about the viability of the pursuit I’ve chosen.  My restaurant is in a very small town (about 7000 people) but one which draws from a region of about 40,000 nearby Kentuckians.  There is a decent amount of tourist traffic accountable to the many bourbon distilleries, the Civil War attractions, Bardstown, the many Catholic historic sites, and a fair amount of hikers, bikers, and anglers.  We have a healthy economy with a quality of living envied by many other Kentucky towns of comparable size. 

Still, I have to wonder how far beyond the saturation point we’ve come in my particular industry.  As have other independents, I stopped serving lunch last year.  It wasn’t because we didn’t have a decent volume of business.  But, there is too much competition from fast food joints to justify all the work and expense to draw a small-ticket, teetotaling, in-a-rush lunch trade.  I need about four hours of labor for an hour to an hour and a half of business.  When the average check is about $7, including tip, it often cost me to provide this service to the town. 

Unlike at dinner, my potential customers who are in a hurry to get back to work– and actually like fast food, truth be told– will consider McDonalds or Wendys or KFC in addition to me as a lunch option.

Even shedding the lunch albatross has not made this business any easier for me.  And, every time I hear and feel the dynamiting going on as our first bypass comes nearer to reality, I have to wonder about the added competition that will come if our economic development mandarins manage to entice a decent chain-type, sit-down restaurant to the shopping center that will surround the “super” Wal Mart now under construction.  The locally owned restaurants that remain have endured the chiselling of our business by the chains that have so much more name recognition and advertising power behind them than we could possibly counter.  We’re holding on, but sometimes it seems like just that, no more. 

Should one or two of these sit-down chains– an O’Charlies or Perkins, say– decide to invest here, I truly believe it’s curtains for us.  Not that independents haven’t managed to hold their own since chains ascended over the last forty years, but I’m talking about a tiny market.  There is no college here.  No sizeable population that sees value in what we’re doing as opposed to catering to the bottom-dollar crowd.    In this small market, and in the thousands of similar markets nationwide, it will not be the independents who will survive.

This could fairly be said to be an indulgence in self-pity and defeatism.  I am, by turns, inspired and infuriated by those who say that anything can be done with enough will and smarts.  I can’t argue with this any more than they can argue decisively that the sad endings in America were self-fulfilled.  As John Tunis said, “Losing is the great American sin.”

The truth is that at some point, an independent business person has to look at the odds against him or her and decide if it is worth the risk.  And, in this reflection, one must conclude that things are just geared most conducively for national chains to dominate.  I don’t know enough about interstate commerce law to know the exact culprit, but, I believe therein may be found the foxhole where the enemy hunkers and shares a canteen with our local and state authorities who share much of the blame with their tackleboxes of  ready tax abatements and zoning law corruptions. 

THE BIG IDEA

 

Consumed with our hyper-consumerism and the havoc wrought daily on our resources in the pursuit of our sordid boon, I have often shaken my head at the pure, sinful (inasmush as I believe in sin) waste of the materials used to contain and transport our goods.  One target of my dismay is the thing most needed to make a slingshot, the lowly rubberband.  I’ve no idea what the ecological cost to make the billions of rubberbands that are surely manufactured in this country alone for all those soggy morning papers and whatnot.  However, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve just about got enough right now.  Except for whatever industrial uses for large rubber bindings, may I suggest that we place a moratorium on their production?  My apologies to those of you whose family fortunes are all bound up in the rubber trade.  The only problem each of us may have with rubberbands is that they are not always handy, but I know of no one who does not have a stash of them somewhere for all those future uses which will surely never exhaust the cache.  And, there are those whose business necessitates that they have a ready store of them. 

I have considered some repository where we might send them for redistribution.  However, that would require infrastructure and a system of transport.  HERE’S THE BIG IDEA:  WHAT IF WE GOT INTO THE HABIT OF PLACING AT LEAST ONE RUBBERBAND IN THE ENVELOPE EVERY ITEM WE PAID OUR PAPER BILL (OR ANY BILL FOR A SERVICE THAT NEEDS LOTS OF RUBBERBANDS)? 

The beauty of this is that it would add no further trouble or expense for anyone.  You could easily fit a small bundle of rubberbands into an envelope and not exceed the first class postage weight limit.  They’d just be tagging along.  Hitchhiking, if you will.

I often take our surplus clothes hangers to Terri, who hems my pants.  She’s always very grateful, and why not?  That’s an expense she can forgo. 

I haven’t really considered just who else besides my paper lady might need more rubberbands for their work.  The bank?  Maybe they’d reduce my interest rate if I brought in enough.  Hey, like the man said, a penny saved is a penny earned. 

It occurs to me now that Andy Rooney has insidiously wormed his way into my brain.  Suddenly I feel the need to go trim my eyebrows.

I ACTUALLY DO HAVE GOALS. TO PROVE IT, I’LL WRITE THEM DOWN.

I don’t picture myself as one of those “purpose-driven” souls who always have an eye on some goal.  Those of this type annoy me, probably because I feel shiftless and feckless around them.  Is it just an excuse for drift and laziness to believe that events control you, not the other way around, and that one, therefore, needn’t bother pushing against the current?  Possibly.  However, I do seem to make some progress at the end of each day by my reactions to stimuli.

This has gone a bit far afield of my intended topic– that of my goals.  I sat down and wrote a bit in my notebook yesterday about some goals I have for the restaurant.  Goal #1 is to sell the restaurant.  The reason I want to sell it is to reduce stress and get out from under my debt and risk.  That leads me to Goal #3 which I’ll get to after the perfunctory Goal #2:  Until I do sell the restaurant, I want to make it as good as it can be and manage the current transition in such a way that the business ends up in a better situation.  More on the “current transition” later.  The aforepromised Goal #3:  Should Goal #1 not pan out in a timely fashion, I would consider taking in a working and investing partner who could bring in enough capital to alleviate my debt and its attendant monthly sop as well as alleviate the pressure on my time and management responsibilities.  I don’t want to be solely responsible anymore for ironing out all the petty issues that come with managing employees of varying loyalty, professionalism, honesty, and maturity.

As for the transition we are in, that was precipitated by an incendiary situation fomenting in the kitchen of late.  The head cook of the last three years and his wife waged war against one other staff member in particular and, because there was vitriol left over, the rest of the staff in general.  Apparenly, it was assumed that I was so reliant on the cook and his shrew that I would tolerate any behavior– even fire the target of their anger.  My hand was forced and I put in writing the situation any my response and delivered this to the cook’s home.  My response was to suspend him for one week and stipulate certain rules to govern his return.  Namely, his wife doesn’t see the doorstep again or remember the restaurant’s phone number.  And, the vendetta against the other employee ends immediately.  He stopped by several times last week and always indicated that he would return when his suspension ended.  He didn’t.  For the record, I stated the day before that it was 50/50 at best whether or not he would be there.  Word on the street is that he already has a job to tide him over until a new restaurant up the block opens in a few months.

Hence, my “transition” period.  Almost as if dropped off by angels, four replacements stepped into my restaurant within days– hours in one case– of the cook’s last shift.  I’ll need more help than that to put us on a smoother course.  I’m working on that.

A KINDRED SPIRIT

 

Despite most assumptions or appearances, I tend to see the world through granola-colored glasses.  To wit, yesterday I had an actual bowl of granola for breakfast (Man!  It was good.  If you’re ever in Indiananpolis, right across from the capitol in the Simon Building is a large coffee shop called Cafe Patachou.  The coffee was better than Starbucks, which I do like, and the granola was, I believe, homemade.) 

Another to wit:  I get emails from Orion Magazine and often find something of interest, whether it’s the latest Wendell Berry epistle from the mountaintop or some other grousing about the insanity of contemporary living.  Here’s an article by Rebecca Solnit about how the demands on our time are anathema to living a full life.  I’ll pique your interest with the beginning: 

“THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF MY APOCALYPSE are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our lives and expand our horizons. “

If that was at all interesting to you, here’s the link to the complete story (If there’s some annoying registration to look at stuff on the site, please accept my apology.):  http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/346

NOT SO DAILY

OK, I’ve forsaken DHC for a few days.  The life of a father is unaccompanied by a lot of free time.

In the time since I’ve written, I finished Garp.  I’m glad I had saved it for myself.  Irving is one of those writers who can draw the reader in on an emotional level without compromising his art.  Now reading James Salter’s “The Hunters”.  I have stated several times since I discovered JS that he is now my favorite writer.  I only wish he were more prolific.  The stories in “Last Night” have those electric moments; a single word or image employed at exactly the right moment hits you like the live end of a severed wire.  He is very careful and I am rewarded for his care.