And I mean that literally and figuratively. Literally because of all the bad weather we have had all this past week. And figuratively because of another bad week - I know, one of my recent past newsletters was titled "The week from hell", and it was. But this week has also been very challenging.

 

Let me start by saying that I had a close encounter with the TABC this week (actually two close encounters). For those of you that don't know the TABC is the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission and is the regulatory agency that oversees alcohol licenses, sales, and anything that has to do with alcohol beverages in the state of Texas. Now, to make a very long story short, the TABC issued a new law that took effect in February. And to avoid all the gory details just imagine that you own a restaurant (or a bar) and all your purchases for the month need to be paid at specific times during the month. If you miss that window then you have to pay by cash or cashier check. Since we are a small business and depend heavily on judicious management of cash flow I wait until the very last moment to pay by cash. If you miss this second (cash) window three times in year then the TABC sends you an auditor to look at your bank accounts, invoices, taxes paid, etc, etc.  Knowing how critical this is and how painful an audit can be I made sure to pay my invoices on time as established by the new law. Well, i did but one of my vendors kept posting my payments late and submitting the restaurants as "delinquent".  I complained twice to the people at this "big" liquor/wine vendor and was assured that they would take care of it. Well, they didn't and posted me as delinquent 3 times at both restaurants!!

You have no idea how stressed I was when I had the visit of 2 auditors from the TABC at both restaurants! Thank God they both were extremely professional, nice, understanding and fair. And they both saw that I had been complying with the law and the vendor had been posting us as delinquent for no reason.

But the damage was done and I still needed to spend a lot of time digging through my files to find all the evidence needed, bank account statements, etc., etc.

Bottom line I am in good shape and my vendor will be scrutinized now because of bad business practices. But...it was a stressful week nevertheless and I had to do a lot of time consuming things that I didn't have the time to do!

 

Second issue (and totally different): We had a VERY slow week at both restaurants because of the holiday and the lousy weather. But things started improving a bit on Wednesday and I expected to be able to somewhat catch up on Thursday night. Well, I had a power outage at Capriccio and had to shut down Thursday night. My electric company is TXU but it is CenterPoint the one that owns the grid, fixes problems, etc. So someone at CenterPoint told me that the service would be restored between 6:30 and 7:00 PM but it wasn't. Then I called again and I was now told that it would be restored before 10:00 PM!!!

So I decided to just shut down. The saddest part was to stand outside the restaurant telling all the customers that were parking their cars that we didn't have power. A very, very sad thing to do. So, if you are in the mood for some Tapas this weekend please come to Capriccio - we would really appreciate it!!

 

The good news is that things should be on the upswing now.

 

Thanks so much for listening!

 

Gerry