Good day to All!

Most of you know, that I spent this past July and August at the China Dine-ah Too to get that business off the ground. The Dine-ah Too has been and always will be my attempt to educate travelers that we have a full service restaurant just off the beaten path, if you are already on Route #3 in South China, Maine. My hat's off to Sherri, Meagan, Ryan, Jess, Jean, Ralph and the rest of the staff for doing a wonderful job without me being there on a daily basis.

When people look at the China Dine-ah, some think that it is a gold mine and that I have a Brinks truck backed up to the back door and that we load it up every night. The truth is, our expenses are pretty close to our revenue. Our top four highest expenses in descending order are as follows: food, labor, electricity and propane. Sherri, Meagan and myself will be directing a lot of attention towards these four items this winter.

 As I continually work to increase revenue, they are going to be tasked with controlling the four costs I previously mentioned. The trick is to control these costs, especially the first two, without affecting the quality-quantity of our product and the service you have come to appreciate at the Dine-ah. If this sounds new to you, it is not. Every business in every line of work has to continually deal with revenue and expenses. In my perfect world, we would increase our volume by 20-25% and the expense problem goes away.       

If economic times were better, I'm sure everyone would eat out more often and again, problem solved. This has been a slow and steady economic recovery and we are not there yet. And with Obama care hitting in 2014, I'm concerned what effects that change may have on all of us.

Your support over the past six years has been so greatly appreciated, I can't even tell you.  Not only have we provided high quality, home cooked meals at reasonable prices, we have also provided 30+ jobs in Central Maine. These two facts alone make me very proud to say, that I own the China Dine-ah. I hope you are just as proud when you tell others that you have dined with us. Thanks for passing the word.

A couple of interesting facts about the China Dine-ah Too this past summer - we were open for ten weeks and even though some of these numbers may impress you and I, I'm sure Laura and her crew at the Red Barn do these numbers in a week or two. Laura reminds me that it took them 37 years to get to where they are.

Ten Week Totals

2,800 lbs of chicken
1,200 hamburgers
6,000 ketchup packets
14 - 114 oz ketchup jugs
5,000 3 lb red plaid food trays (baskets)
1,750 of fresh onions
3,950 lbs of breading (most of that is sifted and thrown away)
4,500 lbs of  french fries
125 lbs of clear lobster meat
5,200 whipped butter cups 
19 gallons of Lively's Embellished Relish (used in our homemade tarter sauce)
35 gallons of clams
270 lbs of scallops
240 pounds of shrimp
600 lbs of haddock

Norm