The harrassment seems to be building. The thing is haunting me.
I was in the library. Off-handedly to someone else, but intentionally loud enough so I could hear it, the Luna Pier Librarian laughingly said, “Yeah I went down to the beachhouse to get one of those great Flint hot dogs the other day … and they were CLOSED.” [emphasis hers]
Of course it was CLOSED … Labor Day was months ago and since it’s a beachhouse it’s on the beach and on Labor Day the beaches in Michigan are CLOSED for the season till next year.
Sheesh …
Lately a week doesn’t go by that someone doesn’t ask me if I’m going to run the beachhouse again for the summer of 2009. Frankly, that was my full-rime job from June 1 till Labor Day. I was there almost every day, and as I’ve mentioned before, the math indicates we made 72 five-quart batches, 90 gallons, of my version of the Flint-style coney sauce. (That link takes you to the recipe. Go for it.)
People liked the darn things. One day a car pulled up in the parking lot and some hairy twenty-somethings got out. The one guy looked at our signs, threw his hands in the air and yelled, “I thought we were getting away from Flint!” They then bought some of our coneys. They’d had some originals at Angelo’s in Flint a couple days before, but told me mine were actually better.
That’s cool. They may have been drunk when they were at Angelo’s, but still, that’s cool.
So people ask, “Are you going to run the beachhouse again this summer?”
It’s haunting me, the ghosts inhabiting real people, all asking the same question, time and time again.
Ok, here’s the thing; I have a full-time day-job now. At the time Caleb and I ran the beachhouse last summer, I was unemployed. That place is a lot of work. I just won’t have time this year. It’s that simple.
Here are some other numbers people don’t know.
Rent for the beachhouse was $600 for each of the three months, with one month deposit. Health inspections were $95 every two weeks. Insurance was $140 up-front. Start-up costs for food were about $200 for ice creams, and $225 each for Sam’s and GFS.
There it is. Just to get started is about $2,100. Then there are the things needed on a regular basis. We spent between $400 and $600 each week on supplies.
It’s more expensive than it looks.
If I were to ever do it again, there’d have to be some drastic changes so I could actually make money. I’ll lay a few things out for you:
- Prices: They’d have to be higher. The bottom line is that our bottom line was too low. We didn’t even make minimum wage ourselves. And while the teens might complain about higher prices, it’s an honest fact that I’m still hearing from adults involved in business that we were too inexpensive. A good $3 coney isn’t all that far-fetched.
- Coneys: This is where I’ll bite a big bullet and say, I’d go with the Detroit-style coneys this summer. This Flintoid understands some things a little better now and knows that buying a pre-made Detroit coney sauce, which is available commercially, would be less expensive that our making the Flint sauce from scratch as we did last year. The Flint sauce is only made in Flint and isn’t sold anywhere, so that’s an issue.
- Nachos: These wouldn’t change much, except for pricing.
- Sandwiches: This would be an addition to the coneys and nachos we served last year. I now find it odd we had all those side dishes and drinks and only two main items. These new sandwiches are items people actually asked for after looking at our menu, starting their request with, “Don’t you have … ?” Panini sandwiches, like a good roast beef & cheddar, a toasted club, and maybe even a panini Reuben, would probably sell well and be worth the price of a small press.
- Ice Creams & Pop: These wouldn’t change much either except, again, for pricing.
- Live Bait: No change at all. This one went pretty well and Mike Kahman of Northland’s Pride bait up in Lapeer, Michigan, took good care of us.
- Swim and beach novelties & supplies: We never really did get a good handle on this last year. We never found a decent supplier, but then again I’m not sure we looked hard enough. This could be lucrative, especially if we were to get tanning lotions and that good Panama Jack sunburn gel in pouches.
- Suppliers: Most of this went well but there would be two major changes. We would arrange for truck delivery from Independent Dairy for the ice creams (they come to town for two other locations anyway) and, believe it or not, the Koegel truck from Flint. The Koegel truck goes to GFS in Monroe and Toledo anyway so it’s in the area, and John Koegel made this suggestion to me last year when I asked him for our window sign. So Dave, that’s a D’oh! on your part. Besides the Koegel hot dog, this truck could also bring us most of the new sandwich meats, and Koegel’s does make a Detroit chili sauce for sale to restaurants only.
Pretty simple really. There are a few other things but this is the meat of it. I do have everything needed except for the panini press.
What I don’t have … is the necessary start-up money and, much more importantly, the necessary time to run the beachhouse right.
That’s all there is to it.