Well, I suppose I should give an update on the store progress. We had been waiting for the oven, menu boards and miscellaneous other equipment. It arrived at the airport early last week but it is stuck in customs due to a paperwork issue. The customs department here requires individual detailed reports of the contents of each individual package. The shipper only supplied one master list without any breakdown, and some of the descriptions are too vague.
Apparently they have changed to a new shipment system and unlike the old system where the shipper had a local Taiwan office, the new one doesn’t. They just dump it on a random freight forwarder and then nobody knows who is supposed to talk to who if there’s any problems like incomplete paperwork. The good news is that the new shipper’s contract says that they can’t charge more than their quoted shipping rate, so they get to pay for all the extra fees for sorting out the paperwork, storage fees in customs, etc. The bad news is I still have to wait for it to get sorted out.
There’s been some delays on other things, but they *should* all be sorted out in time.
Meanwhile I’ve hired a manager and have plenty of other people who want to work in the restaurant. 104 Job Bank has worked out well for hiring.
Yesterday after accepting a delivery at the shop of some supplies I went over to McDonald’s to get lunch. There was another white guy in line there and things were moving slow so we made some small talk for a bit. A little later when I was waiting for my food, my bud Casey from Forumosa walked in. He was there to meet the guy I’d been talking to, who happens to live just two lanes up from my house. Casey, Jon and I went over to Jon’s house for a while to chat and then after Casey left Jon came over to my house to visit for a while longer. Jon has also been kicking around a lot of business ideas but hasn’t really landed on one he likes yet, so it was fun to talk about those kinds of things.