Diane's Page

To the uninitiated, restaurant ownership seems like an easy, fun way to make money. But you don't know the half of it until you're in there doing it. I learned this the hard way. As an ex-owner of two juice/coffee bars, creating a cool concept and coming up with the work flow and systems and hiring and getting the whole thing started was fun... but the day-to-day was killer. The endless grind of management and payroll and ordering and inventory and legal, tax and employee issues turned out to be not the lifestyle I had envisioned. (You know the fantasy? The one where you hire managers to do everything while you sit back on a beach in Hawaii collecting deposits into your bank account? That's where I thought this thing was going.)

The day we sold those puppies was one of the happiest of my life. But if FohBoh had been around back then, perhaps my story would have ended differently.