August 18 will mark our fifth year in the New Hub in Snohomish. We are pleased to celebrate that anniversary along with another historic landmark for us, our 48th year in Snohomish.
Noreen and I have owned the Hub since 1985 when we bought it from my parents who owned it for 25 years. That is a long time for all of us. The anecdotal history of the restaurant is partially documented in the HISTORY section of our web page. Go to thehubinsnohomish.com and click on HISTORY. The old drive in was a pain in the butt, but it produced some great memories.
Our new restaurant is no elegant fine dining place, that isn’t who we are. Unlike the old place it has lots of seats and air conditioning. We are very proud of the new HUB in Snohomish. It is the place we designed it to be.
It is not often that you get a chance to write down on paper what you want and then actually get it. That is what we got with our new place. We drew the plans the way we wanted and that is what we got.
Having said that, there are some small things I would do different if I had the chance, but all in all, I am very happy. Our personalities (Noreen and me) are embodied in the décor. The warmth and comfort of our dining room convey the feelings we wanted when we started.
There are so many stories to tell about our experiences leading up to opening and then for the first couple months, I will break them down into chapters and reveal them over the next few weeks. I will start with KITCHEN CHRONICLES, then maybe DINING ROOM DIARIES. I might even ask outsiders to jot down their recollections of those exciting times and share them with you.
CHAPTER 1 Someone’s in the Kitchen with Steve
I remember five years ago when we were scrambling around getting ready to open our new restaurant. There were so many things to do before we could actually light up the equipment. It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since that time in 2003.
When you open a new restaurant, you know up front that there will be “organizational miscalculations” that will need “remediation”. I can guarantee we had a number of miscalculations. We were remediating our butts off for quite a while. One way to prepare for “remediation” is to have plenty of staff. We hired a bunch. We had drive thru people, table servers and cooks. We had a plan for using all the staff. My plan described how the staff would do the different jobs. What we had not planned for was the avalanche of business that turned up at our door that first day.
When we opened on August 18, 2003, we knew our faithful customers would be happy to have us back, but we had no idea the welcome we had coming. I guess we had an inkling. We knew from talk in town folks were glad we were opening, but when the day actually arrives you hold your breath to see who shows up.
We did a pre-opening weekend where we invited people to come in to sample the food and check out the new digs. It was very gratifying to hear the comments from our guests. It was really nice to get back to work. We actually had a casualty that pre-opening weekend. One of five cooks we hired was so overwhelmed with the volume of work, she quit after a day and a half. Her comment was “I can’t work like that!” And we hadn’t actually opened for business. We knew when we hired her she would be a difficult fit. We didn’t have a lot of choices at that time, we needed five experienced cooks and we had none at the start. When she couldn’t cut it the second day, we didn’t have time to feel bad; we just scratched her name off the schedule and worked more ourselves.
I have to say that of the kitchen staff we hired before we opened, Linda Holland saved my butt. She was the only one of the “experienced” cooks that was actually experienced. She could cook breakfast when I could not. She could step up and get stuff done when those other nitwits needed someone to hold their hands for every task. I will be forever indebted to Linda Holland for her contribution to our start.
Having said that; you know the remainder of our cooks left something to be desired. I would be safe in saying that we had cooks helpers working with Linda and me, but not cooks. We started with five “cooks”, we lost one during the pre-opening weekend so we were short handed for sure on the day when we opened for business in our new place. That would be an indication of things to come.
When we threw open the doors that first day we learned a bunch of lessons. Most of them had to do with my crappy planning. As in most openings, you overcome those “organizational miscalculations” with brute force. You throw extra people at problems to minimize their impact while you recalculate your permanent solution. In my case, too much success made me question my plan when the plan was overwhelmed.
For the first six weeks we were open, I was challenged just keeping product in the kitchen. In restaurant parlance, we were “slammed” day after day for that whole time. Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant knows how difficult it is to teach when you are buried. We had to attempt to teach our cooks to cook HUB food our way. That doesn’t sound so difficult, but we are particular about how our food is prepared. The sequence of the steps, the quality checks along the way, the presentation, the techniques, everything about how we wanted our food to be, needed to be conveyed to rookies and Linda Holland. More often than not, I just brushed them aside and did the work myself. There wasn’t a lot of quality teaching going on.
I think the one thing they did learn was that I was a picky bastard.
There were so many adjustments during the “honeymoon” we hardly looked like the same place even after a couple weeks. The logistics issues in the kitchen were incredible. During the first month, we cooked five thousand pounds of French fries. For a place like ours, that is a bunch of spuds. When I designed the kitchen, I calculated that I would need a big walk-in cooler and walk-in freezer. After the first week, I was beginning to wonder whether I had made them large enough. We were turning huge quantities of inventory and I couldn’t comprehend the numbers well enough to order correctly. There were days when I was running to my suppliers two and three times to keep up. That is not efficient.
As time went by we did get a handle on the supplies, but the numbers were so far from my initial calculations, I was dumbfounded.
I think we had been open one day when Noreen came to me during a busy time and informed me that she had used her “owner’s prerogative” and hired a dishwasher. With all our planning, we had calculated that our servers would bus their tables and do their own dishes. It made perfect sense to me at the time. Noreen let me know she didn’t give a crap about my plan; she was bringing in a dishwasher. In hindsight, I can’t believe we ever thought we could do without.
Look for the next chapter of our Kitchen Chronicles over the next few days. We will have “Tales of Marty” next, followed by others.
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