That was some crummy July, right?

Another July in the books, another Independence Day and Kla Ha Ya Days come and gone. Wasn’t this a peculiar July, even by our standards?

Our hats are off to the Kla Ha Ya Committee for another festival well done. From all the accounts we hear, everyone had a great time. We didn’t hear about any glitches that might have spoiled anybody’s fun. Good job Dallas Van Dyke and the whole organizing committee!
Noreen and I did manage to get out for the Kiwanis Salmon Barbecue. We I loaded my mother into the family truckster for a field trip to the park. It was a delightful venture. Those Kiwanis do know how to crank out the fish. I like hanging out by the cooker. Those guys are so full of you know what.

Since my mother had hip replacement surgery in May, her trips out have been limited except for visits to the medical types. She is beginning to believe there is worthwhile life ahead without the nagging pain of a bad hip. She trundled into the picnic shelter at Hill Park and did justice to her salmon as we sang along with the live music provided by some old guy that knew some really old songs. The crowd seemed to identify with the songs.

Here at the HUB, things have been a little quiet this summer. There is no doubt that the high fuel costs have changed the way everyone allocates their disposable income and in most cases, the allocations are painful. I suspect that we will adjust to higher costs in time, but for now it sucks.

We are constantly looking for new menu items that “do things” for us. We are just now working on a Swiss Steak dinner. It is not a dish that raises a sweat, but it is very comforting. (Our first effort with this dish was a bomb and we had to retool very quickly. We went back to a tried and true preparation that we are sure will work much better.)

There will be cubed steak in our future shortly as well. We really like this kind of food and even though I am partial to flavors with a little kick, we have a great appreciation for “comfort food” we grew up with. We will probably offer a “Cube Steak” Sandwich and a Dinner version.

We also expect to offer pan fried oysters this fall.

For those people that like spicier food, we have a bunch of new breakfast items that incorporate jalapeno peppers and they will raise a sweat. And those cube steaks will make a great sandwich when we slice it up and cook it with onions, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco and then top it with Swiss cheese. The items in the spicy section come with extra napkins to wipe the sweat off your brow.

August 18 will be the fifth anniversary of our opening in our new building. We expect to have some sort of deal that week. Since my parents came to Snohomish in July of 1960 to take over the HUB, we also will celebrate our 48th anniversary as well. We created HUB Days in 1990 for our 30th anniversary. I wrote about it in the history section of our web page. We will try to do something nice this year for the 5 year birthday and save up our big celebration for our 50th year in July of 2010.

This month also will bring some changes to our operation we hope will not impact our customers too much. Our Point of Sale system has not been upgraded since we opened five years ago. It has been putting along okay for all that time, but I was recently informed that our system was not in compliance with credit card processing standards. I checked with the vendor about upgrading and learned that my hardware may not be capable of handling the new software so I may be on the hook for some new hardware as well. It sounds a little fishy to me. Regardless of the merit, we will be embarking on an upgrade this month.

In addition to the credit card thing, we will also integrate our HUB Club rewards program into the system. I know it will be different, but I will wait till the system is actually up and running before I try to describe how it will work.

The last item on my list today is to ask for customer feedback. If you are reading this message, you have some interest in what is happening at the HUB in Snohomish. We need to hear from our customers. We want to know what they think about our food, our staff, our restrooms, our web site and our restaurant. We have been in business a long time and know that we do some things pretty well, but in all the years we have been in business, we never get enough honest feedback about our faults.

We are not looking to get beat up, but we know there are things we do that irk some of our customers and if we know what they are, we can consider changing how we do things. I would appreciate thoughts about any aspect of our restaurant. If you really want to talk about the good stuff you can do that too. The staff really appreciates complements.