Breakeven at 7am

Nothing like starting off the week with a little algebra. Chef Larry highlighted the importance of the breakeven point: it's the point at which you start to make a profit, but more importantly, the point where you are generating funds with which to pay back the principal on your (inevitable) loans.

After some math, we caught the shuttle for our field trip to Economy Restaurant Fixtures. The salesman there gave us a brief tour of the kitchen equipment department. Did you know that a Hobart mixer is essentially depreciation-free? Apparently, the company's reputation is so solid, and the products are so well made, that you can pay $14,000 for a mixer today, and you'll be able to get $14,000 for it after using it for seven years.

We took some notes (and some free Jelly Bellies: Sarah's pockets were sagging as we walked back to the shuttle stop), then returned to North Campus for further adventures in restaurant planning. Andrea took a planned day off, but Andrew also didn't show up -- and the restaurant floor plan is his part of the project. Hopefully, we've collected sufficient data to build a rough equipment schedule.

Do you know how hard it is to find commercial garbage rates online? And the Alameda County Health Department website is not all that user-friendly, either.

Before dismissing us, Chef Larry discussed how a SWOT analysis can be used in this kind of planning. We'll have to build one as part of the Market Study portion of our report. In terms of weaknesses, not only is the neighborhood a little sketchy, as David continually reminds me (but it's pretend!), but our team is less than 100% solid. And that's real.