Just Like a Wood-Ear Mushroom

This project seems to be expanding, just like the mushrooms we soaked in Asian Cuisine, to four times its original size. Jim came to class today, but none of us knew what to do with him, which made for some awkward moments: you can't rely upon him to appear or perform, so it has to be a little something for the duration. Today, he worked with Derrick and Andy at developing a questionnaire for our market survey. Then they continued working on the floor plan. Andy's got an outdoor seating area drawn in one of his plans: you get there via a "Serenity Path."

Meanwhile, Andrea was working on the mission statement and the concept, several pages describing our restaurant in detail. She's given me the other half of the menu items, and I'm pretty much committed to doing the numbers, and not much else. Which is fine.

We worked on labor costing today, starting with a review of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and culminating in the current $9.14 hourly minimum wage in San Francisco. Chef Larry has no qualms about expressing his intensely libertarian opinions. There aren't enough people in class with "experience" of any length to be able to conduct a real debate on any of these issues, and I'm curious sometimes as to what kind of an impression he's making. Will my classmates leave school with a deep antagonism towards unions and politicians?