Monday, July 23, 2007

I shall fear no spoilers. Actually, I finished Harry Potter yesterday. Great fun, and I'll miss the series. But there is so much great fantasy out there.

The GOLDEN COMPASS movie is coming; warrior polar bears, hot air balloons, and the storming of heaven! Cool!


O.K. The reason I'm so late with a entry today, and am talking about light stuff, is that I admit I'm having doubts about opening a second location. And then doubts about the doubts and then doubts about the doubts of the doubts.

Argghh. I've never really ever had such a big decision that seems so utterly equally divided between positives and negatives.

Even my feeling seem to swing equally.

I'm going to keep mulling it over, and sleeping on it, for a while longer. I want to be fair to the landlord, so I expressed a smidgen of doubt to him last week. I've basically got until the end of the month if I want to order material out of the regular order form.

I don't think I can keep changing my mind for weeks and months. I'll have to decide.
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was hoping that you would get an atta-boy from other shop owners.

I think that silence will continue.

People were silent during the boom ( I mean they didn't stop the best fishing holes from getting destroyed, while they were all making an easy buck ), now they'll be even more silent during the bust.
I have always thought that MOST will move on, as large portion of the post incoming 2002 crowd came here to catch the RE wave. Soon even the brain-dead will know its over and NOT coming back, expect the BULL or Source to print that fact soon. I think that's why the Source is pointing folks to the blogs, so that we can be the people who deliver the bad news.

*

Merenda has gone down hill terribly during the last two years. My personal feeling is they'll try and sell and get the DEEP going, then they'll sell the DEEP and Denton will move on.

The gig that big names like Denton always do is get something going and sell, its a hard biz and one gets bored quick. The Merenda food was awesome the first year, and then just went terrible. This year they're not doing the cheap happy hour food, so nobody is going, the first years the bar was packed every night the place. But the food was terrible, the last few times the French onion soup was served cold with melted cheese, no reason for this except that kitchen management is ABSENT, .i.e. the boss is spending more time some where else, ... The house roasted chicken was awesome at first, then after the first year it was no better than the cooked safeway chicken. Really sad. My opinion is that its obvious that Denton is a genius and good promoter, but sadly there is-was NO management in Bend capable of delivering consistency over the long haul. Creative types get bored after a year or less.

Stacatto isn't that busy, and I know the Old-Mill stuff isn't.

Fact is people don't come to Bend to eat, they come to GOLF. The golf crowd is largely wine/beer and chicken wings at Deschutes.

Bend isn't Aspen and Never was.

July 24, 2007 at 11:24:00 AM PDT
Duncan McGeary said...

I think the other merchants are waiting to see what the negative fallout is...

Plus, there is nothing in it for them to say anything, unless they are going to succeed in changing things...which they probably doubt.

I've been wondering how the investors of Merenda feel about Denton starting his own restuarant...

July 24, 2007 at 11:50:00 AM PDT
Anonymous said...

I've been wondering how the investors of Merenda feel about Denton starting his own restuarant...

*

Merenda is too big and nobody has been able to manage it, at this point they seem to be trying to cut costs, and wind it down.

I think that DEEP is an attempt of Denton to just do low volume and high profit.

July 24, 2007 at 2:03:00 PM PDT
Duncan McGeary said...

Merenda is too big...

Well, it's not like that wasn't obvious from the start...but all I heard was how great he was doing. What I heard about the rent for that place made it necessary for it to be full almost all the time...

July 24, 2007 at 2:13:00 PM PDT
Duncan McGeary said...

Though I must add that I know nothing about restuarants...

July 24, 2007 at 2:18:00 PM PDT
Anonymous said...

What I know is that they couldn't find a manager that could manage eighty people. They simply gave up, I think thats why they killed happy hour so that they could get a handle on it with less people.

What do you expect this is Bend, they didn't pay the manager enough work 18 hrs/day 7 days week, and he probably couldn't even afford to buy a house here.

Note that they peaked back in fall of 2005, and road the wave through 2006. Since then all the rumor has been "Ignore Merenda wait for DEEP", well Deep is here, ...

I don't like to eat sushi in Eastern-Oregon, and the cost is $60-80 for two, its not going to be a regular hang-out, but like I said, low volume, high-profit.

Merenda with eighty employees didn't make much money.

Now with NO happy-hour, they have cut staff, I don't know how long the lease will last, but my guess is they'll downsize.

I loved Merenda in 2005 it was fantastic, and last years happy hour was nice, I often stayed for din-din with friends. I quit going there altogether when they killed the happy-hour. When I meet people at Deschutes Brew who work at Merenda and I mention the above, I only get a nod. It ain't what it used to be.

This all really has nothing to do with Merenda, that was Aug 2005 when Bend was called Culinary-Aspen, it was all down-hill after that, by last fall the big-spenders were gone, the little wine-store next to Merenda closed months ago.

Bend culinary ain't what it used to be in August 2005, when "Gastronomy Magazine" Called Bend a 'Gastronomical Aspen'. That was the day, and the next day it was over.

July 24, 2007 at 2:45:00 PM PDT

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