Friday, August 29, 2008

Happy Birthday

Wednesday 27th August 2008
Its Ian’s daughter Sarah’s birthday today, Happy Birthday and hope you got the flowers.

We spent all morning trying to work out how and where we were going to fit all the equipment into the Take Away area at the Café, when we first decided to go ahead with this project we checked the sizes of everything and worked out that it would all fit in nicely. Now we have to factor in things like, a Slush Machine sited on the front counter will outsell one situated on the back counter (apparently), you wouldn’t be able to put it alongside the Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine on the back counter anyway because the Ice Cream Machine needs a lot of room around it for ventilation, and doesn’t take kindly to breathing in another machines warm air.
You then have to take into account that the Ice Cream Machine and the Slush Machine do need to be close to each other, one or possibly more of the Drinks/Desserts that we will be offering will be a mixture of the two and will be using the same containers.
You then have to take into account that the Donut Machine doesn’t want to be near either the Ice Cream or the Slush Machine, doesn’t want to be near is not really accurate because the Donut Machine doesn’t really care where it’s put, it is us that do not want the Donut Machine near the other two, mainly because Donuts are cooked in hot fat and you could almost guarantee that one of the staff would drop a girt big dollop of Ice Cream in it causing third degree burns and lots of form filling.
Filling out forms for accidents like that is always a nightmare (so we are led to believe), and the ongoing investigations have a habit of interfering with trade, you’d think they could do the investigating when you were closed.
Anyway, the Donut Machine would fit perfectly on the back counter, but it would be next to the Milkshake machines so that is probably not a good idea. Also the Ice Cream Machine wouldn’t really look right on the front counter because of its size and weight (approx 250kg loaded), also it makes sense for it to be close to the Milkshake Machines for when we do Thick Shakes.
The Hot Dog Machine is only small and will fit anywhere, so we have decided to put it on the front counter to make it highly visible.
The other part of the equation that we didn’t take into account when we were planning this, was that we might be able to make the area larger by moving the front counter 600mm further forward out into the public area, giving us extra room to work behind the counter. Apparently this was a plan that was devised for the area about seven years ago which got the agreement of the owners but was never implemented, the Fit Out Coordinator who represents the owners feels that there is every chance that we could get permission if we asked for it, so that is what we are going to do and what we are working towards.
So after about four hours of messing around with different layouts and designs, we agreed on a layout and all we had to do then was draw it up to scale and send it to the powers that be for approval.
We have decided that the Donut Machine and the Hot Dog Machine will be on the Left side of the Front Counter, we will have to build a screen (sneeze guard) in front of them to stop people touching and breathing on them. On the right of the Front Counter we will have the Slush Machine, with the Ice Cream Machine behind it on the Back Counter next to the Milkshake Machines and Ice Creamy sorts of bits.
After work Ian attempted to put our new Lawn Mower together, Crocodile Keith is still up north somewhere so we have got to the point where we have got to cut our own grass, we think we should probably cut his as well sometime before he gets back, just as a sign of goodwill. Unfortunately the spanner they give you in the box doesn’t fit any of the bolts that hold the blades in place, so we are going to have to invest in a socket set.
In the evening Ian spent a good couple of hours drawing a plan to scale so that we could send it off in the morning, we have got a copy of the old plans so that gives us an idea of the information that they will require. It was about 11pm and way beyond our bedtime when Ian finished, only for Carolyn to point out that although Ian drew it to scale, it wasn’t actually the same scale as the previous plans.
We decided that we would send a covering letter to the Fit Out Coordinator pointing out our minor booboo in the hope that he would accept it.

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