The Train to Nowhere/Rising Sun Blues
On the morning of our Original SoupMan opening in downtown Colorado Springs. the owners of the Boulder store showed up with cups, bowls, and other consumables. They were giving us their remaining stock; their store had closed. The news was shocking but I didn't have time to process it. We were insanely busy with customers.
In New Orleans, the success of Mardi Gras is determined by the tonage of garbage collected on Ash Wednesday. Even before closing, I knew our day had been a success by the bags and bags of garage carried out to the dumpster. We could hardly keep up with it. It took hours to clean up that night and yet when corporate's training team were saying their good-byes , I had an awful gut feeling-- a premonition of doom.
Our first month was extremely busy. After the honeymoon phase, we settled into a routine, consisting of a healthy lunch rush and many regulars in the evening.
Even though we were selling soup, our cost of goods were too high to ever turn a profit. I began trimming the fat everywhere I could but it was not enough. I called a couple of other franchisees to find out what they were doing to make their businesses successful.
Two more stores had closed, one in Manhattan and one in South Carolina. I spoke with two franchisees. Both had done everything I had--found cheaper cups, bowls, spoons, napkins, etc. We had swapped out the mandated Lindt chocolate ball that we had to give with every soup order (which costed 12 cents a piece) with an Ovation thin mint stick (at 5 cents each). One of the owners warned me, "the longer you stay open, the more money you lose".
Fear kept us open. We knew what would happen to us once the business closed. But long hours of hard work and sleepless nights forced us to surrender to the inevitable-- we closed our store.
to be continued.......
Lost at Sea
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