[business lunacy] cautionary tales [2]

How not to run a business.

The Dismaying Dilemma of the Diminishing Doughnut

His name was Gerlach. I remember him well.

He’d taken over the general goods/fast food store on the waterfront at the beachside resort which picked up the holidaying and camping crowd coming down from the city, especially in the evening when families and lovers went strolling along the promenade.

Under the previous owners, we had, up one end of the long, rectangular shop, three absolute winners – by the glass shop window on the left, a long conveyor belt doughnut machine which children insisted their parents stop by, watch, then come in and buy from. In the centre were the best fish ’n chips, prepared by a bevy of gorgeous gals and to the right was awkward me, tending the hamburger conveyor belt.

You might have seen these machines – meat patties, eggs, tomato and so on on the top tier, each in its own little metal pan, bun halves on the lower. Customers would stand and watch their own personal burgers coming to fruition. Our little trick with the regulars was to look left and right to see the owner wasn’t watching, then slip a little extra into the pans. Naturally, it had all been costed beforehand.

Another of our tricks was to crack an egg in each hand simultaneously, then break them into the pans without touching the contents and without bits of shell.

But the fish was the real winner. There was a local chap who came in late at night and did all the filleting and crumbing and those fish were out of the bay that evening. Naturally, the chippy girls did a roaring trade, plus we were just a little dearer than most, which had a reverse psychological effect. Those were the good ole days.

Then Gerlach came and bought the business.

First to be hit was the doughnut machine. He had a mechanic in to adjust the nozzle which dropped the dough into the conveyor – made it narrower, in other words. Less doughnut.

Customers commented.

Next he turned to the chippies and told them to put in less chips with each serve, then introduced a scoop which made the process girl-proof. I was castigated for giving too much in my corner and being wasteful. Then he sacked the doughnut girl and the chippie girls were reduced to two, one having to double up with the doughnuts.

Next the girl was instructed to sugar and cinnamonize one side only. Then the cinnamon was dropped. Sales halved. The girl was getting peeved about having to run both sections, she got uppity about it with Gerlach and stormed out.

Next the fish changed. It really did. No longer crumbed and battered, it was now thinly battered and of a lesser quality. Seems that the old chap, the local, had told Gerlach where he could put the proverbial filleting knife and had also stormed out, spreading the word round the local community.

Gerlach retreated into his shell and a sullen tone came over the shop. Girls at the other end started working to regulation, chewing gum on the job and getting sacked and the worst sort replaced them, the ‘whadda-U-want’ type. The shop fell away and there was still half the summer to go.

At this point, due to our disobedience, we still had some custom and a travelling poultry vendor took it into her head that she liked the service I’d given and she gave me a whole frozen turkey. What was a young man to do with a whole frozen turkey?

I consulted my father who came over to Gerlach with me and asked if we could store it in the freezer for a few days until my father returned to the city to work.

‘No.’

‘Pardon?’

‘No. Not unless you share half of it with me,’ was Gerlach’s reply. My father used somewhat intemperate language, to which Gerlach replied, possibly within his rights, ‘You only got that turkey on account of my business. Half is mine.’

We were forced to acquiesce.

The last straw was when the doughnut machine was switched off on the grounds of using too much power and was only to be switched on if there were more than three customers wanting doughnuts. This meant they’d need to wait 15 minutes for the coagulated yellow scum to warm up to 80% optimum to ‘sort of’ make doughnuts from dough which had sat in the funnel half the day.

The shop closed near the end of summer.