Can You Step Into My Office?

The Rhino and I are proud to present the following fantastic news:

After hundreds of resumes, 15ish (or I lost count how many) phone interviews, and three slamazing final candidates, we are excited to share that we have officially hired our Food Truck Manager! Please welcome Mr. Bridger, our new Food Truck Manager, to the Bloomy’s food family! Stay tuned for Bridger's exciting photo op introduction. I could have pulled a photo off of Facebook but stopped myself because 1) that might be weird and slightly stalkerish and 2) I'm not quite sure of the Facebook laws regarding photo borrowing*.

* By borrowing, I mean taking and claiming as my own.

Anyway, not only is Bridger 150% awesomesauce, but he has loads of experience in the food industry and is a whiz with social media. He also has a really shiny grill (like a grill where you grill meat and kabobs, not a Lil’John-style mouth grill.). In addition, he has created numerous mouth watering culinary masterpieces that I will be showcasing in our very next blog!

Bridger is so bomb that he already met the Rhino at Chameleon Concessions last week to do the final walk through of Bloomy1 and made lots of helpful suggestions including the most helpful suggestion of all: how to fit a third seat in the truck! This means that we can drive around town with three people in the truck instead of two! Way to go Bridger! Mission accomplished and you haven’t even technically started working yet. A+++. Would hire again! This exciting news also means that we get to install a jump seat in the truck!  A jump seat! I've always* wanted one of those and now I can have one! Thank you Bloomy's for making all of my dreams come true. 
* Ever since last week when I learned about it.

In other news, the Rhino has informed me that we need to begin referring to our home office as “HQ” from this moment forward. So whenever I say “HQ,” you will know that I’m talking about our office where the Rhino has a big nice roomy workspace that takes up half the room and I have this:

Yes, this is where I work.

Now, you could be thinking – is that a super tiny desk located in the closet? Complete with a glass of wine and a book as a mousepad? In the closet? Why yes. Yes it is. It’s called compromise people, and an ability to fit well into small spaces. Although the Rhino does let me put dibs on his roomy workspace approximately 4x per week. Or 0x if I’m “being a fuddy-duddy*.”

* The Rhino’s description of me when I’m being mean and narrowing my eyes at things. For those of you who are thinking “I thought the phrase fuddy-duddy retired back in 1957?”, you are correct. 

The nice thing about owning a company such as Bloomy’s is that you can pretty much call things whatever you please, because you're the boss of everything! You can even pick your own job title. For example, my job title is Chief Executive Officer because I’m the one who does all the filing of important documents and the Rhino is the Chief Operating Officer because he’s the one who does all the reports and check writing. However, the Rhino has decided to change his job title from COO to the more intriguing and FBI/Undercover Agent title of “Chief of Operational Intelligence.” So now when people ask me what my fiancé does for a living, I can say, “Well he is a Chief of Operational Intelligence (obvi, I leave out the part where he works at this job for free).” Then the person who asked says “Wow, that sounds like a really cool job.” And I say, “It IS a really cool job! I mean, he doesn’t carry a 14K gold badge or have access to top secret classified information. But it’s still pretty sweet.”*

* This conversation only happens in my imagination.

(Warning, major sidetrack about to happen here).

My spell checker function just informed me of the appropriate spelling for the word “fiancé.” Apparently, I’ve been e-introducing people to the Rhino as “My Finance.” Oops. Although you could argue that "My Finance" is still accurate. Ooooh. Just kidding! Calm down people. I pay my own bills, on time.

Anyway, before we move on to business updates, which is what this blog is supposed to be about but isn’t most of the time, I want to give one exciting personal update. I CAN EAT FOOD AGAIN! After my 25 day Clean Program, during which I did not cheat ONE time but during which I complained approximately 100% of the time, the Rhino and I celebrated my return to regular food with this:

Chillin'

Yes, my friends. This is a picture of the TWO chicken-topped beer cans who were hanging out in our oven for awhile. One lemon garlic and one smoky BBQ. Mmm, delicious.

Our friend Elliot over at Sysco had impeccable timing as usual (except for the bacon incident) and also dropped off this:

Potatoes and veggies and more veggies!

And this:

The apple is there for perspective, obvi.

Now that’s a lot of Ghirardelli brownie mix! Am I in heaven? Yes. Will I curse the belly ache I'll have after eating this box of brownies? Definitely.*

* Not a deterrent, at all.  Bring it on.

Even though I've since convinced two other people to try the Clean Program, I cannot tell you how ready I was to rejoin the rest of food-eating society. The worst thing was sitting down to lunch with the Rhino, drooling over his beef brisket, frowning over my nasty butternut squash soup, and having super duper lame table conversations such as this.

The Rhino: “How’s your soup?”

KJ: “Eh.”

Rhino: “You know, you can put some sea salt in there.”

KJ: “Why? So it can bring out the assy flavors even more?”

Now, we don’t even have conversations at the table anymore because I’m too busy stuffing my face with things like this!

Soon to be stir fry. Soon to be gobbled up by yours truly.

Ok, now it’s time for the business updates. And here they are, in no particular order of importance.

1) The party planning is well underway for our sponsor/launch celebration, which is officially scheduled for April 21!  That is less than two months away! Yikes*. JamieD, Chickie, and I have come up with an great list of sponsor party ideas that I can't share seeing as they are surprises. But the surprises are aplenty, and they are going to be slamazing.

* I mean Yikes in a good way. I'm not freaking out or anything. Maybe a little bit. Ok, whatever. I'm seriously freaking out!!

2) The Rhino is busy toiling away on creating our master SOP document that we have to submit to the city inspectors to get our official "ready for business" stamps of approval. In times like these, I'm glad the Rhino is the COI, which could easily stand for "Chief of mucho boring things like SOPs."

3) While the Rhino is working away on the above, I have been beating my brains out trying to learn the fine art of web development. Little did I realize that this would also require learning a completely new and foreign language better known as HTML and CSS. This adult language learning requirement has caused a few* whack attacks and many "fuddy duddy" moments that have resulted in the Rhino kicking me out of HQ. Good thing dumbed-down video tutorials and I have become BFFs. Go social sharing!

* Like... eleven. At least.

4) After a bit of equipment rearranging to better fit our wicked jump seat, Mark at Chameleon is putting the finishing touches on Bloomy1. I can't wait to take her up to Papa Bloomy's and get my mechanical skills* groove on!

* I have no mechanical skills. Wait - is sanding and painting even considered a mechanical skill? Let's pretend it is, and that I'm really good at it.

5) I'm trying not to think about the line cooks and cashiers we still have to hire and the companies we have to call and the stops we have to set up. <Heavy sigh.> This is why 4:30am and I have become such good friends lately.  

But, we're nearly to the finish line everyone. The hard part is ... well, just beginning actually. Dang it! I have to go care for my poor Rhino now, who is down for the count with a head cold the size of Massachusetts. Catch y'all on the flip side!