Food and Gas and Car Washes
I admit it, I watch them all.
I am a serial food show addict.
That being said, I do learn from my mistakes.
Over the years I have found myself sitting with my eyes glazed over unable to draw myself away from Martha, and Guy, and Morimoto, and Ina, and Rachel, and Paula and...Giada. Grr. Giada.
As time passed my interest drifted from the food porn to the philosophy of food. The why, the what? Somehow knowing what was behind the food became more important than the food. I guess, that also evolved with my involvement with food.
I grew up in my Mom's kitchen. She was Martha before there was Martha. My whole childhood was about preparing for the next event. We had events because my Mom wanted to be a chef, because she loved people and she wanted to make them happy. Perhaps that is all that any chef really needs.
I never saw myself there though. I liked food, but I never thought about making it. One time I was on a business trip to Chicago. My wife and I ate in this world renowned steak place. I had this enormous steak. It was pretty good, but I found myself thinking, I've had better at my Mom's house. I thought, I've made better than this at my own house. My Mom, taught me well.
I grew up in my families business. We have owned gas stations since I was 11 years old. Before that, my Dad worked for an oil company. I say that I am in the Convenience Store Business today, but really, I am in the Gas Station business. I will never drift far from those roots.
I grew up working the pumps at my Dad's station. Standing at the dispenser taking cash from our customers and resetting it with the key. It was so simple.
The first store that we purchased was only 700 square feet. We still have it. In today's standards it is so simple.
Today, I am still in the gas station business, but, I also have a food truck. I go out everyday and put together what I know from the family business and the family kitchen and try to serve it to unwitting customers. I say unwitting, because I think that there is this illusion that restauranteurs or food truck owners have some sort of training. Some great certification. Ok, well there is a requirement that we maintain certain cleanliness standards, but other than that, we are all just making it up. That's not really different than everyone else though, is it?
For a time I had 60 employees. I managed a computer network of over 60 different types of computers, two franchises, three car washes an auto repair shop and of course the c-stores. It was a lot; not as much as a chain of 600 stores, but in many ways, much more. If you have 600 stores, you don't spend much time in the store managing you day to day. You have "people" to do that. I like to say that we were too big to be small and too small to be big. I spent a lot of time in the office, but if the car wash went down I was there with the welder.
There is something satisfying about getting down in the dirt and feeling the mud in the pit as you try to force the car wash chain back into place. In the cold, you stand there and realize that fixing it is completely beyond your capabilities. Whatever you know about the system, it is cold and dirty and everything that you are about to do will be while standing in muck. Leverage, ice, grease, dirt, simple and complex mechanics, hydraulics, computer technology, they all come together to pull a car through a tunnel and spray it with soap.
My father smashed his hand under one of the rollers once. It squeezed his fingers until the skin burst. I don't remember whether it broke any bones but I remember the stitches on the sides of his fingers.
I ran my thumb through a chain and sprocket system at 5:30 in the morning one time. I was standing on top of a 10ft. ladder and I released the counterbalance on a door weight. I am not even sure how my thumb ended up there but I watched in slow motion as my hand whipped around the sprocket coming out the other side looking very much like hamburger.
I somehow I slide to the ground and landed on my feet. I took a deep breath and asked our store manager for a roll of duct tape and calmly lay down on the floor.
Growing up in the gas station business I learned to just solve the problem. We lived to make the customer happy and we often put ourselves at personal risk to make it happen. We climbed into the pit where all the solids fell at the exit of the car wash and scooped out the muck with a bucket to keep it clear. I power washed the car wash on multiple occasions while the car wash was still running. Only once did the hose get wrapped around the brush and fly out of my hands wrapping around the spinning brush. We climbed on the roof of the store to shovel feet of snow from the eves to stop the leaking inside. Shoveled snow from the satellite dish to keep the credit cards processing. My Dad ran out with a fire extinguisher and put out a car fire the was scorching the canopy.
All and all, I still look back on that fondly.
