Friend to Friend...
It's been a little over six months since we started opening for lunch, and I still catch myself watching the rhythm of each day with the curiosity of someone planting a new garden.
The evenings have been wonderfully kind to us, and for that I am deeply grateful. Lunch, on the other hand, is still finding its footing. Some days surprise us with a full dining room while other days unfold at a slower pace. This past Wednesday, for example, we had exactly one to-go order. The restaurant sparkled by the time we locked the doors, but the dining room didn't welcome a single guest until dinner time.
If I'm being completely honest, there are afternoons when I think maybe lunch during the week simply isn't in the cards. Then something happens that reminds me why we opened in the first place. I see two ladies who made a point of getting dressed up just to spend the afternoon together, talking over lunch for three hours. Someone settles into a corner with a laptop and decides to work from our dining room instead of their kitchen table. A family brings visiting relatives because they wanted to share one of their favorite places. Those moments don't happen during the dinner rush. They belong to lunch.
Opening for lunch was never simply about adding another revenue stream. It's about creating more opportunities for people to gather and giving our team more shifts, more income to support their families. Now that our new air conditioning is finally installed, it also feels like a pretty wonderful place to escape this heat wave for a while, enjoy a leisurely lunch with an extra-cold orange wine, or simply slow down for an hour before heading back into your day.
If lunch became part of your routine, what would bring you in more often? Would you split a sandwich with a coworker? Pick up lunch for the office? Work remotely from our dining room for an afternoon? Stop in after the farmers market? Grab a pizza on the way to the beach?
One lunch reservation won't make or break us. Neither will one sandwich or one pizza to go. But hundreds of those ordinary moments, spread across a neighborhood that believes in gathering around a table, are exactly what give a place its heartbeat.
As always, thank you for letting us be part of your lives. I read every reply, and I'd truly love to hear what you think.
