Old Orchard Construction Update #2
Tis the season of miracles. Adagio's second Tea Experience retail store will be transformed from a rough construction zone to tea nirvana in less than 48 hours. Do you believe?
The carpenters are running one day behind schedule, and so the time-lines are highly compressed. Still, my contractor assures me that we'll still hit our goal of having the store ready for merchandise by Friday evening, or Saturday late morning at the latest.
To accomplish this, we'll need to complete the framing, drywall and plaster today. Tomorrow we'll be installing the lights and millwork, and sanding and painting the drywall. By Friday evening the store should LOOK 90% complete. I'm a bit skeptical and expect that we may be putting in some overtime on Saturday.
The only large piece remaining will be the center sales and tea cupping/brewing counters which are running a day behind schedule with our new millworkers. That should be delivered at 6AM Monday morning so that it can be installed and wired. Once the center counters are in, we'll install the front doors and have everything "pristine" in time for our pre-stock inspections at 10AM Monday morning.
Assuming we pass pre-stock inspection on Monday, we'll have less than 48 hours to merchandise the store before final inspection on Wednesday. The lack of front doors until after the center counters arrive Monday morning makes it pretty difficult for the staff to get in over the weekend and start setting anything up even if we did want to test the theory that the inspectors might be OK with us bringing employees in and working before we pass inspection. Between not wanting to cross the inspectors and the expectation that the store will be somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees over the weekend, we'll just wait for Monday.
The time-frame is a bit insane, and we may be working some late nights, but in theory we could still accomplish our goal of a soft-open sometime Wednesday afternoon or evening November 24th. Unless there is another surprise, we're still on track to be open for Black Friday.
Opening a mall location on the busiest shopping day of the year will be quite a test of our people and our training processes, but if you don't relish the opportunity to rise to a challenge like that, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur.
It's gut check time. Let's go!
Adagio Teas
Twitter: @AdagioRetail