bluehouse Weblog

What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Well, we are no theologians, but if God were just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home, he could visit Bluehouse, as we’ll be keeping our regular Sunday hours this Easter. It’s logical to assume that God would be interested in supporting sustainability and environmentally sound policies, and even a Supreme Being, a Master Of All That Is And All That Will Ever Be, can’t resist our delicious blueberry muffins! Not to worry, though - being immortal and omnipotent isn’t a prerequisite for visiting Bluehouse this Sunday between 10am and 5pm. But, as they say, it couldn’t hurt.

My wacky coworkers put out a suggestion box in the bluehouse café, and people have been suggesting things. Two people, as a matter of fact. Two suggestions.

The first is, essentially, “I love your food, but it’s too expensive.”

The second is, essentially, “I don’t like your food.”

A word about our food. The light fare (sandwiches, soups, salads, empanadas) is catered by Zia’s Café in Towson. It is made largely from locally and naturally produced ingredients, some organic. The baked goods (muffins, scones, and all the rest, except pies) come from Uptown Bakers every morning. The wonderful, wonderful pies (both sweet and savory) come from Dangerously Delicious.

To respond to the first comment, our food isn’t that expensive, really. It’s comparable to most café food in the area, and if anything, it’s underpriced given the purity of the ingredients. It’s a delicate balance we have to strike, promoting local food and sustainable farming practices (which tend to be expensive), but also bringing these crucial concepts into the mainstream, which may resist the associated costs. We do what we can, compromising a bit on price so we don’t have to compromise on the quality, or on our principles . . . we may just be getting to the point where we’re not actually losing money on our food. I do sympathize with the sentiments of our customer, however. Money is tight all around these days. While there’s nothing we can do about the pricing at this time, we may try to experiment with smaller portions, and we have plans in the works for extending the buying power of the café to the rest of our store. In the meantime, in my opinion, at least, a tremendous amount of satisfaction can come from looking at our pricing as an investment in a system that will eventually help to both reduce the costs of healthy and sustainably produced food and to support an economic system that will not leave people unable to afford to eat it.

To respond to the second, which also included a list of alternate food sources, I hope you see why we have to be very selective about where we get our food. Another complication is the concept of minimum buys, which means we can’t just test or sample a bit of food from a new vendor, or carry one muffin from one and one from another. Food providers have daily minimum orders, which means we have to buy a certain amount of food from them whether we can sell it or not. Our environmental and local standards mean that only certain vendors can meet our needs to begin with. Among those, we need to find those with the lowest minimums, who carry the varieties that most of our customers will enjoy, and who can deliver foods at certain intervals. We actually think our current vendors are really great, and we’re starting to experiment with different offerings. I’m sorry our food hasn’t been to your taste yet, but keep checking back over the next month and see if we have anything you may like better. (If not, we’ve still got great coffee!)

Keep those cards and letters coming!

One of the most unexpected things about starting a new business is the speed with which one learns how to conjure the word no. Imagine a fresh-faced young entrepreneur wanting to reach out to the world, to engage on a deep level new and interesting people with new and interesting ideas. Then imagine account executives calling him every day, trying to sell him advertising in local media. I didn’t even know Baltimore had so much local media, much less those run by people willing to swear on their souls that if I picked just one outlet to advertise in, theirs would make all the difference. By the dozen, they call, they fax, they email, and they drop by the store hoping to find me in.

There are other kinds of salespeople, too, chief among them merchant services and payroll companies. Then there are the product reps we met at trade shows but didn’t buy anything from, product reps who just happened to be in the neighborhood, and heartbreakingly, local artists and smaller-scale vendors who would dearly love to show their hard work in our store.

Even more heartbreaking are the charities and nonprofit organizations, all with worthy and noble causes to be sure, whose representatives make excellent cases for why I should contribute products to this or that auction or activity.

If I said yes to even a portion of these unsolicited requests, my coffers would be empty and my shelves would be bare within weeks. Logically, then, the response must usually be no, a word I have not often in my life used to advantage. Why is it easier for me to say yes? To commit to something that is unlikely to be in my best interest? To dilute my resources beyond recovery? I would love to be that fresh-faced young entrepreneur who throws open his doors every morning and says yes to the world. And make no mistake, I am fresh faced and young, despite whatever hideous photo you may have seen in the newspaper. But I am also, whether or not it sits well with me, more cautious than I have ever been before.

No.

It’s difficult, its finality, its cutting off of possibilities, its shutting down of others’ hope. And yet, oddly, it’s a business-owner’s best friend, what allows him to focus his resources every day on what he needs to do and must accomplish.

If you have a request for me that falls outside of my careful planning, no matter how tempting or tantalizing, I will likely hem and haw a bit, wanting to find a way I can comply. But the odds are, there can only be one logical answer. My heart will always say yes, but my lips will say, with increasing confidence, “Maybe.” Um, I mean, “No.”

It’s nothing personal.

Update: The above is meant to address people who walk in off the street without any sense of what we’re actually trying to accomplish at bluehouse. People we have a relationship with, or people with similar goals to ours, need not worry that I’m trying to dump them by the wayside!