The first year of running a restaurant involves a lot of guessing. You try and keep good notes about why it was busy or slow, so you can plan accordingly for subsequent years.

I've guessed wrong about busy/slow so many times now that my employees joke that if I say we're going to be really slammed, then they know to plan for a slow day.

Our first week back post summer vacation was a busy one. And, as per the guessing-then-noting game described above, I'm not sure whether to chalk that up to folks needing their post-break fix, or if that's how it'll usually be the second week in August.

It's nice to be able to assess our situation as we approach the conclusion of the first year. My small annual rent increase kicked in this month, so that provided a reminder that it's been a full year since I've been in the space that is now Edzo's.

The POS system has been a great help during this past busy week. The lines move much faster now and the kitchen seems to be keeping up just fine, which has resulted in lots of busy days that don't "feel" quite as busy, since we don't quite get the huge crushes of people that we used to.

Due to this, I've also been able to accommodate many more called in to-go orders than I could take before getting the POS. I was surprisingly able to take 4-5 call in orders this past Saturday between noon and one. In the past, I'd often take the phone off the hook during that time span.

Last year at this time I was painting, surfing Craigslist, driving my rented red Ford F150 around looking for used deep fryers, and wondering when the time would come that I'd actually be able to cook some tasty food in the kitchen of my restaurant.

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