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08/16/2003 Entry: "Patisserie Planning"

I took a break from wedding planning to do a bit of restaurant development. I've just finished a book called The Baker's Trade by Zachary Schatz. He started a successful bakery/cafe in Mendocino. It's a pretty informative and inspiring book. Some days I get really excited about the patisserie, and some days, I just get really nervous and unsure. I've started to look for suppliers of fruit purees, nut flours, equipment, etc. -- built quite a good list so I just need to start talking to these people. Will also do a bit of recipe testing next week, but I think I have to go back to wedding planning soon. I've been slacking off quite a bit.

Garry and I have been house hunting the past 2 weekends. We love Noe Valley, but it's very expensive. Most of the houses we've looked at don't even have garages! I fell in love with the first house we saw, and then the next, and the next. Right now we have to think about how much we can afford considering the investment we have to make for the patisserie. We visited a mixed-use property in Bernal Heights, right on Cortland Ave., it had a retail space on the ground floor, and 2 residential units above it. I thought it would be perfect for a patisserie, since I can just wake up at 5 am and work downstairs! But I can't really jump at the first location I see -- the area has good potential, but right now, I'm afraid it doesn't have enough foot traffic for the patisserie I want to build. It doesn't help that there's a big tree covering the storefront, but I guess you can plow through some bureaucracy to solve that problem. My brother's in town, so I'm going to show him the property and see what he thinks.