I remembered what Mason said about me helping them with the business. It was thrown out there during the uncomfortable encounter at my apartment, and part of me thought he didn’t even mean to say it. He had to realize how awkward it was for him to show up at my door in the first place. He could have just picked up the phone if he wanted to check in on my decision. My number was listed right there next to the address he’d skimmed.
I spent the morning before going to work coming up with some basic ideas and outlining them for the guys. Then I headed into the bar early to grab some time to talk with them. Jesse was behind the bar when I got there. He raised the towel he was using to dry a glass and gave me a smile.
“You’re here early,” he said.
I nodded. “I wanted to talk to you guys. Where is everybody?”
“Mason’s in the office, Tyler’s in the kitchen, and Matt just went to the basement to look for some decorations the former owner said were still down there,” he said. “Why? Is everything alright?”
“Everything’s good,” I said. “But I want to get a chance to talk to all of you. Hopefully Matt finds those decorations. They might play into everything.”
Jesse looked at me curiously but didn’t ask anything further. He went back to drying the freshly cleaned glasses so he could put them away. I went to the largest of the booths and sat down, twisting my hair up behind my head and securing it with a clip to get it off my neck. While I waited for the guys to come, I took the notes I’d put together out of my bag and set them on the table in front of me.
“Can I get you a drink?” Jesse asked.
The question made another idea pop into my head, and I pulled up the note feature on my table to jot it down before I forgot it. “Um, yeah. Orange juice and lemon lime soda, please.”
“Um… okay,” he said.
As he was setting the drink down in front of me a few seconds later, Mason came out of the office.
“Hey, Ava,” he said, glancing at his watch. “You didn’t need to come in for another hour.”
“I know,” I said. “But I wanted to get a chance to talk to you guys a bit before customers started coming in.”
Just as I was telling him that, Matt came around the corner from a hallway leading further into the building.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
He lifted a cardboard box he was carrying to bring attention to it. “There’s got to be more down there, but this was all I was able to find.”
“You mean all you were able to find until the spiders started creeping you out,” Tyler said.
He had just come out of the kitchen and was carrying a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches cut into triangles. They formed an interesting structure stacked up on the plate, and I pointed them out.
“Is that on the menu?” I asked.
He held the plate out to me, and I took one of the crispy golden triangles.
“No,” he said. “It’s just something I make sometimes when I’m hungry.”
I took a bite of the sandwich and had to hold back a groan. “This is incredible.”
“The secret is the outside of the bread. Rather than just using butter, I use mayonnaise with a hint of onion powder and garlic.”
“Look at this,” Matt said. We turned our attention to the table a few feet away where he had set the box down and was going through it. He withdrew an oddly shaped object and removed a layer of paper. “It’s a glass boot. Like a real, genuine glass boot.”
I grinned and reached for the glassware. Matt handed it to me, and I set it on the table alongside the plate of grilled cheese triangles.
“This is the perfect visual aid for what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said.
The guys looked at each other questioningly but gathered around the table.
“You want to discuss the questionable decor choices around here?” Matt asked.
I laughed. “Not exactly. When you first offered me the position, Mason mentioned you could use some help increasing business.”
“That’s right,” Mason said.
I nodded. “You want to bring in more customers and increase sales. That’s an important distinction you can’t overlook. When it comes to growing your business and making it more successful, you can’t just look at the number of people who come in or how frequently. Think about the collection of regulars who are in here basically all afternoon and evening. They are consistent. They come every day. But they aren’t exactly an impressive element of your nightly earnings.”
“Because they only buy the same thing over and over,” Tyler said.
“Exactly. You want to make sure you are both increasing the number of people who come in, and how much each of them spend. If you’re consistently offering the exact same experience, that’s going to be a challenge. Of course, there will be people who come in constantly because of that consistency. They know what to expect, and that’s what they want. But there are other people who will come once or not at all because it never changes. Offering something new and different that your customers haven’t seen and give you a leg up.”