Keanne's Story, 15Jul11

My friend Keanne and I are part of an 8-woman prayer group, playfully entitled TSW because we know that our prayers do manifest in our lives and that praying with each other gives us each extra oomph in our lives.

Keanne's experience:  Just want to let you all know that the restaurant is coming right along. We have an architect that is working with us to bring the building up to Code.   We are looking at about $50,000 to make all the changes necessary for city building codes. The kitchen doesn't require any modifications.  We need a proper parking lot, the floors refinished, wheelchair ramps improved, landscaping and another bathroom. I met with a professional though the SBA that does business plans. He also will begin to speak to lenders for us.  He says we should have our money in about 3 to 4 weeks.  We are also looking at some grant money as a vegetarian/vegan restaurant.  I have got the QuickBooks thing down pretty well and was able to come up with a Profit and Loss Statement. Wow!  We made a profit in our first 6 months!

Plans are being drawn up this week and next we will be getting our permits for construction. Our space is workable for a 'proper' restaurant. We will close the dinning room during the construction but will be opening a new room where we will be doing healthy grab-and-go food. Vegetarian take-out, plus our cooking demos and we might even do some yoga dinners. We are so excited. We love the support that we are getting from everyone.  We have talked with the landlord not to raise our rent for the next five years and after that only 10% a year for five years. So we plan on being in business for at least the next ten years.

We recently had a man in the restaurant that is a professional photographer; he is willing to do all our pictures for our web sites in exchange for food certificates.  And we just met a woman who is redoing both our web sites so they match and complement each other. She also is working for trade.   Doors continue to open for us. We believe in what we are doing and so does the vegan/vegetarian community. TSW!  You're not kidding. Thanks for being my spiritual support. Knowing we are all here for each other provides such a feeling of confidence and security. I love the TSW Gang!