First 4 weeks

Pica's Open Now sign

We opened Pica's Boulder four weeks ago last Friday. People we had spoken to even a few days before opening shook their heads in disbelief that we thought we could get open. And even though the restaurant wasn't 100% complete and we didn't even have a sign, we still opened on the day we targeted. On our first day we were an hour late to get open partly because I had forgot to go to the bank and get cash for our drawers. 

As I was running back to the restaurant with cash in hand there were five people who were leaving the restaurant as Zoey propped open the door and coerced them to come back, "he's back with the money, we can open in a few minutes!" I think we truly expected to have a line out the door as soon as we opened the first day. But after those few people we had a very quiet rest of the day and our first week was pretty slow. As a restaurant owner you may know deep down inside that the people will come eventually but it is difficult to open the doors and not see an immediate response especially as you start doing the math on how much you're spending to keep the doors open and how little you're selling. But I have a good team around me in my wife and partner and they assured me that it would just take time. And they were right the people have come and the response has been tremendous. 

Four weeks later I'm still anxious when we open the doors in the morning as I never know what the day will bring. All at once it is hard to believe it has only been four weeks and it is hard to believe that it has only been four weeks. The time seems to fly by and standstill at the same time. Our four week anniversary day was by far our busiest day since we opened the doors. A customer who had been in during the first week and who had heard me talk about how things were a bit slow when we opened, looked around on Friday at every table full inside and out, a line out the door and me rushing all over the place and with a sly smile she said, "be careful what you wish for."

We've met a lot of great people over the past few weeks and see many of the same faces multiple times during the course of the week. I think that speaks a lot to what we are trying to achieve as we really want it to be a place that people are excited about returning to over and over again and having it be their lunch or dinner spot. And even more encouraging is the number of repeat customers who return with new friends every time they come back.

We still have some work to do and we're still ironing out a few kinks here and there, but for the most part we are extremely pleased with the way things have started off and we are grateful for all the support we've received so far. Someday soon, when I get more than one day off I will look back at how much we have been able to accomplish in a short period of time and really soak in how fortunate we are to be surrounded by great friends and a great community.

Thanks to all our new friends and customers!