Half a year in the rearview mirror

Finally, some pics for y'all

I think it would be very boring of me to take up a bunch of space in this long awaited update with my meandering thoughts about why I got so stalled on on posting here. So I’m not doing that. Not yet.

Instead, I’m going to share some pictures and stories over the past few months, to give you a sense of how things have been going over here.

As ever, I’m happy to answer any specific questions, just leave them in the comments! And if you’d like to help support, you can always buy a gift certificate or grab something from our online store! Literally every dollar makes a difference. So does every subscription!

January

January is was stressful, y’all. The roads were so unpredictable that we didn’t think it was safe for Haritha to be driving to our baked goods supplier at 7am to fill the pastry case — so it was empty a lot. This was of course disappointing to our customers, which felt awful to us.

In stark contrast to our empty pastry case were our over-full gift store shelves. Without having the experience to know otherwise, I made a big wholesale order after a busy holiday season cleaned us out. But of course no one was doing a lot of shopping in the dead of winter. So when those invoices started to come in 60 days later, it was a big struggle to get them paid.

The biggest source of our January stress was trying to do all of the renovations needed to get our kitchen up to code so we could finally bring our baking in house. Haritha ground himself to dust working to get this done, and even now he’s not fully recovered.

The saving grace in this brutal month was our wonderful friend

Wake Lloire

(of

Whimsical Writing with Wake

) reaching out to us with the offer of help in the form of working in the store a day a week so Haritha could rest (or at least do renovations projects during business hours rather than having to wait until after the store closed). This was such a generous and pivotal offer, our store is forever changed by Wake’s presence! They love this place as much as we do, and we know there are customers that come in on Mondays specifically to spend time chatting with Wake.¹

February

February 1st saw us hiring our first full time employee² — which was such a leap of faith on everyone’s part in the dead of winter. But given that we were unable to travel back in time and give ourselves the resources to do it sooner, it was all we could really do.

Ten days into the month we had our successful kitchen inspection and got a permit to make and sell food in our kitchen! Note that this still did not allow us to put in seating, which required the space to meet accessibility requirements we hadn’t been able to meet yet!

Two pieces of smaller big news in February was deciding to work with Sissiboo as our coffee supplier. (We had initially been working with Java Blend, but we take union busting allegations really seriously over here.)

Another fun partnership was connecting with the mysterious creator of South Shore Goblins — resulting in our very own Goblin inspired by the store³!

March

After a couple of weeks of finishing touches on the kitchen, we were able to start offering the community house-baked goods! This was such a hard-fought milestone, even if it did little to quell the number of people asking Haritha when we were going to put in seating⁴.

Wanting to make sure we didn’t lose sight of the world happening outside of our own kitchen, we also started bringing in Palestinian products via Sitti Soaps, using the proceeds to buy eSims that we send to Gaza via Connecting Humanity.

There is no elegant pivot back to renovation content, but these are the times we are living in. The photo on the left is just one of the many that we sent to the Accessibility Directorate to demonstrate that we’d done everything on the list to make the space accessible.

The photo on the right is the outcome of those renovations: at long last we were able to put in seating on the last weekend of March. This is such a pivotal moment that it deserves its own post. I will say that having tables and chairs at our little cafe in our little town is one of the most tangible ways Haritha and I have impacted the lives of others and it feels pretty great even though we almost made ourselves crazy getting there.

April

Sometimes I get a harebrained idea that becomes Haritha’s problem in execution. In April, that happened when I decided to order a few dozen pairs of glasses that people could use to view the eclipse, and give them away in our store to anyone who made a donation to our community garden. Like a lot of my ideas, I really didn’t think people would be that into it. But it completely blew up and the phone was ringing constantly and we sold out in a matter of minutes both the initial order and the subsequent order. We did raise a couple of hundred bucks for the garden though! Honestly, I just wish I’d ordered way more pairs way earlier.

It’s not just my scrambled brain that dumps crises into Haritha’s lap though! This spring was also a cascading series of discovering all the ways it was a miracle the building had not burned down already. Like the fact that the fire suppression system hadn’t been serviced in eight years, all of the fire extinguishers were empty, the fire suppression above the stove was empty, a shelf had been built that would have blocked the C02 reaching the burners anyway, and a ton of the appliances were plugged into chewed extension cords. This cord is being modelled by our treasured friend Lori who also began pitching in at the store last winter. Stay tuned for more on Lori!!

Two things that made me feel like we were a Real Store in April: a menu written on a chalkboard next to a bunch of baked goods under glass domes, and having Rosefinch Mercantile baseball hats made. People actually buy them! And wear them! Out in the world! This fills me with awe and wonder and gratitude. Big thanks to Yuliya for our dreamy logo.

May

A huge moment in May: The launch of BRUNCH. For the first seven months of the business, the shop was closed on Sundays. Haritha needed a day off every week, and because we are the post office that was the only day we could get away with not being open. But once we had seating, we invited the above mentioned Lori to use our space as a popup brunch restaurant for her catering company galeforce feasts. Our customers loved Lori’s food immediately, and continue to love it still!

It feels a bit silly to pair a picture of such success with a picture of one of the many little things I’ve stocked to sell at the store. But I find these wildflower seed bombs so charming, and I’m gradually trying to make myself creatively document the things we are selling at the store, and this is one that I am proud of.

In May we also hired our third employee! Suzanne came into the shop at the end of March, to give us a hug and tell us she was sorry that we had lost Nadja. That’s something else that I will try to write more about one day, but my heart hurts too much about it still, so that’s all I will say. But clearly someone who is that thoughtful is really special, so when we found out that Suzanne had a decade of experience managing a grocery co-op we made immediate plans to hire her as soon as we could. It took us a few months to get there, but we are so thankful for Suzanne.

We are so thankful as well for our incredible friend Kate, one of the masterminds behind Petite Queer Pride. In addition to making me laugh via Instagram DMs more than maybe any other person in history, Kate is also a loyal and enthusiastic customer. In May, she made us this beautiful hand carved sign of our logo. It is complete perfection and looking at it makes my heart feel so full.

June

Well, our galeforce feasts brunches went so well that we decided to make it long term. When the chef we hired in February let us know he’d be moving on, we immediately knew what to do. We invited Lori to open up a galeforce feasts restaurant in our space, running it alongside Rosefinch Mercantile & Tea Room. I have so much to say about this glorious symbiotic relationship, but Substack is already telling me this post is too long. So I’ll just for now say that when we first started daydreaming about buying this building, we knew we wanted it to be a spot for collaboration and community. Having Lori on board with this plan honestly feels like a dream come true.

Case in point: three days into our new partnership, we co-hosted a food security event in our community garden with the South Shore Multicultural Association. Everyone who attended got a free tomato plant, the chance to talk to Vincent Dieras, the mastermind behind the community garden and mix and mingle. Also, Lori made a glorious selection of tomato-based foods, including a bruschetta she supplied recipe cards for. It just made us feel like we were doing everything right.

And that’s where I’m gonna leave this recap for now, because July deserves its own post and today is the last day of July so … I need to get on that. But we’ve got such great momentum, and are sorting out big things and little things every day. Here are two little things I’m particularly enamoured with: loyalty cards, and these Adopt-a-Pet bags that I keep just giving to kids because it’s such a joy to watch them open them.

Thanks for reading all of this. I pinkie swear you that you won’t have to wait this long for the next one.

1. Wake has written a lot of posts about being in our store, so you should check out their Substack for that reason alone! But also because they are a fantastic writer with a brain that is as pragmatic as it is whimsical. A rare combination!

2. Just a quick note that I won’t be writing a lot about this person! I struggled with this, because I don’t want to be seen as downplaying their substantial impact on our business. Please trust that this not my intent — I’m simply doing my best to navigate their reasonable desire for privacy.

3. Plz appreciate the perfect likeness:

audrawilliams

A post shared by @audrawilliams

4. One thing I was not prepared for as a small business owner was the relentless stream of suggestions. I’m so hyper aware of it now that I’ve made it my mission to shut it down when I see people doing it on the social media posts of other businesses. It’s exhausting.