Maybe he was a little appalled by my background because he didn’t say anything for a while. He actually took another bite of his food, spent some time chewing, and then had a drink of water. But he finally asked, “So what about college? You quit?”
“Uh, I kind of had to. Didn’t have the money to continue.”
“What about the rest of your family? –Your aunt and uncle, or grandparents. They couldn’t help out?”
“Meryl and Scott have two of their own kids to put through college right now. They’ve also had their hands full with this place. They had a few financial setbacks, but even if they could have helped me out, I’m not sure if I would have allowed it. Maybe I would have with the intent to pay them back, I don’t know. And my grandparents… My grandpa had a gambling problem several years back and uh… Well, they had some financial difficulties, too. I don’t come from a family of genius entrepreneurs, but most of us are hardworking—at least on my mom’s side of the family. I don’t have anything to do with my dad’s.”
“What about college, though? Do you plan on finishing?”
“Well, yes. I’m actually taking a few classes right now to get back on track. I’m not here every day,” I smiled.
“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” he said, returning the smile. “So where are you at with school? How far along and what are you studying?”
“Something you’d roll your eyes at.”
“What?” he chuckled. “No I wouldn’t. Why would you say that?”
“Because you hate animals.”
He studied me for a few seconds and then a smile appeared. “I don’t hate animals, I just don’t do the horse-thing. I leave that up to the rest of my family. So you want to be a vet, huh? Any specific field?”
“Mm, I don’t know yet. First I need to finish up my last bit of general studies before I can even apply for a veterinary school. Hopefully I can be done in two more semesters—fall and winter—and then I’ll look toward student loans and transferring.”
“Where are you looking to go?”
“Well I originally planned on UC Davis, but right now I think I’d go almost anywhere.”
“No, stick with what you want. You can do it.”
“Yeah, I know I can. It’s just going to take longer than I hoped.”
There was a few seconds of silence so I took a drink of water. I knew it was getting close to the time that I should be getting back to work, but I didn’t want to be rude by glancing at my watch.
“So don’t you have to have a bunch of hours in the field?” he ended up asking. “Do you do that, too? When you’re in a program like that you have to acquire a certain amount of hands-on experience, right?”
“Yes, and I’ve tried and tried to find a vet that can take me on, just so I can get some applied hours, but I haven’t been successful. It’s pretty competitive. Shoot, it’s pretty competitive to even get accepted to a school.”
“But wouldn’t your application look better if you had some hours on there?”
“Yes. It’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past year.”
“Well I’m just trying to help you out,” he smiled, not seeming to be put off by my agitation. “I’m thinking you should go up to Bakersfield.”
“Huh?”
“To my parents’ ranch. They have one full-time vet and one part-time, and you could work with them. I mean it’s equestrian, but that doesn’t matter, does it?”
I stared at him for a few seconds, mostly trying to put together a complete thought. He knew a DVM that would take me as an intern? Or was it even something that was feasible, and he was just throwing it out there to impress me?
“What’s there to think about?” he finally asked.
“Well, uh, well a lot of- of things,” I stammered. “First of all you can’t just say, ‘Hey, go work on my parents’ ranch,’ and second of all, Bakersfield is almost an hour-and-a-half away, isn’t it? That’s kind of a hefty commute.”
“Well first of all, I just did say, ‘Go work on my parents’ ranch,’ and second of all, whether you commute or just live up there, you’re gonna have to make a change if you want something new to happen. I can guarantee you the job, Nova. It’s up to you if you want to make the change.”
I didn’t even know what to say. It was a real opportunity to get some hours in, but up in Bakersfield? I was looking for something a little closer because I wouldn’t be able to afford living somewhere while I worked. Maybe I could afford it, but my budget didn’t want to pay rent right now. I was saving for graduate school.
“Why don’t you just spend a day up there first?” he asked. “Then you can decide.”
“Well, yeah, that’s…that’s a better plan…”
“And if you’d rather just live up there, my parents have plenty of room in the guesthouse.”
“The guesthouse?”
“Yeah, it’s just a big house that’s used for visitors that spend time at Harmony Acres, and a few of the employees live there, too. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“What?”
“You should come up tomorrow. I’ll give you a tour of the ranch, and you can meet a few people. I think you’d probably like Jack— Uh, Dr. Stevens.”
Did things suddenly start moving really fast or was it just me? “Uh, no, I don’t think I can this weekend. I have a test on Monday and… Well, no, probably not.”
“Are you sure? Every minute isn’t going to be tied up, you know. And you still have Sunday to study.”
“Uh… I just…have a few things I need to do tomorrow.” That was true because I told Levi that I’d go to lunch with him. I didn’t want to cancel that, did I?
“Okay,” he seemed to shrug. “But if you decide it’s something you’d like to do, just let me know.”
He took his last two bites of food, and because he pushed the plate aside and finished off his water, I knew my break time was pretty much up. I’d hardly eaten my food, and after he gave me a hard time about it, he asked Robin for the check.
“Thanks for joining me,” he said. “Can this happen every Friday?”
I smiled when he did but replied, “Uh, probably not, unless you come on the tail end of my morning shift. I’m done at two.”
“That’s every other Friday, right?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed that he knew that. He was really perplexing me. I felt like he liked me, but his demeanor sometimes challenged that thought.
He was gathering the papers that he’d set on the seat next to him and stuck them back into a folder.
“What kind of work do you bring with you?” I asked.
He paused for a few seconds and then seemed to exhale a breath of air. “Well this is just something for fun.”
“Fun?”
He paused again and I watched him carefully. I guess he was debating whether or not he was going to go into detail with me because he finally said, “I’m not sure if now is the right time to discuss it, but this is a market analysis. For this restaurant.”
I stared at him for a moment and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, sometimes I take on a business and give it kind of a makeover. Financially. I look at what it has to offer and if certain changes will be beneficial to making the business do better. It’s kind of…an intervention.”
I stared at him again before I exclaimed, “What? You’re- you’re gonna take over this business and- and—”
“No, I’m not taking it over. I restructure the business plan; draw up some pros and cons, and pretty much brainstorm what will make it thrive better. Finances are a big part of it. Sometimes I do it for businesses that are going under, just to see if there’s any chance that we can do something to save it from bankrup—”
“This place is not going under,” I retorted. “We’re doing just fine.”
He took a moment to look me over carefully. I was fully prepared to battle whatever it was he threw at me, but instead he said, “I’m sorry if you take offense to the world o
f business. You asked what work I had with me, and I guess I could have made up something else, but maybe I thought you’d be a little more open to the idea. You seem to love your aunt, and being that you’re here so much, I kind of thought you’d be interested in improving the family business. Surely you’d like to give her the chance to make this place everything she hoped it would be. There’s a lot of potential here, but sometimes you need the right person to make it happen.”
“And that’s you,” I stated somewhat dourly.
“Well, it is what I do.”
“Oh, that’s one of your jobs? Restructuring businesses?”
“One of my jobs, huh?”
“Yeah, the other week your friend said, ‘Which job are you gonna share?’ like it was some big joke or something.”
He smiled and replied, “Yeah, I do have a few jobs I guess. The track, the ranch, and the little side business of restructuring.”
“You’re a busy guy.”
“Sometimes. Usually just when I choose to be.”
Robin set the check on the table, and after she left, Austin pulled out his wallet and placed a twenty with it.
“So what do you think about coming up to the ranch next weekend?” he asked. “Can I plan for that? Maybe you should come for two days. I’ll pick you up when you’re done with work on Friday, and then I can take you back home on Sunday when I go home too.”
I was still spinning from the first offer (and then the whole business restructuring thing, and now another offer for two days), so I didn’t respond at first. He waited for a few seconds for me to reply, and then he seemed to think I wasn’t going to.
“Well, it was nice having lunch with you, Nova. At the very least I’ll see you next week, and if you decide you want to go, I’d be happy for you to join me in Bakersfield. Have a good weekend,” he smiled.
He was about to get up but I told him to wait, so he settled back into his seat.
“What kind of plans do you have for the diner?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow, possibly surprised that I was hooked on that instead of the whole ranch visit idea. I didn’t know what he was thinking; he was hard to read.
“Well I’d rather not have you bite my head off for something you might not want to hear. Business-wise I couldn’t care less. If you were just another business deal, it wouldn’t faze me one bit. But since we’re friends…”
He gave me a goofy smile and I had to chuckle.
“Since we’re friends, I’d rather not have you upset with me,” he finished.
“I won’t be.”
He raised another eyebrow, seeming to question me on that.
“I won’t,” I said adamantly. “I just want to hear some of your ideas.”
“Okay, but keep an open mind…” He shuffled through his pile of papers in the folder and pulled one out, handing it to me. “Cons. Start with the negative, and then I’ll flatter you with the positives.”
I sort of smiled as I glanced over the first line. “ ‘Clover’s is not even a café; it’s a diner’?” I read.
He shrugged. “The sign says ‘Café,’ but to me it’s more of a diner.”
“Meryl just kept the sign when she remodeled the first time,” I said defensively.
He only smiled and gave me a look that said, “You promised you wouldn’t get mad at me.”
“Okay, okay, so it’s not really a café anymore,” I relented. “I see your point.”
“No, technically you can call it a café. In this country a café is meant to mean more than just a coffeehouse. If you guys make certain changes, people will be able to tell it’s a restaurant. But right now, the way this place is set up, it appears to be a little café. Sometimes owners don’t see how the little things can have such an effect.
“Take that day you stopped us on the sidewalk. Very clever move, by the way, because we were just headed for pizza. But I’ll be honest with you and admit that I saw the sign for Clover’s, but a ‘café’ wasn’t what we had in mind. We exited for Burger King but it was crowded, so pizza was the next choice. Honestly, if that sign had said ‘diner,’ we would have gone in without being bribed. That’s why I asked what you guys had to eat.”
“But what about places like Mimi’s Café? I mean…that’s like an actual restaurant, but they call it a café. Why isn’t that okay for here? Just because we’re small?”
“Honestly you can call it whatever you want. But yeah, Mimi’s is a chain restaurant and their establishments are larger in size. In California alone there are around sixty Mimi’s locations. But like I said, it was just the size and the appearance of this building that made us think that it was just a little coffee shop. The name won’t even matter once you make—if you make—a few changes.”
I slightly nodded my head and then read the other cons on the list. “Windows don’t allow for passersby to get a good look inside… Menus could be posted on the door… Aesthetic appearance is up to date but not overly exceptional…”
I continued to read for another minute. Most of the cons had to do with the building itself—the visual appearance or the storefront—and a few had to do with other small things. I actually agreed with most of it. Meryl had made some changes over the past couple of years, but without the money to do anything big, there wasn’t much she could do about the building.
“These are all great observations,” I said. “But Meryl doesn’t have the money to make any changes, Austin. It’s not that we don’t want to be a better business; it’s just that we’re not able to right now. I mean we can’t even afford to hire the two more waitresses we need.”
“Yeah, I realize that, but that’s where I come in. This is just the start, the ideas. I can help make the funds available to Meryl, she can make the changes, and when the business is pulling in the money that it deserves, she gradually pays back the loan.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You get a cut too, right? I mean how else would you make money on this.”
“Yeah, usually I get a return. But it’s negotiable, and right now I’m not interested in that.”
“And what about the loan? Which arm do they want of Meryl’s because she kind of needs them both.”
He chuckled. “I’ve taken care of that, and the loan will be pretty fair.”
“You’ve already done the financial numbers?”
“Yes.”
He looked through his papers and handed me another sheet. I read it over, nothing really surprising me much, but then something caught my eye.
“An addition? You mean to the building?”
He nodded and pointed to the other end of the diner. “Fifteen feet that way lined with windows. The property includes another thirty feet, so a little bit of construction out that way will give you six more parking spaces, some basic landscaping, and room for a sign.”
“Yeah I see the price for the sign. That’s outrageous.”
“It will at least be seen. And you’ll be able to compete with other businesses better when people come off the freeway looking for a place to eat, or head over here from the amusement park.”
I took a moment to think it over and said, “But an addition? We barely fill what little space we have.”
“You’ll fill the space. With the marketing and advertising changes, you’ll fill the space. Trust me, it’s all in equal balance. You make the changes to fit what the diner can offer. You have to measure out the potential and then figure out which changes to make.”
I sighed. “This is all…very comprehensive. I don’t think Meryl will want to talk to you, though. She’s had other people on her case about selling the business and stuff. It makes her mad.”
“Yeah, she was a little perturbed,” he smiled.
I raised my eyebrows. “You already presented this to her?”
“Earlier.”
“And?”
“And she didn’t say much. I could tell she wanted to do it, but I understand how hard it is to make those kind of decisions.”
“And yo
u didn’t try to talk her into it? Sell your plan?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I’m not a salesman, Nova. I form the plans. Normally businesses come to us for help.”
“So you just decided to do the work without even being asked to? Why?”
He shrugged. “It was interesting to me. I automatically look at things like that when I enter a business and it just kind of…started developing in my head. So I decided to throw it in the computer to see what there was.”
“And did Meryl say she was going to get back to you or anything?”
“Yeah. I left her a copy—it’s a lot nicer than this; more formal,” he smiled, “—And I told her I’d be back next week, or she could call me.”
I took a deep breath for some reason and began thinking over the situation. Here was this guy that I was totally hooked on, and it turns out he just wanted to dive into another business venture? I wasn’t sure what to think, but I did look at my watch and say that I needed to get back to work.
“Don’t you want to look over the pros?” he asked with a tiny smile.
I paused but eventually took the paper from his hand. My hackles kind of went up when I saw that it was a very short list, probably a fourth of the cons list.
But I read the first line, Staff is incredible, and I had to smile. The other few things on the list were pretty simple—great food and drinks, very clean and well managed, fair prices, and exceptional service. I guess those were the biggest parts of a restaurant, and I couldn’t complain.
“The heart of this business is already what it should be,” Austin told me. “The food, the people, and the service. The other little things—the aesthetics and the things that will entice people to come in here—will just be simple changes to the surface. But those changes are what will bring Clover’s the business it deserves.”
“What about the name?”
“The name?”
I found a line on the cons list and pointed to it. “ ‘May need a new name.’ ”
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