One of our biggest sellers at The Keep are milkshakes, for obvious reasons. That’s why we invested in a Blendtek blender to do it right. However it’s chewing through pitchers and at $80 plus hand carrying from America we only had three. The third one broke yesterday meaning something might be messed up with the blender itself since the pitcher only lasted six weeks or so. We had to order a pitcher and rush ship it to a friend from the US who’s coming to visit our manager next week.

We also had to run around town trying to find a backup blender to tide us over and serve the kitchen when the Blendtec pitcher arrives. This was a chore. The base price of a VERY CHEAP CHINESE disposable blender with one plastic pitcher: $90. The price for an authentic Japanese Panasonic food processor/blender/juicer/chopper with three stainless pitchers and a fourth plastic pitcher: $170. We had to bite the bullet and hope that we can make some profit on fresh juice and such and not lose so much on milkshakes when the Blendtec is down.

Wow. This is a real restaurant. Our profit matches our current expenses (“breaking even”) after four years, and we are employing dozens of people.

I’m not complaining. That’s terrific! But it would be really nice to be off the razor’s edge for a while.

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