Bureaucracy

Ah, bureaucracy, the sand in the wheels of business. And when it comes to restaurants Germany is even worse than New York City or London. I went to the Kreisverwaltungsreferat (KVR) -- the seat of licensing and registration for people and businesses -- to get started on the inevitable.

Typically I was sent to one office which then sent me to another. Take a ticket and wait. After a 15-minute wait my number came up, I went in, and I was told to go to a completely different department. That department's door was locked but an atypically friendly woman (she doesn't normally deal with the scum who are forced to visit the KVR directly) brought me to a room next to the room which was locked. In it a friendly blind guy who started 'splainin stuff to me that I already knew.

I was able to save him a few breaths and within 20 minutes had the basic information I needed.

How to start a restaurant in Germany Munich:

1) If you plan to serve alcohol, you need a Gaststättenerlaubnis (Public House Permission) which can only be issued to a specific person and specific bar at a specific location. No booze, no worries... but no booze, no chance. I need this one.

2) Even if you're taking over a place which already serves booze, you gots to get the permission slip.

3) Put up a new building and you're in a world of hurt, especially since you must provide at least one parking spot for each 10m² of space you have including storage rooms, kitchen, bar, bathrooms, basement... all of it gets added up. This is an 850-year-old city. There are no existing places to put cars let alone new places.

4) You have to go to the police and pay €10 or so for a damned print-out to prove you're not a bad boy, or that if you are a bad boy, you're no longer bad enough that the police are terribly interested in you. I was able to stop the blind guy's spiel here with a brief comment and cut him off a second time telling him, "not even a single point on my driver's license". Despite being unable to see my Sideshow Bob hairstyle he sounded surprised.

5) If you're serving alcohol you have to go to the IHK and take a full-day "running a restaurant" course. The IHK is more or less the Chamber of Commerce. The content of they "teach" is the reasons that 80% of restaurants fail. Perhaps not the content but the fact that people actually listen to their barely post-mercantilist bullshit which includes advice to jack up the price on anything popular and even better advice not to ever comp anything. EVAR!1!!11!1shiftone. Because that's giving profits away.

I know the contents of the "course" -- everything from employment methods to pricing policies -- and they're all fucking wrong. That shit might've worked here 30 years ago but no one who wants to survive in the modern world gouges customers. They still think first in terms of entitlements and the Industrial Revolution-era thinking about "management versus employees", a long-dead mindset in most currently successful businesses. But I'm required to go there and do this.

6) Business license. Fair enough, and the price is only €40 for real humans or €50 for fictional humans (a.k.a., businesses).

7) Are you a forinjer? You have to sort out a load of paperwork in a completely different section of the KVR but I've long since done that.

8) Another class! This one is a 3-hour "course" at the Health Department but worse, it has to have been completed it within 90 days prior to the application for everything else. Apparently it's so stupid that on day 91 people have forgotten "Wash your hands", "Don't leave broken eggs and ground beef out overnight" and "Don't smoke in the kitchen."

9) The place must be inspected by a building inspector.

10) The place must be inspected by a health inspector.

11) The place must be inspected by an is-it-safe-to-be-a-bar/restaurant inspector.

12) There's a one-time fee of more than €12/m² of total area (including kitchen, bathrooms, storage, broom closet, etc.) giving the city even more incentive to help businesses in their quests fail.

13) You have to close between 5:00a.m. and 6:00a.m. for "cleaning time" whether or not the damned cleaning woman actually comes at 9:00a.m. when there's no one actually there. I know Burger King has gotten around this one so there have to be exceptions and they're no doubt expensive.

14) New place? Barrier-free. Doesn't matter if no one in a wheelchair would set foot in your place (so to speak). And "barrier-free" rules in Germany are sillier than those in the US.

15) Boys' and Girls' bathrooms and a separate employee toilet. With a sink inside. Hands must be washed before opening the door (never mind that the door handle is the same one the dirty hands touched while going into the room). this one's a no-brainer; I've screamed at idiot personnel for being lazy and walking into customer area cans. It just looks bad.

16) Proof of financial capability

17) Registration with the Chamber of Commerce.

And that's only the start.

This cake needs icing? No problem. It takes at least two weeks to schedule an inspection which can only be done once the lease has already been signed, and gettig a tentative lease with an exit clause should the inspection fail is impossible here. One faces paying at least one month (and more likely two or three) of astronomical rent costs before the doors may be opened to earn the first penny.

What the hell am I thinking?

A Fireproof Bridge

"Andy, I need to talk to you for a minute before we split."

It was 1:30a.m. and I'd walked a whole 62m up the street to to pick up my girlfriend at the bar and talk to the owner.

"What's up?"
"I gotta stop. I can't do this anymore."

He was taken aback and had a look of surprise on his face. The cigarette almost dropped from his mouth.

"Two or three shifts a week are really taking a toll on me at the office. But mainly I'm sick of the bullshit, the cliques here at the bar, the games that a few of them play. I'm out."
"I see. So right away?"
"Nah, I won't leave you in the lurch. You need to find a couple people. It's June; I can stay through August if you need."

It wasn't just the other people working there, most of whom I'd rarely see anymore as everyone migrated into "teams" of a sort, terribly clique-ish and incredibly back-stabbing. It was also him.

Andy had reluctantly hired me as a barman back in 2003. I needed some extra cash and more importantly I needed to get out of the house and back into something resembling a social setting after three years of sitting in the office or at my computers after a particularly painful and nasty divorce.

The then-manager had quit shortly before to open his own Thai restaurant having failed to convince Andy to try and make this bistro in a dead part of town where one-third of the housing is subsidised into a three-star, fine dining experience. This was after blowing around a hundred grand of the owner's money on a rehab of the place, which among other things covered the old, famous wooden lattice ceiling with beautiful white gypsum board and white paint. Gone were the pin spots everywhere and in their place some dust-collecting globes hanging halfway down from the ceiling.

Not surprisingly Andy was a bit gun-shy after this. Still, I took to the job like a duck to water despite some problems with a few of the employees which I was able to resolve over the next two years. I was there for everyone, having fallen back into my old ways from some seven years ago in a different town where I'd rescued a bar's business. I impressed regulars with American-style service and surprised regulars by learning their names and drinks quickly. This just isn't normal for Germany. The tips we received (and still do) reflected that.

After about a year I started thinking of opening my own place. I'd tried to implement a few ideas at Andy's but was blocked at every turn. Never again would this be anything but Andy's bistro. The one thing I was able to convince him to try by throwing down with my own cash was a flop. Only afterwards did I find out he'd tried it a few years ago and blown it. Had I known then I would've tried to find out what he'd done to combat the problem. We don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things; I know what he did wrong.

And now more than a year later I'm still there every Monday night, every other Saturday night, and occasionally on a Friday or other night when all his shit staff bail an hour before opening. I told him about my plans and he knows it's even more important that he find new staff, something he's failed to do since my announcement last June. There's one new guy but Andy decided to let Mary train him.

I remember well when Mary came in for her first night. I trained her and saw immediately that she has no business in the business. For one, she can't add. She couldn't figure out the total of two €2.80 beers without running back to the bar for a calculator. I had to make her a cheat sheet. She thinks that Rachmaninoff and Chopin are suitable music for a bar. She has no overview of the location or the customers. She lets regulars wait 20 minutes for a beer.

I told Andy she was nice but not cut out for it. He sees it now but, pigheaded as he is, always does the opposite of what I say. He can't bring himself to fire her. In a fit of inspiration one normally associates with the effects of Thorazine, he had her train the new guy. To do a job she's wholly incapable of performing herself. So of course the new guy was incompetent and on a night that was so slow that any other person could've worked it alone and still been bored, the two of them crashed and had to call the owner for help running the place.

The new guy has since been re-trained by my now ex-girlfriend who I still intend to make the manager of my place. She worked one evening with him and undid all the damage. He could yet work out, but I won't be stealing him away. I'm leaving the place and only taking my ex-girlfriend. She wouldn't be there if it weren't for me. I've got dibs.

I haven't really enjoyed working there for the past year (with a couple of exceptional nights), but I've been there for Andy. So it was no surprise that he was willing to take me along to the business-only supermarket in order for me to price out items. With a tentative menu I was able to break everything down into individual ingredients and now I know what everything costs, so it's time to get to work on finalising the menu and pricing.

Of course there's a bit of Schadenfreude; Andy doesn't want me to fail per se but since I plan to follow the policies he's rejected, he really can't wait to say, "I told you so". And so it goes...

Toys

Sweeeeeeet! Based on Anthonly Bourdain's praise of it in his book, Kitchen Confidential I went to the store to pick up a new toy. They didn't have any veg for test cutting but they have a cutting board and you can get a feel for the thing. At first glance it seems like little more than a short bread knife and the balance is a bit odd with more weight than I'd expect in the handle. On second glance, too. I was wondering if I was about to shell out €50 (after professional discount) for something I didn't need; Wüsthof calls it a "deli knife" and their own description only describes bread and sandwiches.

Here's what Bourdain had to say about it:

A genuinely useful blade, however, and one that is increasingly popular with my cronies in the field, is what's called an offset serrated knife. It's basically a serrated knife set into an ergonomic handle; it looks like a 'Z' that's been pulled out and elongated. This is a truly cool item which, once used, becomes indispensable. As the handle is not flush with the blade, but raised away from the cutting surface, you can use it not only for your traditional serrated blade needs-like slicing bread, thick-skinned tomatoes and so on-but on your full line of vegetables, spuds, meat and even fish. My sous-chef uses his for just about everything.

Wicked sharp with a scalloped blade it's certainly most excellent for tomatoes. I'm not sure how I feel about it for potatoes which I normally cut with a santoku. I'll give it a couple weeks and see how things go.

With a serrated edge this thing can't be sharpened at home. It cost me €7.50 to get a new edge put on my santoku after someone dumped it into a drawer full of unsecured steel things. Actually it cost me €15 because the store double-charged me and I couldn#t find the original receipt -- they're out of business now. I don't know whether this blade can be sharpened even by a pro but with care it should last a few years, after which I'll wrap it up and send it to Solingen with a pretty-please letter on restaurant letterhead. It's worth a shot.

Oddly, on the cardboard sheath is printed standard instructions for sharpening the balde which would be applicable to a normal flat blade but which are impossible for a rounded, scalloped blade, both steeling it and sharpening it against a stone: After extended use the blade may be easily resharpened on a WÜSTHOF steel. Simply hold the blade at a 20 degree angle and draw down and across each side of the steel.

Umm... no.