Chapter Six
Augie
From the way my initial conversation didn’t include my contact’s name, I’d expected the contract to be bare bones and to have to make a thousand phone calls to find out all the details. How wrong I was. This Dante, whoever he was, knew his business.
Every detail I needed was in that document.
Had I been doing a bid and looking over contracts to see if it was something I was interested in, I’d probably have been intimidated by it and given a hard pass.
It was that intense. I had a lot of respect for whomever wrote the document. They’d thought of everything.
I didn’t hesitate signing it electronically and then printed out a copy for myself. I was doing this. There was no going back.
I took out a brand-new notebook. This wasn’t a random job.
I needed to keep it all in one place. Some people did everything on a computer, but I needed all the details to be portable and not worry about flour catastrophes.
I cut and pasted the details I needed from the contract into the first few pages.
I took the most well-written contract I’d ever seen and turned it into an elementary school project complete with glue sticks.
If Mama Sue saw me, she’d exert all her effort trying not to laugh.
Next came my recipes. I pulled up any and every recipe I thought might work and printed them out with pictures of my products.
I’d put them all in the cloud while I had the flu a couple of years earlier and it wasn’t the first time it came in handy.
I added them in the notebook the same way I did the contract.
The notebook looked more like a scrapbook than anything professional, but this was the quickest way I knew how to organize.
I had my inventory sheets out and matched up with the supplies I needed.
My calculator got a heavy-duty workout as I filled out pages of calculation.
I went so far as to use an online program to sketch out the area of my display to make sure everything was there.
I had the cutest ideas, or at least I thought they were.
I was going to do teddy bear-shaped rolls, fox cookies, macarons that were little turtles, cream puffs that looked like little hedgehogs, and sugar cookies in the shape of paws of all different sizes to be random beasts in the animal kingdom.
And because I wanted to, honey cupcakes with little bees on them.
Bees might not be animals in the sense of the theme, but none of us on this planet would be here without them.
My final items, if I had enough budget left, were going to be little woodland and desert creatures cakes and puppy-shaped mousse, because puppies.
It was a huge undertaking, and I was afraid I might have bitten off more than I could chew. But I was more excited about this than anything I’d done since opening this place. And my employees were amazing. Sierra promised to work some overtime, and Sal said he could work the entire week full time.
It was good because I was going to need to rely on them heavily. I tried to add on to my supply delivery order, but there wasn’t time, and we took the van to the restaurant supply store after we closed for the day, grateful they were open until ten.
Sierra came with me. I had a pallet hand cart, and she had a traditional shopping cart, and we filled them both with flour, butter, eggs, chocolate, cream, fruit, honey…and so many ingredients I lost track. Thank goodness for my scrapbook-style organization. It did get a few looks, though.
The order was so expensive, it ate the entire deposit.
Normally, that wasn’t the kind of profit ratio I wanted, but this was a charity event, and I wanted it to be perfect because, in a way, it felt like an audition as well.
I could do without bringing home the extra money.
I’d still be able to cover the added staffing, and that was good enough.
One thing I refused to skimp on was ingredients. Cute was great, but delicious was mandatory. My only disappointment was that I hadn’t been able to get local honey directly from a beekeeper, but this was labeled “local,” and I had to call it good enough.
Every morning after that, I came in, I did my normal baking, and then, as the day wound down, I did prep for the event. Some things could be made ahead; others had to be done last minute. But I had a plan and a schedule.
Sierra never complained, and by midweek, I promised her and Sal the biggest bonus I could possibly give them. Sal was just as much of a champ despite working twice as much as he wanted in his “semiretirement” years.
I tried to keep everything as normal as possible, and I was failing.
“Are you sick?” Marty asked, while picking up muffins one morning.
“No, I’m just overworking.”
“You need to stop that. Overworking makes for a lonely life.”
He didn’t have to tell me that. This wasn’t sustainable, but for the short term, I could handle it.
This was one more step toward the life I’d been working so hard for.
And as time went on, more and more people became part of my life, and that drove off the loneliness.
People like Marty and Sal and Sierra made each day brighter.
When everybody left for the day, things became difficult.
Tonight was no different. I checked and double-checked my notebook for all the things that still needed to be done, and wondered if I took on a job that was too big.
I had a tiny little neighborhood bakery, and despite my experience doing much bigger orders all over this country, this was different.
This could make or break me. If they loved my goods, my place would be packed.
If they thought they were gross or ugly or dry or grocery-store quality, it could hurt.
“No. Augie, you’ve got this,” I said to myself.
“Don’t worry, Mama Sue. I’m not giving up.” I refused to let her down.
By the day of the event, I had to close up shop.
There was no getting around it. I put up a sign and promised a free cookie on Monday.
I felt bad, but it was the only way to get the last of it done in the quality I wanted.
The three of us baked and decorated and cleaned.
Cooling racks were full. Bread was everywhere.
The refrigerator walk-in was lined with sheets of adorableness. It was chaotic and beautiful.
“We did it.” Sierra put her arm around Sal’s shoulders. “We got it done.”
“I need to check one more time,” I said, and she laughed.
“You’re going to check-mark holes into that book of yours.”
“Maybe, but I know we didn’t miss anything. Now all that’s left is getting it there.”
My plan was to leave early. I’d be a fool not to expect hiccups along the way. There always were.
My best foot was put forward. All that was left was seeing how people responded.
If Mama Sue and Grandpa were here, they would be proud of me.
Mama Sue, for my baking skills and organization.
Grandpa, for baking it all with love because even when things were the most hectic, I never once thought, I hate this. Or I wish I was doing something else.
I couldn’t wait to share what we’d created together with everyone at Animals.