12. Vivienne
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vivienne
This is a complete fucking disaster.
Callum’s office is small. Barely bigger than a closet, really.
There’s a desk piled with invoices and order forms, a filing cabinet with one drawer that doesn’t close all the way, and a corkboard covered in sticky notes and supplier business cards.
And only two chairs, one behind the desk and one in front.
He closes the door behind us, muffling the kitchen noise to a dull roar.
“Okay,” he hedges, leaning back against the desk, arms crossed. “What’s wrong?”
I pace to the far wall — all of three steps — and then back again. My hands are still shaking. I shove them in my back pockets.
“The investors are coming.”
Callum just stares at me for what feels like an eternity.
“What?”
“Brad Henderson just called. He’s in Crescent Bay with Jim and Cameron. They’re on their way here. They want to meet at 4:30.”
Callum looks at his watch. When he looks back up at me, his jaw is tight, and his eyes are panicked. “That’s in less than two hours.”
“I know.”
“They’re just showing up? Without warning?”
“Apparently they’re ‘in the area.’” I make air quotes, my voice pitching up slightly. “Thought they’d ‘swing by’ and hear about our progress.”
“Do we have progress?”
I stop pacing and look at him. “Define progress.”
“Vivienne.”
“I have notes! Lots and lots of notes. Pages of observations and ideas and —” I drag both hands through my hair, pulling strands from the already-messy bun. “But an actual plan? A presentation? Numbers and timelines and concrete strategies? No. I don’t have that.”
The silence that follows is charged.
Callum pushes off from the desk and runs a hand over his face, scratching on his mustache. “Okay. Okay. What do you have?”
“What?”
“You said you have notes. What are they?”
I pull out my phone. The screen is wet and smudged from my soapy hands. I open my notes app and scroll through weeks of observations.
“Social media strategy,” I read off. “Your Instagram is basically dead. We need consistent posts, behind-the-scenes content, food photography that doesn’t look like it was taken on a flip phone from 2005.”
“I don’t even know how to use Instagram.”
“I know.” I keep scrolling. “Your website needs an update. It looks like it was built in 2010 and hasn’t been touched since. We need online reservations, better photos, an actual menu that people can read without squinting.”
Callum is pacing now too, the small office barely big enough for both of us to move.
“Menu changes,” I continue. “Small ones. Keep your core dishes — they’re incredible — but rotate seasonal specials more frequently. Give food writers a reason to come back and to write about you more than once.”
“You want me to change my menu.” His voice is flat.
“I want you to evolve your menu. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Callum, can we argue later about this? We don’t have time right now.”
“Yeah. Fine. What else?” He’s stopped pacing and is now standing in the middle of the tiny office with his arms crossed, that familiar defensive posture I’ve seen too many times these past weeks.
I look back at my phone. “Maybe a special event. Something that generates buzz. A collaborative dinner with another chef or a wine pairing event, or — I don’t know, something that gets people talking and gets press coverage. And reminds people this place exists.”
“You want me to turn my restaurant into a circus.”
“I want you to market your restaurant like it’s 2026, not 2006!” I shoot back, my voice bouncing off the close walls.
We stare at each other.
Callum’s jaw is working, that muscle jumping the way it does when he’s angry.
“These are all — these are all surface changes. Social media and events and jumping through hoops like a fucking trained monkey. But none of this addresses the actual problem.” He waves his hand dramatically at the room. “The debt.”
“I know.
“So what’s the plan for that?”
“I don’t have one yet.” The admission feels like failure. “The debt is complicated, Callum. It’s not something I can fix with a few Instagram posts and a wine dinner.”
“Then what can you fix?”
The question hangs between us, but I refuse to back down. I know what I’m doing. I’m a damn good consultant, and I refuse to let the fire in Callum’s eyes make me forget that.
I meet his eyes and hold them. “I can fix the things that are keeping you invisible. The things that are preventing this restaurant from reaching its full potential. The food is incredible. You know that, I know that, anyone who eats here knows that. But if people don’t know you exist, if they can’t find you online, if they come once and never have a reason to come back —” I watch the words hit their intended mark.
“I can’t make the debt disappear. But I can help you make enough money to manage it and to survive long enough to actually pay it off. ”
Callum holds my gaze, not quite ready to concede. “These investors. They’re going to want more than ‘we’re working on Instagram.’”
“I know.”
“They’re going to want numbers and projections. Probably a timeline.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any of that?”
“Not in a format I can present in” — I check my watch — “one hour and forty-three minutes.”
“Fuck,” Callum hisses. “Okay. Okay. What do we do?”
The fact that he said we doesn’t escape my notice.
I pull up my laptop files on my phone and scan through spreadsheets and notes.
“I have some preliminary numbers. Projected revenue increase based on improved social media engagement. There are industry standards for that. Estimated cost of website updates. Potential ROI on special events based on similar restaurants in comparable markets.”
“Can you put that together in time?”
“If you help me, maybe.”
His arms uncross finally, and he rubs his hand over his mustache. “What do you need?”
“Your financials. The real ones. Not just what you sent the investors initially. I need current numbers. Exactly how much you’re making, how much you’re spending, and where every dollar is going.”
Hesitation flickers across his face. Or maybe embarrassment.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know the full picture.”
“The full picture is ugly,” he says quietly.
“I know. But we don’t have time to make it pretty. We just need to make it presentable.”
He holds my gaze for another second longer, then nods before moving to the filing cabinet. He yanks open the drawer and pulls out a folder that’s noticeably thicker than the others.
“Current profit and loss statement of the last three months.” He hands it to me, his fingers slowly letting go. “It’s bad.”
I flip it open and scan the numbers.
He’s right. It’s bad.
Revenue is steady but not growing. Expenses are climbing. Food costs up, labor costs up, utilities up. The loan payments are massive, eating up almost fifty percent of gross revenue. There’s barely anything left over.
“How are you surviving?” I whisper, not looking up from the pages.
“I’m not.” His voice is flat. “I’ve been paying myself last. Sometimes not at all. I used my personal savings to cover payroll twice in the last three months.”
My head snaps up. “Callum.”
“I know! I know. But what was I supposed to do? Let my staff go unpaid?” He drags a hand through his hair. “I’ve got maybe two more months before I’m completely tapped out. After that, I don’t know.”
I close the folder. “Okay. We’re going to fix this.”
“In ninety minutes?”
“We’re going to present a plan that buys us more time to fix this.” I’m already moving toward the door. “I need my laptop. You need to print out your current financials. Clean copies, nothing handwritten. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Meet me at my table in five minutes. Bring coffee.”
“Vivienne —”
I pause at the door, hand on the handle, and look back at him.
He looks exhausted and scared, even though he’s trying to hide it. He looks like a man who’s been drowning for so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to breathe.
“We can do this,” I declare. “Trust me on this, please.”
He takes a deep breath and nods. “Okay.”
I push out of the office and back into the kitchen. Roman looks up from his station, eyebrows raised in question, but I just shake my head.
I’m already running through the presentation in my head. What to emphasize and what to downplay. How to frame the problems as opportunities. And how to make three finance bros believe that this restaurant, this beautiful, struggling, deeply in-debt restaurant, is worth saving.
I grab my laptop and my notebook full of observations from my table.
Callum appears a minute later with two cups of coffee — mine made exactly right, his black — and a manila folder stuffed with papers.
“Financials,” he states, setting everything down.
“Good.” I’m already opening my laptop and pulling up spreadsheets.
“Okay. Social media strategy first. I’m thinking we position it as low-cost, high-impact.
Maybe two hundred dollars a month for a student photographer from the local college to come in once a week and take professional shots of the food.
Frannie can manage the actual posting. She’s been dying to do it anyway. ”
Callum sits down across from me, pulling the folder open. “Two hundred a month. Okay. I can do that.”
“Website redesign. I have a contact who does restaurant websites. He owes me a favor. I can probably get it done for five thousand, maybe less.”
“Five thousand.” Callum winces but writes it down.
“Menu evolution. This one’s free. It’s just you being willing to try new things more often. Rotate one or two specials every two weeks instead of every month.”
He looks up at that. “Every two weeks?”
“It keeps things interesting and gives food writers a reason to come back.”
“It’s more work.”
“You’re a chef. Creating new dishes is literally what you do.”
He makes a sound that might be agreement or might be frustration, but he writes it down anyway.
“Special event,” I continue, typing as I talk.
“Let’s say a collaborative dinner. You partner with another chef.
Someone from Portland or San Francisco. Someone with a big following.
I’m thinking a five-course meal, limited seating with premium pricing.
We could charge $150 a head easily, maybe more. ”
“I don’t know any chefs who’d want to do that.”
“I do.” The words are out before I can think about them.
Callum looks at me quickly before looking back down at his notes. “Yeah?”
“I still have contacts. From before.” From when I was a chef, I don’t say. “I can make some calls.”
He’s staring at me like he’s doing the math on something he doesn’t quite have all the numbers for. “You’d do that?”
“Callum, I’m literally being paid to save your restaurant. Yes, I’d do that.”
“That’s not what I —” He presses his lips together and swallows loudly. “Okay. What else?”
We work in silence for a while, building the presentation piece by piece.
I pull industry benchmarks, calculate projected revenue increases and create graphs that make the numbers look less terrifying.
Callum feeds me current figures, points out where costs could be cut and where we might be able to negotiate with suppliers.
My table becomes a war room. Papers spread out in every direction, coffee cups multiplying, my laptop screen filled with spreadsheets and projections.
“What about timeline?” Callum asks at one point. He’s taken off his hat, his hair sticking up in different directions from running his hands through it. “They’re going to want to know when all this happens.”
“Social media starts immediately. Like, this week. Today, even. Website redesign, four to six weeks. Special event …” I think about it. “Two months out gives us time to plan it properly, market it, build excitement.”
“And the debt?”
I look at the numbers again. Even with all these changes and optimistic projections —
“The debt is going to take years, Cal. There’s no way around that.”
“So what do I tell them?”
“You tell them the truth. That you’re committed to making it work. And you’re implementing immediate changes to increase revenue and reduce costs. And you’re willing to do whatever it takes.”
He laughs, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Whatever it takes. Right.”
I glance at my watch. 4:17.
Thirteen minutes.
“Okay.” I grab a USB drive from my bag and start copying files. “I’m going to print these. You should —” I gesture at his chef’s whites, which have acquired a coffee stain at some point in the last hour. “Maybe change?”
“Right. Yeah.” He stands up, already moving toward the back. “I’ll be fast.”
“Callum?”
He pauses and looks back.
“We got this. Okay? We present a united front. We show them we have a plan. We buy ourselves more time.”
“And if they don’t buy it?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
He doesn’t wait for one. He just disappears toward the back hallway where his apartment is.
I grab the presentation files and run to the office. I hit print on the ancient printer that takes thirty seconds to warm up and makes sounds like it’s dying.
Come on, come on, come on.
The pages start feeding through. I grab them as they print, still warm, and shove them into a folder.
When I get back to my table, Callum is there. He’s changed into clean whites, fixed his hair, and looks almost put-together except for the barely concealed panic in his eyes.
“They’re here,” Frannie announces, suddenly appearing at our table. “Three guys in suits just pulled up.”
My hands go to the papers before my brain catches up, straightening something that’s already straight. “Okay.” I cue the laptop to the right slide. “Okay. We can do this.”
Callum is gripping the edge of the table. “Vivi —”
“Smile. Look confident. Let me do most of the talking unless they ask you direct questions.” I’m running on pure adrenaline and caffeine now. “And whatever happens, don’t let them see you sweat.”
The front door opens.
And three men in expensive suits walk in.