mybeardpapa.com

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The big guy himself knows how special it is to be a Dad, so to celebrate all the Papa’s in the world, we will have our special coffee custard at our Glendale and Arcadia stores this Saturday and Sunday! Here’s the description of the custard straight from the Beard Papa’s website:

“A delightful bittersweet combination of our original custard and our supreme hand picked coffee; a popular flavor among our older customers.”

Cream Puff Guarantee
During the past few holiday weekends, we’ve underestimated demand and have unfortunately run out of our cream puffs when our customers have come in. This weekend, we vow to not run out of puffs, or else you get one of our new flavored iced teas for free!* Our iced teas are brewed with premium loose-leaf white tea and guava leaves, and are available in pomegranate, raspberry or peach. Try one of our antioxidant rich iced teas and let us know what you think!

Father’s Day Discount Code
Make Dad think you’re a big spender when you’re actually saving money! If you pre-order by Friday night for pickup this weekend and mention discount code: PAPA, you’ll get an additional $1.00 off your order of $10.00 or more!*

Happy Father’s Day from the Beard Papa Crew!

*If we run out of puffs, you’ll get a free LARGE flavored iced tea! This guarantee is good for 6/14-6/15 and is valid from store open to one hour before the store closes. This guarantee only applies when we have zero cream puffs available, including the classic shell, eclair shell and cookie crunch shell. Custard flavors may run out from time to time and is not covered under this guarantee.

**Discount code must be mentioned when pre-ordering. Pre-orders must be placed before Friday at 9:00 PM (6/13/08).

Hi! Remember us? Sorry for not blogging for the past month. Now that things are more settled and we’ve hired more people, I’m back!

Not sure if you guys visited during the grand opening, but we worked throughout the night and were the only food pavilion open on Friday. The Thursday before the opening was monumental, because we had all of our inspections that day and everything had to work in order for us to open. Here’s what went down:

1. Plumbing Inspector - Our big nemesis who must have served in the armed forces previously and rules the Glendale plumbing department as if he were Patton himself. We called him out for inspections on Wednesday and he basically tore us apart and told us to change everything. There is absolutely no arguing with the General, so we begrudgingly complied and changed everything to his standards. On Thursday, however, our plumber was on another job and could not come out if we needed him. The inspector came by, said everything was fine, EXCEPT for one small thing on the roof. If we didn’t pass that inspection, there would be no way we were going to open, so we begged him to come back in an hour and hopefully we would have everything fixed.

So the big scramble began to find a plumber. I was running around asking the construction manager if he knew anyone, Daishin was asking random stores if they still had plumbers on site. Luckily, Peek, the children’s clothing store in front of us, were working on their restroom and their plumbers were available! At this point in time, we didn’t care about cost and would’ve paid them 10,000 cream puffs if that’s what they asked for, but they were reasonable and got right up on the roof to fix the problem. When the General came back, he actually shook our hand and said he didn’t think we could pull it off. First step complete!

2. Fire Inspector - The fire inspector was actually a really nice guy and tried to help us out as much as possible. We installed the fire sprinklers and alarms to his request, but our kiosk was still such a mess that he said he couldn’t approve us, because the kiosk didn’t look “open ready”. It definitely didn’t look open ready, because all our contractors were still sawing and screwing away. So we did what we did best: We begged the fire inspector to come back in a few hours, when hopefully everything would be done. We’ll come back to this one.

3. Building Inspector - He has to sign off when every part of the construction has been completed. Obviously it wasn’t done yet when he came by. More begging ensued.

4. Health Inspector - When she came by, everything was okay except for the biggest thing of all: We had no hot water! Our health inspector said she’ll sign off on our kiosk IF we had hot water by the time she got back. We had our electrician, who didn’t really know much about water heaters, climb to the roof and check to see if anything was wrong. He had no clue, but all of us fiddled with stuff and kept testing, and it must’ve been a miracle, but we got hot water! Someone really wanted us to open. Anyway, our health inspector came back, tested the hot water, and gave us the OK to open!

5. Caruso management - They wanted everyone off the property by 12 noon because Caruso was hosting his big party that night and everything had to be clean and everyone had to be gone. Instead of listening to them, we just closed the doors to our kiosk and kept working and basically hid whenever someone came by. We felt like we were in a really lame version of Mission Impossible.

Finally around 4:00 PM, our contractors were done with everything and we started cleaning up in anticipation of the fire and building inspectors. We tried to make everything as presentable as possible in the short amount of time that we had, and thankfully the two inspectors took pity on us and gave us the go ahead to open.

You should’ve seen how happy we were!! Even after 48 hours of not sleeping, we were too excited to rest. Besides, it was 5:00 PM and we had the Caruso party to get to at 7! Time to clean up and find a tux in 2 hours..

Here’s a picture of the Americana trolley!  It was unveiled a couple days ago and blows away The Grove’s puny trolley.  Plus it’s colorful orange and not dark green.  When you’re here, take a ride on the trolley and check out our HUGE cream puff pictures that we have on our windows facing the trolley.  No, those are not actual size, so don’t point to the picture and try to order the super size puff.

In construction news, we are getting our ‘final’ inspections tomorrow.   Final is in quotes because I’m not sure if we’ll exactly pass all those inspections.  As I’m writing this, we still have a lot of work to do and I’m not sure if we’ll be ready for final inspections tomorrow.  Don’t tell our contractors that I wrote this though, because we’re telling them that they have to be done by tomorrow morning =)

So the plan is to get our inspections tomorrow, get a re-inspections on thursday (and hopefully pass), and open on Friday!!  It’s slightly crazy because we haven’t had time to train our staff, market our product or sleep!  Luckily a lot of our initial staff will be current and former workers from our Arcadia store, so things should be less hectic.

Ok, time to go.  Less blogging, more painting.

Well maybe you can, because we’re telling you that we’re opening in three days, but you wouldn’t believe us if you saw what our kiosk looks like currently.  Actually, above is a picture from Monday of our pony wall.  I hope you’re impressed with the crazy amount of conduit and piping we have stuffed in there.  We’re putting up stainless steel around the pony wall Tuesday morning, so when you guys see it on Friday, all that piping will have disappeared.

Anyway, we’ve been working EXTREMELY hard to get open in time.  I left at 11PM last night, and when I got back at 6:30AM, Steve was still there.  We’re running crazy 24 hour work schedules right now.  It’s 12 midnight right now and we have a couple drywall contractors putting up our ceiling as I type.  When we go back to the site at 6AM, our cabinet contractors should be installing our counters.

But we WILL be open!  Not to brag, but of the six food kiosks at the Americana, I think we’re in the best shape to open (knock on wood).  Barring any major mishaps, you’ll see us pumping your cream puffs!

Oh, and I forgot to mention:  The first 100 customers this Friday, Saturday and Sunday that buy a six piece box or greater will receive a super limited-edition Beard Papa mug!!  These mugs are exclusive to the Beard Papa Americana’s grand opening, so you can’t get them anywhere but here!

This weekend was our plumber’s birthday (Happy Birthday Trevor!) and so we let him off this weekend to go have fun with 35 of his friends at Pismo Beach. His description of the event was, “Dude, this was an epic weekend”.

This was a very epic weekend for us as well. Daishin, Steve and I worked until 3AM on Friday (after waking up at 6AM) putting up drywall!! This was only to be followed by waking up at 5AM on Saturday to install our fire sprinklers and fire alarm and get plumbing and electrical inspections. We ended Saturday night at 1AM and started Sunday at 6AM again.

The lack of sleep was crazy, but most of you are probably still thinking, “those guys know how to put up drywall??” Yes, three Berkeley and UCLA grads can actually do construction as well. Ok fine, you still don’t believe me? Here’s the real story. So our new Mexican buddy Daniel was working at the Americana and we noticed he was very skilled at many construction issues. So we asked him a few questions, and next thing you know, he’s teaching us how to drywall. Being VERY smart and good looking guys, we were able to catch on quickly. I guess not too quickly, because we finished the job at 3AM..

Anyway, so if you are looking for any drywallers, please do not hesitate to call any one of us at either the Arcadia or Glendale Beard Papa locations. We will be happy to give you a free estimate while we are pumping your cream puffs. If you can’t find us at Beard Papa, we can also be found at the skilled worker area of Home Depot chasing cars for a job.

Can you believe it??  Next Friday the Americana will open and hopefully we will open with it!  Of the six kiosks, Beard Papa’s is probably the furthest along, but there are still A LOT of issues to be dealt with.  The biggest problem is called the Health Department.  Boring technical stuff on the next few paragraphs.

One Health Department requirement is that employees have an accessible restroom within 200 feet of a restaurant.  Well Caruso, in their quest for as much retail square footage as possible, did not build any restrooms close to any of our kiosks.  This meant that the health department refused to approve our architectural plans until this issue was solved.  This was over two months ago.  Finally, today, the issue is resolved and we’re able to go get our plans stamped!  Apparently Caruso begged a few of the tenants around us to write a letter saying our employees can use their restroom.  So the next time you see a Beard Papa worker walk out of Anthropologie or Puma, they weren’t shopping, they were going poo.

Anyway, my point is that we can get our plans stamped tomorrow but we still need them to inspect our facility.  We’ve tentatively scheduled our inspection for Tuesday, so if the Health Department sees any errors, we can fix them and get a re-inspection on Thursday.  The problem is that we’re opening Friday, so there can’t be any more mistakes!

Sorry for all the whining, but it’s late, I woke up early, and I had to sweep the floor today.

This picture is DEFINITELY not an accurate representation of the events that occurred on this day, but it’s all I got.  Free In-N-Out day at the Americana was 100000 times crazier than the picture.  If I could’ve taken a picture of the line, you would’ve thought it was the freakin DMV on Saturday morning.

Anyway, every night Caruso provides dinner for all the contractors because he wants them to work all night long.  If you’ve ever seen me at Whole Foods, you know I LOVE free food.  I usually pack down eight cheese cubes and five mini-cups of Berry Green before I even remember why I went there.

So back to the free dinner.  The previous free dinners were things like spaghetti, sandwiches, chicken, etc, but this was IN-N-OUT!  In contractor world, this is second only to the taco truck that rolls by every morning.  So my point is that the line was crazy long.  I normally have the patience to wait for anything free, but the line was even making me think twice.

I wish I had a better picture, because I really need you to visualize the monstrosity of the line.  Anyway, we were with our plumber and he didn’t want to wait either, so we did the unthinkable.  We walked to the In-N-Out restaurant a block away and PAID for our food.  I must repent.

What was once a mound of dirt is now a big jumble of pipes and conduit.  We passed our underground electrical inspection in one shot, but it took us two times to pass our plumbing inspection.  Of the six food kiosks at the Americana, Beard Papa’s was the first to pass both our underground electrical and plumbing inspections!

We have a bet with someone that if we are the first kiosk to be ready, they will treat us to Katsuya at the Americana, so we’re definitely going to win the race.  Now, we get to pour our concrete slab and start our above-ground electrical and plumbing connections.

Now it’s time to put back all the dirt we dug out..

Besides the big gold dude, another French landmark is making its way to the Americana - a mini version of the Eiffel Tower.  It sits right above the industrial looking elevators and lights up all kinds of crazy at night.  I don’t have a picture of the technicolor tower with its lights on, so just go to the Americana at night and enjoy the show while you’re eating a Cream Puff.

Ever wish you were a Ninja Turtle? I always wanted to be Donatello (the purple one). Anyway, I don’t think I want to be one anymore, because I just realized that their home is dark, deep and very inaccessible.

After four feet of digging, we finally struck gold and found our sewer! The sewer connection was thankfully only four feet deep for us, compared to Nestle Toll House’s seven foot deep sewer. Our plumber did most of the digging, but we managed to help him dig about 1.5 feet of the hole. Well I should say that I dug 1.5 feet of it, and Daishin posed for the camera.

That big black pipe is the start of our main drain trunk that carries the waste from all our sinks into the city sewer line and into the homes of our beloved Ninja Turtles.