Reply To: Upholstery – Restaurant Warning Signals

[mitchellreid]

Owners and Associates,

This morning while I was bringing my daughter to school I passed some of the restaurants where I take care of the upholstery. I realized since Covid came to town I have gotten out of the habit of checking on these locations quarterly as I had done faithfully for years. I pulled the files of 3 restaurants that I carry with me in my van and noticed it had been 3 months since I had worked any of the locations. At 8:00 a.m. no one was at the first or the second locations. The third location had employees on site including a manager. Even so, I held little hope for work at this location. I was counting on the first two restaurants to provide me with the majority of the upholstery on this day.

Lo and behold, the third restaurant, Buffalo Wild Wings, had 4 long booths with damage and the manager wanted all of them recovered as soon as possible. I was very surprised to say the least. I had already made plans for the next 2 days work so I told the manager I would be back as soon as possible. It was 8:15 a.m. when I left the restaurant. I double checked the first two locations. They still had no one on site. Then I realized a few things, it was ONLY 8:30 in the morning, BWW’s doesn’t open until 11:00, and I had their vinyl on the rack at the shop! I drove directly back and started to trace, cut, and sew those booths. I got back to the restaurant by 10:00 and installed all the covers by 10:45. I wrote them an invoice and was out the door a full 10 minutes before they opened for business! They were not only surprised but extremely happy that their store upholstery was back at 100%. They thanked me for “having kept a stock of their booth covers on hand”… their words not mine.

When I started today, I had no idea or intention of doing any upholstery work. Normally, I would have scheduled that work for another day later that week. However, the opportunity presented itself and I took full advantage of it. So instead of starting my day off with a zero before I went to my car lots, I started off with $700. I knew I was going to have a great day no matter what happened during the rest of it. I bet you can’t guess what I am going to do tomorrow morning. I am going to check on those other two locations!

You never know what you can accomplish until you get out there and try. Good hunting to all you Dr. Vinyls and remember those rocks don’t turn themselves over. That’s up to us.

Sincerely,
Mitchell Reid
The Wandering Upholsterer
“All Who Wander Are Not Lost”