The Ultimate Internship

I have to say, I am loving this internship. It is easily becoming the best job I've ever had. Aside from the fact that it's unpaid, it seems to be perfect in every other regard: great hours, great projects, not too heavy but not too light of a workload, great people, everything seems to be falling right into place. On top of that, it's almost as if I'm being paid because I eat at least one free meal (either lunch or dinner) almost every day of the week...it's glorious!

I ended my apprenticeship as a waiter last Thursday and I sat down with my boss for a few hours to discuss what I will be doing for the next few months. We talked about things that I would be doing in relation to marketing, pubic relations, market research, business operations development, design planning, finances, and more. It has truly became an entrepreneurial internship, because it offers me an opportunity to dip my hands into all aspects of the business world, as any entrepreneur might experience, and I'm loving it :-)

My boss owns four restaurant establishments: the Boxing Cat Brewery, Cantina Agave Taqueria & Tequila Bar, Iiit! Cafe, and Closed Door Italian Restaurant and Lounge, along with a 5th that's in the works - an upscale Molecular Martini Bar. They are all very different and so far they have all provided me with excellent opportunities to learn...

Currently, I'm working on specific projects for the Brewery, Iiit! Cafe, and Closed Door.

For BCB, I'm helping to plan some big events coming up - such as World Cup game promotions and parties from June 11th - July 11th, our 1 year anniversary on June 13th, and a 4th of July party (I'll leave the date up to you on that one). Today we actually met with some people who run the Shanghaiist.com, a blog/news site that does a lot of promotional stuff throughout the city, to discuss our 4th of July party which will be co-sponsored by them so that we can get the word out about it very easily to people all over Shanghai. We decided that we're going to do a 'Dukes of Hazard' theme, and we're going to do a costume contest, boat race (beer chugging competition), pie eating contest, as well as a bluegrass band all during the event. In the near future, I'm also going to be helping with various projects to move forward with the creation of a new location for the brewery, which should be a lot of fun.

For Iiit! Cafe (pronounced 'eat'), Kelley wants to establish a new location, which we scoped out today. Currently the location is a Costa Coffee shop, but she says it's shutting down (hopefully not because they aren't getting any business).

It's in the main floor of a tall office building down the street from where I live. She has some qualms about this space because she feels that there are not enough non-Chinese people going by on a regular basis. Apparently about 70% of her customers are either American or European and so she wants to ensure that those types of people will be readily available to eat at the cafe during the day. The peak hours for Iiit! are 11am-2pm, so I have been put on the task of sitting at the coffee shop during those hours for the next couple days to do some 'market research' on the types of people coming, going, and passing by the place. =) It should be interesting!

For Closed Door, I am working on some various marketing projects to help with the conversion of the restaurant from a 'restaurant' to a 'social club.' It's a real cool setup that she's got going...there are no signs on the outside of the restaurant, just the address (808) on the door, and it's not really a building, it's in the middle of a big cement wall of many different shops.

You can't just open up the door and walk on in (hence the name), you have to knock. Then a person comes to the door and opens the small wooden window to see what you want. If you have a reservation, you're in. If you don't, you're asked to call ahead of time maybe later on in the week or something. But it is open to anyone - at the moment. As mentioned, they have to change to a 'social club' because they had an issue with their licensing. It's a very weird and hard to explain situation, but essentially, the government busted in a few weeks ago and took all of their files/receipts/customer information/etc because they are not operating legally due to some zoning/licensing issues that are hard to understand and I don't know much about. So they're changing from an open restaurant to a private social club with food. It'll be a very similar concept, but people will have to be members to eat there, so we're not sure if it will be successful or not but we're trying hard to ensure that it will be!

In regards to the Molecular Martini Bar, Kelley is trying to take a new worldwide concept and bring it to Shanghai for the first time. Apparently, in hot spots all over the world, there are new bars popping up that are offering martinis using a technique called 'molecular gastronomy.' This bartending method uses an avant garde cooking approach to mix cocktails through an understanding of scientific processes of various ingredients.

Apparently, different things such as gels, powders, foams, sprays, gases, fire and more will be used to mix drinks - crazy stuff. It's a trend that started in Paris about 4 years ago, and has spread to the Americas as well as Asia, but has not yet hit Shanghai...It will in September though! The projected opening date for Kelley's new project is September 1st, 2010. So it should be a lot of fun to help plan the very first molecular martini bar in Shanghai. I've seen some of the financials for the venture, and it seems to be a very low-risk high-reward opportunity with some great potential to be a huge hit if done right. I can't wait to see where it goes. =)