WalkingElephant

We are what we eat...

...and that ain't good.

I was shocked to learn from one of our beneficiaries recently that a significant percentage of Boston's public schools have no kitchens. But, they do serve lunch. It's just that their school lunches aren't made on the premises. Instead, they're prepared airplane/TV-dinner-style, in individual portions on flash-frozen, shrink-wrapped trays, in some factory in Philadelphia. 

No, I've got nothing against Philly - honest! But I DO find it appalling and alarming that we have made our peace with this choice to serve the lowest possible cost, pre-fab food to our children. And this fact is just one of myriad indicators that the health and welfare of our public school children is not truly important to the majority of us. Only more money flowing into public school systems will make it possible for a course change in a healthier direction. 

Meanwhile, the French definitely have different priorities, as I just learned from this story at grist.com, which includes this video:

 

More...means less...

...but it shouldn't have to.

Yes, because of my Cambodian restaurants - The Elephant Walk - and Cambodian partners, Cambodia anywhere in the news always draws my interest. But, because of the principle behind my Benefit Restaurant Project, a recent NY Times blog post by Nicholas Kristof - "Does Haiti's Earthquake Hurt Cambodia" - pierced me through the heart.

Of course, when I learned of it, I immediately feared that the Chilean earthquake with diminish ongoing relief efforts in Haiti. But - shame on me - I didn't connect the dots all the way around the world the way I would have expected. Instead, in the Kristof piece a gentleman who runs a Cambodian AIDS patient relief foundation very eloquently shared his experience with our collective, global giving being largely fixed, bringing me back to first principles of the Benefit Restaurant Project:

In the world today, unfortunately more giving to one cause or crisis means less to others, because the "giving pie" is more or less fixed in size. If one organization takes a larger slice, that means smaller slices for everyone else. The unspeakably horrific Haitian earthquake rightfully attracted tremendous resources and attention - but away from Cambodia, and everywhere else. Now, the Chilean earthquake almost certainly will draw resources and attention away from Haiti. 

Digging a tad deeper, said the Kasumisou Foundation's Mark Rosasco - the gentleman I referred to above: "...the school kids, the church groups, the women's clubs, etc. - in short, the very groups on whom small foundations like mine [depend] shift their attention and fundraising energies to... the calamity of the month." I live in the business world where we live through seasonal demand cycles - busy in the spring and fall, slow in winter and summer. But imagine what the boom>bust, feast>famine cycles must be like in the nonprofit world when your support disappears because something bad happens somewhere. You're suffering, because they're suffering. 

The nonprofit world needs more support altogether, of course, but equally importantly, nonprofits - and perhaps especially the smaller ones like Mr. Rosasco's - need consistent, long-term funding so they can remain strong, stable, and focused on doing their essential good. - A widespread proliferation of The Benefit Restaurant model - a funding commitment to nonprofits of a small piece of every single transaction, each and every day - would go a long way toward ensuring that the pie grows larger, and that a larger piece for someone in crisis doesn't mean that another hungry one goes unfed.

Weather, or not...

...We'll always have weather. It just may not be what we want, or are told to expect.

 

Seriously: Can there be a better gig than being a television weather forecaster? As "meteoroligists" they carry scientists' credentials, they're paid as entertainers, and there's no apparent penalty for poor performance. - Oh, right... they're entertainers. So their real job is to deliver ratings - which of course are up when the forecast is a downer; failing to actually forecast the weather correctly, at least to my amateur eye, doesn't appear to cost them very much.

 

This is NOT an image of yesterday [not in New England, at least!]:

 

Yesterday was an excellent example of the high price we all pay when a sure-thing snowstorm turns out to be a fizzle. A couple of anecdotes shared with me by Rocky, a dog park friend of mine... One: Late yesterday afternoon a five-snowplow caravan was rolling down Route 3 toward the Cape plowing... water - when they could've stayed in the barn. The other: A friend of his who commutes back-and-forth to Lexington each day from the South Shore, took Tuesday night's forecasts of dire Wednesday weather seriously and so traded his 40 minute drive each way [which would've been even shorter yesterday, under the circumstances] for nearly 4½ hours on several different trains.

 

And at about 6:30 yesterday evening, I get back to our Waltham restaurant after an hour in the woods with my dog Jasper [and Rocky with Max], in light mist, over clear roads and maybe a half-inch of slushy snow on the sidewalk, to find our shift supervisor, two waiters, a bartender, a busser, two line cooks, a prep cook and a dishwasher... and not a single customer. By the time I left at about 7:30 we had welcomed 10 brave souls, when we might've been serving 60 by then on an ordinary Wednesday evening.

 

Don't worry: I know well what it's like when the situation is reversed, when the forecast is for an afternoon dusting and we get 10 inches. I was one of those incredulous drivers who lived that evening commute nightmare a couple of winters ago when it took me nearly 5 hours to drive from Kenmore to Waltham instead of the normal 25 minutes [and I hit the road that day before rush hour, before 2:30!]. So, of course we do need to be careful. Absolutely. And when the talking heads see something coming, of course they can't say nothing... I just wish that, more often, they'd get it right.

 

I don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere respectable once that, over the course of the year, weather where we live averages out to run in approximately four day cycles. Translation:  if you were to simply say "Tomorrow's weather is going to be very much like today's," you'd be right about 75% of the time. - I also heard that professional meteorologists - with all their radar and satellite imagery, with all their computer models, historical records, and professional training - get their forecasts right just a little better than 85% of the time. Really?

 

To me, that's a good argument for, before deciding whether or not to venture out for the day or evening, looking out your window first. Then go online, [and read read the forecasts - yes - but also] take a careful look at your local radar and satellite loops [I use wunderground.com primarily, but also accuweather.com and weather.com], and crafting your own best guess as to what's going to happen.

 

If your experience is like mine, you'll find you'll disagree fairly often with the weatherfolk on the short term [2-8 hour] forecasts for what is going to really happen where you live and work. And you know what? More often than not, it is YOU who will be right - and that'snow joke!

Getting an education... on Education!

Like many of you, I recently finished reading the 2006 bestseller Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - an astonishing and ongoing story of a man [Mortenson] who, climbing down K2 after a failed summitting attempt, stumbled into a Pakistani village and a new life building schools where there aren't any in northern Pakistan and now Afghanistan.

Working similar magic, but from a somewhat different perspective is John Wood, founder of the remarkable foundation Room to Read, which builds libraries, schools and computer labs in Southeast and Central Asia, and now Africa. I also just finished Mr. Wood's book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a no less inspiring story of an overworked corporate executive who stumbled upon a cavernous need for better education in the developing world and dropped everything to commit to help build libraries and schools for people who don't have them. - The Boston Chapter of Room to Read held a sold out findraiser at The Elephant Walk in Cambridge last November in pursuit of their goal of building 10 libraries in Cambodia.

It was Heather Faris, Cambridge resident and mother of two students who educated all of us at The Elephant Walk as to what American journalist Bernie Krisher is doing with his non-profit organization, American Assistance for Cambodia [AAfC}- you guessed it: building schools in Cambodia [more than 400 so far] and more. Ms. Faris brought us up to speed early last year on the Cambridge School for Cambodia [CambCamb] project, a grass roots Cambridge organization she was helping run that included many students and was raising money to fund a school through the AAfC. [We hosted a fundraiser in support of their effort at our Cambridge restaurant last April that raised over $5,000. - We're also hosting a follow-up buffet luncheon this coming May 9 - spearheaded by Cambridge high school student Lucy Flamm - to help further the CambCamb mission - (Tickets are still available!)]

Frankly, until recently, I had no idea how many people are making extraordinary commitments of time and money, sometimes even risking their lives let alone their life savings to help bring the opportunity of education to people whose governments and community resources cannot provide it. Their efforts and achievements are amazing and inspiring.

Time flies...

Hello again... It doesn't FEEL like four months but it has indeed been four months since my last post...a cardinal sin in the blogosphere. Can't - won't - let THAT happen again!

It's been a busy time. Since early November, among other things, we've remodeled our Cambridge restaurant, really warming things up there. [And we now serve Sunday brunch and lunch Monday-Friday in all three restaurants.]

We've also been adjusting to the new economic reality confronting just about everyone: people simply have less money to spend.

There are marketing "experts" who counsel lying about how things are going ["never let them see you sweat"] when things aren't going great. And in my experience most small business owners really prefer not to tell the truth when times are tough. I prefer to respect people's intelligence [don't kid yourself: most people already know how things are going!], and I especially want to "keep it real," which in this case means having conversations about the truth of the matter rather than what I hope I can make them think. We all stand to gain the most out of what we share with one another when we share honestly, and earn each other's trust.

So, how are WE doing? Sales are definitely off a bit. The fall was off significantly with December particularly slow due to businesses reigning in their holiday celebrations, and that butal three-day snowstorm the weekend before Christmas was no help at all! But, as they were only a little slower than last year, both January and February provided us with a bit of encouragement.

Someone told me in the early 90s that restaurants are leading economic indicators, one of the first things people cut our of their budgets when the begin to worry about their economic well-being, and one of the first things they add back in when they begin to feel better. So what are our restaurants telling us? That the worst is over, but we've not turned the corner just yet.

Yes, like most businesses, non-profits and governments great and small, we have had to make some changes to the way we run our business to feel sure we're going to be serving you - and serving you well - for the long haul. I'll be exploring some of those things in future posts.

But for the moment, let me just thank you for reading, and for continuing to support The Elephant Walk with your patronage and your feedback. We are here for you, and because of you. Thank you indeed.