Fall of 2012 would be a hectic experience. Nick was off to Wilkes University, Joe traveling all over in his second year of Junior hockey and Lor doing her thing. Me? Working my ass off. Selling diamonds, buying gold and making hoagies. It was crazy. Business was rolling at the store and DiNuzios was holding its own.
We rolled through the Christmas season like a well oiled machine. The crew was experienced and as usual there were no issues. Santa delivered. The crew in Quakertown was becoming well oiled too. Lol. Running a restaurant is a lot of work. Opening, prepping, ordering, making the food and closing/ cleaning up at the end of the long day. Everything usually came all at once. Lunch rush, calm, dinner rush, calm, closing rush, whew. Except Fridays. Fridays were dead. This was not good. Twelve hours of almost nothing. The Mart was a three day operation with only two days of customers. This really hurt the bottom line. Saturday and Sunday were usually very busy but there was another hitch. Most people only frequent farmers markets occasionally. Not every week. Therefore, we constantly had to hawk for customers to try our food. Sure, we had our regulars and made fans as soon as they tasted our product, but it was a grind. I also realized after a while, that to be successful in this environment, you had to be a mom and pop operation. Literally. If you couldn’t be working the restaurant yourself, with family, your profits were going solely to your employees. There just wasn’t room to make money. At least not the money that I was looking for. I really enjoyed my stint for the year but enough was enough. My lease was ending in August of 2013 and I put DiNuzios up for sale. The turnover was quick and easy. The right price had me walk away leaving everything for the next owner to take his shot. Goodbye Quakertown. Goodbye fabulous Hoagies. Time to take a break. I really don’t miss it though. My family can’t wait for Super Bowl and any occasion that I whip up those amazing sandwiches.
Joey and I had taken a trip to Toronto in the interim. A big invitational tournament where he would again impress and was invited to tryouts in Ottawa and Chicago for the Minnesota Junior Hockey league and the Central Canadian Hockey League. Both trips went very well and Joe was signed to play in the MNJHL in Indiana and invited back to the CCHL for the season after when he would be 18 and old enough to be eligible to play in Canada. So, we had two road trips that summer. One, to take Joe to live in the Midwest and attend his senior year of High School while playing hockey. Two, to go pick Nick up in Wilkes Barre. He decided, two weeks into his sophomore year, after a very successful first year at Wilkes, that his passion for Real Estate was more than that of Dentistry. Oh well, we’ll see how that goes. His transfer to my college Alma mater…Temple University to the Fox School of Business, went seamlessly. We left all of the furniture that we rented a U-Haul to take up to his new apartment at Wilkes two weeks earlier for his roommates to keep. I’m sure he will do great.
As far as Jeff goes… all quiet on the Leukemia front. Gleevec was doing its job keeping the cancer at bay. I needed another project to latch onto. Something fun. Not so much work. YEPPPP!!
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