Every Second Counts,
Except the Two
We’re Taking Off
Why we close Monday and Tuesday, and what those two days can be for you.
Update, November 9. Tasting Tuesdays needed more runway than we planned. A J. Lohr wine dinner is coming in December. Watch the Tasting Tuesday page for the date.
There’s a sign in the kitchen on The Bear that just says “Every Second Counts.” By the end of season two it reads like an indictment. While it was meant to motivate, it actually started grinding everyone down.
Since we signed our lease, neither of us has taken a day off. Well except for a day or two here or there for family events, birthdays, etc. We expect that to hold for at least another five months. Monday and Tuesday closures are not days of rest for us yet. They are closures driven by math.
The Math Behind
the Closed Sign
Restaurants run on extremely thin margins, and a seven-day operation only works one of two ways. Either the owners are in the building every day, or someone else is, and someone else costs money. If you have the same core team covering all seven days you create overtime that kills margin. If you try to staff more part-time people instead of pay overtime, you put quality at risk. We need both quality and whatever small amount of margin we can get in our first year to remain viable.
Right now, Karl and I are choosing to absorb those hours ourselves rather than push the overtime onto our team or the debt onto our books. “Every second counts” makes for a great sign. It makes for a terrible staffing model.
What Those Two Days
Will Actually Be For
There’s an episode of The Bear called “Forks” where Richie, the grizzly manager who’s been at the restaurant for years, spends a week staging at a restaurant that isn’t his own. He isn’t cooking. He’s polishing silverware and learning somebody else’s rhythm. He comes back changed, not because the silverware needed polishing, but because stepping outside his own routine let him finally see it clearly.
That’s what Monday and Tuesday are for at Maisie’s. Chef Jamisen and I do work together on those days. Menu revisions. Staffing decisions. Office work. Vendor conversations. Karl and I (and sometimes Jamisen) also use those days for facilities work. Painting. Deep cleans. Reorganizing the line. And yes, a few hours of actual rest if we can (Mondays Karl and I “sleep-in” to the very late 9am. It ticks the dogs off they have to wait a couple extra hours for their morning walk, but they’ll survive this too).
Monday and Tuesday
Could Be Yours
Now, switching analogies to something a little older like me…
Cheers ran for eleven seasons on one idea: a bar where you’re already known before you say a word. Sociologists have a term for that kind of place. Ray Oldenburg called it a third place, somewhere between home and work that belongs to whoever walks in often enough to be recognized. Cheers turned that theory into a hangout so convincing that people still measure their own local bar against a sitcom set from the 1980s.
On the two days we’re closed to the public, the whole site is actually more available, not less. No lunch rush competing for the room, no dinner reservation squeezing your group into a corner. If your gathering wants the whole place, Monday and Tuesday can be yours.
A nonprofit board retreat or fundraiser that wants a room to itself, not a corner of one. A ladies day out. A quilt retreat. An all hands meeting or team celebration. For a few hours, we hand you the keys and let it be your Cheers.
If any of that sounds like your group, reach out. Email us at maisie@mgb-llc.co or call 803.81.HOUND (46863), and let’s talk about your date.
Something New
Landing on Tuesdays
There’s one more thing coming, and it’s specific to Tuesdays. Later this month (or early October if we need the extra runway) we’re launching Tasting Tuesdays: a small, exclusive evening experience that requires a prepaid reservation. Call it our own quiet chase for a star, minus the Michelin panic. I’ll have more to say when it’s ready.
Five months from now, or whenever the math finally lets us exhale, Maisie’s Green Brae might be open seven days a week, and Karl and I might remember what a day off actually feels like. Until then, we’ll refrain from putting an Every Second Counts sign up in the kitchen. And, we hope everyone here learns your name Wednesday to Sunday.
— Christine G.D. Schaefer
Let’s Talk
About Your Date
2150 Gold Hill Road, Tega Cay, SC 29708. Email maisie@mgb-llc.co or call 803.81.HOUND (46863).