Demo Days

We are nearing the end of our second week of ownership, and are almost finished with demolition. See the photo album on the right called "Demo Days." Mike has more pictures to add, which we will do over the weekend.

Conor secured the domains mexicalifresh.co.nz and mexicalifresh.com and will be posting a splash page shortly. We are honing our logo and will be unveiling that next week. You all will be the first to see it. We found a painter who will do a mural for us similar to what we had at Baja Norte. The lighting guy is awesome, and he and Conor have worked up a plan to wash the outside with warm lights at night.

We have accomplished so much, it's really hard to recap it all. We are so lucky to have Andy, our project coordinator, who seems to be a walking directory of Auckland contractors. We have had issues with banking here. Either we are talking to the wrong people, or Kiwis pay an awful lot in fees for the right to keep their money in a bank. We are all trying hard to remember that we are in a different country and they do things differently here. Depending upon your plan, you could be charged 50 cents for every debit card transaction, or $3.00 to write a check. By the way, you are not issued personal checks for 6 months after you open a personal account.

We have finally found the cheese to use - a white Colby. Mike and I have searched high and low for a substitute for Monterrey Jack, which they don't make here. Colby will do just fine. Mike is master of the kitchen equipment and knows each piece intimately. He and Conor have packed up everything and taken it to the two storage areas we have rented down at the end of Quay Street. It think they will be quite happy when the manual labor phase of this project is over!

I hope to ramble less in my next posting. You get the idea . . . we are all tired but pleased with our progress.