A week until the start.

In this restaurant almost everything is ready. Our job was to make the final connections, tune it all, upload the new firmware, read through the cleaning procedure, test and start up all the kitchen equipment. Plus hang various shelves and fit a couple of ceiling ventilation grilles. Unhurried, good-natured work. You can see the restaurant already taking on an almost finished look. Outside, a tractor is levelling the ground for the lawn. The asphalt has already been laid and the parking spaces marked out on it. The outdoor furniture is in place and the flower beds are done. Inside they are taking down the partitions between the dining room and the kitchen — they were there to keep the joinery dust out of the kitchen. Someone is melancholically touching up with paint the schematic pictures of people on the toilet doors. Oh, the victory of common sense over the illusion of gender equality. Two women’s toilets. Hooray!

We’re working with the equipment, mainly an ice cream machine and a smoothie maker. There’s a lot of waiting involved, so we’re also starting up other machines during that time. An engineer from the head office is working with us. We’re collaborating closely. The kitchen staff has also arrived. They’re looking around and checking things out. We spent about half an hour with them explaining how some of the equipment works. A couple more people from the main office showed up as well. They’re also taking a look around. Finally, the restaurant owner arrived in his Maserati. He got here and immediately grabbed a mop to start cleaning up the trash. Then he was running around picking up garbage—mostly empty boxes, bubble wrap, stainless steel film, and so on. He kept asking if we needed any boxes or not.

They tested the equipment by processing several kilograms of food. They didn’t fry the potatoes, but they did heat the oil. However, they did prepare buns, cutlets, ice cream, and smoothies. Everything was placed in containers to check how it works. It’s already been left on. It will remain on all the time, only stopping for maintenance.