Have I ever told you how much I love my son?

Our breakfast buffet is very quickly becoming the cornerstone of our business. It has been growing steadily since we started, and we have quite a few regular customers now who count on us for their weekend breakfast. Imagine my surprise this morning when Forrest and I got to the restaurant right as the buffet was supposed to start and the place was still dark. I knew our breakfast cook was going to be leaving soon because she found a new job closer to home, but I didn’t know that she was going to just stop showing up two days after giving her two weeks’ notice. In the restaurant business it isn’t uncommon for people to quit without notice, but when it is someone you count on to open the place, it can be a little traumatic.

We went into the restaurant and started trying to figure out what to do. I tried calling my other cook, but she was out of town thinking this would be one of her last weekend’s off until we hired a new cook. I was really tempted to just stay closed for the morning, but Forrest assured me that we could get the buffet going. We decided to give it a try and open an hour late so that we could make a decent show of it.

I started cooking some scrambled eggs when Forrest came up and told me I was doing it wrong. I explained to him that everyone cooks a little differently, but the end result would be the same. He looked at me and said he had been watching our breakfast cook quite a bit, and he was pretty certain he could do it. I let him take over at the grill, and he started cooking away. By nine o’clock we had just about everything ready on the buffet. Business really picked up after 10, and I spent most of my time running from the buffet line to the cook’s line to tell Forrest what we needed. We ran out of a few things here and there, but given the fact that we didn’t have the two hours of prep time we normally would, Forrest did an amazing job. He even got several comments that the bacon and sausage were cooked much better than they were before. All of my other employees are college age and older, and not one of them could have done what Forrest pulled off.

I am sure I am like any parent who gets frustrated with their teenagers every now and then, but with a day like today, it really does make everything worthwhile. I really love working with my son, and I think we both get a lot out of it. I am really proud of the young man he is starting to turn into.