Launch of Chippery.net

I'm proud to announce that we have launched the first release of the Chippery Florida site. The site allows customers to read more about our operations, the Chippery product line and it also lets them join the Chippery Club. Members receive exclusive deals and special promotions for everything from chips to shirts. Head on over there for a peak and make sure to vote for your favorite type of chip.

The Chippery - Florida: All About The Chippery

The Chippery is a unique specialty food concept that serves freshly prepared premium potato chips, dips, and sips to customers in just about any venue. The patented Chippery cooker, designed by Chippery Potato Chip Factory, Inc. (Chippery Canada), can turn a space as small as 200 square feet into a complete potato chip factory capable of producing 100 bags of chips per hour of operation. The entire process of turning fresh potatoes into tasty chips takes approximately three minutes and occurs right in front of the customer’s eyes. The Chippery cooker is a completely automated computer-controlled fryer that takes whole potatoes or any other chip-able vegetable in through a chute on one side and produces perfectly cooked chips at the other end. Once the chips exit from the cooker, they cascade onto stainless steel bowls where they are seasoned and tossed in the air for an even coating. The Chippery takes the lowly potato chip from the role of accompaniment and places it squarely at the center of the plate. Chippery chips are like no other commercial chip on the market; our customers get to enjoy them within minutes from when they’re made.

Last Day as an Employee

Strange feeling... I've been thinking about what I'll have to do so much that I didn't give any consideration to what this would be like. I spent most of the day packing and had a great lunch with a group of friends. I wrote a short message to the folks that are still left and included a link to this blog. Interesting to see that so many people were curious enough to click. Tomorrow I'll go in for a bit and go through the "Exit Interview" process. That will officially be my last day as an employee.

Overview Meetings with Contractor, Press Release and Business Cards

Over the last couple of days I've driven out to the mall to meet with Don, our contractor, to review the renovations we're going to be doing in the space. I'm confident that Don has a good grasp of all of the changes we want to do. The more I go out there, the easier it is for me to envision the space as it will eventually be. I drove out there today and found that our "Coming Soon" sign had been posted already. The sign is very plain, but at least it gets the message accross.

On the PR front, I've received and made revisions to Jenifyr's first draft release. It is sort of strange reading about yourself even if it isn't in print yet. I'm confident that Jenifyr will do a great job getting it in ink. I'm starting to feel pretty good about it and I think we'll probably issue the release in the next week or so.

I also ordered my first batch of business cards. This may not seem very important, but I only have two weeks left working at Motorola and I want to be able to hand out as many as I can before leaving. These cards can be redeemed at the store for a free "quick fix" bag of chips. I'm hoping they will bring some people out there and that those people will order a dip and soda to go with the chips. By the way, if you're looking for a great printer for your business cards, I've place several orders with Printing For Less and found their service to be great. Check them out and use my referral code (RP1QSDHJ6) to receive a $25 on your first order.

Back Home After Hurricane Frances

I brought the familly back home today after being at my folks house for five nights waiting out hurricane Frances and its aftermath. It's nice to be home again!

I actually drove up to Boynton to check up on our house with my dad on Monday. Our place did fairly well. We lost some roof shingles, had some damage to our wooden fence, and have slightly thinner trees now, but that's about it. We also ended up losing everithing in our fridge and freezer. My dad and I threw all that out when we were here. Seems we lost power on Friday, Sept. 3, at night (lucky that we left that morning). We found out we had power from one of our neighbors this morning so we packed everything back up again and headed home. I love staying with my parents and everything, but it's just not the same as being in your own house. I think they're going to miss having the kids there a lot!

Preparing for this damn hurricane was a royal pain in the butt! Since our house was built just prior to hurricane Andrew in 1992 (and we've slacked on getting them on our own), we don't have hurricane shutters. I started our preparations by running out to home depot to get plywood to board up the windows. This was the Wednesday before the storm at 10:30 in the moring. I was in line about 2 hours before I got the maximum 15 sheets that they would give me. I also bought a bunch of 2x4x12's that I used to build a wall across my lanai. Unfortunately, the 15 sheets was 2 sheets short of what I needed. I wasn't going to wait in line again, especially since I really didn't notice that I needed more until Thursday evening. By then the lines were much longer and the weather was starting to turn crappy. I started looking around until it struck me... "Hey... the chip cooker is in a crate... a wooden crate!" It was like I ordered the thing exactly to fit our front office window. I built a frame out of the studs and drilled one of the large faces of the crate and one small scrap piece directly into the space. The best thing is that "The Chippery" and "Fragile - Handle With Care" were clearly visible for all of the neighbors to see. See for yourself in the picture:

Plans Approved by Division of Hotel and Restaurants

I got a call today from Lynne, the plan reviewer from the division of hotel and restaurants, saying that our plans had been approved. She was very pleasant on the phone. She said that she was so bored waiting for the hurricane to pass that she ended up taking plans home to review and she got through ours. I'll be sending her a case of chips as soon as we're up and running!

I also called Steven, the permit expediter I had talked to earlier, to see if he can pick up the plans and take them over to the Palm Beach County offices for the Fire Department's approval, but I couldn't get a hold of him. If don't talk to him before I get back up to our house I'll just rund down there and take them in myself. That will save me about $400.

Preparing for Hurricane Frances

Things aren't looking too good over here. It seems that hurricane Frances will pass by close enough for us to see at least some of the effects of the storm. Other than the regular preparations for the family and home, now I have to worry about the business. Even though the store hasn't been started yet, I still have the Chippery cooker sitting in my garage. This was supposed to be a temporary holding place until we received access to the space in the mall so I didn't think that updating our insurance would be an issue. Our contents including the cooker add up to more than what we're insured for (gasp!). The plan is to push the mall to turn the space over as soon as possible and get the cooker over there. The mall sits further inland and may not experience as strong a storm as we would. We're fairly close to the coast. I'll try to keep this updated with what we do.

The Space Was Vacated

Well, if you're keeping track, you're wondering to yourself when the heck I get the space. Funny you should ask! I was supposed to get the space on August 25th, but due since the tenant paid through the end of the month, they were able to stay there for the full month. Just to make sure, I passed by the mall tonight and saw that they had vacated the space. They didn't leave it in too bad a shape, but they did take a few things I didn't think they would be able to get away with.

The ice machine is no longer there and they took the sandwich prep station. The ice machine is attached to plumbing, so I figured it would be considered a leasehold improvement. I had already budgeted for a new ice machine and refrigerator. On the bright side, they left a glass door merchandiser that I may be able to use.

Submitted Plans to Health Department

This afternoon was very hectic. I took off early from work thanks to Mot's "Summer Hours" program and had to drive to Ft. Lauderdale to our architect's office to pick up six sets of plans. I had the architect sign and seal five of them and print out an extra set for me to keep. I then drove back up to Margate to drop off the plans at Florida's Division of Business and Professional Regulation. The Division of Hotels and Restaurants is the regulatory agency that reviews and issues permits for restaurants in Florida.

I managed to get to Hotel and Restaurants at 4:30 in the afternoon. This, along with the fact that I didn't have the required water and wastewater approval forms, didn't play well with the plan reviewer. She quickly told me that she didn't believe that I was there at 4:30 and that she couldn't work overtime anymore. Not having the water approval form or a water bill for the space almost cost me the chance to get the plans in for review before the end of the week. The reviewer ended up agreeing to let me fax the bill in on Monday but warned that if I didn't, it would be another 30 days in the review cycle. I'm hoping that I'll get their stamp in two weeks.

Free Gmail Invitation

I've got one Gmail invitation available that I will graciously give to the first person to post a comment on this post. If you include details of why you read, I'll even send you your first message on your new account :)

Back From Vacation

My wife and I just got back from a quick cruise vacation with the two kids. This was sort of the last break before things get crazy through construction and then opening the business in November. We took a three-night cruise to the Bahamas and Castaway Key on Disney's Wonder. Overall it was a good trip even with a two-year-old and five-month-old. My only complaint was the quality of the food aboard the ship. I've had much better meals aboard Carnival cruises and I figured Disney should at least been as good.

Final Store Design

The design phase of the first Florida Chippery unit is done and boy has it been a chore (more to come later). Little changed from the initial concept that I posted about earlier, but I thought I should post the final layout for prosperity's sake.



The main difference between this one and the one I posted earlier is that the counter has a raised section at the end and a couple of cubby holes along the front face for displaying bagged chips. The face of the raised portion of the counter will be finished in Chemetal #449 Ripple with a Real Red tint. The effect I'm looking for looks very much like fire running up the side of the counter if the lighting is right.

(Re)writing the Business Plan

As I told you folks earlier, I lost my previous business plan due to a combination of stupidity and laziness. The plan wasn't finished (as if they ever are) so I had never printed a copy or sent it to anybody for review before losing the USB key drive that I stored it on. Well, I'm in the process of re-writing the business plan for the Chippery and I'm much happier with this version than the last. I've been able to take a step back and re-think the entire concept. I'm no longer married to the words that I had thrown on the page just so that I didn't have to stare at a blank sheet anymore.

In doing the re-write, I've gone back to one of the resources I've always used to get my bearings on the outline. That's Inc.com. They have a series of posts (Build a Strong Business Plan, Section by Section) that for some reason or other, I've always used to get a better idea of what I should include in the business plan. The articles may not be all-encompassing, but they've helped me. I thought I should share.

Employment Pre-Screening Service

Wow! What a racket! Here's an itch looking for a scratch...

I've been looking for a service that will automate the employment pre-screening for my chippery stores. I figure that for high-turnover businesses like this there must be something where I can pay a monthly fee to have any candidate answer a few preliminary questions, then if they satisfy our criteria, have them move on to a short personality assessment. Personality assessments are available in the public domain and the rest of it isn't rocket science.

Well, I've found a few providers, but none that are even remotely close to what I'm willing to pay. One wouldn't even quote because they target operations with more than 4000 units. The ones I have gotten prices from charge upwards of $2500 for initial setup and then about $25-$50 per candidate - not qualified candidate, just candidate. If I send 10 people to this site, they charge me $250-$500 that month! The incremental cost for each new applicant is zero once the system is set up!

I don't know about you, but this looks like a rip off.

Fully Executed Lease

I just received my two copies of the fully executed lease documents. There's definitely no turning back now :)

Notice to Vacate Issued

I heard back from our leasing manager for the mall and found out that the letter that gives the current tenant 30 days to vacate the property has been sent. This means that we will get the space by the end of August. It's sort of tough for the current tenant, but I think they may want to get out of the lease. Their store isn't doing well by my account. I've never seen more than one or two people order anything from them, while directly accross the corridor, another specialty food place is hopping.

During this month, I hope to have the construction drawings done and back to the mall's offices, and be part of the way through permitting with Hotel and Restaurants and the city. If all goes well, a date of November 1 is still feasable.

Architect Hired

After speaking with Mike Sanchez from MS Architects, Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale, I decided to retain his firm for the construction drawings and final details for our first store. It turns out that even without knowing it ahead of time, I've hired another University of Florida Alum. Mike heads a smaller firm, but I was impressed with his commitment. I asked him to review our plans at about 12:45 PM on Thursday and to have a rough estimate of costs by the end of the day. Mike called me back at about 8:30 that night and he had an estimate that was in the ballpark of what I've been getting.

Architects and More Contractors

I received the "approved as noted" set of drawings back from the landlord and I've been trying to hire an architect to complete the plans for construction. The letter that accompanied the prints from the landlord stated that I had to revise the plans with the comments that were made and resubmit within 14 days - and there were plenty of comments. Some not so serious, but others seemed fairly bad. Of note were some that called for changing some of the material finishes the Chippery designer chose. The one that sticks in my mind is the disapproval of the floring selection. I could work on incorporating these changes myself, but it would take me way too long, and I would still have to find an architect to sign and seal the construction drawings so I'm looking for a local architect with experience working in this particular mall.

Coincidentally, I received a call from a representative of a local company called StoreTech. These guys have been in the retail construction business for more than 20 years and have a fairly strong portfolio. This firm would be able to take the job from begining to end and only farm out the electrical and mechanical work. I met with the rep and found that they have done work in Wellington Green, almost directly below my space. After speaking with the rep and the owner, they were willing to find an architect to work on the plans for construction and permitting. I made some modifications to their contract and one of those changes required that they check back with the architect. Unfortunately, I've lost a day because it appears the architect has not responded. In the mean time, I've interviewed another local architect that I'm willing to give the work to if these guys can't respond by tomorrow morning.

General Contractor

I met with the second of several prospective general contractors for the build out of our first store on Sunday. This gentleman is currently in the lead to get the job. He has plenty of experience working in the mall (he's built out several food operations in this particular mall including the McDonalds and a salad place), he lives in the same city, and he has contacts in the building department that may prove helpful. We sat and talked about the plans for a bit and then he took me on a tour of the path I'll have to take to get the machine in to the store and cases of bagged chips out of the mall. We then stood in front of the space trying to stay out of sight of the current tenants and discussed what he felt would be the harder parts of the job. The good news is that his rough estimate on the amount of time needed for the project is half the time I've alloted for the work. He feels it can be done in one month if all the materials are ordered and everything is on hand.

One Crate Later

The excitement began at around 10:00 in the morning when I heard a delivery truck stop outside our house. By the time I made it out there, the tailgate was already out and the door was pulled up to reveal the crate that housed our first Chippery cooker. It took about 25 minutes between the driver and I to pull the crate towards the back and then ease it onto the tailgate. The next hurdle was getting it over the 2" step into our garage. As you can see from the pictures below, it didn't take long for me to unscrew one of the sides to take a peek inside. The machine looks very solidly built and carefully packed. There are also a few boxes that are strapped above the crate that contain the chip theater, cash table and other assorted items. These will be used for special events since our counter will have a built in chip theater. I can't wait to see what the machine looks like behind a glass wall under the glare of accent lights while it's cranking out fresh hot chips!

Preliminary Design Package Submitted

After staying up until after 3AM and getting up at 8 to continue working on the initial drawing package for the mall, I managed to finally submit the first set of prints to the facilities coordinator today. I shouldn't of had to twiddle with the drawings at all, but unfortunately the drawings that I received from the designer weren't ready to be submitted. It makes me wonder if the designer even took a look at the design criteria for the mall.

Loss of Data

Nothing is quite as bad as losing data! In the past 24 hours I've lost every piece of digital information I had for the Chippery and the covered call site. This includes business plan, financial projections, digital copies of contracts, web site source code and other documents, etc.

The first to go was my USB drive. I use this to take the working copies of important documents from computer to computer. I'm not sure if It fell out of my pocket when I pulled my keys out somewhere or if it just fell off the top of the desk or something, but I've looked everywhere and can't find it. To make matters worse, we had a power failure at home yesterday and afterwards, my computer is booting straight into an XP Blue Screen. I've run all of the manufacturer's hardware diagnostic utilities (which didn't find anything) and left it running the old CHKDSK /r from the Windows Recovery Console to see if anything works. I'm usually pretty good about backing up my jumpdrive to the computer, but I don't remember when the last time I did a full back up was. We'll see if anything comes back to life.

Update
I was able to recover my home PC's drive and most of the data in it. Unfortunately, no business plan to be found. The financial spreadsheet that I had on that PC are also very old. Argh!!!

Store Design Update

The process has been a little slower than I expected, but it seems we're on our way to getting the final store design drawings within the next day or so.



As you can see, we have made some considerable changes in the layout. For starters, the first column and the bulkhead that it supported are now gone. This clears the way for a much more unobstructed view of the operations end of the store. This will be a glass wall from about 9" or so off the floor to the bottom of the bulkhead sitting 8' high. The centerpiece of this part of the store is the chip cooker which will be placed approximately 2' from the glass wall. Unfortunately, we're going to have to place the machine facing into the store to be able to have the chips flow in the direction of the counter. This means we won't be able to show the actual frying process, but my guess is that that won't be too bad. Seeing the oil may remind some people that these things are fryed and could end up costing a couple of sales.

On either side of the cooker, we'll have stainless posts that hold signs that explain the process and say that the chips are 100% natural, have no trans fats, no cholesterol or msg, and are cooked in non-hydrogenated sunflower oil. There will also be several chip trees (a pole with a bunch of bowls extending out of it) to the right and behind the cooker and open cases of raw potatoes, sweet potatoes, plantains, yucca, tarro and whatever else we'll be making displayed in this side of the space.

On the other side of the store, we'll feature a chip theater where the chips are seasoned, bagged and served to our customers along with the cash wrap area. The far right hand side (bottom portion of the plan above) will also be a glass wall with additional signage post. The space to the right of the cash wrap is open to the customer and will feature a wall of bagged chips and additional merchandise. The counter behind the chip theater holds the beverage fountain and a floor-standing glass-door merchandiser that will have bottled water, Snapple juice drinks and teas and containers of our various dips.

Draper Dissed Me

Well, I can let go of all that pent up nervousness I had waiting to see if Tim Draper would pick me out of the pack to present the ScribeCenter idea to him. The contest I wrote about several posts ago is now over and I wasn't selected to pitch. The actual finalists seemed fairly wacky. You can read all about the results in this Times (registration required, try BugMeNot) article. In the end, the winners were... Oh, who cares... it wasn't me.

What I did find very interesting is the mention that there may be an Apprentice-like show coming out of this deal. It seems that Tim has been approached to take part in a show that would blend American Idol with The Apprentice which conceivable would put would-be entrepreneurs up against a panel of judges, one of which would be Tim Draper, to see who would get funding for their idea. I love it! I'm gonna put it in TiVo right now!

The New York Times: An Investor's 'Gong Show' for Billion-Dollar Dreamers

It is doubtful that any of Mr. Draper's Sand Hill rivals will mimic his contests anytime soon. But Tristen Langley, Mr. Draper's assistant, said television might be interested.

"We've been approached by one of the major networks to turn this into a TV show," Ms. Langley said. "It could be like 'The Apprentice,' but it might be more of a panel show, like 'American Idol,' where Tim is one of the judges."

Ms. Langley added, "Tim's attitude is, if a network says this is a good idea and they want it, he'll do it."

Mr. Draper said it was premature to discuss the possibility that he might become Silicon Valley's equivalent of Donald Trump. He did allow, though, that a presence on television would be good for business.

"A broader reach would guarantee a strong, strong deal flow" from around the world, Mr. Draper said.

Quick Service Restaurant Credit Card Processing

After having taken care of the credit card processing system for the Covered Call Pro site, a web site that operates on a card-not-present scenario, I figured the discount fees that I would get as a quick service restaurant would be lower. It turns out that on a percentage of sale basis, it's higher than I thought it would be.

I met with a rep from SunTrust Merchant Services last week to discuss what they offer and it seems that we'll be facing somewhere between 2.75% and 3.0% discount for Visa and Mastercard without a per-transaction fee. This would be using their new QSR plan that doesn't require a signature for sales under $20. The whole idea of a per-transaction fee that is somewhere in the $0.20 - $0.30 range is ridiculous. Assuming a 3% discount rate, for an average sale of $5.00, I would have to pay $0.15 ($5 * 0.03) plus the transaction fee of $0.25 for a total of $0.40 or 8% of my sale price! That may not seem like a lot, but it's higher than most franchises require as their royalty!

It also bugs me that the rate is flexible. Why does it matter to the credit card companies what the average sale is? If my tickets ended up being closer to $20 or $40 or even $100, what difference would it make on the processing side? I'll be shopping these services around before settling on a processor.

The Lease Is Signed and Shipped

After chasing everybody down and getting all of the required witnesses and notaries to do their job, we finally signed the lease with the mall. I drove over to our local Kinkos and dropped the large FedEx box into the slot. I don't know if it was that I was staring at the sun for a while or the fact that I knew that I had just entered into a very large commitment, but my head was spinning.

Initial Concept Drawings

I've started working with Eric, the designer, on the store concept drawings for the first Chippery unit in Wellington Green. Friday afternoon I got the first draft of Eric's proposal (pictured below). I have to say that after taking a look at the existing space, I think we're going to have to do more work than I originally envisioned in order to get the right experience for our customers.



This design is nice in that it wont cost us much money in leasehold improvements, but it also doesn't look like much has changed from the existing tenant. I'm afraid that we would be seen as a temporary tenant. I think we'll have to remove the conter starting at the left end of the store and ending at the middle column. We can then display the raw potatoes, yucca, plantains and other vegetables in the three foot section at the far left. This space would be covered by glazing from floor to ceiling. After discussing it with Jim, I think the best space for the cooker is as close to the lease line as possible between the first and second columns. There's a structural column inside the store that may make this difficult, but if it's possible, it would make a huge impact. The cooker would have to be placed so that it's facing the inside of the store so that the chips would then cascade off of the machine to the right (when viewed from the outside of the store). The would land in a chip tree display right by the middle column. There would have to be a counter after the middle column to house the chip theater and a cash/order station. The far right hand side would still be a merchandising space that customers could walk into. There would be glazing from the right demising wall to the third column and shelving space along that wall for merchandising.



When viewed in plan mode, the cooker would be placed between the first and second columns from the top. The wall directly behind this space would have a work surface for bagging and maybe several chip tree displays to hold finished product. This layout would leave enough room for storing cases of potatoes along the top wall and would also let me have a refrigerator in the back-of-house area.

Clip-n-Seal

I first read about these ingenious little contraptions several months ago on IDFuel and thought that it would make a great impulse item to place right by the cash wrap at our store. Well, today I called them up to see if this was possible. Not only is it possible, but they have sold branded versions of the clips to other customers in the past.

Slow Review Cycle

Well, we've negotiated all the terms for the lease and have in essence agreed to pretty much everything, but when we got the lease form back there were a few things we needed changed. We received the "final" lease form on Monday and we replied with our comments on Tuesday. Unfortunately, we haven't received the real final version yet so we're still lease-less.

On another note, we're supposedly getting the first drafts of the store design from the guys in Canada on Thursday morning. I have a conf. call scheduled with the designer for tonight at 8:30 to guide him through the space as it stands now. I hope they turn those drawings around fast, because we're down to 38 days to go until our August 1st deadline. The landlord still has to approve the design and issue the kickout letter to the current tenant. Once that letter is out, the tenant will have 30 days to exit the space. This gives me 8 days to get the design approved and still meet my deadline.

Pricing a Premium Product

The subject of pricing has come up several times in the last month or so and today, Rob the BusinessPundit had a post (pointing to an article on CFO.com) that discusses the pitfalls encountered when pricing new products.

Here's my situation... Our (projected) most popular item will be the "quick fix" bag which holds about 2.5 oz of potato chips. These are what I consider a premium product because they're cooked within minutes of when a customer orders them and they are seasoned directly in front of the customer. We use only the best ingredients and non-hydrogyneted oils to ensure that they are indeed the best chips our customers have ever eaten.

The market price for a 2 or 2.5 oz bag of mass-produced chips is approximately $0.99. These chips have been in a bag for an undeterminable amount of time and can contain all sorts of preservatives and/or cooked in less-than-healthy oils. How do you quantify the premium to charge for our freshly prepared chips? I'd also like to point out that our 2.5 oz bag will more than likely be overfilled on average. Would a price of $1.49 be too high? How about $1.89? I would like to keep the average sale for a bag of chips, a small container of dip and a soft drink to be at or under $5.00. I would really like to get some feedback from the two or three of you that read these posts routinely.

Mall Lease Negotiations

Yesterday I sat in a conference room at the mall with Jim, our real estate consultant, and Al, the mall leasing manager, and we had Kim, our attorney, and Tom, their attorney, on the phone. All in all, everything went very smoothly. They gave on many points and we had to come to some compromises on a few terms but things went very well. Very well, that is, until we got to the deal breaker!

Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable publishing the details of the lease so it will have to suffice to say that it was a clause in the guarantee whereby we would be severly limiting our defenses. Alex would not sign the lease or the guarantee if this was in there therefore I wouldn't sign either. I got Tom to start working on the updated lease and promised to have Alex discuss this with Kim to come up with some sort of compromise.

After several conversations and some research on Alex's part, we found that the clause was enforceable. Alex and I discussed it and I let her know that unless they were willing to change the language to something she would be comfortable with, that we would walk away from this mall and pursue one of the contingency plans we had set in place for just such an incident. At one point during her conversations, she actually had to tell Tom that it was over and we were going to move on but in the end, they were able to update the language to something that we could live with.

The negotiations that had transpired on the previous day were not nearly as exciting. Since I have very little experience with these precedings, I let Jim handle the majority of the business terms and jumped in where there was something that had to be clarified. I'm very happy with the outcome and I greatly appreciate all the work that Jim has put into this project. It's the best money that I've spent.

First Round of Comments Away

It's taken us (Attorney, wife, consultant and self) approximately two weeks to digest the details of the 67-legal-sized-page lease package from the mall's leasing company. Today we replied with a 10-page document detailing all of the terms we needed changed. To be fair, the lease isn't the entire 67 pages. It's broken up as follows:

• Cover page (1 page)


• Table of Contents (2 pages)


• Data Sheet (2 pages) - This is a sheet that details the business terms for the lease such as minimum rent, allowed use, radius, promotional fees, etc.


• Acknowledgements (2 pages)


• Standard Form (31 pages) - The real meat of the lease. Here is where they list the ways they can screw you.


• Construction Requirements (11 pages) - These are the main requirements for building out the space.


• Utility Requirements (3 pages) - These are the power, plumbing and other utility requirements for building out the space.


• Design Drawing Requirements (2 pages) - These are the requirements for the space design drawings.


• HVAC Requirements (2 pages) - These are the heating and central air conditioning requirements.


• Guarantee (9 pages) - The terms of the guarantee for the lease. Three pages per guarantee per guarantor.

Our comments, which were just on the main business points of the lease, not simply inserting "reasonably" here and there, were a total of 9 pages. We've sent them to the mall's attorney so now we have to sit and wait for a response.

Design Package Is Here

The Taubman Design Package for the WG space got here today. It's basically two CD's filled with the as-built drawings, the design criteria and the drawings for all prior tenants. It seems that the first tenant for our space was a place called CinnZeo. Not much has changed since their original design. Looks like the current tenant just changed the name on the bulkhead.

The next step for us is to provide these plans to the guys that will be doing our design. I have some Ideas for the space, but I don't want to incur too much costs to renovate so I may be forced to not change too much either.

On Sampling

Since I'm planning to use sampling as my main marketing tool, I thought this quote from a completely unrelated article in Brand Autopsy was relevant:

Brand Autopsy:

If you are going to sample a product, make sure the sample tastes good. Samples that taste good will manage to enhance the marketing performance of the product you are selling.

I Pitched Tim Draper

The truth of the matter is that old ideas die hard. When I read that Tim Draper was asking for people to pitch their billion-dollar idea on Always On, I couldn't help but write about ScribeCenter.

For those that don't know, ScribeCenter is was a digital dictation and transcription management solution for attorneys. It took up a whole lot of my waking hours for a period of almost two years. I brought together a group of four other individuals to perform the coding, architecture design, and corporate operations. I also built a pretty strong advisory network composed of people in the industry. We even had a fully functional prototype (except for the actual audio capture portion). ...So what was the problem? Unfortunately, it was the wrong four people. Things ended up imploding when the developers and architect were laid off from their full time positions.

ScribeCenter served as a great learning experience. I was sad the day that I dissolved the company and I still think it has legs. Who knows, maybe I'll get a call from Tim.

Low-Carb Potato

Chad Hutchinson, a University of Florida researcher, is working on a project that will bring a low carbohydrate potato to the market by next year's harvest.

staugustine.com Local News: "Low-carb Tater"

Chad Hutchinson of the University of Florida is in charge of the low-carb potato project. He said for the past four years he's been growing potatoes from the Netherlands in Hastings that have 30 percent fewer carbs than standard baking potatoes. He said the potato is not genetically enhanced in any way, and it's a European gourmet potato that's known for its taste.

The best thing about this is that the farms participating in this project are right here in Florida. I contacted Chad to discuss the possibility of chipping these potatoes in our stores. He said that these are not traditionally suited for commercial chipping because of their high water content and low gravity. After explaining that they wouldn't be mass produced but would be processed in a much smaller scale, he agreed that we could experiment with these to see how it worked.

Chad was also very helpful in explaining the potato market here in Florida. He says that there is a line called the "Sebago" that is similar to the Atlantic (apparently a traditional chipping potato) that has great flavor even if it's not the best candidate for large-scale chipping operations. This line is available for 5-6 months in Florida and can also be sourced in Maine for the remainder of the year. After I mentioned that we will be using Snowden and Norwiss potatoes, he advised that Snowden can be bitter at times depending on where it's harvested.

As a side note, check out this image of a blue potato grown right here in Florida. Chad says that the staugustine.com article mistakenly used this image for the low-carb potato. The real low-carb potato has a yellowish color. Regardless, can you see yourself snacking on a bucket full of these babies!

I was very happy to have picked up the phone to track Chad down. He seems to be a fountain of potato knowledge and I'm sure he'll be a great resource in the future.

Trivia on a chip

Procter & Gamble announced that it will be printing trivia questions, designs and other fun facts on the face of its Pringles potato chips. I think that's brilliant! I already find myself turning over the caps of all of the Snapple drinks to see what Fun Fact lay underneath.

Business Day: "Trivial pursuit - on a chip"

The Cincinnati, Ohio consumer products giant said it was using a "revolutionary" technology for the designs, which will include fun facts and animal designs as well as questions and answers from the Trivial Pursuit game.

"This technology is the first of its kind in the US to be used on food," the company said in a statement.

"The technology uses food coloring and doesn't alter the delicious taste of this popular snack."

The company is teaming up with Hasbro, which makes the Trivial Pursuit game, and will use 2,400 trivia questions and answers from six different Trivial Pursuit Junior categories randomly printed on the potato crisps.

I'm Not Alone

Apparently the spot that Food Network ran on the Chippery has been responsible for more than just my response to the company. I just stumbled accross this article from the Detroit News that describes the Michigan's licensee's story. Here are a couple of good quotes from the article.

Firm's fresh method rolls out the chips (Detroit News):

Since March, Chips to Order LLC has supplied fresh chips to a half-dozen parties and distributes 1,000 bags a week to 14 convenience stores. The chip-making equipment Burnstein uses is not much bigger than oven ranges found in most restaurants.

“It’s a healthier, fresher chip,” said Burnstein, a former Web site owner. “With today’s society, that’s what people are looking for. There are people who will always want a 99 cents bag of chips, but there are plenty of others who want a fresh bag of chips that are made within 24 hours.”

Right now, the chip-making operations are at Maxwell’s Carry Out & Catering in Farmington Hills, where Burnstein goes through about 3,000 pounds of potatoes every week filling orders.

Joel Freeman used to sell 30 bags of Frito Lay chips a week at Maxwell’s. He now sells 120 bags a week of Chippery chips, which he introduced just three weeks ago, he said.

“People come in just for the chips,” said Freeman, who is a franchisee.

It's nice to see a positive response even if it's in a different setting or venue. At this point, it's great reading that others are taking the plunge into this relatively new business.

Low-Carb Losing Steam

This whole explosion of low-carb foods has seriously worried me with respect to how the Chippery will be received. This may not be good news for Atkins lovers, but finally, some good news (for me at least)!

Low-Carb Losing Steam (washingtonpost.com - free registration required):

The nation's appetite for low-carbohydrate foods seems bottomless, judging by the many low-carb products showing up in supermarkets and the new menu items at restaurants and fast-food chains. And when Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. recently announced slowing sales, it put part of the blame on low-carb diets.

Yet the mood at a recent Washington conference on the business was bleak. Sales of low-carb products have fallen sharply at independent and health food stores, and some longtime industry insiders say a shakeout has begun.

I always reasoned that there are plenty of places that aren't offering low-carb foods that seem to be doing very well. This at least calms me down a little. I may still end up offering a low-carb bagel chip that can be seasoned to order if it ends up tasting good and is well received as a special.

via carb wire

Mall Lease is In

I just received our first view of the mall's lease document via email from the landlord's attorney. Quite a hefty document. This thing weighs in at a whopping 65 pages with a couple of other pages thrown in an additional file as attachments to the lease. The majority of the business terms are in a "Data Sheet" that's just two pages long.

I obviously haven't read through the whole thing yet, but I've already found a couple of issues that we're going to have to work on. The first is that the Commencement date was moved to November 1st from October 1st. It gives us more time, but it's not what I planned. Hopefully, I'll go through the rest of the document by tonight and confer with Jim to see what we can do.

Trans-fat-free French fries

Is this a sign of things to come. The fast food industry may soon be rolling out trans-fat-free fries from Slimplot Foods. This may be a good thing in that it will raise consumer's awareness of the benefits of staying away from foods cooked in oils containing trans fats. Chippery uses non-hydrogenated oils to cook the chips in.

USA: J.R. Simplot launches trans-fat-free French fries : just-food.com News:

Simplot said it had developed Infinity Fries specifically to address health concerns associated with trans fat, also known as hydrogenated fat. Infinity Fries are made with 100% non-hydrogenated vegetable oil. They also have lower saturated fat than traditional fries

What's Next

So now that the ink is dry on the Chippery license agreement. I have to gear up to open the first unit. The plan is to open up in The Mall at Wellington Green on or before October 1st. Before this can happen, there are a slew of things that have to get done. Here's a short list:

• Negotiate final terms of mall lease


• Store design


• Mall and Health Department Plan Revew


• Permitting


• Demolition


• Construction


• Installation of Fixtures and Equipment


• Hire staff and take care of other administrative tasks


• Training


• Pre-opening marketing and publicity


• Health Department inspection and occupancy certificate


• Grand opening!

Each of these items is a world unto themselves. I'll be expanding on each one in future posts.

Biometric Scans in Restaurant Biz

Small Business Trends writes about an interesting article about smaller restaurants using finger print recognition in their operations.

Update: After trying to go back and read this article again, I found that the Ohio.com site requires you to register your email, name, home address, social security number, first pets name, etc. in order to access their content more than once. Huge annoyance!

The Deal Is Done

As I mentioned previously, Geoff (the President) and Ernie (the CFO) from the Chippery paid me a visit this week in order for us to get to know each other better and get our previously rocky negotiations back on track.

The guys flew into Miami International and drove up to the hotel in Boca on Monday night. I picked them up at 8 AM on Tuesday because Monday was my wedding anniversary. We had breakfast and talked about strategy, company history and our backgrounds until about 10 AM. It seemed clear to me that these guys didn't have a clear understanding of what the company's focus should be. From the beginning, I saw that the company was trying to avoid operating as a full franchisor for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was cost. They now have a full UFOC which I'm half way through digesting but they haven't registered with the numerous states that require registration. In Florida, this isn't much of a problem. The fact that they have a UFOC for review and that they comply with the SEC guidelines for Franchisors allows them to fill in a simple exemption form and pay $100 in order to do business in the state.

A good example of the lack of clarity for the company's future came in when I asked where they saw the company in five years. Geoff started answering while Ernie excused himself for a second. When Ernie got back, I asked him to answer the question and the two answers were 180 degrees apart. This may be because Ernie isn't in the office full time, but I think it's a clear example of how they operate.

After breakfast, I drove us to Wellington to meet with Jim. I drove around the town a bit to show the incredible amount of development that's going on over there and then all the way around The Mall at Wellington Green. The mall is huge, so it's very impressive. It was clear that the guys were awe struck. We walked in through the food court entrance and took some time to look around. Geoff struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter at Ben & Jerry's. It turns out he was the owner. His spot is perfect for a snack; about 190 sq. ft. and he's doing roughly $300K in gross sales per year. He did say that his first two years were rough. That's understandable, the mall was brand new then.

We made our way over to the soft play area and met with Jim. There we started showing them the spot from a distance because we didn't want the existing tenant to get freaked out. The spot really is very good. This is why it pays to surround yourself with people that can get things done. Without Jim T., the management would never go for what we're doing.

After a bunch of pictures were snapped, we started walking around and parked ourselves in some chairs in one of the side corridors. We started talking over some of the business points that bothered Geoff and Jim went off to see if he could get us a conference room in the management office. When he called to say he got one, we moved the conversation up there. To make a long story short, we negotiated some points, but the terms of the agreement were pretty much what I had submitted to them prior to their trip. We wound things up in the conference room in under an hour and headed to Two Jay's for lunch.

After seeing Jim off, I drove the guys back to their hotel room where Ernie and I sat down to craft the language for the agreement. We brought Geoff in several times and had a few back and fourths until all the terms were documented. This took us up to around 5:00. I ran off to get the document printed and told them I'd be back to pick them up for dinner at around 6:30. I wanted Alex (wife) to take a quick look at the items that had changed but she agreed that they were all ok. I missed the kids during the day. This was pretty much the only time I saw Stephanie and Danny awake during the entire day.

When I got back to the Hotel, Geoff and Ernie were having drinks by the pool. We singed the agreement and had a toast. What a relief!

I drove them by The Town Center Mall in Boca before heading to Mark's Place at Mizner Park. We had a lovely dinner and talked about all sorts of things. I find that many of the business folks I entertain are enthralled by the story about how my family and I came from Cuba. It really seemed that they enjoyed hearing me tell it.

Blogger Relaunched

Congrats to the Blogger crew. They just relaunched a great new interface jam packed with new features, templates and that great new blogger smell! Stopdesign has a great write-up of the entire project

Update: It's only fitting that I choose the Mr. Moto template from the excellent selection of standard-compliant templates that new blogger provides.

Forbes.com: Motorola's Hat Trick

The few of you that read this probably know that I, along with roughly 120 other engineers, techs, factory support folks, program managers, etc, worked on Motorola's Triplets program. My facility was the primary integration site for both hardware and software for all three Triplets phones and is still working on two spin-off projects based on the same architecture. You also may know that we were all laid off just after the triplets received ship authorization. This is the kind of stuff that really ticks me off!

Forbes.com: Motorola's Hat Trick:

"The new V-series (V300, V500 and V600) clamshells were among the top-selling phones nationally during the first quarter for global system for mobile communications (GSM) carriers. The new phones are also credited with tripling Motorola's (nyse: MOT - news - people ) first- quarter net income and boosting its worldwide market share."

Open Source Business

The BusinessPundit touched on an idea that I've discussed with a few friends. His thoughts are slightly different than mine but along the same lines. Should business owners be more open about the underlying details and issues of their business?

I'm not sure how open I would be about an existing business with complete strangers, but I think it's my duty to share what I've learned with anyone in my network that is going through similar experiences. Personally, I've tried to build a network of trusted business advisors that I turn to for help in dealing with things that throw me for a loop. One of my earliest mistakes when I was evaluating new business ideas early on was to keep the idea to myself. I thought that if I told anybody anything about it, it would surely be stollen along with the millions that I was going to make off of it. I think the majority of people don't have the drive that it takes to pursue even excellent ideas on their own... even when you hand them the concept and explain it in detail. That doesn't mean that you can't get good feedback from these people. They may love to talk about business opportunities, but not necessarily pursue any of them :)

An entrepreneur knows that the only way that things happen is if you make them happen. I now find myself throwing out business ideas into conversation just to see other people's reaction.

Accountant Selected

After a few interviews, I've decided to go with Louis Cohen from Caler, Donten & Levine here in West Palm Beach. Lou is a two-time University of Florida grad (like my wife and I) and comes highly recommended from our attorney. They've already set me up with their base quickbooks file that's tailored for the restaurant industry.

Extension

I called up my two-clicker in Libertyville to find out if I was going to be extended through him or if I had to move to a new group to stay until September. Turns out he's willing to extend me until then and I'll be reporting to someboday up in Chicago. Sounds like I'll have plenty of flexibility to get things done for The Chippery.

150 Years of Potato Chips

I can't believe that I let this little fact through without mentioning it. It's been 150 years since the first potato chips were fried by George Crum, a chef at Moon's Lake House resort in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1853.

This article also says that Frederick J. Meyer, the guy that owned the first large-scale potato chip production line, killed himself after selling it to H. W. Lay & Company. This article details the history of Red Dot Potato Chips.

Franchising Takes Root

Florida Today ran an interesting article on franchising. It describes the level of detail needed from a franchisor's side and, for me, points out how far away from this the guys at The Chippery are. I think that in the end, I'll probably be the one that goes through the trouble of doing all of these types of details - POS system, accounting system, inventory control, job descriptions, policy and procedures, etc.

Taubman Provides Wi-Fi in Texas

Slightly disappointed...

TimesDispatch.com | 'Online shopper' has new meaning:

"Internet lovers take note: You can now surf the Web wire-free in the outdoor commons areas at Stony Point Fashion Park."

I have been planning on providing either free or free-ish wi-fi from The Chippery in Wellington Green but this looks like it won't happen. My idea was to "light up" the surrounding area with a hot spot that would be free for a limited time for those that purchase anything from my place or give the user the option of registering for a regular account. I've been planning to use Airpath's Wi-Boss platform for this. I'll bring it up with the Wellington Green management and see if it can still fly. In either case, this wouldn't have been available until a few months after opening. I would want to gather some feasibility info before plunking down a grand or two on the service and hardware.

Meeting Set

We finally have a meeting date with the guys from The Chippery. They're set to fly down to Miami on Monday, 5/10, and leave Wednesday, 5/12. I'll meet with them first thing in the morning on Tuesday and take them around to some of the target malls. If we don't come to an agreement by the end of their trip, I'm going to have to walk away and pursue other options.

WARN Letter

I got an email from our HR lady today that my WARN letter was ready to be picked up. Apparently MOT has to give me 60 days written notice prior to the day that they "Exit" me. I thought it would be funny to go over there and pretend I didn't know what was going on. I show up at her cube and ask what the letter is all about and she says it's my 60 day notice.

I ask "Notice for what?"

She starts to show concern... "ahm... Notice for your June 25th Exit date."

I hesitate. "I'm being fired?!"

Deer in headlights! Ahh the simple pleasures :)

Slate's "Gourmet" Chip Taste-off

Slate published an article that pinned a few gourmet chips against each other in a taste-off. Not very thorough but it was interesting to read. NPR also ran a piece on the article.

On Negotiations...

I was pretty excited when I got out of my first negotiation call with the guys from The Chippery. It seemed things had gone well; I got them to agree to giving me pretty much all of Florida in exchange for a healthy development schedule and zero cash. We agreed that I would rework their original supplier agreement and that we would get back together to finish up the deal. This was on March 11th!

After submitting the revised agreement to the Chippery guys, it seemed that we weren't all on the same page during our first call. All sorts of issues came up and hesitations delayed us quite a bit. We went through four rounds of revisions. Each time, I would ask during the end of the call if we had an agreement or not. The answer was always yes, but when they received the updated drafts, things would change again. At the same time, we found that the corporations that they had formed in the states were not in good standing. The Nevada company was in default for failure to file an officer's report (relatively simple process) and the Delaware company was void altogether for failure to file capital tax forms for the last two years. These forms were also relatively simple and inexpensive to do. I ended up getting very frustrated and informed them that if they didn't get things settled by yesterday (I gave them a week), I was going to have to walk away.

Luckily, when I called today, Geoff recognized that the week off helped him realize the amount of risk that I was willing to bear to get their brand up and running in Florida. He agreed to fly down to meet me in person during the next week and iron out the remaining details.

My big lesson has been not to assume things are settled until the ink is dry. Needless to say, the ink isn't even on the paper yet, so I'm still in limbo in terms of the license.

I'm Linked In

I got an invitation to join Dan's network on LinkedIn. This looks pretty interesting - there's potential if the people you invite take it somewhat seriously.

Negotiations Begin, First Target Space

We started the process of nailing down some of the terms of our arrangement with The Chippery. Since they're not fully ready to enter into business as a franchisor, they proposed we enter into a supplier agreement with an option to convert to a Master Licensee when they do file all of their registration documents. I don't see a problem with this and Jim thinks it may even be better for us to go this route.

Jim has met with a few leasing reps for malls in the area. Namely Aventura, Palm Beach Gardens and Wellington Green. The primary target will be Wellington Green. His ideal is to build out a kiosk-like space right in the way of the main entrance by the food court.

Attorneys and Consultant

Having decided to move forward with The Chippery, I got serious and retained an attorney that specializes in franchises. I would be working with Andy Friedman and Ron Rosenwasser from Friedman, Rosenwasser and Goldbaum, P.A. Ron recommended that I speak with Jim Trindade regarding mall spaces and he arranged the introduction.

Jim is a retail real-estate specialist. His credentials are very impressive and his contacts would make securing prime space much easier. I hired Jim and we set a timeline for his deliverables.

Things are starting to take shape. I have two investors interested in giving me cash for a percentage of the first unit and I'm starting to round out a solid advisory team.

Chips v. Wine

I worked out the numbers for both the Chip business and the Wine business. I even ended up interviewing a few people that managed wine stores in other cities to get an understanding of the inner workings of that business. My conclusion is that Chips win. I really like the thought of owning a wine store, but wine has very tight margins. Typically, gross margin on wine is in the neighborhood of 33%. BC claims that their median margin is 44%. I figured that with the assumptions I was making, I could pull in profits of $50-100K per year while working the store as full time manager. This doesn't meet my goals. My assumptions were partially reinforced by conversations with another wine franchise (Wine Styles) based in Ft. Lauderdale.

In conversations with Rebecca P. and reviewing the UFOC, I learned that the other BC stores did somewhere in the neighborhood of $1M in gross sales per year. This was significantly higher than my assumptions, but it didn't seem reasonable seeing as how they would have to sell over 200 bottles a day in order to reach those numbers. Even if you could get those figures, that would only be after seriously working the community. I would have to spend a lot of time at functions and wooing event planners to buy from me. If I did this was true, then the wine store concept couldn't be repeated as easily to achieve growth. I'm assuming that year over year growth would come from additional units (stores) and not additional sales in the existing stores.

I ended up telling Rebecca that we were going to pass on the wine store idea.

CoveredCallPro.com Launch

Our ads started showing up on Big Charts on Wednesday the 11th. The campaign is composed of a ribbon on the front page of Big Charts along with synchronized banner and sky scraper ads on the news or quote pages. Somehow, someone really screwed the pooch at Big Charts because the first ads that showed up weren't linked to our site at all and they were not the final version of the creatives we wanted.

Things got better by Friday but unfortunately it was difficult to catch the ads. The number of Impressions in our contract was far lower than the number of impressions the big boys (Ing, CyberTrader, etc) pay for. We started to see some registrations on the site, but it looked very, VERY weak.

Grape Finds by Best Cellars

The wine business is beautiful. My wife and I had talked about opening a small wine boutique in a hip outdoor shopping mall in West Palm Beach and we also heard about this company called Best Cellars. They came up with a very attractive and unique way of selling wine. I called their store in New York and bounced myself around until I found the VP of Franchising, Rebecca Parish. She sent me some information along with a questionaire that I diligently filled out.

Announcement

Today we were all gathered up into the ball room at a local hotel and were told that our facility will be shut down by the end of the year. People would be "exited" in stages. 90 leaving at the end of March, and then roughly 40 at the end of every quarter. Approximately 60 others from the semiconductor business would end up moving to another facility and several others got offers for relocation. My date ended up being the end of June. All in all a sad day, but glad to know for certain what was going to happen.

The Chippery

About a year and a half ago, I saw a two minute spot on a company called The Chippery on Food Network that I thought was fantastic. These guys came up with a machine that you could throw a potato in one end and get potato chips at the other. Brilliant! I wanted one! I thought it was a great concept for malls.

Since I first saw this blurb, I told everybody I knew that was interested in franchises and those types of things. Nobody really ended up pursuing it so I decided it was worth a call. I called them up and started speaking with Chris Smith - co-founder. Chris agreed to send me some information and we would hook up for another call within a week or so.

Full Timer

I should mention that I work for Motorola's Personal Communications Sector. I've been there since December 6, 1999. Lately, we've been hearing stronger rumors that the facility I'm in will be closing soon. I've lived under that threat since late 2000. The only Motorola that I know is the one that has been laying off people every quarter since the bubble burst. The rumors were stronger and were being confirmed all over.

My wife has always been very supportive of all my side projects. She's always had a very tight grip on the purse strings, but she understood that it takes a certain amount of investment to make anything work. We've been talking and planning our contingency plan for a long time. She had not worked full time since she was about seven months pregnant with Stephanie, our daughter. Now she was three months away from the birth of our second child, Danny. We planned on having me stay at home to take care of the kids (if I was laid off at least three months after Danny's birth) and have her go back to work full time.

Yesterday, I left her watching The Thomas Crown Affair (her favorite movie of all time) to get coffee for us. When I got back, she said we had to take more risks! We were still young and we've built up everything we have in a very short amount of time. If we took a risk and failed then we would be able to rebuild quickly. If we didn't do it now, we wouldn't do it at all! WOW! She said that she wanted me to figure out something to try and we would be in it all the way. How fricking envigorating! That was one of the best motivational moments of our lives.

Marketing, Meanwhile...

As expected, Dr. X and Mr. Y were unfortunately not grasping the importance of marketing for our (or any) site. Mr. Y was put in charge of coming up with a marketing plan and he decided to read up on improving google placement. I insisted that something else be done because it would surely take some time to get traction in google. The response was to run a campaign on what they considered a critical site for anyone doing any sort of technical analysis on stocks or options research. We would end up running a four month campaign on Big Charts that would cost us just over $10K. By this time, my investment in the company was limited to $2K plus some small monthly payments to our hosting company. We really had no concrete understanding of who the target audience was, why they would register (let alone subscribe after the two week period) or what the competition was doing.

Besides coming up with the plan, I had some difficulty getting the guys to author the content for the site. Our strategy was to educate those that didn't know much about covered call investing so we needed articles that explained how it all worked. Eventually, Dr. X and Mr. Y drafted a dozen or so articles that we posted on the site.