Hey Jodi,
Guess you probably heard Natural High is being reincarnated from the ashes at Daniels old location. Just got back from Thailand to find that someone broke into my house.
Why I am in my parents’ basement
December 11, 2008, 11:49 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Filed under: Uncategorized
Yesterday was one of those days that bitch slaps you out of nowhere. Of course I know that the reason I’m living in my parents’ basement is because of my failed restaurant. But suddenly I saw the link so clearly — the almost $10,000 of organic food and products that we ordered from Tree of Life — a natural foods distributor — that I put on my own credit card was the root cause of my current predicament. This is relevant because I recently signed a paper releasing any claim on the restaurant. I settled for a mere $1,200 check, which my ex’s mother overnighted to me. I actually felt grateful to get anything at all. And I was happy to be done with it. There was nothing left to tie me to Tom. Nothing left in storage in his mom’s basement or attic in Ohio (I got all that moved out in May). Nothing left in Puerto Rico at Tom’s house. And anything I still had claim to in the restaurant — mainly my dehydrator, my Kitchenaid, a library table from New York, and some random things — were now his, since I accepted the check from his mother. I felt free.
Then yesterday I got an email via Facebook from a friend in Puerto Rico:
no, i hadn’t heard that. OMG. crazy. what do you know? tom doesn’t tell me anything.
What’s OMG? Tom’s fixing up his new place and daniel’s fixing up his new one. Neither is open yet. Daniel’s new place is as big as all of freshmart. Talk about trading places!
tom totally misrepresented things to me… his mom got me to sign something and i received a tiny fraction of what he owes me, and signed over any claim i have to that place. that’s what’s OMG. are you saying that he’s going to run the cafe in freshmart now? i feel totally lied to by him.
Yea, he’s opening Natural High in freshmart. Sorry to hear that you were taken advantage of.
—
As a bit of background, Natural High Cafe was my restaurant in Rincon, Puerto Rico. Freshmart is a natural food/supplement chain with five stores on the island. Until recently, a couple we knew, Carey and Daniel, ran a lunchtime-only vegetarian cafe at the Freshmart store in Aguadilla. To say that their business, the Long Life Deli, was successful was an understatement. They bought a house in Rincon. Then they bought a second house in Rincon on Vista Nuclear (the street with views of the inactive nuclear dome, the large green landmark that gave the surfing hotspot Domes beach its name). They also bought a building in Rincon — the former Berrios furniture store, a massive space on Carretera 115. We heard that Carey and Daniel were going to open a cafe/natural food store in the old furniture store. We were beyond bummed. Rincon could barely support one vegetarian cafe, let alone two. And we thought they were friends. We never heard anything from them about the cafe or their progress. All our reports came secondhand from various common friends.
So the fact that Tom is re-opening Natural High where Carey and Daniel found so much success really got to me. I suspected that the reason Tom’s mom suddenly contacted me with this offer was because he knew he was going to re-open the restaurant and he wanted to cut me out of the operation, ensuring that I’d have no claim on any of his future profits.
I guess it’s time to start writing about Natural High Cafe. Natural High (fondly referred to as “natty high”) originally was Tom’s brainchild, but he convinced me to join him. For a $4,000 investment, I would have 25% of the restaurant. My sweat over the next year would get me to 49% (he said he needed to maintain controlling interest so that he could fire me anytime without cause — like, if i started dating someone and he didn’t want to be around me… and I, stupidly, went along. I’m laughing as I write this — I realize how ridiculous that was.)
He didn’t force me into the business with him. I went willingly. It seemed like a relatively small risk for a potentially great reward. Maybe I actually could find a way to support myself in Rincon after all. Maybe I could eventually buy a little place with a view of Steps beach, Desecheo island, and the magnificent sunsets Rincon is famous for. “El pueblo de los bellos atardeceres,” the town of the beautiful sunsets.
The idea of working closely with Tom did give me pause. We broke up for the last time just after we took a trip to St. Martin with some of my best friends. While in St. Martin, my friend got pregnant. And I realized that I was secretly hopeful that I could be pregnant too. I was stupidly hopeful. I kept hoping that some miracle would occur, and that I would somehow finally be pregnant. I had been in menopause for over 8 years, due to some premature failure of my ovaries (there’s that theme again). It’s actually called premature ovarian failure. You can read all about it on that diary I did for Slate five years ago. Maybe I’ll write about it again. Someday.
The restaurant was the brainchild of Tom, originally, but I did have a lot of influence. We decided we would focus on organic food. Tom, being a commited vegetarian, vowed that no meat would ever be served on our menu. Puerto Rico being the land of fried meat (see Anthony Bourdain’s pork parade across the island in the “No Reservations” episode on Puerto Rico), you could say that we were set up for failure from the very beginning.
The owner of the space had tried to run a vegetarian cafe there for the previous three years. He had a small clientele, a few health conscious people who put up with his erratic hours and glacial service. People complained about waiting a half hour for a smoothie–and that was when you could find the place open. It seemed to be 4:20 p.m. there constantly.
So Tom was looking for a place to make his “living foods” — dehydrated raw cookies made out of soaked raisins and sunflower seeds and some spices. He had been making them in his home (i wish i could show a picture) and selling them to the starving students at the Ann Wigmore Institute, the raw food retreat center in Aguada, Puerto Rico where we both used to work. He took over the space from Nic. We had about a week before we opened to come up with a business plan (which we never did), a menu (which shifted constantly), and everything else we needed — plates, tables, etc.
It really was a success, at least on a certain level. People loved our food. But we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. And eventually, we had to shut down.
If I had known that Tom was going to move Natural High to Freshmart, I would not have signed the paper Tom’s mom wrote up for me. I had it notarized at my bank, per her request. But I suspect that any court would not view it as valid, since they omited key facts about the business’s future.
My parents say to forget about it and move on. I want to forget about it. I want to want to wish him well. I want to want him to be successful. But I’d also like that $10,000 of food paid off of my credit cards. I’d also like him to reimburse me for the other expenses that I paid out of pocket (daily trips to Econo for produce or eggs or other things we ran out of that we needed for the day — things that he promised to reimburse me for, but never did). If he really is starting a new venture, totally unrelated to Natural High, and I don’t deserve anything from what I created, as he says, then why is he calling it Natural High? Why is he using the equipment I helped pay for? And the furniture that I helped pay for? And the recipes I helped create? It’s not the same business? Really?
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