Three days later, we walked along the Cliff Trail just above campus, and I shared my idea. I’d had several days to think about it while waiting for her to come back from Spring Break, and I’d used the time to research and hammer out the details. Still, my hands were sweating as I popped the question.
Meg came to a dead stop. “You want me to be a partner in The Pizza Lab?”
I stepped back. “I know. Dumb idea. You’ve got a business of your own you’re building. Forget I said anything.”
“Are you kidding?” She turned toward me. “Do you have any idea how jealous I was when you took over the pizzeria?”
I blinked. “You were jealous? Of me?”
“If you haven’t noticed, I have a bit of passion around food.”
“You know,” I said, laughing, “I did notice a tiny bit of interest there.”
We continued along the trail. “I told you that when I first learned everyone who worked at Camilla’s was family, I was heartbroken. I was only nine, and I figured that all great places operated like Camilla’s, with long traditions and tight family units. And here I was, this Korean immigrant with no extended family in the country. I figured I’d always have doors shut in my face.”
“It must have been torture for you when I got the pizzeria, and you missed out on yet another top-notch restaurant,” I said with a grin.
Meg didn’t bite on the sarcasm. “It was torture. I kept thinking, here’s this guy who would be perfectly happy eating frozen pizza from the grocery store, and an entire pizzeria falls into his lap? Since then, I’ve watched you flailing around, somehow finding ways to bring people in the door for every reason but the one a pizzeria should be known for.”
“Which is what?”
“Killer pizza, Ty!” She flung her arms up. “The kind you could bite into, and for a moment, all your problems disappear because you can’t think about anything other than the incredible tastes and textures filling your mouth.”
“That’s not quite the experience at The Pizza Lab, is it?”
“Part of me kept hoping you’d fail.” Her head fell. “Honestly, I thought you didn’t deserve it. I even hoped that if you were about to go under, maybe I could step in.” Meg met my eyes. “But you didn’t fail. You changed the paint, the name, the logo. You ran crowdfunding campaigns, sold slices for a dollar, and made crappy chocolate dessert pizzas. It’s like you tried everything but making an amazing product.”
“And you were bummed I was succeeding?”
“Hell, yeah.”
I laughed. “Because you knew you could do better?”
“That’s the strange thing. I’m not sure I would have. Oh, the pizza would have been better. Miles better.” Her hands stretched out into the distance. “Light years better. But would I have gotten the students to embrace me?” Meg shook her head. “I’m not so sure. They like you. They’re rooting for you. Even your avatar was right on.”
“You gave me such hell about choosing Joanna.”
She nodded sheepishly. “I did. And it wasn’t just the fact that she wasn’t fictional that bothered me.”
“Then what?”
“Rather than choosing someone with exquisite taste, you chose a sorority girl, someone who, like you, would have happily eaten frozen pizza straight out of the microwave. But the truth is, there’s a reason every grocery store devotes a huge chunk of its super-expensive freezer space to pizzas. Because they sell. And there’s a reason the stadium sells out for football games, and the sororities and fraternities are packed every weekend. Much as I can’t stand any of it, there’s no denying its popularity. You know how many cakes I’ve sold since the beginning of the year?”
My eyebrows shot up in question. “How many?”
“Thirteen.”
Meg was the super student. How could that be? “That’s it?”
“Yep. I spent hours and hours on each one.”
“Your customers weren’t happy with them?”
“They were thrilled. Three of the cakes went to the same person, a man, ironically, even though my avatar was a woman. But my cakes are also wildly expensive. They’re not something the average person would even consider. And I haven’t done a great job of getting the word out within the tiny population that’s willing to splurge on something exceptional. Meanwhile, you’ve grown into a college icon.”
I brushed her off. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious. Everyone knows of the kid who bought the pizzeria for a buck. I’ve heard you talked about dozens of times since the year began.” She leaned in and asked, “You know what I’ve never heard?”
“What’s that?”
“A complaint about the pizza.” Meg’s hands balled into fists. “It’s like college kids expect pizza to be average, and that’s what you deliver. Most of them have no clue how much better it can be. And if they did have a truly fabulous pizzeria in town, I’m not sure they’d even prefer it.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as you’ve proven, college kids want their pizza fast and convenient. If I were to open a competing pizzeria next door, I might have to charge double what you do to cover the ingredients I’d want to use. And if I made my pizzas anything like my cakes, it would take me too long to produce each pie. Half my customers would probably zip over to your place to get a quick slice to tide them over until my masterpiece comes out of the oven.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself. No one in class comes even close to your grasp of the business principles Professor Hunt’s been teaching.”
She rolled her eyes. “If we’re talking about an intellectual grasp, you’re right. But when it comes to implementation, no one can hold a candle to what you’ve done.”
“That’s not a fair comparison.” I threw my hands out. “I was handed a pizzeria for a dollar. The rest of you had to start from scratch.”
“That’s not the only reason. You tried more things.”
“Mostly out of desperation,” I said, shrugging. “I was never far from having to close my doors.”
“Whatever the reason, the point is, you did it. You made the hard choices. You put together these half-brained plans and put them into action.”
My old frustration with Meg came out with fangs. “Half-brained?”
“That was meant to be a compliment, believe it or not. I’m too much of a perfectionist. I never would have launched with anything I didn’t consider amazing. But I’ve heard it said that perfectionism is the lowest standard because you never get anything out the door. The person who can run with a half-brained plan, analyze the results, and make adjustments will beat the perfectionist every time.”
“I’m not sure the new plan is fully baked either. It might just go from half-brained to three-quarters-brained.”
“Hey, a quarter of a brain is nothing to sneeze at. That’s enough to go into politics.”
I laughed. “You’re too hard on yourself, Meg. You’ve now taken me to two pizzerias and a bakery you love. All three make an awesome product and, most importantly, get a ton of it out the door. Yes, you want to do things well, but something tells me you wouldn’t make hungry customers wait two hours until you could construct your masterpiece of a pizza. Something tells me you’d develop, hone, and scale a process for making fabulous pizzas that can be ordered and enjoyed in the same lifetime.”
Now Meg laughed. “It’s nice to talk to you this way, Ty. You no longer feel like the competition.”
“Competition? We’ve been on the same team this entire time.”
“Yeah, right. I creamed you on every test last year, and Professor Hunt still offered you the research assistant job first.”
“Only because she knew how desperate I was.”
“That’s not why she chose you.” Meg shook her head. “The real reason is you’re easier to get along with. I mean, listen to the two of us. You view everyone in class as a teammate; I consider them competition. It’s no wonder you were chosen ahead of me.”
“Enough about the past. Let’s talk about the future.” I stopped walking. “Would you really want to still be running the same pizzeria in ten years?”
Meg met my eyes again. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“For me it is. Don’t get me wrong. I love this place. I feel like I’ve put everything I’ve got into it. But at the same time, I can’t wait to get away from it.”
“So what do you see yourself doing in a decade?”
“Honestly, I enjoyed taking over a failing business and turning it around.” I looked out over the cliffs. “I think I could do a better job next time.”
“So you’d be like that Porte guy who offered to buy out half the pizzeria? You’d go from one business to the next?”
“Maybe.” I grinned. “It sounds fun. Each time, I could learn about a new business. Get to know a new place.”
Meg’s expression soured. “Your vision of heaven sounds like hell to me.”
“Really?”
“You have to understand, I came to this country when I was five. My parents, my grandmother, and I all lived in a studio apartment. None of us even spoke the language. In the thirteen years until I came to college, we moved eight times. The idea of moving from thing to thing and place to place has no allure for me.” Her arms crossed. “It’s just the opposite. I majored in business with the hope of someday owning one of my own and putting down solid roots. My dream is having a business I can pour my heart and soul into.”
“And your passion is food.”
Meg nodded. “And my passion has always been food.”
“I wish I had a passion like that.”
“You have no lack of passion, Ty. But your passion is for novelty. You like trying new things, going new places. You don’t want to be tied down. I’m the opposite.”
“You’d want to do the same thing, day after day?”
“No. One thing you and I share is a love of experimentation. Much as I love Camilla’s, working there would drive me a little nuts because they haven’t made a single change in a hundred years. If I had a pizzeria, I’d want to learn to make the best pizzas from around the world. My dream vacation would be to fly to Italy to learn from a master pizza chef. But a week later, I’d want to come home, to my pizzeria. I’d want to bring everything I learned back to my customers.”
“So where does this leave us?” I asked.
“You tell me. You’re the one with the pizzeria. Up until now, I’ve assumed it would take me years of working and saving to open a place of my own. If you have some other plan in mind, let me know.”
“OK, you’ve gone into your dream. Here’s mine. I want to leave this town at the end of the semester. I’m ready to get away, and I’d love to do junior year abroad. But I need to know that I’m leaving The Pizza Lab in capable hands. I’ve thought of selling it, but I don’t want to for two reasons. The first is that I doubt I’ll get enough money to make it worth my while. But the second is that I really do love this place. I just don’t want to build my life around running it.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not interested in being someone else’s manager.”
“I’m not asking you to. Well, yes, I am asking you to, but not forever.”
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “How long?”
“You’d be manager for one year. You’d get a salary and half the profits.”
She cocked her head. “And after the year?”
“What I really want from The Pizza Lab is a steady, passive income stream. I want the flexibility to travel when I want, and I want enough money to cover my cost of living while throwing my energy into my next business projects.”
She gave a low, skeptical chuckle. “So you want this place to produce headache-free money?”
I didn’t deny it—I couldn’t. Porte’s words came back to me. Amateurs focus on the dollar amount. Pros are all about the terms. He’d nearly bought 50% of the pizzeria by listening well, figuring out exactly what I wanted, and making me an offer that matched. As he said, it was all in how you slice it. And Meg just told me what she wanted. “If you can run The Pizza Lab for one year while keeping our profits at current levels, I’ll give you 10% equity.”
She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, the gears turning behind her eyes. “You realize hitting the same profit level next year is going to be harder because I’ll have to get a salary?”
“You realize our profits have been growing every single month? And that’s while serving a product that you yourself consider crap.”
“So that’s your deal? A 90/10 split in your favor?”
I raised both hands in a calming gesture. “The same deal will be in place for each of the first five years. As long as you keep working as manager and keep us at current levels of profitability or higher, you’ll be a full partner in five years.”
Meg bit her lip. “But if the profits go down, I’d get nothing?”
I met her gaze without flinching. “No equity. If we can’t increase the profitability, then this partnership is a non-starter. But I don’t think it will be.”
“Why?” She brushed the hair from her face. “I’ve sold thirteen cakes, Ty. And it’s not like you’ve got a stellar track record as an absentee owner.”
I exhaled hard. “I wanted it too bad with Michael. Had I not been in such a hurry to get out the door, I would have been more objective. But I kept rationalizing things that should have been warning signs.”
Her brow lifted slightly. “Like what?”
“Like the fact that he’d worked in so many restaurants. I told myself that made him experienced. Really, it meant he never managed to keep a job.”
She folded her arms again, this time a little more protectively. “You’re still anxious to get out the door. How do I know you’re not rationalizing things about me?”
“Like what?”
She glanced off into the trees before responding. “Like you seem to believe I’ll be able to manage a staff, despite the fact that I have few friends and I’m told all the time I’m too abrasive.”
I shifted my weight. “At this point, all I’m asking is that you try it. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll collect your paycheck and walk away, and I’ll write it off as yet another failed experiment of The Pizza Lab. But I have a good feeling about this.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“First off, I’m not just going to hand you the keys and walk away. Not after Michael. For the rest of the semester, the two of us will work closely together to create the strategy.”
“But I’ll get free rein on the quality of the pizza, right?”
I held up a palm. “Not entirely. It still has to be cheap enough to be profitable and come out fast enough to satisfy our customers, so we’re not aiming for pizza perfection. But as long as it works for our customers and our bottom line, you can design recipes to your heart’s content. Can you live with that?”
“I am a business major, Ty. I get the practicalities.” Meg turned away in a huff. But a moment later, she glanced back. “Maybe the two of us working together isn’t such a crazy idea. I don’t think you’ll add much culinary genius, but you can rein me in when my approach diverges too much from what our customers want or the business can afford. But I’m still concerned about managing people. My abrasiveness doesn’t worry you?”
I hesitated before answering. “Honestly, it does. Of all the concerns you’ve raised, it’s the one that worries me the most.”
She blinked in surprise. “Then why are we even having this conversation?”
“You’re tough on people, Meg, but you’re not unfair. And you never expect more from others than you demand from yourself. For my part, I’ve been too easily satisfied with some of my hires and kept them on even when their performance hasn’t been great. My gut tells me you’ll be more selective and faster to fire those who don’t work out.”
She gave a dry laugh. “Leaving me with nobody.”
I smiled at that, just a little. “Leaving you with an exceptional workforce who appreciate high standards and enjoy working for a boss who is demanding but fair. Will they be harder to find? No doubt. But when you do find them, I imagine they’ll be loyal, talented, and hard-working.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
I shrugged. “Then I’ll fire you and go back to square one.”
Meg actually cracked a smile at that. “OK, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say I can keep The Pizza Lab at its current level of profits or higher. Then what? Eventually, we’ll be full partners, but I’ll do all the work.”
“You’ll receive a salary for your work, and we’ll split profits equally.”
She gestured off into the horizon. “And you’ll wipe your hands of this place?”
I shook my head firmly. “No. I learned that lesson the hard way. I can’t just drop the pizzeria and expect it to continue to perform.”
She tilted her head. “But you have no interest in being here looking over my shoulder either, right? So what will your role be?”
I gave her a grin. “Think of me as the Chairman of the Board.”
“Meaning what? That we’ll discuss all the big picture strategy together?”
I nodded. “Not just. If I’ve learned anything this week, it’s that I don’t want to be in the dark on what’s going on in the pizzeria, even for a day if I can help it.”
“And yet you want the freedom to travel the world. How will you bridge that gap?”
“Practically?” I pulled my phone from my pocket and held it up. “I’ll want daily reports so I can keep a finger on the pulse. Don’t make that face. I don’t want anything extensive. Ideally, I should be able to review it in a minute or less.”
“What will these reports contain?”
I leaned against the wooden railing. “I’ll want to know how many pizzas we sold on any given day, plus all the upsells like drinks and desserts. If one day the numbers are way off, I’ll want an explanation, something short like ‘blizzard’ or ‘blackout,’ so I’ll know if it’s something I have to worry about long-term.”
She looked unconvinced. “So that’s it? You’ll check in for a minute a day?”
I shook my head. “Those daily reports will just be an early warning system. Then we’ll meet each week via video conference for a more intensive update and to hone our strategy. And I’ll try to visit in person at least once a year to interact with staff and see the place with my own eyes. This way, I’ll never feel out of the loop, and if I learn new ideas from my other business ventures, we can implement them here.”
Meg rubbed her chin, still thinking. “We’ll need to talk actual numbers before I sign on. I’ll want to know what kind of salary I’m getting, plus what I can expect my cut of the profits to be. I’ve got some reservations, but there’s also a lot to like. The slow transition means I get a chance to earn ownership without the fear of having full control and maybe tanking your business. And it means I get to run my own restaurant years before I could otherwise get there. But you need to know, I have no intention of dropping out of school to run this place. I have another year of undergrad to go, and I’ve been thinking of continuing for a master’s.”
I nodded slowly, letting the weight of her words sink in. “You’ll be the business manager, not its slave. As long as you’re the one making sure it’s running well, as long as you’re prepared to make this a top priority and handle each crisis as it arises, I have no problem with you investing time elsewhere. What do you think?”
Meg looked down the trail, then back at me with a glint in her eye. “It is The Pizza Lab. Let’s experiment.”
