“I definitely don’t need any visual aids of anything you just told me about. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I guess we should talk about work,” he said.
“Probably a good idea,” I agreed.
“Did you hear back from Holly about any of the distributors?”
“I did. She was actually able to track down everything we wanted. There are a couple of options for some of the ingredients, so we should go over those to decide which one is best. You’re going to have to make a final decision, obviously—they vary on things like price, volume, and how frequently they can deliver,” I said.
Derek nodded. “But at least we found them. That’s the first step. Tell her how much I appreciate it. Much like I would have appreciated you coming by my place with some soup or something while I was dying of the stomach flu.”
“Are we back to that?” I asked with a laugh.
“Yes. There I was, debilitated and starving, and you didn’t even slide me some chicken soup or anything,” he said.
“You were also throwing up, so there’s that. But just to be clear, you didn’t have the flu. There is no such thing as a stomach flu. You might have had a virus, but not the flu.” Derek stared back at me, and I eventually shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Useless trivia. Anyway, my point is, you shouldn’t have been eating, first of all, and second, I wasn’t about to go traipsing into your den of infection. If you’ve forgotten, there’s a restaurant that’s supposed to be opening soon, and it’s going to need food to serve people. It would be pretty hard to pull that off if we were both laid up with that whole situation.”
“Fine,” Derek said, “How did things go while I was gone?”
I laughed and shook my head. “They went fine. I tried out all the dishes we talked about. Some of them worked better than others. A couple of them really didn’t work. They were relegated to the depths of the abyss. But I made notes on the rest of them. I have them in my bag. Want me to get them for you?”
“Yeah. I’d like to see what you thought. We need to get the menu finalized and start really polishing up the recipes if we’re going to be ready for opening night. Which I actually wanted to talk to you about. What do you think about doing a full tasting menu for the opening?”
“Like, a progression of everything?” I asked. “That sounds good. They can try out everything and have little bits of the different wines. That’s even something we could do for a soft opening or VIP event if that’s something you guys were thinking about doing.”
“You think that would be a good idea?” Derek asked.
I nodded. “Absolutely. You guys want to make this place a destination. That means you need to build up hype, and the best way to do that is to get influential people here before anybody else can be. They get to come, see the vineyard, try the wine, taste the food, see all the facilities. Just like a soft opening for a standalone restaurant.”
“And from there they tell everybody about it,” Derek said, catching on to the concept. “They build up the buzz.”
“Right. Especially if we can target social media influencers, bloggers, those types. Get them talking. If they make the people who follow them feel like this place is the hot new thing, then it will actually be the hot new thing,” I said.
Derek laughed a bit too hard, and I looked at him with a lifted eyebrow. He shook his head.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about what my grandparents would think about their vineyard being thought of as the next hot thing,” he said. “They weren’t exactly up on all the trends or technology, or anything, really. I wish you’d gotten a chance to meet them.”
“Me, too,” I said. “From what you’ve told me, they sound like pretty amazing people.”
Derek had told me about his grandparents stepping up to raise the five boys and how incredible they were all through his childhood. I could see how deeply it hurt him that they were gone, and how much he wanted to make this place spectacular again for them.
“They would like you a lot,” Derek said. “My grandmother would be really impressed by you in the kitchen. Speaking of which, how did Noah do helping you?”
“He didn’t,” I said, then instantly regretted it. That was going to tip Derek off, or it was going to make him question Noah about it but it seemed I’d painted myself into a corner. “We just can’t seem to see eye to eye. That’s why I kept him out of the kitchen.”
Derek nodded. “I see.”