Bought the espresso machine today!

I am pleased to be the only owner of the esteemed Racilio Classe 6 espresso machine in the entire West LA area! Entirely made in Italy and virtually bulletproof, this thing is the best.

June 14th update

So in the coming couple of weeks there should be more to report, but the current status of the cafe is; I am 90% of the way through the permit process (which has been the hold up) and on Monday I should have the final details from the contractor so we can start the heavy construction. Once this begins it should come together fast.

In the meantime, the sign is being finalized, the menu has been made, various vendors are on board and I have an important meeting at Supreme Bean in North Hollywood on Wednesday to order the almighty espresso machine and water filtration system.

More to come!

Health Dept. Update

So the finalized/revised plans are as of today in the L.A. County Health Dept and supposedly they will fly through without a hitch! *fingers crossed*

"Coming Soon" sign is up!

Today we installed the "coming soon" sign, which looks great. I'll have to get a better picture of it, but this is it from a distance. It was a bit of an adventure hanging it from the roof, but it looks perfect! Now lets hope the cafe really is coming soon.

Here's a pic taken from the roof:

April Update!

First off, sorry about the long delay between posts!

Not a lot of interesting things going on, besides waiting for permits/preparing for the health dept. inspection/designing the menu.

The "coming soon" sign is going up this weekend, and the logo is finalized.. therefore will be going out to the sign company as soon as possible! The good news is, I've gotten a ton of extremely positive feedback from the local community, leading me to believe we have a hit on our hands!

More pics and updates to come this weekend. Thanks for checking in and pestering me to post!

-Ryan

Another messy day.

Today my good friend Scott and I attacked the now infamous brick wall with angle grinders,

...with this kind of attachment, I think it's called a cup-brush:



Basically the brick still has a lot of cement on it, which chips off easily. Applying the grinder to the wall produces violent cement-shrapnel shooting in your face, as well as sparks because the brick is stone. It's a horrible process and hurts the skin, but getting off the loose cement was important enough. We don't need any free non-dairy creamer for the customers coffees! Here's a couple of pics from the mess:

Me:

Scotty:

Me:

Scotty:

We're almost done. Tomorrow I'll put in a couple of hours and see if I can finish it off.

-Ryan

UPDATE: Ok, so forget sandblasting!

After much thought, and realizing that I was just being cheap, I went ahead and got the interior sandblasted yesterday. The place looks amazing now, and it was definitely worth the $1400, mess, and hassle.


The city of Santa Monica is super strict about every aspect of starting a business, and sandblasting is no exception. They will only let you do it between the hours of 10am and 3pm, so it's very hard to pull it off. I had the crew from Supreme Sandblasting come out at 8am, so they could prep the ceiling and walls and right at 10am they started. Instantly it looked like a total warzone as you can see...

(Keep in mind this is in the middle of the day. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face after a few hours, with all the airborne sand particles.)

I'll take some "after" photos tomorrow morning. The place is really transformed and is beginning to look stylish! Nice!

Update 3.13.08

So after some drama with the electricity, and cleaning the place up after the crazy demolition, the place is now a perfect empty canvas waiting to be built upon!

Next step: getting the approved final plans so we can start installing plumbing. This should happen by Monday. Until then, I'm going to clean off the brick wall to take down some of the concrete residue.

-Ryan

Brick wall is done!

At long last, the 58' brick wall is exposed! Yesterday myself, a subcontractor, Brett (my bro) and Scott (friend and talented artist) went crazy on the wall with air-hammers and after about 9 total hours chipped all the plaster off to reveal the 85 year old brick wall, in all of it's glory!


I met the subcontractor Julio there at about 8:30am, Brett and Scott showed up soon after, and we were finally done around 6pm. I swear I was high up on the scaffolding for at least 6 of the hours. Today all of us are totally sore... it looks amazing though! Thanks for the help guys! Glad no one fell!

Demolition!!!!

Yesterday and today were spent deep in the trenches, tearing down the plaster wall and demolishing the freestanding walls in the space. Also, the subcontractors are going to chip the plaster off of the wall today, to expose the brick. The place is trashed, but it's fun to destroy stuff! Plus, the subs have to clean it up.. not yours truly.

Meetings with contractors all day

An important meeting today at the spot happened, and it looks like I've found my GC to build the place, pending a reasonable bid. These guys really understood what I needed (perfection at a low price.. and fast) and were excited to see the space and work with me. They are locals too that have built tons of commercial retail food services locations in Santa Monica, which is notorious for being extremely hard to pull permits in. They also are just nice guys who are old pros, which goes a long way!

-Ryan

I'm pleased to announce a vital partnership...

I'm very happy to announce the official partnership between Flying Saucers and Supreme Bean Coffee Roasters, based out of North Hollywood, CA. I'm blown away by their coffee and tea, simple as that. The coffee is roasted fresh at their facility daily, and sent right away out to their clients, ensuring the freshest cup of coffee possible. They have a full line of organic coffees that we'll brew, most notably their famous Espresso Abruzzo and single-origin Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

As for teas, Supreme Bean has a great line of loose leaf senchas, black teas, oolongs, herbals and even those cool hand tied Flowering Pearls that unfold and "blossom" in the tea cup.

Thank you Supreme Bean!

-Ryan

Ok, so forget sandblasting!

Today the sandblasting guy came out to give me a quote on blasting the paint off of the facade, and possibly the huge 38' wall on the inside (it's plaster covering beautiful brick).

After hearing the price and hassle, the verdict is in:

Looks like the facade will stay painted, and the huge wall will have to be taken off manually. Too bad!

Went sign shopping today.

Wow, are signs expensive. The place I've nearly decided on using prices pretty standard, but it's still easily going to run $4000-$7000 for one worthy of Saucerness. Sigh.

Price aside, this place rocks and really makes some amazing stuff!

Here's some examples of signs they've done:



A combination of the two shown might be really cool. Any opinions?

-Ryan

Done with the front!

I'm beat, I just spent about 4 hours painting the damn place.. I didn't think it would take so long!

It came out pretty nice, but the facade is so high (at least 18') I had to paint it with one of these extenders that stretches out to a whopping 12':

Because I was nowhere near the top of the building, I couldn't paint in the grout. I'll have to figure that one out... likely I will need a gigantic ladder and a valium.

-Ryan

Painting today

Cool, I've secured a 11' ladder (not easy to do when you drive a 2 seater) and I'm going to paint the facade today. The issue with the facade is that it's all brick (a good thing) but it's been painted a horrible bright red color (a bad thing). Short of somehow sandblasting off the paint, which would surely include sandblasting the skin off my forearms, I've decided to paint it as close to "real" brick color as possible.. and do a little faux weathering on it to make it look proper. After then, the flower pots come and the clinging ivy gets planted, which will eventually cover most of the front anyway. No coffee house is perfect unless it has ivy covered brick as a facade!


So I found a great color, and a gray color for the grout (yes, I have to paint the grout too for full effect) and I'm getting down and dirty today.


Now the skin on my forearms will just be red from paint, not from being sandblasted off!


pics to come..


-Ryan

A few pics

So I snapped a few "before" pics of the old Benway Records store (RIP) before I go crazy on the place.

You won't recognize it when I'm done with the place..






































Next week: Lawyer/Painting/Demolition

Introducing Flying Saucers Cafe and Art Gallery!

Welcome to the official blog of Flying Saucers, located at 306 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica, CA!


Allow me to introduce myself...

My name is Ryan MacLeod Morris, professional musician/painter/paranormal enthusiast and coffee and tea junkie! I guess you can add businessman to the list now, because I'm striking out on my own and opening the coffee house/art gallery of my dreams (or nightmares, depending on how the next 6 months pan out!).

The mission of Flying Saucers is simple; promote and sell artwork of the best painters Los Angeles has to offer (I know some great ones), while serving an amazing selection of organic coffee and tea. Hopefully in the process, a little awareness of the weird world of UFOlogy will be poured into the minds of the unsuspecting citizens of Santa Monica. Don't get me started on the UFO thing unless you are ready for a passionate history lesson on the subject. Seriously.

My experience with the coffee business goes back over ten years, when I took my first "real" job (that wasn't gardening or sprinkler repair) at the amazing Palo Alto Cafe in Palo Alto, CA working for Keyvan Kermanshahi doing a lot of dishes, serving customers, and helping him roast coffee on Wednesdays on his huge Franciscan coffee roaster. I had a lot of great experiences at the PA Cafe under Keyvan, and it planted the seeds for what would become a important part of my strange and multi-pronged career.. which has included playing in various rock/metal/prog bands, painting gigantic portraits of a couple of C-List celebrities dogs and cats, joining a paranormal investigations team, and running the #1 most profitable and fastest growing Coffee Bean location in the company! That was a priceless experience that led to me taking the leap to open my own gallery/cafe.

Sound strange? It's bound to get stranger. Thanks for reading!

-Ryan