In August, the Ermoyans had weathered a difficult summer as road-construction projects hampered customer traffic near the shop. Things have improved slightly since then, with new patrons stopping by. Still, the family is bracing for what’s typically the slowest time of year.
We’ve seen a little improvement this time around. Things are better. The volume of business. There are more people, more action. More folks are coming into the store, but it’s hard to say why.
We lost another big tenant in the shopping center here, the Hollywood Video store closed, and that’s not going to help much. It’s almost a third empty now, discouraging after 20 years here.
These past three months, we’ve seen a slight — maybe 10 percent — improvement in sales, but we’ll slow down the next few months. Even if someone stops by during their shopping, December and January are the slowest months.
People are still using credit cards to buy their doughnuts. In fact, 90 percent is credit cards, and that’s why we had to put a minimum to what we allow them to charge — $5 — because it costs us 35 cents every time we swipe the card.
We’ve seen quite a few new faces, though, including some players from the Denver Broncos. That’s been nice.
We had some very rough times very early in the year when it was pretty slow. The summer was OK.
Thank God that road construction is finished. It’s beautiful, and the old customers are coming back, and we’re seeing the faces that we used to see again.
We’re still keeping the prices below the market. It’s not great yet, but thank goodness for the customers that we still have. They keep us around.
