It’s impossible to please everyone, and I found that to be particularly true in the restaurant industry. No matter how hard I worked there was always someone not satisfied with the choices on our menu!
We had started out selling baked goods accidently, we needed to make money and weren’t ready to open the restaurant. First we made bread, then gradually expanded to include muffins, cinnamon buns, croissants and banana bread. In 1979 we opened for breakfast to sell the baked goods with coffee and it was a hit, we were packed each morning with appreciative patrons.
Then came the day when customers started requesting bacon and eggs. At that point in time I was doing pretty much all of the baking single-handedly and didn’t have the time (nor the inclination) to deal with eggs. The requests became more persistent, and a friend came up with the perfect solution. Quiche! If I served bacon quiche people could have their bacon and eggs for breakfast. My friend showed me how to make delicious quiches and I added them to the breakfast menu.
The quiches were popular, so popular that I began making four different kinds. People had a choice of bacon, spinach, ham or mushroom, and the slices started flying out of the kitchen. When we started serving lunches I would sometimes have lobster quiche as the daily special, served with a salad topped with fresh mung bean sprouts. I stopped getting the complaints about the lack of bacon and eggs, the quiches were delicious and satisfied the fussiest of customers.
I loved the addition of quiche to the menu. I could make them whenever there was oven space and they refrigerated well. If I ran out of bacon quiche the customers would be happy to accept ham quiche, if I ran out of spinach quiche vegetarian customers were happy with mushroom quiche. It was a win-win situation.
The publishing of a single book in 1982 caused a sharp decline in quiche sales. Bruce Feirstein’s tongue-in-cheek “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” ensured that the fellows who had been eating it quite happily up until then switched to pizza. Duh!