Punk's Backyard Grill: A true story of Sheila's restaurant 🍽️

I am ten years out of a commercial lease, and I am almost out of the hole. My scarlet BK will be removed from the sweater of my credit report in September.

Today, I am committed to helping people make good decisions and get good deals on their leases, because I know what it feels like to have it all go very wrong.

I’ll tell you the whole story of my first child (RIP: Punk’s Backyard Grill 2009 - 2013), another time. But for now, let’s start here...

If my experience were a cocktail, it would have been equal parts severe anxiety, disappointment, luminous pride, absolute ridiculousness, and deep joy. The day-to-day was just those five parts auto-cycling every 12 hours.

And when I think about all the many things that went wrong, I’m still maddest about the lease. In fact, it’s the only thing I can specifically identify as the albatross the whole time.

You see, we underestimated the power of the lease. We signed our lease in May 2008*…the Great Recession was months away. We got our building permits the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. We went to our advisors and our investors, and everyone told us to go to our landlord to renegotiate our lease. That’s what everyone is doing! So we did. And the landlord said, “oh yes, we can work with you and agree to this arrangement, the papers will be sent over next week.” But the papers never came.

 


We trusted them, and that was a mistake. We believed them every time they said we had a deal and the formal documentation was coming. We wanted to believe them, of course.

So we kept building and we opened. We managed to open and run an amazing, incredibly popular, award-winning, pioneering restaurant for four years. But we went to court twice, we spent a ton of money fighting, and in the end we lost.

I’m sure there are many thousands of people who have the same story from Covid. And of course, we can’t predict these global events that really F with our plans. Sure, most years aren’t so insane, but the point remains: leases have no mercy.

I also know that even in normal times, your lease may not make your business, but it can absolutely break it. And I hate that. That’s why I’m committed to using my experience and my privilege to share it to make a new future one lease at a time.

Buy me a negroni sometime, and I’ll tell you the whole story.

Xo

Sheila

*I count my lucky stars that Instagram (and “gluten-free” ) was only just coming into popularity in the final years of my restaurant. I can’t imagine going through this experience on the ‘gram.