Roughed-out Profit and Loss Statement for food cart, provisionally named “Two Chicks on a Roll”:
Initial stock and restock costs, weekly
Eggs 200 eggs per day x 6 days = 1200 eggs x .50 cents/egg = $600/week
Cheese 12.5 lbs/day x 6 days = 75 lbs/week x $6/lb = $450/week
Butter 12 lbs/day x 6 days = 72 lbs/week x $5/lbs = $360/week
Tea 3 lbs/week = $80 (with our 60% friends discount)
Misc. foods (herbs, flour, salt, lemons, milk, yeast, baking powder) = $150/week
Other (fuel, utensils, napkins, menus, fire extinguisher, cleansers) = $500/week
Waste: $150/week
Total loss/week = $ 2290
Total gain/week: $12.50 per order x 100 orders/day x 6 days week = $7500
Monthly net gain, 4 x 5210 = $20840
Mobile food facility permit = $1000/month
Insurance = $100/mth
Food safety/health permit = $30/mth
Taxes = $1000/mth
Monthly take home = $ 20840-$2130=$16,580
Monthly rent for future one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco (with bathroom) = $3500
One-time down payment for apartment = $7000, in addition to first month’s rent
Average cost of heat/electricity/per month = $250
Cost of firm and wide two-seater couch = $800
Cost to purchase back all books sold to bookstore at start of summer = $669.50
Cost to start fund for Gus (Mr. Yellow raincoat) and neighbors, $5 a day = $35/week
AUTHOR’S NOTE
San Francisco is a magical city. But it has a problem. There aren’t enough affordable homes for the people who need them. The result is a lot of displacement—families living in cars, vans, shelters, and on the street. It’s a problem facing many big cities. Libraries and the librarians who run them find themselves on the front lines of the crisis, providing shelter and warmth and priceless (paper) distraction. You can tell them how much you appreciate everything they do here: https://ec.ala.org/donate, or donate to your local library.
I didn’t set out to write about the American housing crisis, but that’s where the story took me. I set out to tell a tale of friendship and community, and the ways we try to help one another and sometimes fall short. If you’ve ever tried to soothe a crying friend and been shooed away, you know what I’m talking about.
Writing this novel forced me to ask for help in ways that would’ve nettled Jeanne Ann and thrilled Cal. There were the early years when it was called Fricassee and I was “just scratching around” with the help of workshop buddies, Tara Austen Weaver and Rebecca Winterer among them. There were the pre-baby years: Thank you, David Linker, Lindsay Edgecombe, and Beth Fisher, for reading the half-baked version and still liking it. There was the pre-sale period: Thank you, Kerry Sparks, agent empress. And finally, the post-sale phase, which mostly involved my editor, Jessica Dandino Garrison, lifting me over her head and setting me down over and over, in a new, better place, Incredible Hulk–style. When Jess and I (and Ellen Cormier, Lauri Hornik, Nancy Mercado, and the rest of the Dial team) were eye- and brain-drained, I handed it to Aline Marra, Anika Streitfeld, Clare Luskin, Kate Nitze, Meredith Arthur, Kirsten Main, Lucy Quirk, David Sterry, and Carol Halpern, who all led me toward the light. Until I got lost again. When that happened, I tried to channel Lewis Buzbee, my first fiction teacher, circa 1999, and I reread I Capture the Castle and When You Reach Me and Counting by 7s. When that didn’t quite work, I gave it to Renanah and Lilah Lehner, who said, “Don’t change a hair on its head,” which is better for self-esteem than an overdressed Caesar salad with extra-crisp leaves. And then there were my sideline cheerleaders: Donal and Brenda Brown, Marilyn Wronsky, Gina Bazer, everyone at LGR Literary, the Waldingers of Illinois, the Waldingers under my roof, Eric Svetcov and team, my clients, and my parents. Regarding the last in that series: Everyone should be raised by a seventh-grade English teacher (Mom) who treats eating out like a trip around the world, and a prosecutor (Dad) who graded the food, A+ through F. I’m so darned lucky. Thank you.
P.S.: A shout to Kasper Hauser for the “emergency room” joke. Brilliant, adapted, and borrowed.
P.P.S.: From Jeanne Ann’s high-tops to the sunny back jacket, thank you, Tony Sahara, Kristin Boyle, Mina Price, and Mina Chung for this amazing package, inside and out.
P.P.P.S.: For eleventh-hour edits and Listening Library nods, thank you Rebecca Waugh.
An impatient chef once told author DANIELLE SVETCOV, “You talk too much, you move too slow!” when she was peeling onions in his restaurant kitchen. He was right. So she doubled down on writing, which rewards thinking (and talking) and going slow. Danielle wrote for the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, the Chicago Tribune Magazine, and others before becoming a literary agent and, now, an author. With her debut novel, Parked, she writes her way back to her first loves—food and friendship. You can find Danielle across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco with her salami-loving family, on Twitter @dsvetcov, and also at daniellesvetcov.com
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