It’s weird.
I guess I’ll expand on that.
We’re a place that does the vast majority of our business in products people associate with and desire during a specific season, and/or are sweet treats. The vast majority of our peers/related businesses across New York State (and further afield), are closed for the season. We’ve found that it is worthwhile for us as a business to remain open through the winter, as we see a good deal of ski traffic come by to or from our neighbors down 392. However in years when there isn’t snow or viable snow-making weather anytime near Thanksgiving (which are becoming incredibly and troublingly regular), traffic slows considerably. Add to that the post-Thanksgiving, over-indulgence recovery period and it’s quiet times at the Cider Mill.
Normally this would be a time when we start working on projects, new recipes, equipment maintenance, planning for the summer season, and even planning for the following fall. This year however, every time I think we’re going to get into that sort of thing, we have some portion of our staff get hit with a quarantine order and staffing has to change. Ending last season straight into the full lock down, pushed a product launch that has been years in the making back to this season, and each successive quarantine means I’ve got push it to the back-burner (which is a groan inducing pun once you know what it is). Luckily (is it lucky that we’re so much less busy that it’s not worthwhile being open 7 days a week?) we’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays in the winter, and I’m able to make progress on days that I’m not supposed to be here.
Soon we’ll have an awesome product that I’ve been dying to share with you. In the meantime we’ve got the oven time/space to make all of the other non-pie, baked goodies you’ve come to love over the last few years. Come get a fresh, hot, scratch made soft pretzel, they were the first thing I added to the recipe box, because it was a thing I wanted and couldn’t get. Now we all can have some.
