Well, the calendar year is over and we’re coming right up on our 4th birthday (who woulda thunk!) so it’s time to look at the past year and make some sketches for the upcoming year. I write up this brief report every year for our stakeholders, a group which includes not just our investors but, more importantly, our guests, our co-workers, our neighbors, the community-at-large and anyone who reads this blog.

Whenever I start trying to break down the Linkery, what strikes me most of all is the tremendous number of people who contribute to the enterprise. Last year, we nodded to this group by riffing on the old Sgt. Pepper’s illustration. This year, we’d probably need a photo of a high school football stadium. As our operation doubled in size within a year, the complexity of what we’re doing increased to a level that staggers me. When things go right, it is the coming together of passionate work from a lot of unseen farmers, processors, distributors, drivers, stewards and cooks, in addition to the people you see on the restaurant floor.

In past years when I’ve written this report, I was quite structured in comparing different aspects of our business against dimensional goals. Over the course of this year, my perception of how an enterprise lives has changed, and I no longer really see things that way. Now I experience the business more as a living organism, and watch as it develops into maturity.

For any organism in the world, “maturity” means something different, according to its genetics and environment, and forces we don’t understand. But we know when a person, an animal or plant is filling into to its frame, physically and emotionally. The big stride of the Linkery this year, I think, is that we now know what maturity is going to look like. The framework of the enterprise is clear and we’re moving to a stage where our challenge will be to develop into it as fully and meaningfully as possible.

As always, our expectation is that the Linkery will become the best restaurant in America. For the first time, I’d say, we have a clear sense of what that means for us and what the Linkery will look like when it’s there.

That process comprised so many things this year:

• Most obviously, we moved to a location with about 3 times as many seats, a much bigger kitchen, and varied seating areas (and roll-up doors for these great weather days).
• We expanded our menu to include flatbreads, sandwiches, offal, and a locally-sourced lowcountry boil in addition to our traditional link plates, vegetarian dishes, and market menu.
• We increased our beer selection to 4-5 drafts and 4-6 casks. Our cask program is among of the most ambitious in the country, which is appropriate for a localist restaurant in the leading craft beer city in America.
• Our new wine manager improved the wine list and now we offer a big selection of great wines by the glass.
• In addition to curing all our own meats, we now bake all our own bread, make our own sauerkraut, make all condiments from scratch, and pickle a lot of stuff.
• We’re curing a wide variety of meats with both new and traditional cures, including the Best Damn Ham in the Land. This is informing our new North Park Meat Co., which is really fun (and looks cool, too).
• Our meat is coming from a wide variety of the best independent farmers in California and Iowa. We’re now serving only grassfed, pastured beef, goat and lamb. All the pork and poulty on our market menu is pastured now.
• We’ve been able to procure and cook a lot of foods that haven’t been available in San Diego restaurants in generations, like local pastured goat, local pastured quail and eggs, and pastured pork from California.
• To my taste buds, our food got more delicious this year.
• Our sales doubled this year, which means we served our community to a much greater degree in both breadth and depth. I take that as a referendum that we are, for the most part, on the right track.

The important driver about doing more work ourselves, and about working more closely with a greater number of the best independent farmers, is that we are closely in tune with the quality. World-class food requires that everyone involved in the nurturing and creation of the food be doing great work starting with the soil; the more involved we are at the source, the more opportunity we have to be a part of that kind of excellence.

Looking forward to 2009

Next year, we have two big opportunities/challenges.

The first is to achieve financial sustainability. Since we started the restaurant, it’s been subsidized to a great degree by both its ownership (taking negative return on investment) and its employees (working for less than they would make elsewhere). This has happened in the belief that the project is worth doing and will have a long and bountiful life, and that eventually, it will be able to sustain itself financially. As we approach our fifth year, I think we have a consensus — and a necessity — that it’s time for that to happen.

Fortunately, the changes we made in the last year have laid the groundwork for the restaurant to support itself. Even in the last 2-3 months, we’ve seen the business learn to operate in way which should, in the upcoming year, be able to pay the employees at market rates and still provide a modest but positive return on capital. That is exciting and necessary. Of course, the greater economy remains a wildcard.

Our other challenge/opportunity for the future is, now that we understand what the Linkery is in the community, to assert its excellence every day, every meal, every ingredient. In other words, to elevate our game to consistently meet the world-class promise of the enterprise. I get to work with the people at the Linkery every day, and I believe that this is the group of people that will make it happen. In fact, I think it is already happening and that that degree of excellence will obviously manifest itself to even casual observers in a surprisingly short time. Though the future is hard to predict.

Thank you very much for contributing, in whatever capacity you serve, to this enterprise. It is truly community-driven and passionate, and to get to be a part of it is a rare treat. I also think that together we are making a great difference in what’s available for us all to eat and drink, and as someone who wants to eat real food, I’m grateful for that.