Meet the new owners of The Loft.

Yui’s Dad, Kiet, had arranged for us to meet at the officers of one of his lawyers for him to go over the contract with the three of us. It was a little bit more intricate than normal with Mr Pat originally having the majority interest in The Loft which is slowly transitioned to Holly and Jessica as they make payments to Yui’s father.

I’m the first one there with Yui getting me up out of bed extra early to come running with her. Amazingly I am finding myself not getting quite as puffed out as I normally would when jogging with her, the extra session I’ve put in by myself helping to keep up a little with the running machine. I’m dressed in a pair of slacks and a button shirt that Yui picked out of my wardrobe for me.

The girls are likewise dressed for business when they arrived fifteen minutes after me. Holly in a sensible cut grey dress and Jessica in a white pantsuit that looks great with her bright red hair.

I hug them both hello and they are filled with nervous energy at the daunting prospect of what’s in front of us. They make no mention of having seen Dawn after I drove off last night so she must have made her own way home rather than go to The Loft.

When Kiet arrives nearly half an hour after the supposed meeting time he is dressed like he barely has a cent to his name despite having the cash to front up for payment for The Loft. Dressed in a white singlet along with slacks and sandals I have to guess that Yui’s mum has given up on trying to keep him dressed well as Yui did with me this morning.

Kiet waves hello to Jessica and Holly when I introduce them to him and he butts out his cigarette before leading us all in the lawyer’s office. The place is busy with dozens of staff working there, the ratio of lawyers to assistants about 50/50. Were showing into a conference room off the main entrance and offered coffee and refreshments.

Kiet’s lawyer then goes over the contract in fine detail explaining every item and answering every question Holly and Jessica has. Then he gives us all a thick stack of papers to takeaway and sign after we’ve received our own independent legal advice. He helpfully provides a number of good lawyers he can recommend to us. Then Kiet gives us the last piece of news.

“Final price based on stock on hand so you need to do a stocktake,” he says.

“Stocktake is normally done on Wednesdays before we get our orders for the week,” Holly says as she is the one normally in charge of this.

“No has to be done today. Very important,” he reiterates.

Holly and Jessica nod their heads in agreement at what needs to be done.

“We’ll have to cancel the shifts and close for the night,” Holly discusses how we are going to do this.

“It would probably better if we closed the place until the staff meeting on Wednesday and give everyone the news all at once,” Jessica agrees.

“The rugby boy will just have to drink somewhere else tonight. And you're helping too if we want to get this all done today,” Holly turns to inform me, including me in the management discussions.

“I’d be more than happy to help. We are all partners after all now,” I say.

With that we all shake hands on the agreement of the deal. Holly, Jessica and I now in charge of the whole shebang.

Outside the offices, Kiet bids up the best of luck and good fortune before he heads to another meeting he has dressed just as he is. The three of us hug this time in celebration before agreeing to each head home to get changed into something we can get dirty in before meeting back at The Loft.

At the locked doors to The Loft, I wait for Holly and Jessica to arrive to let us all in. When they do, they pass their spare set of keys to me to keep and to do the honours of letting us into our venue as I’m the one they feel has brought it all together.

Grinning with excitement Holly and Jessica hold hands together as they cross the threshold into ownership and lead me to the office to print off the forms we need to count the stock.

The back of The Loft is joined onto a giant warehouse that they keep all the stock and extra equipment the place has accumulated over the years. As we begin systematically counting everything, I can’t help but notice all this space going to waste in here. Some of the bottles of spirits are literally covered in a layer of dust they’ve been sitting there so long.

“Why is all this extra stock here?” I ask Holly as we shift boxes to count.

“A lot of it is extra stock the old owner bought years ago that just doesn’t sell,” she tells me.

“Any of it that is out of date is stock we don’t have to accept when we take over and don’t have to carry on our books which save on holding costs,” I tell her, my university degree coming into practice.

“That’s great,” Holly agrees listening in.

“I bet if we brought in an inventory management system it would cut this excess in half and save a fortune. What we keep we start using in ‘cocktail of the week’ and get rid of that way.”

Holly and Jess both agree with what I suggest and the pair of them make plans to work on a whole new cocktail menu for when we reopen under new management.

“Another thing I wanted to run past you, having seen how much space we have here. I have my first shipment of rum arriving in under a month and I need somewhere to put it. If we cleared some of the space it would save renting storage if I could keep it here,” I ask my partners.

Holly and Jess readily agree and we spend the next several hours going through the stock. We also start going through some of the used equipment we no longer need, working out what can be sold or sent away to auction to start bringing in some money and paying back Kiet’s loan.

Dusty, we head back into the main section of the club to grab a drink when I get a call from Yui letting me know that she and Aor had met for coffee just around the corner from The Loft and were surprised to see it was open yet.