CLARYfication 10.31.26 - Cindy Stein Interview

And now I can kind of laugh at it because it's well known that Well, it is

funny.

I think back to when I first opened Clary's in 89 and I hired a bookkeeper, Sweet Marge, God rest her soul.

But she was real old school and she worked from a ledger.

You know those huge sheets that sit on her desk?

The big green ledgers.

Yes.

And you hand wrote on those.

Right.

And hand added them.

Yes.

I know it's wild.

And I mean, eventually, of course...

You know, I had the restaurant when the dawning of the PC age started.

I mean, I remember entering a kitchen inventory into Excel for the first time and just thought, this is amazing.

It can automatically add two rows, you know.

But people that are a little bit younger than us don't realize there was a time, right, Bailey? My producer's sitting across from me.

He's like, what are you guys talking about? Anyway, that's pretty funny.

Well, and back to my analogy about running a business, you're the accountant for a business, but it's multiple.

Each department, like you said, has its own budget, its own team, their own HR, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Yes, yes.

We've centralized some things, like we've centralized purchasing and we've centralized the finances, but you still have to pay attention and accommodate for each small business within Greene County, which is all those departments.

That's interesting.

So you say you centralize purchases, which anybody that's been in business, you know, you have a profit side and an expense side, not a profit.

I should say revenue side and an expense.