The Next Ten Years

What happens when you realize you’re outgrowing the dream?

Hi friends, and happy fall! I’ve got some things to say, and I hope you’ll read them, but you can scroll to the bottom for a list of what’s changing at Borrowed Time as we approach the year’s end.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to build a life, how that life changes as we do, and all the things restaurant ownership has taught me about people along the way. I'm going to start writing about those things over on Side Work, alongside the story of what comes next for Borrowed Time. If that sounds like your kind of reading, I'd love for you to join me.

Just two kids in 2016 with a crazy dream and more energy.

Time is unruly.

I updated our winter hours on an excessive number of websites this morning, cursing the 29 year old version of myself for thinking platforms like Yelp & TripAdvisor were important business tools. At 40 I’m confident Google & Apple Maps would be enough, but who am I to erase 10.5 years of customer photos of outdated menu items and 3-star reviews detailing our distaste for families. Well, we went and made a toddler of our own, so take that internet trolls. We even taught her how to sit in her chair and make conversation with the rest of her party instead of sprawl in the middle of foot traffic playing who can trip the waitress.

Guest experiences aside, I’d like to emphasize that age gap. We first opened the doors to Borrowed Time on May 1, 2016; I was 29. It is now October 26, 2026 and I am 40. Looking back on a decade of Borrowed Time feels nonsensical; there is absolutely no possible way we have owned and operated a restaurant for 10 years. And yet, I have been vacuuming floors, sanitizing tables, and washing dishes for over 5.2 million minutes. My body feels every second of that decade and it.is.tired.

Full patio, full hearts, peak Borrowed Time.

When we were first planning Borrowed Time, we were given some advice from another restaurant owner that has always stuck with me – always love what you do. At the end of a busy day early into our 11th summer, as we filed yet another w2 into our accounting system for an employee that might not even see the end of the payroll period, Robert & I realized we might not love what we do anymore. We aren’t the same people who hung that first open flag and holding ourselves to a business framework that doesn’t leave room for our current personal and family goals feels really suffocating.  

A life worth making room for.

Who we have become is a direct reflection of what we have experienced and accomplished since opening this business, and we are not discounting the memories made or the community created. Gratitude is as deep-seated in our bones as exhaustion, and balancing the two is precarious. It seems counterintuitive to look at success and want to change it, but it also feels inauthentic to keep pursuing work without heart. At the end of the day, our bones also know we cannot keep going in this direction at this pace much longer. A startling epiphany, but also a hopeful one, as we are business owners with the freedom and ability to make change. Furthermore, Borrowed Time was built on a constantly rotating wine list with the food menu at the whim of whoever helms the kitchen.

So, let’s switch it up. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do have some ideas and we’re going to start fleshing them out.

As always, regardless of what change comes, we are so grateful to all of you for your support through the years. Our tiny baby selves from 10 years ago are so thrilled to be living this dream, and our current selves are looking forward to its glow-up.

Cheers,

Kim & Rob