AFTER THE OPENING

It's Wednesday afternoon, four days later. The balloons are gone, the grand opening sign is down and only one of the 10 tables at the Cereal Bowl has customers. Glassman, who is also the general manager, has been waking up every morning at 3 a.m. to drive in from Kendall, pick up an employee at Dadeland Station and have the store ready for the 6 a.m. breakfast crowd.

Kenneth, who was working overtime during the construction and build-out phase, claims to be taking a half-day off but is at the store having cereal for lunch. Josh, they say, calls about every 45 minutes from his office to check in.

Despite the sluggish afternoon, the entrepreneurs are feeling optimistic. Their business plan estimated they would need about 250 sales a day at about $5 a pop to break even. The average sale has been running slightly higher than that and on Saturday alone they saw about 400 people. Traffic dropped to about half that on Monday but has improved every day since.

``A lot of people still don't realize we're open,'' said Glassman, who has been standing outside with signs trying to lure in rush-hour drivers. ``And a lot of people don't know that you can get a bowl of cereal and coffee to go. They think you have to eat it here.''

They're trying to tackle that perception by printing up 500 color fliers promoting the fact that their biodegradable bowls have lids that make them commuter friendly.

But they're also mulling ways to cover the client gap.

``We're trying to find out how to keep ourselves busy 15 hours of the day, not just five hours in the morning and the last three hours of the day,'' said Kenneth.

Once their open-air fridge has been repaired, they plan to offer sandwiches and salads. ``It would be an extra revenue stream and it fills a void,'' said Kenneth. ``It's easy to sell [cereal] in the morning or even for dessert, but for lunch and dinner . . . you have to be a hard-core cereal lover.''

They're also tinkering with the idea of hosting birthday parties and school field trips during slow hours of the day - when the risk of alienating college students would be at its lowest.

But for the moment the biggest priority is getting the message out that The Bowl is in business, said Kenneth.

``Because we moved the opening date back so many times, people still aren't sure if we're open,'' he said. ``The good thing is that people seem to be leaving much more pleased than when they walked in.''

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