Sunday, June 26, 2022

Jumping In!!

For several, several weeks, we debated whether to try to have a booth at our local Hot Air Balloon Festival.  The first year we started having the Hot Air Balloon Festival again a couple years ago, it had such a huge turnout they weren’t expecting that all the vendors had hour long lines and ran out of everything.  Since then, they implemented rules wanting vendors to have at least 3 people working and enough product to serve 750 people.  They didn’t want to have a repeat and get a reputation for being a poorly run festival, which then nobody would attend.

Having 3 people working wouldn’t be too difficult.  I knew my mom would help me, and my sister could fill in if needed as well.  But having enough product to serve 750 people?  The Hot Air Balloons have to have just the right conditions to take off – no rain and the wind can’t be over 10 miles per hour.  If you don’t have those conditions, or if it’s too hot (since it’s done at our local airport there is no shade), how well is the Festival going to be attended?  I’m not regularly open, so if I don’t sell through the product at the festival, I don’t have an outlet to sell it afterward.

Heat treating the flour for edible cookie dough - gotta love a big oven like this!

50 lbs. of lemons to squeeze for lemonade.

Finally, about 10 days before the festival, the weather forecast had no rain, it was supposed to be hot, and the wind – well, that’s hard to say but most days the forecast said 11 – 15 mph.  A little high, but hopefully it would be okay.  I decided I would “take the jump.”  I decided to offer Iced Cold Brew Coffee, with beans roasted locally by Jackrabbit Coffee in Hiawatha, KS.  I would premix in milk for the festival to make things go faster and it would be available either plain, or with in-house made caramel or mocha syrup.  We would also have Iced Loose Leaf Brewed Tea with tea leaves from The Tea Smith in Omaha, NE and Fresh Squeezed Real Lemonade.  Both of these would also be available plain or with in-house made fresh strawberry or peach syrup and/or popping pearls.  I figured if I made 20 gallons of each drink, it would be enough for 350 – 400 servings – not nearly what we were supposed to have, but I would also have 240 bottles of water to come closer.

I wanted to have a snack of some sort as well as the drinks, so I decided to also offer brownie bites, edible cookie dough in birthday cake, chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, peanut butter & snickerdoodle, and candied popcorn in a few fruit flavors.  Because I like everything to be as fresh as possible and I underestimated how long it would take to make stuff all by myself, I only got all the drinks, syrups, brownie bites and two kinds of edible cookie dough finished after staying up until 1:00 am Friday night and getting back up at 5:00 am Saturday morning and calling my mom in to help Saturday morning.

Our stand at the Hot Air Balloon Festival
The view from our stand as the sun sets and they put on a show with their fire, since they can't actually blow up their balloons.

Saturday afternoon came and we got our booth setup at the festival.  It was a hot evening with no rain to be seen, but there was a nice wind to help keep things a little cooler – but also forced the balloons to not be able to take off.  The newspaper says there was about 2,200 in attendance.  We went through about 7 gallons of lemonade, 2 gallons of tea and a gallon of coffee, serving around 75 drinks.  We also went through probably between one and two dozen cookie dough/brownie bites.  If you do the math… + - * / … that means we had A LOT of stuff left over!!!

It was an interesting and fun event to do, but we definitely learned a lot too.  For one, we can’t do an event that requires us to have so much stuff, especially when we don’t have a regular way to sell the extra if we don’t sell it.  We did decide to try opening out shop a few hours during the day on Sunday and also Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings since I don’t work my other overnight job those nights.  Hopefully we could sell some of our extra during these times, but we aren’t normally open and it’s hard to get word out on such short notice.  Since we were going to be open in our shop, we added rolled ice cream to help bring more customers in with the cookie dough / brownie bites as the only available flavors to help use them.  The rolled ice cream definitely helped – it was our most popular item.  We went through another couple gallons or so of our drinks as well and got some recognition and reputation started, so it was a good thing, but we still had a lot of waste.

Thank you to a local business, who wanted to remain anonymous, for letting me store the 60 gallons of drinks in their walk-in for several hours before and a couple days after the event, and to A&G Restaurant for letting me store the remainder in their walk-ins after that.  I so appreciate everything the community helps me with!

Our front A/C must have a Freon leak and needs replaced

One more expensive surprise, like our last post discussed about our fuse box, we learned our air conditioner that cools the front of our shop wasn’t working very well.  Since we aren’t actually open, we haven’t been keeping it cool, so we didn’t know until we turned it on for these few days.  It was in the 90s most of these days and our shop stayed between 86 and 94.  We had Jones Air Conditioning come look at it, and it’s out of Freon and it’s an old unit that takes a kind that isn’t made anymore – it would be in the lower hundreds just to recharge it, plus labor to try to find the leak – and if they can find the leak, hopefully be able to fix it.  The other alternative is to replace it with a newer, more efficient unit.  We’re getting a price for that to see if it’s something we want to do now, or if we want to try to cobble something together from another unit that cools the back room (which we have blocked off) to force it to cool the front room until we get closer to actual opening.  Either way, we have to do something before the end of August so it is cool when we’re open for Cobblestone.  Always run in to those surprises! :)

We aren’t totally out on all of our excess product.  We are having our Fairy Floss at another softball tournament with the local girl scouts concessions this weekend, and they agreed to let us bring our brownie bites & edible cookie dough to sell as well and we're donating as much tea as they need for the weekend.  We also have a local restaurant, A&G Restaurant, who is taking our lemonade and selling it – and hopefully, possibly offering it in the future as well?  So, we still have quite a bit of waste, but hopefully it won’t be as bad as it could have been – and it was a good learning experience!

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

What to do first....

     We have started several of our simple remodeling projects all at the same time.  We are still trying to get in touch with an architect to draw up our plans for our main remodeling to get it approved by the fire marshal.  I had a recommendation from someone and have tried calling them 3 or 4 times over the past month, leaving a message twice, but haven't heard back from them.

Basement divider wall coming out!
     
Taking the peg board off the walls upstairs unfortunately didn't reveal I nice painted wall underneath.

     When we had several warm days a few weeks ago, I started tearing out the 6' tall divider wall in the basement because it was cooler to work down there.  I also wanted to get the electricity that was being run to that wall to reroute to the back wall for a 220 plug-in (yes, it was using two breakers for the wall, so I can turn the 110s in to a 220) for my batch maker so I can start making ice cream.  I have gotten it taken down, and will be rerouting it hopefully within the next week or so.

     I had started taking the peg board off the walls upstairs simply to see what the walls looked like behind it, but kept going for one whole wall before thinking of something.  A lot of the materials I'm removing, I will be using somewhere else.  But I don't have a use for all the peg board and I was planning to offer it for sale.  Why am I doing the work of taking it down if someone else would prefer to get it a little cheaper for simply taking a few screws out and saving me the time?  So, I stopped doing that for now.
Peg board for sale.  Some unpainted, some off-white, some grey.

     If you need any peg board, let me know.  From what I have seen, it typically costs around $23 per 4'x8' sheet.  We're selling what we have, which is about 75 sheets, for $13 if we pull it down or $10 if you pull it.  We have quite a bit painted off white, some painted grey and some not painted at all, still the slick brown color.  We also have a few half and 3/4 sheets as well.

There were holes in the tile, so the tile's coming up in the ladies rest room.

     The other project I've just started is tearing out the floor tile in the ladies restroom.  It had a few holes in it, so it has to be replaced.  While we're replacing it, we're going to cover the guys floor as well even though it isn't to the point of "having" to be done yet.  I've got all the baseboard pulled up and some of the tile pulled.  That will probably be the main remodeling project I try to get done next.

     It's funny how your priorities sometimes get changed for you when you're doing this kind of work.  We got a notice last week from our insurance that they were cancelling our policy because we have a fuse box in the building.  We also have at least 5 or 6 breaker boxes, and only 5 of the fuses are being used, but since they are there - our insurance will not be.

Pay attention to me... NOW.  The fuse box the insurance says has to be replaced immediately.

     We knew we were going to have to put a new, bigger breaker box in for all of the equipment we're going to have - so this wasn't something unexpected.  However, it is going to be a long time before we're to the point of needing that part done.  It was going to be a project probably a year down the road.  All of a sudden, I called our electrician, Wiltse Electric, and asked if he could come see what needs to be done and get it done within 3 weeks.  He met me at the shop 5 minutes later to look it over and is now working on getting what he needs and working me in to his schedule in the next 3 weeks.  A great help considering I know he, as well as any other electrician in the area, are backed up 3 months or more.

     I'm sure this is just the first of several things we will run in to that are either unexpected, or just having to be done sooner than expected.



As for being up and running......

Our setup for selling Fairy Floss at the ball tournament concessions.


Our flavors sign for concessions - do you see what is wrong with it?

     We had our first sales event this past weekend.  Our town's softball teams sponsored a tournament Saturday and Sunday for 4 different age groups from 8 & Under to 18 & Under (I think.)  16 teams in town on Saturday and 18 on Sunday.  The local girl scouts do concessions for them, and I got to setup our Fairy Floss (cotton candy) machine to sell along with them, letting them make some money from it as well.

     It was small and simple, and made for a VERY long weekend for me, but it was a nice start.  I didn't ask for the weekend off from my other job, so I had to work 10:00 pm to a little after 7:00 am Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights.  Friday evening, after closing my computer store at 5:00 and taking my sister home, I met with the girl scout leader to see if there was enough space, and then setup.  I got done about 7:00.  The tournament started at 8:30 both days, but I chose to sleep for a couple hours both days before starting my concession day at 10:00.  I stopped both days around 6:30, cleaned up the machine and area and getting to bed about 7:30.  So I basically slept 2 hours each Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Monday morning.

     Some of the little things you learn as you go.  Do you see anything wrong with our flavors sign?  I'll tell you what's wrong with it in a moment.

     This was the first time using this machine for more than a couple batches, so I learned some tricks for using it through the weekend as well.  As you do more and more Fairy Floss, the sugar builds up on the rim of the center spinner.  This causes it not to come out as fluffy.  But instead of turning it off and letting it cool down so you can clean it off, you can just tap it with the metal sugar scoop and knock the sugar off - voila, you have beautiful, fluffy Fairy Floss again.

     If I ever wondered which flavors to get rid of and which to keep, I learned Radiant Raspberry (Blue Raspberry, the standard blue you see at all the fairs - the standard pink is Pink Vanilla) is by far a favorite.  Over the weekend, we sold 139 total.  53 of those were Radiant Raspberry, followed by Bustin Bubble Gum at 22 and Watermelon at 18.  We sold at least 1 of every flavor.

     I also learned that I want to come up with something else to offer to sell with the girl scouts to make the time a little more worth it.  They invited me back for another league tournament the last weekend of the month - I will brainstorm some ideas of something they aren't already selling that I could offer.

     So, did you figure out what was wrong with the flavors sign?  It only took about 15 minutes after I started Saturday morning for me to figure it out.  I thought it looked really nice when I made it...... but when the 7, 8, 10 year-olds came up and we asked what flavor they wanted, they haven't learned to read cursive or script yet.  With Fairy Floss, a good portion of your audience is going to be young kids.  I simply wrote the flavors out on another sheet of paper and we put it out as well.

Save Money…. Buy Used

I need A LOT of equipment.  And a lot of that equipment is not cheap equipment.  Just in the main ice cream machines I have purchased - 3 ro...