I looked into a sea of sad, sorry eyes, drooped shoulders, and it came to me that these people did not need anymore sorrow, they knew my dad, what they need was, to laugh. My dad would have made them laugh.
"Hello... I am Bridget. I was his favorite."
This is, I suppose, the final word now, isn't it? My sisters will never one up me on this one. I can tell you many things about my dad, great things....terrible things.... but what I am going to tell you is this: he taught me right up till the day he died. I learned the very meaning of life, watching him peacefully slip away (thank you god for having mercy on him). I learned that life is about relationships, giving, and learning everything you can to help your soul advance into a higher realm of understanding. That is what we want, isn't it? The ability to understand why everything happens the way that it does, and what will happen in the future. Nothing is certain, we are all dying, we must make the most of every day. Simple, to the point, and almost a cliche.
On December 12th, 2009. I drove away from this place:
sans my father. Not the ideal situation if you ask me. On the drive back to Upstate New York, I had an epiphany. A very strange one might I add. I turned to Johnny in the van and said to him, "we need to buy a concession stand and start a business." Johnny is used to me, he doesn't bat an eye, he assures me that if that is something that I want to do, then I have his full support. This is good because... Johnny is the cook, without him, it would not be good. Why did this come to me on the way home? I have no clue.
I combed craigslist ads and ebay. Concession stands are a ridiculous price. I found a $50 "how to" manual on starting a concession stand, the very fact that I forked over $50 should tell anyone how very serious I was at the time despite the discouragement of the discovery of the expenses. A month or two goes by, a check in the mail from my dad's wife, "a gift from your father" she writes... the same day, a concession stand is listed on craigslist for the exact amount of "dad's gift". We go look, and buy it.
It is a trailer, the lady sold fishfry out of it. It was old and dirty, and we were oblivious and crazy. She painted it (apparently several times), using a patriotic theme. Red, white, and blue...blue, white, and red.... you get what I'm saying. We had our work cut out for us.
Cleaning it up was a pickle. We were lucky in so many ways, a neighbor who served as an electrician in the army, a landlord with tools and a spot on the town planning board, and a vigor that was fueled with the fire of losing the person you love most in the world.
We cleaned it up, completely gutted it, rebuilt the counters, took out the horribly spray painted appliances, installed a self contained water system, put in a new floor, and painted the outside snow white. She looked better.
(pictures from before)
(pictures after)
Johnny and I talked about our plans with the concession trailer non stop. Deciding what to sell was tricky. From the beginning, I kept talking about a dinner that Johnny and I had a few months back that I thought about constantly. It started with this delicious vegetarian chili that he made, that was completely out of this world. He made it from scratch, it still mystifies me how he can just whip things up in the kitchen out of the "nothing" in our cupboards and comes up with gourmet creations that never leave the mind. Back to the chili. It was good (if you haven't gathered that already). We ate it three nights in a row, when Johnny decided to serve it to me on a tortilla shell that he also, made from scratch. The dinner was this: hand rolled shell, mixed greens, chili, cheddar, avocado, sourcream, chopped tomato, chopped onion, and parmeson cheese. This dinner...was the bee's knees!!! I even started topping mine off with a small squirt of balsamic vinaigrette. I can't express how delicious this was!!!!!!
I wanted to sell chili burritos. The same ones we ate for dinner, over and over again. Johnny was set on sandwiches. We went back and forth and finally settled on burritos. With a product in mind, we set out for more equipment. We got lucky finding an almost new prep table in Syracuse. An hours drive away, this refrigerated prep table was a steal, and our ticket to success.
After setting her up, we had to come up with a business plan. This was for the health department and our town planning board. Red tape, red tape, yellow, yellow, yelllow.....GREEN! I won't bore you with the details, but getting her up and running was full of trials and tribulations. Also, just for the record, my landlord did recuse himself from the planning board vote on account of our relationship. One of the funnest parts of this phase was naming the concession stand. Johnny came up with the name "the burri-in-tow", which was witty and worked for our product. After much discussion, we dropped the "in", and decided on "the burri-tow"
One thing we did not think about after purchasing this concession trailer was the fact that we would need a truck to tow it with. Asking those kinds of favors was something I wasn't brought up to do, so we spent the last few weeks we had in the summer with our concession stand parked out front of our house.
It was still kind of ugly, but a much better version of what we started out with:
The end of our first year in business arrived in October of 2010. It was slow (out front of your house in La Fargeville, NY is bound to be), but we learned a lot and had a big head start for the next season.
The following season began in July of 2011. The French Festival was first up! How we landed this gig, nobody really knows, luck of the draw. We were much more prepared this season with marketing. During the off season I managed to create a website, a logo, got a credit card machine, and we decided to expand our menu to include beef as a possible filling and fish tacos. We also decided to paint the outside of the burri-tow in an effort to look more professional and for the "pop" effect. White was not cutting it.
The French Festival in Cape Vincent, NY, is one of Jefferson County's largest festivals. With attendance in the tens of thousands, we knew we were in for a long, hard, weekend. A week of no sleep and constant preparation yielded our most successful event to this day. Our sales for the first day of the French Festival exceeded our entire season from the year prior. After the French Festival was over, our next event, and one we were very excited for was the Clayton Farmer's Market .
Clayton, NY is located on the St. Lawrence River. Their Farmer's Market is set up along a brick lined walkway with vendors facing the river. It is beautiful and always seems to have an eccentric mixed crowd. The Clayton Farmer's market has become our home base this season. We had a list of things we wanted to achieve this summer, continue with our business, spend time with our children, and not be stressed. Although it is tempting to be open every day and try to milk as much profit as we can, while we can. The burri-tow's summer has been Thursday's from 2pm - 8pm, in Frink Park in Clayton. I am completely amazed and awed by the amount of support and praise we have received from all of our customers at the Farmer's market. A conversation a few weeks back that Johnny and I partook in revolved around our surprise that the concession stand could possibly be a successful business. Street food has always been one of my favorite things in life, and apparently other people share the same idea that we do. It is not abnormal for me to go somewhere and say something offhand about the business to be met with someone who has heard of us, leaving me in complete and utter shock. I even did a presentation for one of my master's classes on "starting a street food business"
No comments:
Post a Comment