Thanks! Yeah, it’s been a journey, but I had to do something- I was slowly dying working in the terribly exploitative restaurant industry. I literally put everything I had into this- all my savings and then some. That said, I seem to be doing well so far, and like I said, the margins are fantastic. When we get to good-weather season here in Seattle, I should recoup that fairly quickly.
And what do you do with them? (Have worked at pizza place before, but have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe because our crust was thin and sorta crispy.)
You put some sugar on it and eat that shit up!
[Warning: may trigger]
That one and the one where the cake, I think, breathed have been with me all of my life. And not in a good way.
I had an enormous Native American fry bread “taco” (slathered in buffalo chili, salsa, nacho cheese, and shredded lettuce) and dessert fry bread (slathered in literally like 3/4 cup of honey and an absurd amount of powdered sugar) tonight at a local tribe’s annual powwow and my hands were literally too coated in deliciousness to take a picture but it was fucking amazing and I am so goddamned sick now because I ate SO MUCH FOOD.
GO ROMAN OR GO HOME
Bumping this thread cause I just saw the stand at the University Farmers Market! I’ll get one next time for sure - I just ate prior to the market and couldn’t eat anything yet.
How are things going overall?
Haha, cool! Things have been going well enough, especially considering it’s the ‘off season’.
I ended up quitting my day job in September, and the business has been supporting me (living very frugally, heh) through the winter. It might not have been the smartest decision, but after 7 months, I needed to cut down a little. I was doing 35-40 hours/week at the day job and another 35-40 in the business. Something had to go.
As you noted, I’m at the U-dist Market on Saturdays now- they let me in for the ‘end of the season’, Dec-March. After I quit my job I did some pop-ups at a few of the other local markets for the end of their seasons, and a few more at some other places like coffee shops, events at the Pacific Science Center and the like.
I actually started at the U-dist on Thanksgiving weekend. For those not in the area, the University District Farmer’s Market is the oldest in the city, it runs year round on Saturdays, and is very, very well-attended. So everyone in the business wants in- I’m really, really, lucky they let me sell there, even if only guaranteed for a few months.
Every week there my sales get better and better, mostly regardless of the weather. I do good work, and am fast making lots of regular customers, and tons of other vendors and the market staff are all big fans, so I have high hopes I’ll be able to continue on after the new season starts in April. I’m currently in planning where to be during the main season (May-Oct)- I hope to be working minimum of four market days a week, and frankly I’d do six if I could- my plan is to burn myself out working for six months (I’ve already proved I can do that last year, heh), make a lot of money to pay down the debt it took to get this started and evaluate where I’m at, and figure out what the future holds. It might be trying again to find a retail location, or investing in a food trailer to take on more ‘corporate’ gigs like joining the food trucks outside corporate headquarters during the week (Amazon, Starbucks, etc).
For those who want to follow along, I regularly update my Instagram feed. I’m posting my menu and schedule a couple days early each week, as well pics of the food itself.
Thanks for asking! It’s nice you remembered. Say hi next time!
I definitely will! Glad to hear things are going well.
Thanks! And thanks for making the trek out in this cold weather. Sorry I was a bit off my game when you came- it was an interesting day, as I mentioned. Always something new, even almost a year in. Heh.
Thanks, Armando. I always like to play and try new things. The beet one this week was especially interesting- the flavor was definitely there, but not too overpowering (I hope), balanced by the small amount of cocoa.
It really is too bad you’re literally on the other side of the continent, heh. Like I said yesterday, if you have Insta or FB, follow along- I post my menu every week. A few weeks back, there was a post you would probably get a little kick out of.
I’m far from you but everything on your IG looks great. Makes me want to find someone doing something similar near me. How does the coffee ban at the market work? Do you agree to sell only one kind of thing and another stall does coffee or is there specifically an anti-coffee/drinks rule for vendors?
Thanks for the complement. Regarding the coffee, well, it’s a bit fuzzy. You aren’t supposed to sell anything that isn’t locally sourced. And no coffee grows here in the Pacific Northwest, so you can’t sell it. But. The tamale guy sells hibiscus tea (jamaica tea), and that certainly doesn’t grow around here. And now I’m at the U-dist market, I find there’s a little bicycle-cart setup that does pour-over coffee. So their rules are somewhat fuzzy.
So when I applied with the market folks last month for the 2019 season, I said I’d like to sell coffee- hot during the colder months, cold brew during the hot months. Nothing fancy, just a big pour-your-own insulated dispenser thing. I figure I can brew it up ‘cowboy-style’ in a big stainless pot on a burner (really a turkey deep-fryer) with the grounds in a organic cotton bag. Maybe make flavored syrups using some of the other ingredients I have around, and/or make ‘shelf-stable’ sweetened condensed milk to add to it. I’ve got most of the kit for it already, I just need the dispenser. I should hear back about that in the next few weeks.
I wonder if locally roasted would squeak by on a technicality.
Yeah, that’s the plan, and that was detailed in my application Seattle is lousy with fancy local fair-fade-sustainable-organic-ethical-etc coffee roasters. Also, the woman who built this Farmer’s Market Association (they run most of the markets in Seattle- three year-round and another four during the season) retired last September after 25 years- it was largely her vision, her rules. Now she’s gone, though, and people have told me there’s potential for change. I’m also applying to work with other associations/markets, and they might not have such policies- it might just turn out that I can’t sell coffee on Saturday (when I work with them, and there’s a dedicated coffee vendor) but it’s fine every other day of the week. I probably wouldn’t mind that too much, especially if that’s the sacrifice I had to make to stay at that market. The sales there are that good, even in the middle of January.
I didn’t think of the local angle, but that obviously makes sense, as does the locally-roasted workaround. Worst case, sell some local sodas in the summer, maybe?
I bet you’d be a hit for corporate parties and events and the like, and they’d probably pay pretty well too. Though I have no idea what it takes to get those kinds of gigs or if you’d even be interested.