I arrived home from work around 1:50 pm. We're allowed to start setting up at the market at 2:00, so I ran inside, packed up the car, changed my clothes, and headed down to Caste Village. My mom and Lila were with me this week to help set up. Set up went fine. It's not much physical labor—just big, bulky things like tents and tables that it's easier to assemble with two people. I was grateful for my mom's help, and Lila was a doll and knew to stay out of the way. By 3:00, the market opened, and we were ready for customers. While the crowd seemed to be the same size as last week, we just didn't have as many customers. And I don't think it was just me. I talked to a few other vendors who were also a little slower this week than last week. One thing that might have affected me, particularly, was the weather. It was hot and sunny. There was a vendor selling snow cones, and on a hot, summer day, he did very well. But for every snow cone he sold, that was probably one less pack of cookies I could have sold to a mom who wanted to buy a treat for her kid. So c'est la vie.
I made the same amount of treats for this week as I had made the previous week; however, last week I sold out, and this week, I had about 40% left. I had quite a few people stop by to tell me how awesome the goodies were that they bought last week, so that was nice to hear. Miss Bernie, one of the teachers at Lila's day care, sent her husband down to get some treats, and I was very appreciative of their support. He even came back for more! And our babysitters' dad stopped by after we were packing everything up, and bought one of my last apple pies. Thanks, Fred! We had several repeat customers, and I was happy to see Margot return for more lime cookies. She emailed me last week to tell me how good they were—that really brightened my day, to get an email from a stranger raving about something I made. This week, she introduced herself, so it was nice to meet her in person. And the lime cookies were better this week than last week, I think. However, that claim wasn't enough to convince one woman to buy another pack. She went out of her way to come to my booth yesterday and tell me how horrible the lime cookies were from the week before. She asked what the inedible hard things were in those cookies (the lime cornmeal cookies), and I told her it was cornmeal. But I had used a coarser cornmeal last week, and I personally felt it was too coarse, so I switched and went with a much finer cornmeal this week. I told her she should try a pack this week, but she refused. I'm not sure what people expect from me (or anyone for that matter) when they complain like that. What was her point? If she wasn't willing to try it again after I fixed the problem, why did she feel the need to complain? I felt bad at first, but when she refused a new pack, I realized I just can't care about what every person thinks. I receive too many words of praise over my treats to let one sour apple spoil the fun.
So now my dilemma is predicting how much to make for next week. And I need to figure it out quick, because my baking schedule starts on Thursday. At this point, I must say that predicting sales is the hardest part of selling at the farmer's market. That and standing around for an hour with very few people stopping by to say hello. I don't even care if you don't want to buy anything; I just like to talk to people. Thank goodness Jack came to keep me company yesterday. I would have been pretty lonely there by myself.
Thanks, again, to all of our family and friends that stopped by to support us: Kelsey, Paige, Mikey, Molly, and all of our friends, new and old, from Whitehall and St. Gabe's.
No comments:
Post a Comment