Oh, this is supposed to be a vacation.
Well,
it IS a vacation of sorts. I mean ... I'm working on enjoyable things. Phil and I are rethinking the menu of the TRF shop, and research involves touring and eating at Bakeries mostly.
The booth will get a face-lift, so as to create an impression of being 3 separate shops in order to control where people order things. That may not make sense to some of you, but if your shop is 50 feet wide, and ice cream sundaes are made on one end of the kitchen, it's terribly inefficient if the server at the other end of the shop sells one. Consider that we serve thousands of people in a day, and the inefficiencies are more pronounced.
So, the booth becomes 3 booths on the outside. I'm still stuck for the names for the sections. "Just Desserts" is an easy one, then we have the bakery section, and a lunchy-sandwichy section. (I don't even have any good working titles other than "Bake Sale" and "Lunch Lady Land" or "Lunch Line". Lunch in the name doesn't really work because we sell Bagel sandwiches there in the morning. Ack ... At least I have a couple of months before the real deadline.(Input is appreciated!)
We put two bakery cases into the front counter. Renaissance Festival food sales are strange in that in order to be somewhat authentic to the timeframe, most of the workings of a kitchen are hidden. Stainless tables are still preferred by the health department, but not by the Festival Management. Consequently, all of the food is created inside a kitchen, and passed through a shelf-like hole in the wall to the server. Short of having fake-food on the counter for display, people only know what a food item looks like as it's walking away in someone else's hand. It was a pleasant surprise to be given permission for the bakery cases.
Other inefficiencies were more subtle. There was no dry storage space to speak of, and yet there was a cluttered little 8' wide shed space in between the 2 walk-in freezers. The 2 compressors were there, so you couldn't really do much with the space. Phil (always thinking) moved one walk-in 6', and put the 2 compressors in line with one another, to create a 12 x 12 dry storage space. (My Hero!). An organized dry storage space means tighter inventory control, which is the only real cash double-check available in a world without cash registers. I have someone working on a database program for our product line. It will cut some of the math out of the process, but there will always be a lot of counting involved.
Today we were trying to find a location for an herb planter near the front of the booth. I want to plant rosemary, as we intend to sell rosemary bread. Post Christmas there are always deals on Christmas-tree shaped rosemary plants, so I bought 4 big ones yesterday. Here in the Houston area they are a no-effort hedge, so I won't have to worry about tending them. I use the herb too much to worry about remembering to prune them, so it's perfect.
We're heading to our house on Jan 1st, to spend a month eating organic Grapefruit and Avocados. We'll still be thinking about the TRF booth, but we don't really know what direction or shop will take until we get approval for our new items. We're trusting that our competitors are not threatened by an expansion of the bakery line (Hey, I'm not asking for Turkey Legs or Funnel Cakes so it should be OK.) The "Food Meeting" is this spring, and all of the food vendors present their menus and prices to each other for approval. It promises to be interesting.
it IS a vacation of sorts. I mean ... I'm working on enjoyable things. Phil and I are rethinking the menu of the TRF shop, and research involves touring and eating at Bakeries mostly.
The booth will get a face-lift, so as to create an impression of being 3 separate shops in order to control where people order things. That may not make sense to some of you, but if your shop is 50 feet wide, and ice cream sundaes are made on one end of the kitchen, it's terribly inefficient if the server at the other end of the shop sells one. Consider that we serve thousands of people in a day, and the inefficiencies are more pronounced.
So, the booth becomes 3 booths on the outside. I'm still stuck for the names for the sections. "Just Desserts" is an easy one, then we have the bakery section, and a lunchy-sandwichy section. (I don't even have any good working titles other than "Bake Sale" and "Lunch Lady Land" or "Lunch Line". Lunch in the name doesn't really work because we sell Bagel sandwiches there in the morning. Ack ... At least I have a couple of months before the real deadline.(Input is appreciated!)
We put two bakery cases into the front counter. Renaissance Festival food sales are strange in that in order to be somewhat authentic to the timeframe, most of the workings of a kitchen are hidden. Stainless tables are still preferred by the health department, but not by the Festival Management. Consequently, all of the food is created inside a kitchen, and passed through a shelf-like hole in the wall to the server. Short of having fake-food on the counter for display, people only know what a food item looks like as it's walking away in someone else's hand. It was a pleasant surprise to be given permission for the bakery cases.
Other inefficiencies were more subtle. There was no dry storage space to speak of, and yet there was a cluttered little 8' wide shed space in between the 2 walk-in freezers. The 2 compressors were there, so you couldn't really do much with the space. Phil (always thinking) moved one walk-in 6', and put the 2 compressors in line with one another, to create a 12 x 12 dry storage space. (My Hero!). An organized dry storage space means tighter inventory control, which is the only real cash double-check available in a world without cash registers. I have someone working on a database program for our product line. It will cut some of the math out of the process, but there will always be a lot of counting involved.
Today we were trying to find a location for an herb planter near the front of the booth. I want to plant rosemary, as we intend to sell rosemary bread. Post Christmas there are always deals on Christmas-tree shaped rosemary plants, so I bought 4 big ones yesterday. Here in the Houston area they are a no-effort hedge, so I won't have to worry about tending them. I use the herb too much to worry about remembering to prune them, so it's perfect.
We're heading to our house on Jan 1st, to spend a month eating organic Grapefruit and Avocados. We'll still be thinking about the TRF booth, but we don't really know what direction or shop will take until we get approval for our new items. We're trusting that our competitors are not threatened by an expansion of the bakery line (Hey, I'm not asking for Turkey Legs or Funnel Cakes so it should be OK.) The "Food Meeting" is this spring, and all of the food vendors present their menus and prices to each other for approval. It promises to be interesting.
posted by Rhonni at 11:07 AM
2 comments
