misc My booth setup, table and displays

[Sam & Oliver]

had a stellar turnout, 5000 paid (adult) through the gate (under 18 got in free) for my first day at my first event.
 
thanks to SL, i had a great setup, a constant stream of people queued up at both tasting stations and sold 19 boxes of product in 7 hours.  the keychains, not so much. only 6 sold, on a $3 or 2/$5. not sweating it though, as the sauce was the showcase, not the merch.
 
with SL's suggestions, i had a case of 'Thank You' teeshirt bags under the front table, and left room on the front of the table for people to set bags down.
 
i had a nice '16 gauge clear vinyl roll for the table top, for easy cleanup and spills (6 people dropped sauce)
 
had over 250 at the booth, with me and a friends daughter helping me.
 
each person was invited over to try, offered the choice of spoon or chip (i had those small debutant spoons, and tostitos scoops). chips were kept rolled up and samples were poured by staff only. only used 1.5 bottles of each. nearly 3/4 of all visitor who tried bought a bottle.
 
cinder and stoke sold nearly 1:1 with stoke selling 10 bottles more.
 
7 hour day went by in a snap. with 1 hour to go, sales dropped off the cliff and had 1 sale in the last 60 minutes.
 
at the show there were 170 vendors. no one else had a booth like mine. a few tents blew over from wind guats but my weight plates i got with the MightyTent were perfect. zero issues. i used TentCraft.com to manufacture it.
 
tent is a 10x10 mightytent with a 10x10 screened rear, black side skirts with bars, and a custom valence.
 
table is a powerstretch fully printed cover with zipper in the rear on an 8' table.
 
the displays were built by me from crates and bare wood, like the sample trivots.
 
the keychain was from ColdStone Creamery when it went out of business. bought 3 of them for just $5 each, used chalkboard as a dropin back and $30 worth of towel hooks (black) holding 3 of each keychain color.
 
i still need a solution for lighting for the fall.
 
and an anti-fatigue mat for the front table instead of standing on the hard packed ground
 
 
 

edit: had more people at the booth but just over 250 actually samples. very few refused, but every ome that stopped asked questions or was invited over by us. no one was ignored
 
one woman acused me of having bad info on the nutrition panel claiming hot sauce has carbs.  i explained  that cinder and stoke had 0 carbs but she was adamant.  in the end i encouraged her to actually try them and she bought a bottle of stoke haha

 

[AJ Drew]

Wait a minute.  In some states, each batch of a food product has to be tested and released by the state?  I knew they would inspect your facility and recipes but the state holds food and releases it?  How on earth could that be economically possible unless your batches are huge?

 

[salsalady]

For California, I'm not sure if it's EVERY batch, but I know at least the First Batch of any new products gets held in a warehouse/storage until the state inspector can take a sample (I'm assuming they randomly take a bottle or two)? and do whatever tests on it.  Then the product is released and authorized to sell.  I remember one of Lucky Dog's batches sat for something like 6-8 weeks before the inspector got around to doing whatever.

 

[AJ Drew]

SalsaLady, good grief.  Not sure how you guys manage.  Seems like their is so very much grief.

 

[Lucky Dog Hot Sauce]

Every single batch of every recipe. At my expense for the Inspector's time, including drive time to & from the commercial kitchen.


Thank you, California.

oh:

  I remember one of Lucky Dog's batches sat for something like 6-8 weeks before the inspector got around to doing whatever.

Yep - 4 weeks. It was brutal. And then he almost didn't release it because the white "5 FL OZ" wasn't legible enough (despite being the correct font size) - so next batch I incurred design time to outline the letters with black.

Yay!

 

[salsalady]

Every single batch of every recipe. At my expense for the Inspector's time, including drive time to & from the commercial kitchen.
 

YOWZA!!!!!!!!!
 
 
That's when scaling up and a large batch co-packer makes a difference.  I couldn't imagine doing that for my small batch runs.  The most I can effectively make is 8-9 gallons (8-9 cases of the larger 10 oz bottles, double that for the 5oz bottles).

 

[Lucky Dog Hot Sauce]

Exactly - it was part of the SWOT I did when evaluating whether to rent a kitchen every few weeks vs using a copacker.

It was actually a big part of the equation - in addition to paying the inspector, I'd have to pay the kitchen to store my product whole sequestered.

Plus the inspector would fit me in to the schedule - which means more delays.

With a copacker the inspector is there all the time - so I save on having to pay travel time. And it cuts down on delays. And the kitchen deals with them, not me directly.

Much mo betta.

 

[salsalady]

Definitely mo' betta to have the copacker deal with it. 
 
 
I suppose we should get back on topic to S&O's booth issue~