On Saturday we were at the Extreme Thing Festival at Desert Breeze Park. I had high expectations for this event from the previous years pictures and that it was an all day event. So armed to the teeth with more supplies then we have had for a single event to date we arrived early and parked right next to the main stage. We were in good company setup along with the Philly Cheesesteak Truck, a Fire Truck that served Pizza (I don’t think it was Engine 1 Pizza though), and a couple of Funnel Cake vendors. However as the bands started and more and more people started showing up at the park, it seemed that no one was interested in our caffeinated goodness. Even though we were serving iced coffee, frappes, and ice blended drinks I think most people at the park thought we were just serving hot drinks. That along with kind of being hidden in the farthest corner of the park it was hard for people to find us with all the other stuff going on. That resulted in us only selling about 20 drinks in the first 5 hours of the event. I was very disappointed in this and started to think what I could do to use up all these extra supplies and what a waste of time this was.
Then a miracle happened, the sun started to go down (ok that’s not really a miracle). As a result it got colder and colder and what started as having 3 customers in a row quickly turned into a line of 10 to 15 deep that did not end for the next 6 hours. It started right before POD came on the stage (which we gave a couple of free coffees to), went through Sum 41 performance, and all the way up to the last couple of songs of The Hollywood Undead.
By far the most popular drink was Hot Chocolate, but we ran out of Chocolate sauce about 2 hours before the end of the event and that wasn’t all. We also quickly ran out of milk and had to make two separate runs to the connivence store on the corner to restock. After the first restock run we decided to limit the size of the drinks to the 12 oz cups to conserve on the amount of milk being used and also it allowed me to make the drinks faster as a 12 oz drink only requires a single shot of espresso, so I was able to work on two drinks at a time. We ended up selling between 180-200 drinks (we lost count) in that 6 hour window and closed up a little after 10 PM and boy was I exhausted, but happy it turned around.
On a final note I would like to comment that all the people who showed up to this event were extremely nice. From the other vendors, to the people who came to watch the bands, to everyone who bought coffee, to the people who organized and ran the show, it was great day and I look forward to next year.
Lessons Learned:
– Buy more supplies
– Look for other ways to advertise drinks on the menu and attract people to our location
– Figure out ways to pre-make drinks that will keep for faster service
– When busy limit the drink sizes to maximize efficiency
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