Gig 1 in the books yesterday and it was quite interesting. Long update, sorry, hopefully worth it.
For starters we showed up and there was a ton of lemonade vendors, including one directly across the street from us. Turn out this guy really took advantage of the event, as were were setting up, the president of the chamber was fighting with him bc he paid for 1 spot and ended up taking up 3. He had a whole BBQ, Mediterranean food booth with a side lemonade cart off to the side. The real crappy part was that the cart was located on a corner, so she had no one next to her and was set up on an angle to attract people walking up the street, where we were set up parallel between a row of other vendors and an ice cream truck, so you really didn't see us unless you were directly in front of us (except for my sign on the top of my tent and my 15ft feather flag).
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Apparently I heard they made him pay for an additional spot, but he still took up a ton of extra space.
Bigger issue then having the same product across from us, is that his open flame BBQ was blowing directly into my tent all day. The wind direction never changed, and at timers it was blowing hard. It was so annoying. I joke that I didn't need to get dinner afterwards, I could just lick my self and enjoy their food.
There was also a very small lemonade cart dead center in the street at a small median at the front of the festival, and then many of the food vendors sold their own version of a lemonade. On the other side there was a guy selling lemonade in a those cheesy palm tree cups, but I think he was a Minute Maid, sugar water product b/c his thing was the cups and for his price, I doubt he was doing fresh as well.
The other thing is it was unseasonably cold here. After a week of rain, we only had a high of 68'sih, cloud cover and lots of wind. Not really lemonade weather.
So we knew we were in for a long day.
The fair was packed, great turn out. The road where were was not very wide, so people were shoulder to shoulder through most of the prime part of the day. The sun never really came out except for about 45 mins late in the day.
With all that considered, we did have a good collection of customers, wouldn't say it was consistent, but we did have pockets with 3 or more customers stacked up and many transitions had multiple cups. B/c my son was doing most of the squeezing and my wife was doing the finishing/shaking, I was taking orders and cash, and so i was able to keep an eye on my cross street neighbor and overall I didn't see a ton of action at her cart either.
Lastly our prices are generally higher then most. I was seeing $5 lemonades, as well as free refill ones, but we are start at $8 for original, $9 with a flavor and $10 for out deluxe which has candy and such. Plus we are one of the few that take cards....the guy across from me was cash only.
That said, we sold over $900 on the day which I was pleasantly surprised (I had guessed $700). I did have 2+ cases of lemons left over, but we have another event in 2 weeks and they will hold well in our fridge. I also bought a used chest freezer last summer and so all our extra ice went back in there. So I have a head start on product for the next one.
Fun moment: A lady came to our tent and said "Yes, you are here!!" She said she came to our tent at a big festival at the end of last summer. At this one, she said she walked the whole fair looking for us, hoping were there. She said how much she loved our product and was so happy we were vending. She asked if we were doing $5 refills (which we did at the one she saw us last year) and I said we weren't (we don't always do it, depends on the fair), but for her I would honor it, and sure a heck she came back for another one. I still make about $4 on a $5 refill b/c we reuse the cup.
Business Moment: We have business cards on the table. When we got home, I found a FB message from someone asking us to be at their event in July. Turns out he was a customer that day, like the product and grabbed a card. So I booked a new event just from being there.
Benefit moment: I love the trading that goes on at these things. We had a delicious pretzel vendor next to us who handed us 2 big bags of leftover pretzels at the end. And down the road was a C4 (energy drink) rep who had so much product left over that he dropped a free case of drinks off for my 15 year old...complete score for him! lol
One last grrrrr....We had a parking lot behind us that many vendors parked in. The guy across from me who took advantage of the spaces also had his truck parked there. As were were packing up, I saw the small cart from the front of the fair push past us and load into that guys truck. So not only did that dude have the cart across from us, he also had one tucked into a tiny non-spot that i'm sure he didn't pay for or finagled some deal out of it. But whatever, competition will always be there, gotta roll with it.
Next one is in 2 weeks and we do very well there. I happened to see the treasurer of that chamber at this event, he's a friend of mine and my insurance agent, and I was grumbling to him about the number of Lemon vendors, and he said they cap theirs and only allow a certain number of any one type of vendor.