tofu tamales and the soul of white folk
day 1 at Whole Foods >
demoed tofu egg rolls in the meat section... that lasted about 30 minutes until the meat guys literally had us removed for distracting customers from their sales. which is ok, since that place was so packed it was more like a buffet line than a demo. no time to talk = no time to sell.
then we were moved to the frozen aisle.
where customers were distracted by the ever popular amy's pizza on sale, and the not so popular $18.99/lb parmegiano reggiano cheese (king of parmesan).
can't blame the pizza though, it was day 1... so it took us 2 hours just to get situated in the store.
we demoed both tofu egg rolls and tofu tamales, simultaneously, and consequently barely sold anything.
hehe, i didn't have much of an appetite come dinner time.
day 2 at Whole Foods >
so change in strategy. talking to w the night before, she agreed and so did mario, that a simultaneous egg roll/tamale demo was confusing and counterproductive.
i began demoing only tofu egg rolls... sales started to roll in. i actually demo tofu egg rolls until i run out of stuff to bake. overall sales are much better than the day before.
so we break out the tofu tamale demo. we sell some of that too. a kid told his mom that they were "like grandma's."
at dinner time, we ordered a lot of food, since my appetite corresponded with the day's sales.
day 3 at Whole Foods >
we got crazy responses on the last day of demoing. a lot of latina women
1) declared that they make their own tamales at home
2) commented that ours were better than the ones they made
now this i didn't expect. i knew we had something comparable to meat tamales, but those type of comments were shocking. in texas, tamales and bbq are part of the culture... you tinker with them at your own risk. between saturday and sunday, we sold our whole inventory of 76 packages of tamales (8 in a pack) at a 9.99 retail.
overall, it was nice to get the expectation off your back. was it worth missing alicia keys/john legend in houston the same weekend? probably not, hehe.
_____________
on the drive to austin today, i was listening to a cd of corey harris "fish ain't bitin'"
blues and national steel guitars go together like a really good metaphor that i can't think of at the moment. him and son house are the only artists i know who do that national steel blues stuff. it just sounds painful to hear them play that guit so hard.
_____________
mom and i are going to check out josh groban and elton john in concert in march.
(don't tell me you don't take your mom out to white soul concerts... ok, i'm the only one.)
march is scrapped for me regarding whole foods demos... be back there starting april.
a costco distributor has been on/off with me in terms of being interested the last couple of weeks... we'll see how that goes.
demoed tofu egg rolls in the meat section... that lasted about 30 minutes until the meat guys literally had us removed for distracting customers from their sales. which is ok, since that place was so packed it was more like a buffet line than a demo. no time to talk = no time to sell.
then we were moved to the frozen aisle.
where customers were distracted by the ever popular amy's pizza on sale, and the not so popular $18.99/lb parmegiano reggiano cheese (king of parmesan).
can't blame the pizza though, it was day 1... so it took us 2 hours just to get situated in the store.
we demoed both tofu egg rolls and tofu tamales, simultaneously, and consequently barely sold anything.
hehe, i didn't have much of an appetite come dinner time.
day 2 at Whole Foods >
so change in strategy. talking to w the night before, she agreed and so did mario, that a simultaneous egg roll/tamale demo was confusing and counterproductive.
i began demoing only tofu egg rolls... sales started to roll in. i actually demo tofu egg rolls until i run out of stuff to bake. overall sales are much better than the day before.
so we break out the tofu tamale demo. we sell some of that too. a kid told his mom that they were "like grandma's."
at dinner time, we ordered a lot of food, since my appetite corresponded with the day's sales.
day 3 at Whole Foods >
we got crazy responses on the last day of demoing. a lot of latina women
1) declared that they make their own tamales at home
2) commented that ours were better than the ones they made
now this i didn't expect. i knew we had something comparable to meat tamales, but those type of comments were shocking. in texas, tamales and bbq are part of the culture... you tinker with them at your own risk. between saturday and sunday, we sold our whole inventory of 76 packages of tamales (8 in a pack) at a 9.99 retail.
overall, it was nice to get the expectation off your back. was it worth missing alicia keys/john legend in houston the same weekend? probably not, hehe.
_____________
on the drive to austin today, i was listening to a cd of corey harris "fish ain't bitin'"
blues and national steel guitars go together like a really good metaphor that i can't think of at the moment. him and son house are the only artists i know who do that national steel blues stuff. it just sounds painful to hear them play that guit so hard.
_____________
mom and i are going to check out josh groban and elton john in concert in march.
(don't tell me you don't take your mom out to white soul concerts... ok, i'm the only one.)
march is scrapped for me regarding whole foods demos... be back there starting april.
a costco distributor has been on/off with me in terms of being interested the last couple of weeks... we'll see how that goes.