A couple of weeks ago, I went up to Phoenix to visit and support a friend’s food business at the first Foodieland. A week later, he asked me if I could help out at his food stand at the next Foodieland. I was excited at the opportunity and said yes. I helped him on Friday and Saturday. If you asked me how my weekend went, I would say “I felt alive that weekend”.
Dead during the weekday. Alive during the weekend.
Before supporting my friend at this event, I had gotten into this rut of really just not enjoying life – I was (and still am) struggling at my stressful job and didn’t do much outside of work (mostly my fault for not setting stuff up and injuring myself – so no volleyball or rock climbing). I didn’t look forward to much during the weekday and the weekends were not long enough for me. I was feeling quite dead inside.
Things quickly changed for the better once I arrived at the food fair on Friday (Friday was a day off for me). I felt excited and way less stressed being there. I was introduced to the team, given an apron, and got to work. This is what I did at his food stand (both Friday and Saturday):
- Learned how to prep, cook, and deliver food to customers
- Greeted customers and took orders
- Gave out samples and convinced customers to buy his food
- Traded food between food tents (part of food tent relationships – see end of blog post)
I can’t exactly pinpoint what made me feel so alive. It was a combination of everything – I was doing something I had never done before, supporting a friend’s dream of running a food business, and having just a really good time with his team. I felt like I was really present in the moment and excited for each day I was there.
Since that weekend, I’ve really questioned how I’ve been living – do I have to wait until the weekend to have fun and feel alive? How can I change what I’ve been doing now to feel more alive? What do I define as feeling more alive?
Living like our heart’s rhythm
A great analogy that I heard a couple of years ago was from Jay Shetty about what it means to be alive.
When we are alive, our heart activity goes up and down like what you see on the EKG machine:
When we are dead, our heart beat goes flat.
The idea is that having ups and downs is part of living.
But if you’re living day to day and not feeling like you’re doing anything with your life, it’s almost like you’re dead. You don’t exactly have any downs but you also don’t have any ups.
I was living like I was dead. When I supported my friend that weekend, I got some life injected back into me. My pulse came back to that up and down signature. I felt alive again.
I’m glad that I came and supported my friend for two days. I let my friend know that I would be open to helping out again!
Thanks for listening.
Other thoughts
There were some things that I learned and saw during the food festival that I wanted to write about but each was their own separate topic that I couldn’t quite write into the main content above – so I’m writing about them here in this section here.
Food tent relationship and food sharing
As somebody whose usually the customer at these food events, I see these food tents as individual entities that don’t support or interact with each other. Turns out – I was wrong.
While each tent is there to sell their product and make money, each food tent has relationships with other food tents. These relationships can be symbiotic (where they support each other) or detrimental (where they can harm each other). At the end of the day, these relationships are really key to surviving in the food service business.
For example, it rained a little bit on Saturday evening and one of our neighbor’s fryers was getting wet. My friend took one of his extra big patio umbrellas and propped it over their fryer. He didn’t have to but he told me that it’s part of making and establishing good relationships. The other food tent returned the gesture by giving us some of their bomb ass quesadilla and tacos.
As part of giving food to other tents, you can also trade food between tents. It’s like playing Settlers of Catan but food tent edition. When I went to trade food, I felt really nervous because I didn’t know what the other tent would think of the food I was offering. I ended up trading my friend’s popcorn chicken for some ultra good Hawaiian grilled chicken.
Marketing Marketing Marketing
If you aren’t well known in any food festival, marketing your food is key to gaining customers. Your marketing doesn’t just end online; it has to continue at the food festival.
When I was giving out samples, I met this one couple who said they were looking for my friend’s tent because they saw it on Instagram.
I also met this group of Taiwanese people who tried the samples and started asking, in Mandarin, about how culturally authentic the food was. I led to them to my friend who was able to answer their questions more confidently; we eventually were able to sell them some food :). So marketing doesn’t just end online – it continues with these interactions at the festival.
Giving out samples in a crowd is SUPER nerve racking
There’s definitely something really nerve racking when you step outside the food tent to give out samples. I was super duper nervous because I felt embarrassed to scream “FREE POPCORN CHICKEN SAMPLES” to the onslaught of people walking around. I didn’t want people to stare at me like I was some weirdo. I was constantly walking back to the tent out of nervousness.
However, with some encouragement from my friend, I gained some confidence and slowly started giving out samples. Eventually, I was giving out so many samples that I was going back to the tent to get more samples. I felt so alive being out there.
