The time is almost here – you’ve ordered your equipment, and you’re ready to start making money with your food vending business. You know an event is coming up, and you’re nervous but excited.
What now?
For many people, the first event is the hardest – full of unknowns and ‘what if’ scenarios.
Thankfully, once you get through the first one, the process will be pretty similar for all the others.
So, in this article I’ll be giving you a framework to go through to ensure there aren’t any surprises that will jeopardize how your first event goes!
Do A Full Test Run Beforehand
The most important thing that you’ll always want to do after ordering your equipment is doing a full test run, where you make and actually try all of your products.
It’s especially important that you do this in the same environment that you’ll be vending in.
One of the items that I sell is cotton candy. Cotton candy is very prone to humidity, and gets ruined very fast in very humid conditions.
Likewise, the machine pulls a lot of power, so I had to get a very beefy generator to be able to power both my cotton candy and popcorn machine at the same time.
Anyhow, unless I was only planning to prepackage, this means I had to actually take all my machines outside, hook them to the generator, set them up my tables, and basically make my whole booth inside my yard weeks before my first event happened.
If you don’t, unforeseen consequences might happen. For example:
- Maybe my generator or one of the extension cords wouldn’t work.
- Maybe humidity would’ve ruined my product within minutes
- Maybe the table wouldn’t be able to hold everything’s weight, or provide enough space to work with.
- Maybe light wind blows cotton candy off of your cones, and you’ll need to package it differently.
These are things you don’t think about until they actually happen – and unforeseen circumstances can completely derail an event. Not very encouraging if it’s your first time!
So, do a full test run of everything – including your Square card reader if you’re using one.
Note: To test a Square transaction, test only a $1 payment, and then refund it. Large payments to yourself can trigger anti-fraud or anti-money laundering alerts.
Put Your Products In Square
Speaking of Square, if you’re using it with your vending business, you’ll want to set up all of your products and info with it beforehand.
If you’re selling multiple flavors of the same item, it’s a good idea to put these all as a separate SKU for better tracking and sales reporting. This will help you better choose which flavors to provide or switch out in the future, give you ideas on which flavors need reordering, and more!
At my booth, I like having my niece handle all of the order tallying on Square. We have a large iPad with pictures set up for all of the different products, so tapping the ones the customer is ordering is a lot of fun for her.
Square can take up to 4 days to validate external bank accounts, so it’s important to set all of this up in advance.
Plus, doing it at home before-hand – where you likely have a stable wi-fi connection, ensures that you are able to get set up and selling straight away as soon as you arrive at your first event.
Double Check Your Permits Have Been Approved
Many people put off getting permits until it’s too late.
Ideally, you want this done as far possible in advance after you know you’re going to be doing an event. This gives your local government enough time to review and approve your application without delays.
To give an idea of a timeline, my county wants paperwork submitted at least 2 weeks in advance before the event. You can still submit it with a tighter deadline, but they charge an extra $50 fee for rush processing.
Note that depending on your location, cotton candy and popcorn may not require an actual temporary food establishment permit at all. However, in my case, I still have to file a form for each event that will state I’m exempt from needing a permit.
Thankfully, there are no fees with this. So I lose nothing by filling out forms over a month in advance, even if I later decide the event wasn’t right for me, and I don’t attend.
Anyway, check if you need the following done:
- A temporary food establishment permit (or an exemption. This will almost always be required, regardless of how you’re preparing your food.)
- A commissionary kitchen agreement, typically only if you’re pre-packaging. Pre-packaged goods will also need to be properly labeled.
- A business license to do business in your city. In Washington, I had to select the cities I was doing events in when I updated my business license. Some cities had a $10 fee.
- Insurance. Bigger events often require it and require their venue to be listed on the insurance policy.
- Food handler’s permits, for anyone that will be handling food.
- An account to remit sales tax that you collect, if you’re in a state that collects it. The exact process for this varies by state.
This sounds scary and overwhelming, but I am here to help!
And thankfully, once you do it once, updating insurance, permits etc for new events literally takes less than 5 minutes.
Get Some Cash On Hand
Never show up to an event without cash to use for change.
A lot of people will use cards, but cash is still king, especially at smaller events. You need to have enough bills on hand to give proper change to everyone, no matter what denominations they decide to pay with.
Stack your cash box with some 1’s, 5’s, 10’s, 20’s, and maybe even a couple 50’s. There will be people that try to pay with $100 bills – sometimes specifically so they can get smaller bills back in the form of change.
Finally, if you are passing sales tax onto the customer, make sure you bring coins with you as well.
Keep Expectations Low
I hate to say it, but try to temper your expectations for your first event.
You are going to run into some challenges. Things will not work as you expect them to. You’ll discover new problems that you couldn’t have foreseen, because you probably haven’t made food at this scale before.
It could be anything from machines needing a break during a huge rush, or a helper not knowing the proper way to handle customers.
Even more likely is simply the fact that not as many people stop by your booth as you might hope.
One great thing about cotton candy and popcorn is that they sell themselves – you don’t need to have any skills to make sales. If people see it, a percentage of them will buy.
But when you’re just starting out, people likely won’t know that you’re there unless they’re walking by and paying attention to the booths around them.
As you attend more events in the same area, people will start to expect you there, and they will look out for you. Especially if they enjoyed your food the last time they bought from you.
This is why I opted to use hulless popcorn kernels for my popcorn – it’s a bit more expensive, but it tastes amazing and is more comfortable to eat. As someone with a bad stomach condition, I appreciate that, and other people do too.
Anyhow, even if your first event flops sales-wise, you’ll still gain a lot from it. Not only an incredible amount of experience that no amount of reading articles could provide you, but some town recognition that will boost sales next time – as long as your customers have a good experience!
Arrive Early
When the day finally comes for you to do your first event, I cannot stress enough how important it is to arrive early.
Even if you do a full test run in your yard, conditions will be different when you’re out at a new place, surrounded by other vendors.
Maybe you have to rearrange things to not be affected by wind. Maybe you determine that your products need to be moved around for maximum visibility.
Heck, I’ve even heard of people forgetting a key supply (like their twist ties or heat sealer) at home, and having to drive back and go get it.
Expect things to go wrong, and prepare accordingly. Eventually, accidents will happen, and you want to be prepared just in case.
Conclusion
First events are scary, but they are also a whole lot of fun!
The goal of your first event isn’t to make your entire investment back in one day. It’s to gain valuable experience and truly start understanding what this whole process looks like when you actually, well, do it.
Preparation is key to making sure that everything goes smoothly, and you can hit the ground running without any stress or surprises.
Have any questions for me before your first event?
Write to me in the comments below, and let me know! I’d be happy to help.
– James McAllister