Records Fall, Sleep Needed

I am trying to recover from a tough weekend.  But, for a change, I’m at the farm and although I have a lot to do over the next few days, its nothing like the past few weeks have been.  Today, I’ve been catching up on bookeeping and entering a ton of credit card slips.  I really have no energy to do much else.

Tank and I worked the auction on Friday.  As it has been, it was nothing great, but okay.  The main differnce was that we packed up Big Red and headed for Amelia Raceway.  Donnie wanted me to cook for the practice session Friday night which turned out to be a bust.  There were quite a few trailers and campers and motor homes there for Saturday’s VDKA Race but noone actually got their carts out and practiced.  We did a little business, nothing great, but we had the time to get everything organized for Saturday.  We stayed at the track until 10:30 pm or so and stayed at a motel only about 10 miles away.

I set my alarm for 4:00 am and eventhough I rolled over for a few more winks, I had Tank up and going and we got to the track about 4:45 and started setting up breckfast.  I served Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuits, Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits, Cheezy Westerns and Sausage Gravy and Biscuits.  Also juice and coffee.  We opened at 6:00 am and basically sat there looking at each other until 6:45.  Believe me, Tank is no pretty picture at that time in the morning.  Then it started.

By 9:30, I was sold out of everything I had for breckfast.  When we sold our last order of biscuit and gravy, and the last Sausage, Egg and Cheese, we had about thirty people in line and had no choice but to change over to the regular menu on the fly.  Didn’t even have time to wash a single dish. 

About the same time, Petey, and two new guys, Brian and Ben arrived and immediately jumped into the frying pan.  Tank took over the cooking, I gave Petey a quick training on my new cash register, and then I had to leave.  Basically, I didn’t even get a chance to meet Brian and Ben, much less tell them anything about what to expect.

During my drive to Harrisonburg–about 3 1/2 hours pulling Big Red, I talked to Tank a couple of times and sent my sister on a shopping trip before she headed for Amelia to replentish supplies.  By the time she got there, Tank had another list and sent her immediately to a local Food Lion.  NOTE:  This happened several more times during the day.  And, according to Jean and Tank, the boys were awesome!  Brian and Ben, eventhough it was their first day, were soon cooking burgers and steaks and pouring funnel cakes, running the register and doing anything needed.  That took a load off Tank and Petey.  Really good guys.  And from the reports I’ve gotten, everything went unbelievably well.

I got to Harrisonburg and dropped Big Red at JMU and at least had an hour or so break before Peggy and I started getting ready for the clash with Number 1 ranked Appalachian State.  We really didn’t know what to expect.  Because it was a little cooler, I thought lemonade would be down and funnel cakes would be up.  But since it looked like a really good game, I was a little afraid of people actually watching the game instead of standing in line for a goodie.  If I’d paid for a ticket to see a No. 1 team, I’d be in the stands!

Wrong.

Peggy and I got slammed.  This week, she was pretty well prepared for the lemonade, but I got overwhelmed with the funnel cakes and corn dogs.  As the night wore on, and my lack of sleep starting to get to me, it was HELL.

After the game, a gentleman from Appalachian State that was maybe our first or second customer before the game, stopped by and said to Peggy. “I saw thousands of funnel cakes in the stands.  How do two of you possibly put out so many?  Do you make your batter ahead of time?”

“Believe it or not, Chillie makes it as we go,”  she answered.  “But, I’ll show you his secret.”

With that, she took him behind Big Red and showed him my trusty electric drill with its funky attachment that a friendly competitor gave me.  “He can do five gallons of batter in 30 seconds with this.  Then it’s just a matter of filling his pitcher to keep up with the demand.  Tonight, he made batter three times.  That took him less than two minutes total.”

The guy left scratching his head.

By the way, JMU won the game knocking off a Number 1 for the first time.

In the end, we set a new record for JMU and were less than $100 away from our old record for a football game at Liberty.  Had I not been so exhausted and shutdown with less than a minute to go in the game, we probably would have surpassed that record too.

Meanwhile, at Amelia, Tank, Jean and the boys sold out of virtually everything.  In total, it was the biggest day I’ve ever had by far.  And the second biggest week.

This week, I’ve got to retrieve equipment from Amelia and clean all of it including Big Red.  Friday is a state sale at the auction so it should be a little better.  Saturday, there is racing at Amelia but won’t be anything like this past week.  But, I found out tonight, Belvedere Plantation opens this weekend so Big Red will probably be there.  For now, it’s a night for some sleep.

This will be another one of those brief reports as I’m at the farm for less than 24 hours again.

Tank and I worked the auction at Richmond from Big Red for the first time.  All went well and of course, all of the regulars had to come look at Big Red and make their comments.

I left Tank to work Amelia with Jean and headed for Harrisonburg.  I got to JMU Friday evening in time to set up Big Red and then crashed at Peggy’s.

Saturday was the JMU-U Mass game.  Both top ten teams.  A really close game was expected so I assumed that our sales might be down a bit like it was last year for the Richmond game when the game was so close that everyone stayed in the stands and didn’t visit vendor row.  I told Leigh, our cashier/Aramark girl (a JMU student from Lynchburg) not to count on a whole lot.

WRONG!

Would you believe we went thru 148 lemons and 25 lbs of sugar.  That was before halftime!  I’ve never done more than that at any of the football games I’ve done.

Thankfully, Janet and Brian, our two main Aramark contacts pulled some strings and did me a huge favor.  By early in the second half, they had another case of lemons and 100 lbs of sugar delivered to Big Red so we could get back in the lemonade business.  Because of the heat, our funnel cake sales and corndogs were down, but only slightly.  In the end, we set a new record for JMU games and came close to our old record at Liberty.

Peggy did very little other than squeezing lemons.  By the end of the night, she looked like a lemon. But it was a great game.

Sunday, Monday and today, I worked at Dayton Walmart.  Our Walmart sales are way down this fall.  Probably due to the economy and the price of gasoline.  They were decent days, but nothing great.

Tomorrow, I move all of our equipment to Amelia in preperation for the VDKA Race on Saturday.  Then back to the farm to pick up Big Red and move it to Richmond for the auction on Friday.  Tank will be there.

Friday night we’re opening at Amelia for a big practice session.  Then Saturday, I’ll start breckfast at 4:00am and open by 6:00.  Petey and the boys will get there by 9:00 am or so, and Jean about 11:00.  As soon as I can, Big Red and I will head for Harrisonburg for another JMU game Saturday night.

Needless to say, this should be a really big week and I’ll be ready for a couple of days off.  I’ve been on the road something like 20 out of the last 23 days.

NOTE:  There are a couple of pictures.  Just click on the Flickr thingy to see them.  I’ve forgotten how to download the stupid things in the blog and get the copy to wrap around.  Guess I’ll have to confer with Jason—-AGAIN.

This will be a brief update as I’m only home for less than 24 hours and will be gone for another 12 days or so.

Big Red did everything asked of her and then some.

On Friday, Tank and I worked the auction and retrieved all of our equipment that was left there during the Fair.  Sales were light but that was expected.  Unfortunately, Tank was rained out on Saturday at Amelia but the rain ended in time for Big Red’s first appearence at JMU.

It wasn’t our biggest game ever at JMU, but close to it.  And certainly not quite up to the levels of Liberty last year, but it was a good effort for Peggy and I.  We did very well with Lemonade, the first time we’ve added that to our menu there, and OK on Funnel Cakes.  We sold out of Corn Dogs.

After the game, we broke down and set up Sunday at Staunton Walmart.  Peggy worked and was invaluable in organizing for the first time we’d used a full menu on Big Red.  Monday and Tuesday, I worked it alone and all went well.

This week, I’m off to Richmond for the auction and Tank and Jean will be at Amelia on Saturday.  I’m back at JMU for another game, followed by three more days at Walmart in Harrisonburg.  On Wednesday of next week, I’ve got to move extra equipment to Amelia for the VDKA race which will be huge as it was earlier in the year.  I’ll be there for breakfast, turn everything over to Tank, Petey, and crew, and haul my fat butt to JMU for another game.  Somewhere in that mess, I hope to get to Fredericksburg so we can start the big auction on Thursdays once again.

A report will follow. . .sometime!

Big Red made its first appearance at the Chesterfield County Fair the past nine days.  While there were some problems and overall a bit disappointing, it was still a great experience, we made some new friends and learned alot.

If you want to check out some pics, just click on the Flickr thingy at the side of my blog.  Then just look for the Fair set  and enjoy.

Chesterfield County has adopted the same ridiculous standards as Henrico County in that they require a fire suppression system in trailers just like in restaurants.  Big Red doesn’t have the system yet.  So, I couldn’t cook inside the trailer.  That wasn’t too bad as I was already planning on setting up a tent out back for my big grill thinking that the volume would be so much that the inside griddle wasn’t big enough.  Setting up my fryers outside was no big deal and I figured we’d serve from Big Red, do our prep and serve our lemonade, tea and drinks.  Tank or I would cook and the girls would handle service and sales.

Wrong!

The Health Department said that they would allow the grill under the tent but that they wouldn’t allow a fryer.  Both use propane.  Both are commercial.  The tent is fire retartdant.  What’s the problem?

By the way, the other counties with these standards allow cooking under a tent as long as you meet all of the other Health Department requirements, which we do.

So, I couldn’t offer funnel cakes, corn dogs or fries.  Probably cost me at least $300-$400 per day in sales.

We also lost 2 1/2 days due to weather.  Something like 11 inches of rain.  What a mess!

All in all, my first venture on the fair circuit wasn’t very successful.  The crowds were OK on the weekends but a little light during the week.  And there were 32 food vendors.  Probably for that size fair, there should have been about half that many.  For instance, there were six other funnel cake vendors.  So nobody did all that well.

We did surpringly well with Bar-B-Que and of all things Bologna Burgers.  Of course, we sold lemonade and tea like crazy.

We were located right outside the Karaoke tent which was going every night.  Karaoke is an interesting phenonmenon.  Sometimes it can be foot stomping, dance while you cook good.  Other times, it makes your fillings hurt.  Unfortunately, I only wore out one pair of shoes while I lost five fillings.

I did fall in love during the fair however, and Peggy is on her way to the curb.  Right across vendor way from us was Ronnie’s Seafood out of Maryland.  Ronnie, his wife Sylvia, their daughter, Dawn and her daughter Jada ran the stand.  Jada, who is now six, started selling crab cakes when she was 2.  That’s before she could even pronounce ‘crab cakes’.  She definitely wrapped me around her little finger the first day.  Grandpa Ronnie also became one of my advisers offering bits of advice from his long years in the business.

I also spent a good bit of time with Hans of Dimitri’s Greek Foods.  They’re another of the big guys who don’t mind talking to a new guy like me.  Both Dimitri’s and Ronnie will be doing the state fair next month.

For us, we start in on our football schedule this week.  Tank and I will do the auction on Friday.  Tank and my sister Jean will handle Amelia on Saturday while Peggy and I with either Laura or Todd will handle JMU’s opener on Saturday afternoon.  We also hope to be back in Fredericksburg this week or next for the big auction we did last year and thru February this year.  Our fall schedule is pretty full and Big Red will be well broken in by Thanksgiving.

Before I fall asleep, I figured I’d better throw in a post to update everyone on recent happenings.

This weekend, Tank and I did the Big Equipment Auction at Richmond on Friday, which was huge, packed up an headed for Harrisonburg for the Rockingham Memorial Hospital picnic on Saturday.  Peggy worked it also plus we set up our double fryers  we use for high volume events.  Would you believe we did 986 funnel cakes in five hours?  That’s cranking them out.  Almost 200 per hour or about three per minute.  Afterwards, I crashed at Peggy’s because I didn’t have the energy to drive back to the farm.

On Sunday morning, I drove to Lynchburg, unloaded  Sweet Pea (my new Mitsubishi) and dropped the trailer after unloading the equipment.  About 11am, I left for Summerdale, Alabama to pick up Big Red.  I got as far as the middle of Alabama before stopping on Sunday night.  On Monday, I drove the 150 or so remaining miles and went thru all of the paperwork, checked out the new trailer and

its equipment and got some training on all of the features.  I left about noon and headed back.  It took 19 hours total driving time pulling Big Red but finally got back to the farm late Tuesday afternoon.

I’d hoped to use it this weekend but I’m not sure I can get all of the preliminary work done like seasoning the griddle and boiling out the new fryers, plus setting up the Health Department inspection.   I also have to get the new propane tanks and have them installed on the tongue.  In addition, I have to set Tank up in Bedford on Thursday and still have the auction and Amelia on the weekend.  So it looks like the Chesterfield County Fair will be the unveiling of the new Big Red starting on the 20th.

I’ll try to find time tomorrow to take some pics and get them posted on Flickr plus will have plenty from the fair.

The past couple of weeks have gone pretty well.  The auction and Amelia have been solid.  Tank’s tour went well except for Altavista that has had a change of policy on food vendors.  And we celebrated mom’s 90th birthday.

For now, its time for a nap.

Tank’s tour started off with a bang in Lexington this week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  While not the volume we’ve done in the past on weekends, a good outing.  Oddly, our funnel cake sales were down but lemonade went thru the roof.  Since he’s squeezing to order, I think his hands got worn out.

I packed him up Wednesday night and moved the operation to Altavista on Thursday morning for a four day booking there.  After setting him up, I headed for Richmond and the auction.

Thursday was a bit slow for Tank, but then, on Friday morning, he was informed by management that there had been a change in Walmart’s community envolvement program and we had to shut down.

I have a bit of a problem with that.  Not that they are changing their policy.  That is certainly their right.  But the way it was handled just wasn’t fair and goes into that same area of poor handling of contract vendors by promotors/event organizers.  The Altavista Walmart folks didn’t consider that I had a crew (Tank) scheduled to work for the four days.  Nor did they consider that I had gone to the expense of stocking our operation and traveling to set up.

The right way to handle it whould have been to tell us of the change, let us complete the booking and then, in the future, comply with the new policy on any future bookings.

So, we had a down weekend, something I hate during the prime summer months.  Tank loses three days of income, I loose three days of sales.  In the long run, it won’t hurt.  There are hundreds of companies out there that support fund raisers for any number of charities.  It will just take a little more creative marketing on my part to develop new locations.  And I’m not at all sure if this is a Walmart policy or just an Altavista one.  We’d just finished three days at another Walmart, and have three days booked in Staunton starting tomorrow.  At least I’ll be in Staunton to fight for the three days in case  we’re told the same thing.

On the good side of the ledger, Peggy and I had a great day at the auction on Friday, eventhough I had to haul my fat butt to Altavista to pick up my equipment Friday night.

One bit of news:  On August 10, I’ll be heading to Summerville, Alabama to pick up the new Big Red.  I’ll spend a good bit of Monday working with the folks there and head back to Virginia with the new trailer in tow.  I’ll probably use it at a couple of smaller events to work out all of the bugs and I’m hoping to unveil it officially at the Chesterfield County Fair August 22-30.

Last week, I erroniously sent out an email to everyone stating that the new system  wasn’t working properly.  In reality, the notification is sent out on a timed basis.  I didn’t know that.  So, you were notified twice.  Once by me and then you should have received the post via the new system.  Sorry about the duplication.  I was just a bit too eager.  I also apologize to my computer guru (Jason) for thinking something he’d done hadn’t worked right.  I should have known better.

The sun shown bright.  The temperature: a balmy 96 degrees.  The track temperature over 130 degrees.  A nice crowd.  They were playing the national anthem just before the feature races started.  I was sitting on the inside pole, a gift and the only advantage I was given as I’d never done this before.

It took three jars of vasoline to get me into this little go-cart.

I was dressed in my silky Jeff Gordon pajamas, the closest thing to a racing suit I could find.  I wore a black nylon Birmingham Southern warmup jacket (a leftover from Jason’s college athletics career) and two rubber gloves to give me a little protection from flying dirt as I expected to be behind most of the way.  I’d also donned a football helmet since I’m too cheap to spend $249 on a racing helmet for my one race career. 

The butterflys were lodged somewhere between my throat and lower unmentionable areas.  Frankly, I was scared to death.

One warmup lap, nice and slow.  And then the checked flag.

Andy, as expected took off like a maniac.  I couldn’t find the accelerator.

He was turning laps at 86 mph.  I hit a top sped of 35.  In ten laps, he lapped me nine times.

And then the checkered flag again.

I’d made it without crashing or making a complete fool out of myself.

About then, the alarm clock went off and I had to wake Tank up to get his shower and start the day.

Actually, we had a pretty good day at Amelia Raceway.  Things there are definetly going in a positive direction and after a one week layoff for the VDKA Race at Capital City next Saturday, its straight thru including a huge money race on Septemtber 13 when they are expecting 400 carts from all over the east coast and the VDKA Race on September 20.  Just to complicate things, I also have JMU football games both days.  We’ve already started planning how to handle that.  Maybe a helicopter?

Tank and I handled the auction on Friday and Peggy joined us at Amelia on Saturday.  Tank will be going on tour starting Monday as he will be doing Walmarts for something like 12 out of the next 13 days.

Speaking of football season, Big Red took a disappointing blow this week as I was informed by the Sodexho folks at Liberty that they are going to start doing their own funnel cakes and other items like cotton candy and therefore won’t be using several of the contract vendors any more.  We’d been asked to set up on both sides of the stadium this year to eliminate our long lines, had trained a staff of ten, purchased equipment and another vehicle for transporting the extra stuff. 

I hope they aren’t making a mistake.  Va Tech tried this a couple of years ago and went to a frozen product.  We get complaints all of the time about their funnel cakes.  The new folks at RIR did everything they could to get rid of the contract vendors and while they make a little more money, they’re losing product quality and service to their customers.  From what I’ve seen and heard, that’s not working well either.  The other problem is that it takes a little expertise to deal with the intricacies of funnel cake batter because it changes constantly due to temperature, humidity and sunlight.  I hope they can come up with a quality product as we had a lot of very happy customers at Liberty and I’d hate to see that go away.  I wish them well in their efforts but I am really disappointed.

Thankfully, we’re busy enough that I’ll still be using Tank and his crew at other venues.

So much for now.  Maybe I can have another good dream.

 

So I got to bitching at Jason about having photo galleries on the website and he dove in Sunday and fixed me up nice. See the pictures below for my trip to Kentucky.

However, and as you can tell, the look of the blog has changed quite a bit. Apparently the old design he originally set up for me couldn’t fit or handle the photo gallery thingy. He’s going to fix the header and do all those little design tricks that make the site look all fancy sometime later this week, so keep coming back. It’ll look prettier soon.

For now, though, enjoy the photo gallery below. I think you can just click on the pictures and they come up in a nice box. This will hopefully make it easier for me to publish embarrassing images of Peggy soon.

I finally got to go see my new grandaughter, Katie, my grandson, Grant and Nancy and Jason.  It was a terrific trip, only much too short.  I hope to go again between now and the start of football season, maybe while my friend Kent (from Thailand) is visiting his folks in Kentucky during August.

Katie, who primarily still eats, sleeps and poops, is starting to develop a personality and an engaging smile.  Grant, who is an early riser, managed to get me out of bed as early as 5:30 am to play ball, and allowed me to spend two days in the pool with him for his swimming lessons.

I also spent one evening with Jason working on a bottle of bourbon and learning quite a bit about the whole social media arena of the PR business and how it might apply to my funnel cake business.  All of you recieved an email about the first change.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but  we’re changing the notification system when I post an entry and the new system, due to privacy issues, won’t accept my “old” list of subscibers.  So if you want to continue receiving my prose, you have to resubscribe.  On the other side, it will give us a much better picture of who reads my stuff and from where.  Hopefully that will help us to understand why.

As most of you know, I started this blog to keep family and friends up to date on what Peggy and I are doing.  And, secondly, to entertain.   As the family has expanded, my readers have too.  But, we’ve found that I get readers from 30 states and 35 countries.  I need to know why.  I can understand readers from about 10 states, from Thailand (Kent) and Australia (a friend and loyal reader of Jason’s).  I’m not sure where the others are coming from.   Some are from  Jason contacts like an exec from Elijah Craig (my preferred brand of bourbon), the guru of Dell’s social media work and a writer from the Wall Street Journal.  But where are the rest coming from.

One explanation may be that there are folks out there looking for resources in the concession/funnel cake business.  Because I get so many hits, I’ve moved up the search engine chain,  and if you search for “funnel cakes”, I rate like fourth or fifth on the result list.  That being a possibility, I need to spend some time and space to responding to what those folks are looking for.  In the future, I may have posts specifically designed for that type of reader which may bore some of you, but I promise to continue to try to entertain a bit even in those circumstances.

I’m also considering several of the “new” techno advances like “twittering”,  picture galleries, instant messaging and text messaging.  Sounds impressive, huh?  Actually, I’m still the same dumb, fat guy I’ve always been.  Just regurgitating info I learned from my son.

Upon returning from Kentucky, I took Tank with me to Richmond and Amelia.  Two reasons:  I didn’t have a booking for him this week and I hoped to buy another vehicle at the auction for him to use this fall for football.  Having Tank and Peggy allowed me to spend the time bidding and we got a Mitsubishi Montero.  Tank drove it home.

Business both days was average.  But that’s OK after last week.

I thought I might have to save Tank on Thursday evening.  We checked into the motel and went for a swim.  He was attacked by a nymphet in a skimpy bikini looking for a little action.  He handled it like a pro.  Not that kind of pro!  I didn’t have to intervene and his integrity is still intact.

More next week.

This has not been the best year for Big Red.  Lots of reasons:  the economy and the price of gas,  my counting on the new folks at RIR and losing a bunch of really good shows and the races, the weather,  and some questionable scheduling on my part trying to cover for the whole health department debacle at Fredericksburg.  But finally, the Funnel Cake Gods have seen fit to turn things around a bit.  Maybe not all the way, but heading in the right direction for a change.

This week was fabulous.  After a slow start at the auction in Richmond on Tuesday, the Balloon Festival in Lexington was awesome.  They’d expected about 1,500 on Thursday night (got close to 2,000) and 6,500 on Friday (closer to 8,000).  And it was a great festival.  Because of other vendors, we could only offer three items:  funnel cakes, ribeyes and sweet tea.  We rocked!  Friday was our second biggest day ever.  And, I actually covered my expenses for the show  on Thursday night.  Friday was all gravy.

Saturday at Smith Mountain Lake was equally as good, only with a full menu.  We more than doubled our sales from last year when we did mostly funnel cakes and very little food.  This year, we sold a ton of food and increased our funnel cakes despite having three other funnel cake vendors.  Also, we cut down those long lines and got our customers turned much faster (another reason for the huge increase).  Bottom line:  our second biggest week ever less than $100 from the record.

This week has led me to a new plan.  I’m sending Georgie boy a memo requesting we celebrate the 4th every week.  He should be able to do that before he leaves office.

Most of you know that I constantly make fun of Tank, Peggy and even my sister.  Today, I won’t do that.  You can’t imagine the amount of work they’ve done this week, and how much I really appreciate it.  All of us are tired, stiff and sore.  And taking a much needed day off.  I’m actually taking a couple of days to make a trip to Louisville to see my new grandaughter and grandson.  Oh yea, I might see Jason and Nancy too.

At Lexington, Jean worked the front and served the customers.  She did that eventhough she’s recovering from a nasty fall in France on here European trip and a boxing match with a yellow jacket nest where she got about 15 stings.  Tank ran the fryers and I handled the grill.  Peggy did all of the prep, mixed batter and brewed tea.  It was so busy, she never got a break.  At the lake, Tank did the same.  I covered the grill and partime on the front.  Peggy worked the front and prepped.

One other note of interest from the past couple of weeks.  It appears Donnie and crew at Amelia Raceway may have turned things around finally.  We had a very solid outing there last Saturday and my hopes are up for the remaining summer schedule.  I knew when I started there that I was taking a chance.  Yes the VDKA races would be good, but Donnie was trying to rebuild what was torn down by the previous promoter.  As a result, we had a bunch of losing days.  That appears to be over now.

Peggy has a new love interest at Amelia however.  There is a local farmer–somewhere between 85 and 140–that comes by every raceday for a bologna burger.  He keeps asking Peggy to go dancing with him at the Moose in South Boston.  So far, she’s resisted, but …….

Also, the long awaited, often delayed closing of our little property sale to the Forest Volunteer Fire Department, happened.  Not only is mother’s care now taken care of, but the new Big Red Funnel Cake Trailer is on order and should be here by the end of the month.  And, my niece, Amanda, can soon go flirt with firemen whenever she wants.

Its nice to see that little smile on the Gods faces!