Trucking Through The Pandemic
I’ve been in the food & beverage/event business for 18 years and the main thing I’ve learned is that nothing is certain. Some things we can’t control like the weather and the economy. Now we can add pandemics to that list. Never could I have anticipated my businesses shutting down completely… for months. We’ve watched 100% of our business in venues just disappear, leaving the other 10%, our dessert truck, being the only thing standing.
I try not to carry much debt, but one of my suppliers had an incident in November which had shut down their production and we had purchased an additional $20,000 in product we didn’t need until the spring, in anticipation of our busiest season ever. I guess add “suppliers having to shut down” to that list above. Our survival strategies had to kick in.
1. I immediately went on creditkarma.com and got 2 no-interest credit cards and moved my debt to those cards so I avoided additional interest charges. This literally took less than 5 minutes.
2. I trimmed my staff to just me and the food truck manager.
3. I evaluated all of our expenses, notified vendors to suspend some services, cancelled others, keeping only what we had to have to run the business.
4. I kept my social media marketing. This was now a necessity. Cut out all print advertising we were doing.
5. I applied for 6 different grants/loans for each of my 2 businesses. I was denied 12 times! – each having exhausted their funds. Eventually, PPP came through which gave us some breathing room.
6. I allowed myself a few days to have a pity party before I had to snap out of it and decide what we do next. How do we pivot and reinvent ourselves? We were used to doing events with 5,000 to 20,000 people (or 100,000 person stadiums) and that wasn’t going to happen for a long, long time.
7. We added a pre-packaged product that we don’t usually sell, added wrapped spoons - making the customer more comfortable.
8. We simplified our pricing packages, reviewed our menu to see if it needed tweaking.
9. We pooled our supplies from all locations so we don’t have to purchase supplies. We had everything duplicated in 6 different locations so we’ve combined them all.
10. I continued networking when I could, contacting everyone we’ve ever done events for. When I see a string of successes, I look for more businesses “like that” and pursue them.
11. Above everything else, we try to be reliable – show up when we say we’ll be there, do what we’ve promised, stay through the rain and leave a clean area when we go.
12. You have to know your product, know your customer and be able to change your menu or your price points or your prep routine to become more efficient and to meet each different situation and environment.
By May our calendar was filled. We had 18 events in 15 days straight. It’s mostly been social media, word of mouth, and repeat customers. We won’t make a profit this year but it will keep the lights on for now.
Author: Denise McCaskill
Owner: Dippin Dots
