Planning for the worst and expecting the best.

Burgers and hotdogs

The other day my boss came up to me and said he was looking for someone who would be willing to sell burgers and hotdogs at an event he was involved in called trials. As soon as I heard there would only be one vender I quickly jumped at the opportunity to make some extra cash. I thought what a breeze this is going to be, stand around sell some burgers and make a whole heap of cash. Sweet!

Well the process began, not only did it involve drawing up list after list to ensure I had everything I needed, as the area was remote and there would be no facilities at all including water. The cost of the operation soon rose and rose. I thought sweet I have all the supplies and as long as I sell out which shouldn’t be a problem as I am the only food seller there I will make a profit.

I had estimated numbers of how many people were going to be there because my boss was able to tell me how many riders there were. I took the amount of riders and added a few spectators and came up with a number of about 120 people. So I stocked about 120 peoples worth of food and drinks.

Then came spread sheet number three, amount/ cost, profit to be made/ potential loss. Now I knew going into this that I had a lot to lose. I was putting up all the money for supplies; I had to pay someone to be there to assist me. But what I didn’t take into account was the little things the things that were not on my list.

I had to buy things like sauce bottles and plastic bags for serving. Then came the cost of getting there, because we were transporting so much we had to take to vehicles, which cost about R200 which was fine, but this all put a huge dependency on selling out.

Well the day came, we all got up at about 04:45 to get dressed and packed, and we arrived after an hour drive at about 07:30 at the venue to set up. Because we were new at the whole thing we didn’t have massive attractive signs to let people know we were there so I walked around from person to person letting them know we were selling food(which helped sales a lot by the way). Only to find out that most had just had a big breakfast at the hotel they were staying in. What I also realised that I had way over catered, opposed to my calculation of about 120 people there were about 70 if that, most of which had brought their own food and drinks due to the fact that no one had ever supplied there before.

By lunch time I was getting stressed we had only sold half of our burgers and almost no hotdogs and cold drinks, cold drinks by the way were my biggest expense and smallest profit margin. These sales I must also mention were mostly due to the fact that I physically walked around and offered people items, and brought it to them. I needed to make sales happen and fast.

Fortunately at three people stated to buy more of our burgers which we managed to sell out on, however we only sole about 12 of the 72 hot dogs I had catered for cost R180. We waited and hoped, the day got longer and longer, eventually I decided to cut my losses, at 17:35 we started to pack up and head home after packing up driving back we got home at about 19:30, with R1000 and a ton cold drinks and hot dog rolls to show for it. Fortunately I managed to sell some of the cold drinks and rolls and left over sausages which earned me R1300 and then just gave away some perishables to my girlfriend’s mom as it would just go off in my fridge.

All in all I lost about R1000 rand, which is better the two I guess. I had the monopoly and I managed to lose money...

Looking back. There are a few things I could have done to prevent this from happening.
1. Is be more pedantic about my costs and potential gains
2. Is to use actual instead of estimates.
3. Analyse potential risk versus gains
4. Put more effort into cost saving.

All in all a very long day with no reward

I have learned a lot though and what I have taken away from this experience is you will never know until you try but expect the best and be prepared for the worst. In my case I should have bought less and guaranteed a sell out that way at least I would have known how much to expect at the end of the day. I do not regret this decision however as I took plenty away from it, When I one day open a business which involves a lot more infrastructure I will remember this incident and ensure I am prepared.

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