I think every food concessionaire remembers his or her first event. Mine was with a stick joint made of scrap barn boards, screwed together on sight by my dad and me. It took all day and lots of hand tools to have it standing straight enough to throw a tarp over it and call it a food booth. Inside I had a folding table, folding chair, stack of napkins, cash box, and, a tall stack of coolers full of my one and only menu item: sliced loaves of banana bread. I knew it wasn't the perfect menu for a five-day Fourth of July event, but, since I was already baking loaves to sell to restaurants, it was easy to bake extra. Besides, what's not to like about banana bread?
In anticipation of sales, for a week prior to the event, I stayed up late each night baking bread in my home kitchen. By fair time I was ready with two freezers full of bread. I mistakenly believed I would sell every one of them. It's amazing now to recall how, back then, the health department was much more lenient in their food service licensing than it is today. By just answering a few questions, such as: "Is your dog an indoor or outdoor dog?" I was able to get a license to cook commercially at home.
I wanted a classy looking booth so an artist friend hand lettered wooden signs for me. On the front counter I plunked down a nice bouquet of flowers. I was set to make my mark in the concession business.
The absolute, number-one, most important thing to remember when playing live music in front of an audience is this:
Moving people and stuff around in a festival environment can be a challenge, and the larger the land area the event occupies the bigger this problem becomes.
For many years, this writer has been an enormous fan of Gordon Ramsey's show, Kitchen Nightmares. It is a show that keeps the audience captivated with both real life drama and built in suspense. For those unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that Master Chef Gordon Ramsey travels around the country to save various failing restaurants from certain bankruptcy. Ramsey literally has one week to turn a failure into a success. Every week, Chef Ramsey, like a skilled surgeon, must overcome tremendous odds and breathe new life into an almost moribund patient. Amazingly he is successful almost every single time turning water into wine. How does this wizard of the kitchen do it? What lessons can you learn from him to reanimate your failing business?
Entrepreneurs are artists, and artists are entrepreneurs. Artists need to express their art, entrepreneurs need to exploit their art. Problem is, Art is always on the battlefield with Commerce:
The absolute, number-one, most important thing to remember when playing live music in front of an audience is this:
The spring and summer seasons are the busiest times of the year for us, and hopefully for you too. Warm weather blankets the entire country and everyone wants to be outdoors in the sun and fresh air.
One of the myths that is still prevailing in the wholesale business is the "business license and tax I.D need" in order to achieve wholesale success. It is a big mistake to get such an opinion as a fact and then making such message viral all across the Internet.
The absolute, number-one, most important thing to remember when playing live music in front of an audience is this:
The Internet provides us with an opportunity to do it all ourselves. However, there 
