PORK DAY USA

Phat Skinny’s BBQ tried something new this weekend – not being Phat Skinny’s BBQ. We attended Pork Day USA in Albion, IL for the first time. Albion, IL is a really, really small town. My husband is originally from Albion, so we thought we might do well since we are known there. However, we were very skeptical about investing our money in a couple hundred pounds of pork and everything else we normally sell at a festival. We almost didn’t go because we were afraid to take the risk. Then, we had a brilliant idea. We decided to set up only as “Mrs. Skinny’s Lemon Shake-Ups.” With the low $30 entry fee, no health inspector fee, and the low cost of lemons and sugar, we weren’t risking a lot.

It was a stressful hour and a half trip because we left late (big surprise), had two lawn chairs blow out of the back of the truck just three miles from our house, and we had to turn around a second time because I forgot to load the six bags of lemons I sliced the night before. Stress! To make it even worse, I had to ride crammed in the front seat of the truck with my husband and smelly brother-in-law. It was a tight squeeze.

Upon arrival, we saw that most of the other vendors offered lemon shake-ups (or orange shake-ups, or strawberry shake-ups). It was tight competition. Our only offerings were lemon shake-ups, sweet tea, and bottled water.

A morning parade led to a pretty good lunch crowd, so at first, we were regretting not having our barbeque tent. Plus, live music was promised all day long. We weren’t sure, either, if our past success with shake-ups was linked to our delicious barbeque.

We began selling shake-ups like crazy. It wasn’t long before we had sold our six bags of sliced lemons and had to start slicing new. However, around two o’clock, the crowd died down and never returned. We packed up early, willing to sacrifice the two shake-ups per hour pace we were on.

We did great with our shake-ups and are thankful to have made a good decision. It was excellent profit with little stress, an easy workload, and no overhead. We sold one case of lemons, 25 lbs of sugar, several bags of ice, 5 gallons of sweet tea, and one case of bottled water. We will definitely try this again.