FolkFoods 'Official' Business Meeting

Where should we have our business meeting?

Where can we sit and talk and eat (of course)?

Shana and I planned a big meeting, to discuss where we were going with this whole business thing. With a messy kitchen and a beautiful snowy day, we decided to find a local business to support.Several small coffee shops later, we hadn't found the right place. (We were being quite particular - and enjoying walking around Burlington!)

Shana smiled, and suggested Viva Espresso, a small, new coffee shop that I affectionately call, "The Baby Coffee Place". Yes, this is a family-baby friendly cafe that supports local businesses and families alike! Walking into Viva Espresso felt comforting. We met Megan, one of the owners, and ordered our drinks and eats. Then, of course, we wound up talking to her at the counter for about 15 minutes! She was quite interested in our business and mentioned that she was hoping to start offering breakfast sandwiches soon and would be open to the idea of using our breakfast patties!!! That's pretty cool, actually. Also, we were all sorts of inspired about the art for our product labels while admiring the local artist exhibits. (But more on that in a later post...)

So, we got to work. We read through a small food business manual. We made A LOT of lists. We made a time line for those lists. What are some of the things that we have to do?

- Get the product recipes ready for scale up.
- Register the LLC. (Learn more about what the heck that means!)
- Schedule training time at the Vermont Food Venture Center.
- Talk to friends about spreading the word (that would be fun).
- Get ideas and figure out how to work our website - find someone to help us!
- Finish applying to farmer's markets.
- Create more lists and schedules!
- Learn about business and marketing plans.

Overwhelming, perhaps, but also exciting. We are getting closer to making this vision a reality. The interesting thing is that as we get closer, the vision becomes even more detailed, extensive and enlarged. I do look forward to writing more about how the entire FolkFoods business relates to our visions of working as food activists, community developers, individual, family and community therapists, and teachers! But all in good time. Patience is something that I am learning to embrace more and more.

Thank you Viva Espresso. Thank you Megan. We got a lot accomplished today. Energized. We'll be back!