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!

A Perfect FolkEvening!

Well, Good Morning FolkPeoples!

This whole blog thing is quite an interesting endeavor. Both Shana and I have started taking pictures like crazy, and I am constantly thinking of things to post on here. To whom? No one really, but we'll see, eventually...

As you may know, Burlington, like a lot of the East Coast, got TONS of snow! Fantastic! What does this have to do with FolkFoods? Well, a lot, thanks for asking. In the midst of the snowstorm, a bunch of us ran outside, barefoot, and jumped (carefully) into a comforting, nurturing hot tub!! Still, how is that related to FolkFoods? I am getting to that. It was a perfect FolkFoods evening. We made a huge pot of Glugg (or glowwine, Gluggi or mulled wine - whatever your culture calls it.) Drank it while soaking in the tub, hair and eyelashes frosted with big flakes of snow and laughed together. We talked and shared stories and dreamed of the future and planned in the present. It was nice. Truth is, though, this was only the beginning. We ran (less carefully) back inside, dried off, and then made some homemade pizzas (using, of course, some FolkFoods products and home-grown oyster mushrooms!). The evening just kept getting nicer. Over Drinks and Conversation, we heated up some leftover chocolate fondue and washed the strawberries. This dessert, combined with cuddling on the couch and watching the movie, Chocolat, was the perfect end to a Perfect FolkEvening!

Well, it has been about a week since this happened and I have been meaning to add pictures and links for Glugg/Mulled Wine recipes. Oh well. Next time. We have lots of pictures and I am realizing that we have lots of these types of evening! Pics and Recipes from the next one, then...

Traditional Foods - Farmer's Markets - Business Craziness - Here We Come!

Hello Everyone!

Well, It seems that it's taken longer than expected to get this whole thing off the ground. (Isn't that always (sometimes) the way?) We were hoping to send out an email with a lot of hullabaloo and fanfare with this announcement. Instead, however, it will be a calmer, more reflective note.

[Some of you already know various details of this message, so please excuse the repetition, and (per some of your requests) this will be a shorter message than some of the previous ones.]

We are starting a small artisan foods business here in Burlington, VT. The official launch date has been delayed, for some busines-y reasons, that we are still not so sure about (any of our business-y friends out there, feel free to contact us to answer some of our questions re: LLC, trademarking etc.)

But, the details so far:
Our company is called FolkFoods. You will be able to find us at http://www.folkfoods.com/; we have the domain name, now we are looking for a web designer to help us get started. You will also soon be able to read our rambling blog (so there is less rambling on these emails) at http://www.folkfoods.blogspot.com/, NOT to be confused with http://www.folkfood.blogspot.com/, which is a cool blog highlighting the Localvore movement in New Hampshire (If you don't know what the Localvore movement is, ask or look it up. It will be sort of important to our business as well.) We have about 4 products that we are dilligently testing and getting ready and are planning to start selling this spring at several farmer's markets around Vermont. Additionally, we will be (hopefully) distributing to local restaraunts, bed & breakfasts, and co-ops/healthstores etc. From there, we shall see!

We are still working on label design (a lot more work to go on that), which will help in designing the website and creating a FolkFoods theme or brand. We are most certainly open to ideas at this point. We would very much like to stay with the ideas of folkfoods and get as much input from our 'folk' as possible. We believe in the promise of creative endeavors that arise within the context of community and connection. As such, longer visions for this company include social action, community building, workshops and more!

Well, this is already longer than hoped (but, realistically, shorter than expected!) This news is really exciting for us, and we welcome any questions, feedback, ideas, comments, etc. If you know someone that we have left out of this message, or someone that would be interested, definately let us know and forward it along. Thanks for reading...!!
- Jason and Shana!