German American Society Oktoberfest 8/1/2016

After a long hot summer, festival event time was finally here. Our first event for the fall 2016 season was the first Oktoberfest of the month. The German American Society of Central Florida was the site of our event--a cute building whose facade looks like a Bavarian chalet. Behind the building is a large German Bier Garten. It was all decorated with red,black,and gold banners and flags (the German national flag colors). Multiple tents with cooks preparing bratwurst, potato pancakes, and hotdogs. Other tents were busy dispensing beer with numerous "maidens" decked out in colorful dirndls and men in lederhosen. The atmosphere was quite festive. A German band played under the gazebo with dancers twirling around to the sounds of the Kufstein Leid (a village called Kufstein located in the Alps. Kufstein Leid simply means "The Kufstein song"). Authentic German bagels, apple streudel, German beer, brats, saurbraten, and German potatoe pancakes and potato salad--could anything be better! The organization of the event was excellent thanks to Bob Stover and his crew. We were poised to make the proverbial "killing," until the skies opened up around 5pm and dumped inch after soggy inch of rain. It poured for three hours straight. We ended a night of hard work with less than $200 to share between the two of us. Being a food vendor is not for the faint of heart or the lazy. It is always a gamble owing to weather, temparature, age of crowd, numbers of event goers, the product a vendor offers, and competition (how many other vendors are selling the same thing). We are still in the learning curve mode, but have learned much. For example, we now specialize at events with a limited menu. We specialize in Conecuh sausage on a bun with grilled onions, our roasted corn, fresh from the Texas corn roaster, and one of two sides--homemade cheese grits or friend potatoes & onions. We also bring one dessert item, which is usually strawberry shortcake. After many trials and many failures, our menu is now firmed up. Sincer we were not in charge of the weather, we packed up our soggy tent, coolers, cornroaster, half a dozen plastic tubs, not to mention 6 bushels of corn that didn't sell because of the weather, and headed back to the Villages. There's always another event to get ready for, so I've gotta run and put together our event spreadsheet, analyze the event, and put 8/1/2016 in the books.