Showcase Showdown

At just about a week and a half away from the Roots and Blues Festival, we are officially at DEFCON 1 on the preparation scale.  Planning for something we've never done before - selling pies at a large venue - is an overwhelming prospect...and also one our weaker skills.  It is no secret that we like some last-minute drama, but even I recognize here that running out of pies while thousands of people mill about in Stephens Park is NOT THE SORT OF DRAMA WE ARE LOOKING TO FIND. So, today we learned that we are at Spot 4 on food vendor row.  We will call that home from 4 pm to 11 pm on Friday, 11 am to 11 pm on Saturday, and 11 am to 9 pm on Sunday.  Even looking at that time commitment makes my throat close up a bit.  My only hope is to secure a selfie with Dwight Yoakam sometime during that 25 hour-ish time frame.  And to overcome my phobia of porta-potties...that would be helpful as well.

Here is how we tentatively plan to handle the weekend...I'll head up a team of people selling pies at the festival.  (I'm the extrovert of Team PJP and Jeanne is allergic to any playlist that isn't featured on Spotify's coffeehouse channel.)   Jeanne will stay at PJP Buttonwood and head up a team of people baking pies.  (She likes to be the captain of the ship...and she is way better at it than me.)  We will try to make it seamlessly flow together wherein Jeanne and team make a lot of pies and my team sells a lot of pies.  Goodness, I hope that is actually how the whole thing goes down.  I'm a little scared, honestly.

Trying to plan for how many baby pies to have on hand has been like the Showcase Showdown on Price Is Right.  How do we guess the number closest to what we need without going over?

And the answer, I suppose, is WE GUESS.  All we can do really is start with a solid number of baby pies in stock and see just what the heck happens.  Is that right?  And it leads to a more interesting problem...what to do with PJP Buttonwood next Saturday.  Our normal hours are 9 until 1.  We both feel a bit like the only way we can produce enough pie to sell until 11 pm is to close our doors to walk-in traffic for that morning...but even typing that makes my throat catch. Without question, someone will be disappointed with that decision.  And if we run out of pie in our booth, someone will be disappointed.  And hey, did you know that one of the dirty secrets of entrepreneurship is that trying to figure out how to make everyone happy all of the time will slowly make you crazy?

I wonder what Bob Barker would do.