Should Have/Could Have/Would Have...

It is hard to believe that just one week ago, we were deep in the throes of preparation for the Roots and Blues festival.  And now that we are past the baking, packaging, and selling of 1,000-ish pies, here is our should have/would have/could have recap...

1. We should have sold water.  The festival organizers required a payment of $400 for the right to sell bottled water in our booth.  We weren't terribly interested in paying $400 to lug in heavy cases of water, so we scoffed at the idea.  Until every fifth person in line ordered a baby pie and a bottle of water.  Hmpf.
2. Offering a variety of pie sizes would have been helpful.  While we knew that taking a nine-inch pie would be sort of silly at a festival, we didn't really count on so many people feeling that the baby pie size was "too much" pie.  Taking our three-inch tarts would have been a good alternative.
3. Chicken pot pies would have sold like crazy.  We had dozens of requests for our homemade chicken pot pie, which is honestly something we never even considered.  To consider it in the future, we would have to figure out how to have an oven on site...and 220 electric...and an okay from the health department...which honestly all sounds like a dream made for the food truck that we don't own.
4. And while we are discussing ovens, having the aroma of freshly baked pie would have only helped us.  Almost every person that visits PJP Buttonwood comments on how great it smells...taking that with us on the road would be the icing on the cake (or uh, the crust to the pie?).
5. A pitcher of mimosas.  Not to sell, but really just for me.  Keepin' it real, peeps.
6. We should have brought shirts to sell.  A lot of people asked.  Our awkward pause after explaining that we never even considered it was um, well, awkward.
7. We could have sold SO MUCH ICE CREAM.  I would guess well over 100 people asked if we had a scoop of ice cream available to add on top of their pie.  Nope.
8. I should have anticipated that introducing our brand to so many new people would open us up to a lot of new fans...and also to a few people who thought our pies were pricey comparative to grocery stores.  (I guess they missed the part about us not being a grocery store.)
9. We would have brought better forks.  Medium weight plastic forks weren't made for our substantial pies.  Sadly, I didn't know that until I purchased 2,000 of them.
10. We should have considered a larger tent.  We rented a single 10x20 booth while most other vendors seemed to rent double the space.  I have no clue what I would have done with the extra space...well, beyond set up ovens, plug in freezers for 300 scoops of ice cream, build a darling t-shirt stand, and stock bottles of ice cold bottle water...