We Didn't Buy A Truck.

On Saturday evening, our Kickstarter campaign to purchase the most adorable pie truck ever wrapped up its 30 day run.  And you probably already know this because if I've mentioned the campaign once here, then I've mentioned it 612 times.  Whew. Sadly, we fell a short of our funding goal.  And if you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, falling short of the funding goal means we get zero dollars and the credit cards of all those generous donors are never charged.  Our original goal was to raise the purchase price of the truck...$18,000.  By Saturday morning, we had raised $12,079...which, when you think about it, is a tremendous amount of cash in thirty days.  After a serious amount of internal debate, I did send the seller of the truck a message and asked her if she would be interested in taking an offer of $12,079. While we would have to front the difference to Kickstarter to make the project fund, we knew we would get that money back and be able to use it toward the sales tax, property tax, cost of wrapping the truck, the insurance, and any mechanical repairs it might need.

So I just threw that offer out there at her and meanwhile I worked through one of the busiest Saturdays we've ever had at PJP Buttonwood.  Which was helpful because I didn't have a lot of time to obsessively check Kickstarter or stew around about our options.  Mainly, I tried to be zen with the whole thing.  And if you know me in real life, then you probably laughed out loud just now because while I'm a lot of things, being zen about highly competitive situations is not in my skill set.

When the seller responded and said she thought she could maybe take $13,000 and we would have a deal, my competitive little heart went right into planning mode.  I was working to think how at 5:30 on Saturday night I would move money around and log in and donate the $5,921 to make the campaign fund.  And then how we would budget for sales and property tax, insurance, and adding our logo.  And then because Hy-Vee is my life, I went grocery shopping for my family groceries because I had a busy Sunday ahead, which is the short story to how I was roaming the grocery aisles while talking to Jeanne on the phone about our maybe pie truck while I cried a bit.  You know, as one does.

It likely won't surprise when I say that Jeanne was not in agreement with the scenarios I had in mind to make the truck ours.  In all aspects of life, Jeanne is a believer that if something is meant to be, it should happen easily.  So all this last minute finagling to fund the campaign sent up her red flags.  And she started to think about the money we would need to spend in January to get the truck ready to go.  And just how long it might be until we found the first event of 2018 to try the truck out and generate some revenue.  And then she swayed me to her side with the very real worry that we would pace around a relatively slow PJP Buttonwood in January while looking out the window at the truck parked in our parking lot knowing that we had spent a lot of money that made our slowest month feel even MORE slow.  Reminding me of January is my kryptonite.

Since I couldn't refute any of Jeanne's points and since I was crying in the canned vegetable aisle at Hy-Vee out of frustration and general nine-days-before-Christmas exhaustion, we decided to let the clock run out and accept what the universe was offering us...a very solid example of all the generosity and love we have in the #WPD community and the opportunity to grow it in our storefront in 2018.

So if you donated, thank you times one million.  And if you wanted to, but just couldn't afford it because this is an expensive time of year, just knowing you believed in our idea is enough to make our hearts full.  And if you didn't because you thought the whole thing seemed crazy, well...you know how we are, and for that we are thankful.

So, here's to 2018 and whatever happens at a stationary PJP.  Whatever it is, I'm certain it will be epic...