I guess it was time for the obligatory newspaper photo. I’m not even sure what local rag this was in, but here it is. A couple of people have come up me while popping kettle corn and mentioned they saw it. I suppose this can only help the biz. It kills me that there will always be an error in whatever newspaper article I’m mentioned in. I even gave the guy our magnet which has our name clearly identified as WICKED delicious. Sigh.

I’m also a professional videographer when I’m not making this stuff, so I had a good repertoire going with the newspaper photographer. If you notice during a broadcasted baseball game, there is basically only one good spot to catch most of the action, it’s behind the pitcher zoomed way in so you can see the batter and catcher all in one shot. As with kettle corn, there is only one good spot to catch the “action”; in front of the kettle, opposite side of the popper.

So when this photographer arrived, he immediately got behind me and close to the kettle. I point out to him the universally accepted spot to take the photo; which is in front. He just kind of waves my comment off and continues to crouch behind me. At this point the load of kettle corn I was making goes off and starts to splatter hot oil and kernels in his direction. He makes a yelping sound and scampers off. I start doing Kevin Costner from the J.F.K. movie; “front..and to the side, front…and to the side.” I should mount a little plaque that says “picture spot” onto the side of the sifting bin.

It’s the third day of the season in Springfield and the sale are still holding up! Even though the weather was kinda iffy we still went through 7 1/2 corn oil jugs. This would’ve been a very fine day anytime last year, but it’s only the beginning of this season. As mentioned previously, we’re still missing a bunch of of the vegetable vendors and they’ll show up once something has had time to grow out of the ground. At this rate, we should get a record day sometime in July.

I still find it fascinating monitoring the drug habits of our patrons. (Oh, did I say DRUG habit? I meant kettle corn buying habits.) Above is a typical view of the farmers market this time of the year. It’s not exactly swarming with people.

Now here’s a view of our tent around 4:30 pm. This was our “big rush” around that time. You wouldn’t notice from just driving by, but it’s the steady stream of just one person buying a bag, then someone else appearing 3 minutes later wanting the same. You do this for 5 hours straight and that’s how we end up going through 7 jugs of oil. A small farmers market usually wants $20 a day for us to be there. Many craft festivals easily want $200 out of you before you sell one kernel. I guess the trick is to build up a following of loyal customers who want their fix. Apparently this is how real drug dealers get caught selling out of their homes. There’s never a crowd, but a steady stream of cars coming by all the time. At some point the neighbors notice what’s going on and call the cops. What’s nice about our biz is we sell our “drugs” to the cops.

Another thing that surprised me was the web stats on this website. You people have been visiting this stupid blog big time! As you’ll notice on the chart for April of this year, the blog page gets over 3,500 views, way more than the “buy kettle corn” or the main index page. My main purpose of this blog was to just generate crap about kettle corn so Google would rank our webpage higher in it’s rankings if you searched for “kettle corn”. I mean…c’mon, it’s about a guy in a tent hocking “drugs”.

The Framingham Farmers market will be starting back up in June, so I’ll be yammering on about that. I’ve got an idea to help market ourselves and hopefully we can bring those numbers up to what we’re doing in Springfield. Oh yea, and we’ve started to sell kettle corn online again. Within 24 hours of setting up the webpage, we had 2 orders. I think they were customers who had bought a bag online in the past. Let’s see how online sales pan out this year.

Well, here goes another year at the Springfield Farmer’s Market at the X. I look forward to this because we do well and Steve and I get to bang back a few beers and rummage through the liquor store with our loot later that night. We also buy dinner for Steve’s family with some of the loot and I get a chance to play his kids off of Steve’s parenting skills. (Me: “Hey kids, tell your dad it’s SAFER if you have your own cell phone.” Steves kids: “IT’S SAFER IF WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN CELL PHONES!” Note: Steve has 3 kids.)

So wow…we weren’t expecting this to happen. It’s a rule that the first day of the market is the slowest day. None of the veggie vendors are even here, so we’re only about at half capacity. This farmers market is one of the earliest ones in this area to get started. We were figuring we would make enough for the beer and food for tonight. The first half of the day with Velma was OK, but no great shakes. About what we were expecting. Steve tends to arrive after his teaching job around 3 o’clock and takes over from there. That’s when the kids and their parents arrived. We had a huge rush starting around 4 o’clock and didn’t stop till closing time and beyond. We’ve been in this spot for a few years now, so apparently we’ve created a nice, deep “groove” of addiction for this stuff. All of our repeat customers just started up where they left off from last year. This day would’ve been a record day in our first year there, but it wasn’t slow compared to anytime during last years market. We’re thinking, “if this is the FIRST day…we’re gonna get murdered with business as the year goes along.” We were still popping after all the other tents were packed up and had left. It’s kind of embarrassing.

To keep track of how much product we’re moving, we count the amount of empty oil containers that are accumulating. (Counting the money is kind of tough when it’s all small bills and a couple of people are making change at the same time.) Four oil containers are normally enough to pop (1) 50 lb. bag of popcorn. I think the most oil containers we’ve used in Springfield was 11. A normal day we use 9. Today we almost finished the 8th. We did pop a whole bunch extra to give away to friends and family though, so the sales weren’t as equal.

I’ve noticed a bunch of people who are getting into the kettle corn business read this blog. Here’s something we stole from a vendor down in Florida. Use a tall Tupperware container with a pour spout for storing and giving out samples. In the past we’ve poured samples from a scoop directly into the hands of our customers. It was kind of fumbly as we tried to get the kettlecorn into their hands without them touching the scoop. (The health department frowns on having the public put their mitts all over the serving utensils.) With the pour spout, you just gotta shake the kettle corn into their paws. I guess they were originally designed to hold a box of cereal.