Look Mum I’m writing on a weekly schedule
again! Hahaha. I expect this will last all of today.
So last week I talked about how my new job is
like…bewilderingly good and I can’t really get over myself about it. I have a
bunch of Feels on the matter but that generally continues to be the case.
This week I’d like to focus on my second professional life:
my experience as an entrepreneur/small business owner.
When asked how I felt about starting Queen ofStrawbs I responded, “My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner.”
Everything that’s happened about becoming a small food business owner in one of
the coolest foodie scenes in the country has been positive. The margins are
huge but I’m staying in the black on my hobby. There is literally nothing more
I could ask for.
A lot of folks have asked if I will be selling my jam at
farmer’s markets. I usually respond that I’m struggling to keep up with my
friend requests and then usually get a puzzled look in return. It recently
occurred to me that the average person does not regularly communicate with 1000
people on any platform. If 30% of my “friend” base on Facebook were to buy 1
jar of jam each, that’s still 300 jars of jam for me to make and distribute. This
is not including people I work with, people I attend synagogue with and other
tenants at the share kitchen I rent. If I were able to produce adequate supply
for all of those people, yeah—maybe I’d consider taking my jams to a farmer’s
market. In the meantime, my side hustle is intense enough as is.
And then there’s this guy:
This guy has bought close to 20% of every jam I have made to
date. He freaking loves my jam. He loves my jam enough that I think everyone in
his life is getting a jar for Christmas. And if they all like my jam, that’s
another whole network I just acquired. Like, damn yo. Slow down.
I’m loving all the things my friends are doing with the jam.
A common recipe is yogurt with muesli/granola and jam on top. Some friends
introduced me to the wonders of hollowing out one of those crappy little
croissant from the supermarket, filling it with jam and microwaving it for 15
seconds:
That one was actual heaven. It was so good I forgot I was
the one who made the jam.
The same couple made a mixed drink and called it a Sara
Jewlep and it looks as follows:
The recipe:
- Bourbon
- Mint
- Queen of Strawbs "Get Stuff Done" jam
Another friend made shortbread cookies:
And like…I’m completely in love with every single photo I
get. Everything looks phenomenal and the fact that something I made with my
hands is bringing people joy is literally the best feeling I have ever felt in
my life.
- I pay my landlady money and I get a shelf in a walk in freezer to keep my fruits.
- There are ladles and scoopers of multiple sizes. It turns out that ladles come in 3 oz and 4 oz varieties, which is super helpful when you need to fill a jam jar to 7.75oz.
- INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH NINJA BLENDER
- Dish washing machine that washes and sanitizes in 3 minutes <<<makes all the rent I pay 1000% worth it.
- 6 burner gas range
- A Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer for the Gods (rando internet person for scale).
- Stainless steel surfaces that can just be wiped down and sprayed with bleach.
- A mop and floors that are easy to mop.
- Did I mention I don’t have to wash my dishes by hand? I don’t have to wash my dishes by hand.
- Walk in freezer that freezes blueberries to marbles in 1 hour (I timed it).
- INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH NINJA BLENDER. No more hand processing, ever.
- Bose sound system with a Tupac Pandora station. Tupac has become my mandatory soundtrack. Biggie can join too.
I invited some friends to help me this weekend where I
attempted some very aggressive goals: three flavors and processing 60 lb fruit.
Let me just say that it absolutely wouldn’t have happened without them and I
owe them much but all I have is gratitude and jam so I paid them in that. I’m
going to name the couple AdventureTeacher and King of Pomegranates (or KPom). I
call him the King because he singlehandedly processed 50 lb of pomegranates. We
all got our talents.
I really liked AdventureTeacher’s remarks upon the kitchen:
“This place isn’t fancy. It isn’t huge. It just has the best stuff in it. It’s
like they went with absolutely no frills and just went straight for quality.”
This warmed the depths of my utilitarian heart. That’s exactly what I love
about my kitchen.
I emphasized to my friends that just because I was setting
crazy expectations for myself, I did not set the same for them and they were
free to go when they needed. They stayed 8 hours, for which I am eternally
grateful. It turns out I was starved for friendship and companionship and
hanging out all day made me feel much more sane. (That goes for all the other
friends I’ve had seen in meatspace in the past 5 days or so. The sanity benefit
of spending time physically present with friends and family is absolutely
irreplaceable)
I, however, did not give myself a break and I worked for
nearly 13 hours straight. The issue with jam is that once ya pop the fun don’t
stop. If you have jam on the stove, you need to see that jam through to a
jar/can until it’s sealed. I successfully met my goal and here is a glimpse of
the final products:
I’m really excited about the flavors. I used the blueberries
I froze during my first couple days at the kitchen. There are three flavors:
·
Blueberry, white nectarine, ginger
·
Blueberry, pomegranate, vanilla and fresh sage
·
Pomegranate, mint (spearmint) and cumin
The final flavor is hands-down my favorite. It’s also my
first jelly! (Jelly does not have fruit pulp. Jam has some, preserves, like
“Get Stuff Done” and "Summer Jam" have whole fruit pieces.)
I have not fully decided on flavor names but I think the
blue/nect/ginger will be called “Morning, Darling” and the pom jelly will have
Moroccan in the name. I definitely leaned into my deep memory of Moroccan food
of my childhood to put that flavor combo together. It will work excellently on
meats, particularly white meat like chicken breast or pork.
It turns out I have a word that’s in my head but it’s not a
word, it’s a hand motion. It’s the motion of opening a lever 90°. I
use this word/motion to describe how I pair savory components with the
overwhelming/overpowering aspects of fruit. With pomegranates, the overwhelming
attribute is the sour, so the compliment I chose was cumin. I don’t know if
this is a real thing or I’m just weirdly good at identifying these pairs.
::shrugville::
The real treasure of working in a shared kitchen with other
food entrepreneurs is the people. The people who work in my kitchen are the
most wonderful, generous and lovely people I’ve ever met in a professional
setting. Working together in the setup we do, it is common for folks to share
resources, share tips/suggestions/opinions about vendors and most importantly:
SHARE FOOD. And the other chefs in my kitchen are amazing. They make little
macrons, lumpias, all manner of baked goods…it’s just basically heaven TBH.
One instance that really summed it up was when I worked in
the kitchen this weekend and some of my dishes (I’d left them soaking)
disappeared. I asked the guy from the other company what happened and he just
shrugged and was like “Eh, we’re all in here together. We help each other out.
Welcome to kitchen life.”
It’s an interesting juxtaposition of drilling life, which
I’m learning more and more about. First of all, within the context of drilling
I am hired as oversight and management. I liked the way one trainer put it: "we’re the professionals, [the drillers] are the experts.” They carry
two 100lb sacks of cement on their shoulders, I carry a clipboard and nitrile
gloves. Drillers, so far as I’ve met them, tend to use crude language but are
generally not rude. Not that kitchen folks have prim mouths—I certainly do not,
in either context--- it’s just that working in a kitchen seems softer, in a
way. They’re both kinda harsh work conditions with lots of physical exertion. Overall
I didn’t get very close with any of the drillers or my work colleagues. I
parted ways for the week with a firm handshake. I hope that was the right thing
to do. Corporate interactions are so confusing, esp in a white collar version
of a blue collar job. Light Blue Collar, I guess. Like my arts high school motto “Fight high school fight,
for the blue and the liiight blue.” You
would think so many artists in one place would choose better spirit colors.
Kitchen folks are also more up in each others’ lives than I
expected going in. Everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. I don’t
mean like business plan kind of business, more like who’s going out with whom
type thing. One time there was a drug phone found in the doorway and that
rippled through the tenant like a gossip wave. We have our own Facebook group.
I think this is a side effect of having a small business: your personal life
and your professional life don’t really get the luxury of separating. It’s all
you, all the time. I like it for that very reason. As long as I make good jam
and I want to keep being there, I’m allowed to be exactly who I am.
Being in control of my own business, being a little bit my
own boss has been a great experience for my sense of myself as a leader. I
don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep doing this because my day job
requires a lot of logistics so having a logistics heavy hobby is pushing my
limits. I am struggling with my demand. Freakin’ everyone wants my jam. And I
don’t really know how to alert people in a kind and fair way to let them know
my jam is on sale before it sells out. Hopefully having a bigger supply this
time will buy me some more time. My last batch, after distribution to my
GoFundMe backers sold out after one day of my announcing publicly that
jam was for sale. 3.5 gallons of jam
completely gone in 3 days.
I am definitely going to finish out my contract (and complete
the jam from the stored fruit I made in August) but I am probably going to put
this experiment on hold until I can get a more reliable travel schedule. Being
that I was 100 mi south of home on Friday and I’m on a flight to somewhere 800
mi north on Tuesday, it might be a good minute before I have a “predictable”
schedule.
But, as Tupac says, “That’s just the way it is”
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