How much can you earn at a one-day fair in a small town. I share my first experience.
5 years ago, when I was just starting to bake cakes, I could not even imagine that one day I would sell my desserts at the fair. A couple of years later, I was invited to participate in a city fair. I agreed and began to think what I would sell there. Is it possible to make money by trading at the fair without having any experience, I will tell you at the end, and now I will share how I prepared for it.
The fair was held in my hometown of Zhukovsky. The registration fee was small, so I decided to try my hand. I had never exhibited at similar events before and had no idea what would be required.
To begin with, I made a list of products with which I can exhibit: piece desserts, which are convenient to eat on the go, and pastries. Remembering my impressions from other fairs, I decided to add homemade lemonades.
After drawing up the menu, I began to calculate how many products I could sell. When all the calculations were summed up, I realized that I hadn't thought at all about where I would store the desserts so that they would not deteriorate in hot weather.
Fortunately, I had a small display-case refrigerator, but it turned out that the fair would be held without access to electricity. I already wanted to remove desserts from the menu, but the organizer promised to provide a gasoline generator.
This turned out to be not the only difficulty that I had to face. The day before the start of the fair, when all the products were ready, it began to get colder. I realized that a huge assortment of delicious lemonades would be useless if it was cold.
The way out was found by chance. When I was buying disposable utensils at the wholesale market, the seller heard me discussing a sudden change in the weather with my wife and advised me to take a gas stove with me and make tea. But I had another idea.
When I got home, I added spices to the lemonade and cooked a non-alcoholic punch. It turned out to be very tasty and warming. Now I could quickly turn lemonade into punch in bad weather. Let's tell you how it went in the end.
On day X, we arrived at the event in a couple of hours. I was worried that we would be parting for a long time, and took more time. But in the end we got through quickly. Here relatives helped, nevertheless I came to my hometown. Such an early appearance played into our hands.
When the rest of the participants began to pull up and exhibit, chaos began around, which ended only half an hour after the official opening. At the time of launch, our shop was one of the few operating, and this helped to make good sales from the very beginning.
The weather was good, but by the middle of the day there was a light rain and it got cold. A gas burner came to the rescue, and not only visitors, but also participants of the fair began to buy up hot punch.
Towards the end of the event, it became clear that it would not be possible to sell everything and, in order not to take the products back home, I decided to sell the combo at nice prices. This made it possible to sell off almost all of the stock. During the whole day, I did not keep track of how much I managed to earn, but this was the first thing I did when I returned home.
When I calculated all expenses and incomes, it turned out that the first fair was successful. I not only repaid expenses (and in fact I had to buy a lot of different equipment, dishes and other things), but also earned.
In total for this fair I got 11 thousand rubles of net profit. A lot or a little, everyone decides for himself, but I was pleased with the result. I got a lot of experience while preparing for the fair and while it was taking place.
I have a lot of inventory left, which was useful to me at the following fairs, as well as culinary master classes. But that is another story. If you are interested in learning about how to conduct a pastry master class without experience, let me know in the comments.