Thursday, May 21, 2009

Chicago trip is on....sort of.

We are headed to Chicago for sure. We bought the tickets and hotel room last night. I used Priceline and named my own price.....and boy did I ever. I had waited too long to book and the airline tickets went up $150 each. I used the Priceline system last night and got the airline tickets cheaper that they would have been originally. I also used it to get a 4 star hotel room for cheaper than staying in a bed and breakfast. We are talking about getting a $300 a night room for $64 a night at a Hyatt. Yeah, that is VERY cheap. The only problem is that now we don't have the money to attend the classes....oops! A financial screw up on my part caused that, but will hopefully be fixing it this weekend (selling crap on Craigslist and Ebay).

Still working on my list of items that I will have to get before I can open. I think the top of my list is Money! I am going to try and do some computer work to gain the extra funds needed, but not sure how that is going to work out. If all else fails, I will try to swing a loan...but didn't want to be that much in debt for this business. It doesn't seem like you would need that much, but I think that having a months worth of food items would be the normal in this situation and that costs money. I also still have to get new pans and fix the sinks on my cart. It is still a go, but just getting a little more difficult.

I do have something else I am working on that is taking some of my time. I can't talk about it yet because nothing is set in stone so far. Not sure that it will benefit either of our businesses, but hoping that it gives us some exposure that will bring customers in. I will speak more about it when the deal is signed and they allow me to openly talk about it.....don't want to jinx it before it actually happens! Just saying that it is exciting and something I never thought we would be able to do and hope that it happens! Pretty vague? That's the point! Just trying to get it off my chest without giving it away.

Nothing else really going on for now. Found out I have some competition that is already open, but reports are that their location is horrible and no one is eating there. It is an indoor spot that only has 2 outdoor tables and cooks the hot dogs in slow cookers. I had thought about doing that before the cart, but decided that the cart is part of the appeal. I did happen to see that my baker is advertising for this other business. Will have to figure out what is going on and might have to change to another vendor. I don't think it would be right to have them choose between the two of us or advertise for both of us. I wish my competition luck and hope that we can share the wealth!

I did get an offer to take over a prime space in Austin, but the person wanted me to buy everything from them. I don't have the funds to buy their cart, but really want the space. It is on the strip, right across from the UT campus and they have a second bar spot near the campus. I could make some serious money in either of those spots, but will have to hope that they let the spots go and I can get them next year.

I am also working on getting a small video camera so I can do some video blogs while in Chicago. I want to get one of those Kodak hand held cameras so that I can just plug it into the Mac and upload the videos. Anyone know where I can get a good deal on one? Walmart has them for $129, but that is $129 that I just don't have right now. Might have to just use my old Blackberry to take the videos. We will see.

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