We did a soft-launch, in-person event before we go live to the public... heres how it went
A series of 50 posts in 50 days - Day 46/50
We go live on 12/2. On 11/24, we did an "event" to get some buzz going.
We chose this day because its usually one of the busiest days at our host location, The Ohio Taproom, and we thought it would be a great way to put our operation to the test.
Recall the following:
Open from 4pm-9m
1 item on the menu: the 2 slider combo
Customers choose Classic, Angry, or Grilled Cheese
Comes with tater tots (plain or garlic parm +$1)
Entirely digital ordering -- go to website, select items, check out, get text when ready
We forecasted 150 orders
50 "Free vouchers" given to loyal Ohio Taproom Customers
50 vouchers were given to friends, family, and foodies
We were "open to the public" and anticipated another 50 orders or so to come from guests
That put us at the 150. We assumed only about at 80-90% capture rate for the vouchers, so the rest would be for any walk ups. So we brought enough food for about 150 2-slider combos...
And I'm happy to report that we did 115 2 Slider combos!!!!
We assumed an 80-90% capture rate on the vouchers, so we are pretty pumped to get that close on our forecast with literally 0 previous data to go on.
88 total tickets throughout the night, so about 18 per hour. Which means we were pushing out a ticket on average every 3 minutes throughout the night.
A majority of orders were a single 2-slider combo, but tickets had 2 combos, some had 3, and our max ticket was 6 2-slider combos on a single ticket. Thats 12 sliders, or 24 patties. Its the entire grill for a few minutes (sliders cook fast).
Sales doesn't make any sense to report right now because almost the entire night was comped (by design).
But in terms of volume, heres how the distribution broke out:
19% from 4pm to 5pm
24% from 5pm to 6pm
27% from 6pm to 7pm
25% from 7pm to 8pm
5% from 8pm to 9pm
The first ticket was at 4:07pm. The last ticket was about 8:30pm.
Things got really crazy right away, then at some point between like 5:45 and 6:15 it was DEAD. Crickets. I think 1 order came in.
Then things picked back up and were even crazier from 6:15 til about 8. After 8 things got really quiet and only a couple orders trickled in.
From 115 2-slider combos, the style distribution was:
63% Classic (72 Orders, 144 sliders, 288 patties)
29% Angry (33 Orders, 66 Sliders, 132 patties)
8% Grilled Cheese (10 orders, 20 sliders, no patties)
Pretty much exactly what we thought!
Here are 10 takeaways from the night:
1. Labor is high and the operation is a bit tricky.
I think theres a ton of room to get this back in check. But objectively its high for what we hope is a scalable concept.
We had 4 people working during the service. Heres how it shook out:
Andy was on the grill, all night. He cooked 420 patties. Add 5% for some screw ups. Add 5% more for some un-documented orders (some for the staff of the truck + the OTR).
So add 10% more brings us to 462. Andy did 462 patties in about 4.5 hours of service. Thats a lot. Andy just ruled the grill... flipped the patties, cheesed em', onioned em', and stacked em'. Then he slid them over to my station.
Andy VERY SMARTLY brought along a staff member from his current business Kinetic, who had years and years of food truck experience. His name is Mark, and he was a massive help the entire night. We needed the experience as me and Smash brother DJ (youngest brother) were rookies.
Mark took the tickets from DJ, called out patties/sliders to Andy (4 PATTIES.... 4 PATTIES HEARD!), ran tater tots (plain and garlic parm), and staged the sliders with sauce/pickles/jalapenos.
I did buns (I guess based on math above, I did 231 buns + 20 grilled cheese buns, so 251), took completed sliders and placed them on Mark's staged sliders, ran any restocks (garlic aioli's, ketchups, third pans of starred cheese, third pans of smashed patties we did that morning). Also did some IT troubleshooting, some pickup window chatting with guests/foodies/reporters etc. and the "leftover" tasks.
Smash Brother DJ staged boxes (add cookie, add paper liner, hand to team when ready), put completed orders in hotbox, did all ticket management + the POS tablet, and distributed orders as customers came up.
I think we can get this down to 3 once we streamline things, assuming the same volume. If volume is much lighter, then 2 is possible. But light volume = not what we want.
This will be the thing to solve as we proceed with this pop up. Streamlining labor + matching to volume.
2. We need to reorganize the flow of the truck.
We tried to talk through how things would go, but until you're in the heat of the moment you don't really know.
Lots of inefficiencies. Things going back and forth, over top and around, just not good.
We'll fix it.
3. About 80% of people get the digital ordering thing. 20% don't and were pretty annoyed.
We had a few walk ups say "I don't want to do that, can I just do a burger". Stuff like that.
We wanted to make a great impression on night 1, so the few times people were raising a fuss, we did just manually take their order.
But this completely slowed things down and disrupted the operation. We need to be stern about the fact that we are a 100% digital operation, where the guest makes the order and it comes to the kitchen.
We expect this will continue to happen since we look like a food truck at a bar. And people expect to walk up and place an order at a food truck at a bar.
4. I don't think we'll be nearly that busy on our public launch day.
The 115 orders was the result of a highly targeted effort. Specific invites and free food.
That won't be the case on 12/2.
We'll have to fight tooth and nail to get orders in the door.
I expect things to come back down significantly, maybe even half as many orders. Then, as we grow our presence, and start to establish a repeat customer base, we'll build back up to this volume over time.
5. I expect our real distribution to be a little flatter.
This was the night before thanksgiving. Orders died around 8. On delivery apps, I just don't think that things will hit in quite the same flurry. I've heard from other operators its just flatter for off premise orders.
6. 50% of people didn't find our cookies.
We hid a free cookie underneath the paper liner of each box. We took a gamble that people would find it. Half did, and were FLOORED.
The other half threw it away 😂
We knew this would happen, and were fine with it because its a low cost (but DELICIOUS) cookie, and figured that the people that did find it would be delighted.
What we didn't account for was that when the people that threw away their box with the cookie still in it FOUND OUT THERE WAS A COOKIE, they were super bummed!
Maybe we'll change where we place this, but we kind of like the surprise factor. And maybe the word will spread over social media.
7. We have NAILED the product.
People love the boxes. People love the food. The presentation is amazing. The portions seem to be right.
One person said that they felt they didn't get enough. Luckily we'll offer the 3-slider combo. The overwhelming response though was "2 and tots is plenty."
8. Grilled cheese is super annoying to make.
Its just a different process, so when you're rolling through 10, 20, 30 sliders, then have to drop in a grilled cheese, its disruptive.
We need to figure out what we're doing with this one.
9. Our food and experience shares on social channels really well.
This was what we designed it for, but it was awesome to see this validated.
Every photo and boomerang and share that people make looks amazing. Its a different and unique experience, that has some virality to it.
10. Food trucks have LOTS of pros and cons.
I'm going to write a full post on this for tomorrow.
Stay tuned -- its a roller coaster.
Overall the soft launch of our brand was a MASSIVE success in my mind.
Thank you to The Ohio Taproom for being such awesome hosts.