Free Food and Failure

This is the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast with your host, Chris spear. Each week I'll be speaking with food entrepreneurs and people in the culinary industry. If you're interested in learning more about our organization dedicated to helping people build and grow their food businesses, look us up on the web at chefs without restaurants.com and.org and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Chefs Without Restaurants. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris spear. On the show. I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. Their caterers, research chefs, personal chefs, cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers, and all sorts of culinary renegades. I myself fall into the personal chef category as I started my own personal chef business perfect little bites 11 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s, I've literally never worked in a restaurant. Hey, everyone, I hope you're having a great week, I'm starting to come back from the dead from this little allergy thing I've had, so I still might be a little sniffily and nasally sounding, just getting back from the Philly chef conference. So today's episode is going out a little late. That was quite an awesome time. So good to see so many of you there. I think there was like maybe nine of my previous guests who were there. So it was a great time I learned so much. It's really nice to catch up with people. So this week, I have a quick mini episode. I was recently on another podcast and they asked me about what my biggest failure was, or one of my failures. So it wasn't necessarily like a singular failure. It's something that I did repeatedly. And that was doing free events and giving out free food. Now, I'm not saying you should never do events and never give anything away. But I think it's something you should think about. You know, there's guys like Gary Vee, who are like, yeah, work for free work for free work for free. You know, that's kind of okay, if maybe you don't have a physical tangible product. If you're just giving away your time. That's okay. But with food and cooking, the raw cost is so much like food is not cheap. I think we all know that right now. So it's something I just want everyone to think about. So I did talk about like, why it didn't work for me. And I thought it'd be really beneficial to share that here. So it's just a couple of minutes long. I'd love your feedback. Like do you do free events? Do you give away free food? What do you think? Hit me up in the comments whether this is on Facebook or Instagram, go to Instagram at Chefs Without Restaurants and send me a DM or comment on this post when it goes up. And the show will be coming right up after word from this week's sponsor. COVID has redefined the world of dining. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, the personal chef industry experienced record growth. The United States personal chef Association represents nearly 1000 chefs around the US and Canada and even Italy. US PCA provides a strategic backbone that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification and more. It's a reassurance to consumers that the chef coming into their home is prepared to offer them and experience along with their meal. USPTA annual conference is scheduled for July 7 to 10th at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, Florida. For those who supply the industry it's a chance to reach decision makers and the actual buyers of products. You SPCA is currently seeking exhibitors. If you're interested in reaching the decision makers and consumer culinary influencers, this is your show. Please get in touch with Angela at 1-800-955-2138 extension 705 for your custom exhibitor package today. This will be the first time back following the COVID lockdowns and chefs are anxious to connect with industry suppliers. And now on with the show. Thanks so much and have a great week. There are many different types of personal chefs. But for my business, what I wanted to focus on was giving the customer a restaurant style experience in the comfort of their own home. For me, what that means is not only planning a personalized menu for each guest, but also bringing my own cooking equipment and dishware and serving it to people at their table just like they're in a restaurant. So the failure that I want to talk about today is part of the marketing strategy I've employed over the years. This is not a singular failure, but one that I unfortunately repeated a couple of times. When you're starting out in business, I think a lot of people feel like they need to do whatever it takes to get in front of potential customers. For those in the food business, not only personal chefs, but also restaurants, food trucks and caterers. That often means attending events and often giving out free food. On a number of occasions, I paid money to attend events where I had a table got to set up a little display with all my info and hand out free food. Unfortunately, having done this three or four times now I don't think I've ever convert Add a single person into a paying customer this way, people love to show up to these events, shove a little bite of food in their mouth, and then move on to the next table. You're lucky if they even take a business card. One time, an event organizer convinced me that it would be a great opportunity to do this at our local mall for spring bizarre they were having. I think the table maybe cost me 100 bucks, which isn't a big deal, but giving out a couple of 100 portions of free food. That's where it starts to add up. Another time, I was convinced to do a dinner on a boat, I was told it would be a great opportunity. And there would be so many people from the food media there and I'd get lots of jobs out of it. The night was a disaster, I had to drag all my stuff down this long pier, carry it up to the top floor of this boat, and then prepare food all on a grill there. As for the food media that showed up, there were a bunch of 20 Something bloggers, they weren't really the food media, I was expecting their people who just ate the food, took a bunch of photos, posted it on their Instagram stories. And that was it. And as far as I know, I didn't get any gigs because of that. So what was the problem? Well, I spent a lot of time and effort positioning myself as the chef who provides an in home dining experience. As I said, that includes personalized menus, as well as table service, and usually a pretty entertaining show. I don't think there's a way to appropriately translate that same experience when you're standing behind a six foot table in a shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon. And of course, the caliber of food that I'm giving away for a little free byte is not going to be remotely close to what I'll be serving at these dinners. So why did I think this would work? I think I just kept hearing that you needed to get in front of people and that events would be a fantastic way to do that. To be honest, I've talked to a lot of people on my podcast about this. And I don't think anyone I've ever spoken to has said that one of these events turned out to be really successful for them. I think this is something that a lot of people, especially in creative and service lines of work need to think about. I have a lot of friends who are DJs photographers and such, and they all get hit up for free work. I know there's a lot of business gurus out there who preach doing things for free. But in my experience, if you've got the skills, you don't really need to do that. At this point. Now, what used to be my side hustle has been my primary source of income for five years. I've had plenty of customers without having to attend expos or work for free. I really hope this was helpful. Thanks for letting me share my two cents. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and check database. The community is free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.