Last night was the final date for the three public dining dates I'd arranged for this autumm. I haven't felt able to blog about the venture during the last month as it's been something of a roller coaster of emotions, confusion and disappointments and I didn't want to project the wrong impression while I was still trying to encourage people to join the meals.
Keen eyed observers will have spotted that although we had a successful 'dry run' of the Newport Pagnell event with friends from London the actual public night was cancelled as there were only two confirmed bookings by the date and it seemed unfair to get those kind and trusting people to turn out for something that would not, could not be as billed.
This was very disappointing and I put it down to a combination of my poor marketing skills and a dearth of vegan interest in the area.
However to confound my despair the next planned evening, in Nottingham, sold out and we even had a short waiting list. This was more as I'd been hoping and planning for and it was good to give my fledgling catering skills a work out in Paul and Alex's kitchen with tables full of hungry diners to enjoy the food. It seemed to go well with few problems and I hope everyone was as happy and pleased with it as they seemed to be. Nottingham vegans and their friends really are very sociable and lovely.
Particular thanks to Adrian at the Vegan Nottingham guide for allowing me to advertise on his site, it made all the difference.
And so to last night in Ealing. We tried in every way we could to publicise this dinner, with notices in local health food shops, on Twitter, on Supper Club Fans, with a Facebook page, on the Vegan Forum and by plain old begging of our friends and relatives but although I had thought something in Greater London could hardly fail in the end we had just one erstwhile friend in attendance. A very pleasant dinner in great company was had but it could not be described as any sort of public event or successful as a supper club meal.
So, regretfully, the supper club experiment has now ended and it doesn't look like it's worthwhile to try to take it on any further. Time to think of some new adventure to try.
3 comments:
So, one success, two marketing failures in a new venture.
I'd call that a good start.
What would you need to to do to reproduce Nottingham rather than London or Newport Pagnell?
Andrew
A first go at anything will have its ups and downs. The food looks elegant and tasty. Well done for giving it a try, and one out of three isn't bad. Vegan catering sounds like an interesting thing to look into. If you really want to do it; don't give up. :)
I agree with the others - I wouldn't give up too easily because I think it can take time for news of these things to spread. Think setting the dates further ahead might be helpful (well, it would for me), and also maybe trying to go to some of the other vegan events to establish your, ahem, "brand"? The food is so delicious it seems a shame not to spread it around, as it were.
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