Here we go!

Things are starting to take off!  Monday was an incredibly huge day for A Flying Sausage!

The bank wasn't going to be ready until 4pm on Monday, so starting Sunday evening, we were counting down the hours.  "19 hours to go!"  Monday morning, we woke up and the first thing out of our mouths was a current count on how many hours were left.  Throughout the day, we were texting with each other, and the butterflies were growing.  We had to have insurance on the truck before we could sign the loan, so Thomas got that all taken care of.  Finally, it was time!  The I's were dotted and the T's were crossed, and we had a check in our hands! We were SO EXCITED!!!!

We flew over to A Hot Mess Food Trucks to hand the check to Tom.  The truck is ours, our equipment is being ordered, and this is REAL FOLKS!! (Insert happy scream here)  We are set up to go work on one of his trucks next weekend so we can get our feet wet by getting a feel for how a truck is different than working on the line at a restaurant.  We will also be meeting with the graphic artist in the very near future to get our logo hammered out and to design the wrap that will go on our truck!  We can't wait to have these pictures to post for you!  Once we have our logo, we can order our business cards and shirts and all the other great Kickstarter gear that you can receive by pledging to us!

We have also ordered our commercial sausage stuffer and our immersion circulator.  Those should be in within the next week, and we will start cranking out sausages and making our friends and family guinea pigs to taste test them! 

We literally could not have done any of this without Thomas' mom.  She has been right here with us every step of the way, and believes in us so incredibly much.  She came up to help us dot those i's and cross those t's, and she was just as excited as we were!  In addition to all that, she brought us a desk to get our home office all set up!  It's another piece that was necessary for us to put in all the hours needed to keep everything organized, cost all of our recipes, create all of our merchandise, and keep tabs on all the pledges on Kickstarter. (Do you like how I threw that in?  haha)  

Seriously, we have received a few extremely generous pledges on Kickstarter, but we are not even close to our goal.  Our first post about Kickstarter on Facebook was seen by 878 people.  If every one of those people pledged only $5, we would be JUST short of our goal!!!  $5 is a cup of coffee these days, and it would mean a HUGE difference to us!!  If we don't hit our goal by November 16, we do not receive any of the pledges that were made.  Please, please share our Kickstarter on your facebook page and tell ALL your friends, and pledge!!! 

I know that a lot of people are waiting until they get paid to make a pledge, but as long as you have your pledge amount available in your account by November 16, you don't have to wait!  Your card won't be charged until that date, so please pledge now!  

If you haven't clicked on one of the three links above, here is it again!

OUR KICKSTARTER LINK!

Getting off the ground...our Kickstarter campaign!

*I've made every effort to locate the author of this quote, and have not been able to.  I will happily give credit if and when I am able to determine the author.  But for now...just know it wasn't us.*

I'm sure you remember our Hurry Up and Wait post from August 29.  All of a sudden, it's more like everything has switched into hyperspeed!  Monday is going to be a HUGE day for us!  We are signing on our loan and ordering our grinder and stuffer (we've been practicing with our smaller grinder and stuffer attachments on our home chef KitchenAids, and we need to be able to crank out WAY more than these itty bitty's can handle!)

Once we have signed the loan, the check will be cut that day to Tom and Jen, and our truck will be next in line!  We should have our doors open by the end of November, or early December!!!  Are you freaking out?  We are freaking out (a little)!  We have lists and lists of things we need to get done before then, but thankfully we have amazing people helping us go step by step to make sure we get all the legal stuff done that we need to.  We will be testing massive amounts of sausages, so we will be hitting up family, friends, and probably even random people to taste test them and give us honest feedback.  

We still can't do this without help, though!  We have had so many people say that they wish they had a way to help, and now you do!  We just launched our Kickstarter campaign TODAY!  You can donate anywhere from $5- $1000, and there are rewards you will earn by helping us out on every level!  You can get a meal on us, an amazing T-shirt with our logo on it, VIP passes to an exclusive Kickstarter party, a breakfast for you and friends delivered to your location of choice (in Jacksonville only), and even a sausage making demo!!  One of my favorite rewards, though, is that many of the levels include your name being added to our custom painted menu board!  This is an example of one of the boards we have made, and ours will be similar, but the names will be added all around where the red and white checkered pattern is.

There is one caveat to this campaign, though.  If we don't meet our goal of raising $5000, we don't get ANY of it!  So every little bit helps!  We have 30 days to raise $5000! (If we do not hit this number, none of our sponsors cards will be charged, so don't worry about that.) Please go check out our Kickstarter page to see the full list of rewards, and help us REALLY take flight, and stay in the air once we do take off!!!  We appreciate everyone's support, and have been so encouraged by all the amazing people surrounding us this far in our process!  We cannot wait to show our gratitude by bringing Jacksonville incredible gourmet mini sausages!

In case you didn't see the link above, here it is again!!

The Jacksonville Food Truck Competition and an Update

We attended the Jacksonville Food Truck Competition at the Landing on Saturday, October 3.  The turnout was absolutely incredible!  There were so many people there that just walking up and down the rows of trucks was a daunting task.  We mused that it will be SO much better next year when we can experience this event from INSIDE a truck.  We had a fabulous time walking, scoping out the trucks and what they had to offer, their price points, and keeping a close eye on the quantity of people the trucks we able to turnover in set periods of time.  It seemed in the amount of time we were there, that each truck had no less than 50 people in their lines at all times, and that they were pushing out that amount of orders in about a half hour.  Ah.  Maze.  Ing!

Certain trucks were definitely more popular than others, and we chose our food from trucks where we would not be in line with 100 other people.  No joke.  Some of the trucks had lines that long.  It was a feat just to determine which line belonged to which truck, in some cases.  "How pissed would you be if you got in a line, waited for 45 minutes, only to realize you were in the wrong line?"  I can see how that could have happened at that event.  In some cases, we just chose trucks that we would like to follow and eat at in the future when they will be elsewhere and the wait won't be so long.

To give you an update on our current progress, we have been approved for a loan.  We are weighing our options on this loan, as it isn't nearly our original asking amount.  We have a couple of people close to us that have jumped readily on board with helping us out financially, and we could get our doors open for what we have put together so far.  What we have determined, though, is that we would feel much more comfortable with a cushion before we open our doors.  We don't want to get the doors open, just to have to shut them almost immediately if something unplanned were to occur.  Let's be realistic.  That is always a possibility.

We are in the process of starting up a Kickstarter campaign.  To briefly describe what Kickstarter is for those unfamiliar, it is an online community that gives those with a vision a way to fund that vision.  In our case, we will set up a page and describe what we are trying to achieve.  We will set a monetary goal, and a time limit in which to raise that money.  Friends, family, sponsors, or just anyone who thinks our idea is amazing and wants to help has the option to donate at their comfort level.  In order for us to receive funds, though, we must meet our goal in the specified time frame.  If we for some crazy reason didn't meet our goal, we would get nothing, and none of our sponsors would be charged for their pledge.

Our pledge levels will start at $5 and go all the way up to $1000.  Each level has a reward linked to it.  For instance, if you donate $30, you will get a meal voucher, a mug with our logo that grants you free coffee for a year from our truck, a thank you card, and a shout out on all of our social media outlets.  If you decide you would rather donate $50, you will get an invitation for two to join us for a VIP tasting event before we open our doors to the public.   Have some real cash to spare?  Donate $1000 and we will cater an event for up to 40 people for you, you will get to attend our VIP event, you get all of our "swag" (tshirt, hat, mug, sticker) and your name emblazoned on our custom painted menu board.  We have the page set up, and we just have to put the final touches and make those last couple of decisions before we go live.

We cannot wait to join the Jacksonville food truck community!  Please start considering if you would be willing to help us make our dream a reality, and get A Flying Sausage off the ground!!!  Keep your eyes peeled for our Kickstarter Campaign coming VERY SOON!!