new beginnings

Lenore used to teach high school. She told me how each year meant a new beginning because the student were new, of course, and her curriculum could be rewritten for a fresh start. She’d keep what worked and dreaming up new stuff. She would tell me that she enjoyed thinking up ways to motivate students when Sept rolled around. Her classes were called “culinary arts” and they were for students aspiring to be chefs.  Her inspiration for lesson plans often came from current events and movies. This was all before the food network, though, and I have a feeling it might be pretty different for her today. In any event, it occurs to me that she was doing then what she does now for our business. She didn’t call it marketing then, but it was similar–trying to inspire the students and to attract more of them at the same time. As we are in a slow season right now, we too are planning marketing strategies to bring our customers back again and to inspire new ones to come for the first time. I can now relate to what she was talking about back in those years, because doing business here in CB is really like starting over each year, and dreaming up a new beginning of sorts as we get closer to another busy summer is very motivating for me.

As of yet, our plans are to focus on getting done what we’ve already dreamed up–like getting some of our products to market and maybe having them ready by farmers market.  We are bringing back FAMILY MEAL for the summer. This is the one that we invite customers to come on a first come first serve basis and they eat what we make for the staff meal. Only once we start inviting guests, we don’t depend so much on the leftovers, but rather actually plan the menus. The criteria for a family meal is that it be like the old diner blue plate special or what my mom calls comfort food.  It  is fun for us to do it, but more importantly our guests seemed to enjoy it too.

We are happily looking forward to the new summer season  approaching.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 6:19 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “new beginnings”

1. Marcia Zegar Says:
   March 2nd, 2010 at 9:06 pm

   Always great to get an e-mail from EVOO . . . and dream that someday I’ll have a break from Speech/Language Intervention with students and get to vacation in CB!

   BOB– I am hoping that you were energized by the (possibly January?) issue of Sunset and the article on making cheese. It sounded like a TERRIFIC EVOO class and I would LOVE to join a class instructed by your dynamic duo!! That would be fantastic!

   SO . . let me know about any new innovative classes you’d like to offer and I’ll come and bring my enthusiasm and adoration for you and Lenore and EVOO! I so appreciate EVERY class I’ve attended at EVOO! I’ve learned so much!

   Hope you’re both doing well! Dreaming of CB . . . Marcia Zegar

   Ps — hugs to Lenore!

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