This weekend we found ourselves at the Village, it was a nice change of pace from standing in Stikland and we were ready for a good party. We planned to leave early the Friday afternoon and we actually did :) After a drive that felt like forever, taking a wrong turn and nearly overshooting the farm....., we arrived. It was around 4pm and I met Philip who showed us where we had to stand.
Our stall at night.
After a chat and a brief chill Michelle and I started with the setup. It took us about an hour or so, beer soon followed and many minutes of relaxing. Friday night was chilled, we found ourselves relaxing hard on our lumo bean bags and before we knew it we had some groovy company, that's what our chill out area is for :)
Michelle doing some kind of disco
inspired move ;)
We got to bed early and slept well after a hard days work. Saterday morning was slow and relaxed, people were starting to arrive now and the party atmosphere was gaining steady momentum. We were set up opposite the camping area so most of the day we just watched other people set up their chill sections and tents. Many new friends were made and some solid connections formed, that's what I love so much about the outdoor trance scene......people are friendly and willing to stop for a chat.
Happiness
Dance floor
Trading was slow, very slow at a stage I thought we weren't even going to break even and then, we whipped out the smokes. Initially we weren't planning on selling cigarettes but as it turned out we had a couple of boxes in stock because we left straight from our spot in Stikland on Friday afternoon. We started out selling them at R30 a box and slowly pushed it up to R40, I know, thats ridiculous right. Surprisingly nobody really complained and I guess if I were in their position I wouldn't of either, if you want smokes you want smokes and you will pay anything for them.
I jokingly told a women that it was R70 for a box and she started counting her coins...... I kind of felt guilty about it for a little while but I knew that if it wasn't for the profit we were making on the smokes we would of made a huge loss this weekend. So cigarettes saved Morningbru at the Village and I thank all you smokers who were willing to part with your forties for a box.
The village - very awesome!
Truly a lot of hard work went into making this one of the most beautiful setups I have seen, thanks village crew.
Gernot you FUNNY owe! lol
Tjad a loyal Morningbru supporter, we found your blanket
dude ;)
Sunday was lekker hot with a light breeze bringing the coolness, by 11: am we were sold out of smokes. I guess I should of gone and bought more because we had about 3 people an hour asking for ciggies the whole of Sunday. So this weekend I learnt that we should stock up hard on smokes because it seems that no one really remembers to bring enough to a party.
Village was great and once again a learning curve, we made it out ok and managed to get enough rest before work on Monday. Today was the first week of our second month on the new spot and it feels good to know that we have been so consistent with our business venture. More posts to follow on our progress and adventures here at Morningbru. I will leave you with a little experiment I produced at the party, a four minute time lapse video of the view from our stall and some of the amazing people we met at the party...
Hey all, last post was a while ago but were back to get you up to speed with what is happening. The Morningbru trailer is done and we are proud to announce that the Village (event) was a huge success. We were feeling the good vibes and love all weekend from start to finish, thank you to everybody who made it out to buy a coffee and muffin from us on the weekend. To all the guys that helped us set up and down a beeeeeg thanks from the Morningbru team.
To the left is the legendary trailer decorated and tagged by our customers with whiteboard markers. The "buy something to write something" campaign added an extra dose of personality, great work people we loved reading them all when we got home on Sunday evening. We have started a facebook "like" page as well so feel free to go "like" us. If you were in any of the pics please tag yourselves to help spread the word.
To the right are happy coffee slurpers enjoying our fresh bru, Coffee goodness all round. We had loads of fun at this event and know that we will be doing this kind of thing as much as possible in the future. If you guys happen to know of an event please feel free to contact us, we will be more than happy for any information regarding an event.
Everybody loves Coffee
Indeed.
In other news we are trying to secure a monthly spot at the O.C LAN parties which are held once a month in bellville having a solid event every month will set Morningbru up, Wunce ! > > wish us luck!! Soon we will also be incorporating the trailer at our usual morning spot offering our R15.00 Coffee Muffin deal to the thirsty traffic.
Week two on our new spot and it is going really well, pancakes are taking off man, we have a few regulars and many new faces rocking up everyday. People are digging the stall vibe and we are making new connections by the minute. We have really kicked our turnover up by 100% and we are grateful beyond.
I am pritty tired as i type this so excuuse any spellingk mistkes and stuff, we have been working straight from 5 am this morning until now, 10 pm and we are still busy, eish! I guess that is what it means to run your own business in this kind of industry but hey I'm not complaining, it's great!
Heart radio booked us on short notice for a soccer event tomorrow so we barely had time to prep up, which means we are still busy, busy, busy. Michelle is in the kitchen mixing up pancake batter like a beast and I have taken a break to blog for a minute. The bakkie is packed up and reasonably ready for tomorrow. I can see Red bulls in our near future, at least 4 each. We are super keen to serve all the attendees hot coffee and pancakes, lets hope we have a successful and most of all groovy day at the event.
Anyway I better get back to work before I get an egg or a wooden spoon to the back of my head.
It has
been a busy week following Organik and the universe has compressed us into a new spot
Industrial Life
As you know
we didn’t do very well with our sales at the party this last weekend and well,
we wanted to get rid of at least some of the left over stock. Back home we
organised that we could stand in a business park in Stikland to sell some
pancakes and coffee. The plan was to go to the strip first, supply our regulars,
pack up at 12pm and move to the next spot to sell our pancake mix.
Samitches!
It was alien
to be standing in a business area and it felt very different from what we were
used to. Very busy roads, people driving pretty fast and our view has totally
changed instead of trees we now have buildings and concrete :( Our first
afternoon was great though and we turned over in one afternoon what we would
have turned in one week on the strip. “Excited” is the first word that comes to
my mind when I think of that first day on the new spot.
Pre-order Line
Regretfully we had a
hard decision to make after work, leave the strip (that we have come to love)
or continue to split our days in two. Taking into account how hard we fought for permission to
stand on the strip I was a little reluctant to just let it go, but in the
bigger scheme of things it is all about your location and the fact that we can
now trade more than just coffee is appealing to us. We both decided that it
would be in the best interest of Morningbru to relocate. With a mixture of relief,
sadness and excitement we started planning our next day in Stikland Business
park.
New Spot
We open up shop at 7am and end our trading day at 3:30pm, we
also got one of those new NeoTel handsets for business. We have been giving
people our number so that they can pre-order pancakes for their office. The
other day we got a R80 order and a R60 one, so this concept is going to work,
day 6 and we are feeling good about our decision.
Enjoying Some Coffee...........AGAIN :)
The new spot definitely has
it’s perks, for one, my parents own a pub right around the corner called Annies
Ladies bar, drinks after work maybe J
They allow us to use it as a headquarters for Morningbru which means that we
can “bru” our coffee right there in the morning, mix batter, make sandwiches
and have storage space. In fact as I type this I am sitting in the bar while
michelle is selling pancakes and coffee a mere 200 metres away. So I can have
time to do my other work, which revolves purely around the internet and my
laptop. If michelle needs anything she just gives me a call...... eg. Michelle
calls for another pot of coffee or a couple of sandwiches, I then make it and trot
down to her with some needed stock. This setup is great because it allows us to
split up our time to be more productive.
It is our sixth day in the new spot now and it is going
well, we are doing better than we would have on the strip and people are getting
to know us and starting to enjoy our pancakes, banana caramel and cinnamon
sugar for now. Goodbye Strip we now consider you our runway, the gravel that started it all.
Yeah, so that’s what’s been happening here at Morningbru. We
are moving forward and we are amped.
Our first outdoor for the season was Organik Gaian Dreams, we planned, prepped and double checked, it was an absolute awesome party, the vibe was great and we both felt that it was what a party should be --- Connected, vibey and energetic!
The setup.
We arrived the Friday night after a long and slightly stressful drive, the trailer, man, it jumps around on the road and looks like it wants to tip over a lot. Every time I looked in the review mirror my heart skipped a beat, eventually I just kept it at 60 kay's an hour and stopped looking.
I reckoned it was pointless stressing out about it and if it was going to tip it was going to tip. We managed to get there in one piece and were thankful that we found the venue quite easily and that the trailer was still with us.
Our plan was to get there the Friday afternoon set up and relax but as it turned out we got there after dark and well, its not easy to set up a stretch tent at night. We got the trailer in position pulled out the stretchy offloaded the bakkie made some mojitos and decided to call it a night. The cold was intense but luckily we had plenty warm clothes, blankets, a mattress and each other to keep warm. We slept in the trailer the first night ---- it was surprisingly comfortable.
Saturday morning 7 A.M we got up and started sorting out the setup, by now the Sun was out and we were soaking up the heat ray's with much appreciation. I sorted out the stretch tent while Michelle handled the coffee machine and made more mojitos.
Making use of the chill out area.
Our mission with our setup was to provide a groovy chill out section next to our stall so that we could offer something more to our peers than just coffee, hot chocolate and crepes (pancakes).
Our chill zone was a great success. We had a good mix of interesting and beautiful people coming and going at all hours and parking off on our beanbags and beetle seat to rest their weary legs, take a break from the sun and, eventually, get shelter from the rain.
We had mojitos for breakfast and beer for brunch, alcohol is useful when you are working at an outdoor event or any event where you know you won't be sleeping much, it helps to keep your energy levels up. By the time the beats started we were ready to trade and knew that we were going to have a great time.
Nightfall came and with it the cold, oh it was cold! Every hour that passed it just got colder and colder. Of course with it being so cold our hot drinks were selling and we were more than happy to serve it up to the happy trancers. Business was slow but it was ticking nicely. By 3 a.m though we weren't selling much at all and the weather was taking it's toll on us.
Service
I decided to make a B-Line for the jumbo sized green bean bag we got for the party and wrapped myself in a sleeping bag. Michelle joined me soon after and we started generating some much needed heat.
We decided to close up for a while and slowly drifted off into dream land. It was a warm trance induced coma that felt like an eternity of phat fluffy bass. 3 hours later I woke up with the energy of at least one racehorse and I was ready for Sunday, especially the sun part.
Our party affirmation.
I got Michelle up and made her something hot to drink. We could see light now and knew it wouldn't be long before the sun was out in full force, ready to warm up the party again. I cracked a beer for breakfast and started brewing a new pot of coffee goodness, it wasn't long before we had our first coffee lovers at our hatch. A small rush ensued and coffees were flying out of the trailer. Happiness is a cup of hot caffeine in your cold blue hands.
The toilets had eaten enough crap for one weekend. :)
The first half of the day was warm and sunny and then - - - It started raining, nay, pouring. We packed up at about 4pm and hung around till 5, by this time the music had stopped and most of the party people had already driven off. We hitched up the trailer, tied down the poles and drove off silently into the farmlands. The drive home was tiresome and long but we made it home safely. The party was great and although we didn't make much cash it was well worth all the effort.
We made some great connections, met lots of beautiful people and left with residual feelings of warmth and connectedness that we hope will continue to affect our daily dealings with our customers.
Organik - Gaian Dreams was definitely one for the books!!!
We took some video --- I put together a little movie for you guys to watch, enjoy.
Wow it has been an intense week of organizing and prepping for our event this weekend. Organik is going to rock and we are going to be there serving hot coffee and delicious pancakes. Our pancakes have been tried and tested by us of course, many pancakes have been eaten this week.
The final four are Banana Caramel, Strawberries and Cream, Cinnamon Sugar and Hummus, Cheddar and Spinach. If you are coming this weekend be sure to stop by for a tasty pancake ala Morningbru.
This week on the strip has also been great and we have sold a total of 35 cups. That is a six cup improvement on last week bringing our average cup per day to 7. Eventually we want to be at around 30 - 40 cups a day and if we keep on improving at this rate we will get there sooner than later.
Anyway I really had to squeeze this post in today, we are sooo busy running around tying up loose ends for this weekend. Wish us luck and have a awesome weekend.
Monday has come and gone - 6 cups sold, 5 new customers and one comeback. Good signs. Pancake man didn't show up today, this is strange as he is always there, like everyday besides Sunday. What can you say the man loves making them pancakes ;)
We were soul alone on the strip and it kinda felt weird, almost scary. A tazer is now on the priority list in case, you know, someone tries to jack our stash when we are alone on the strip. Hoping the pancake man will be back tomorrow, I need my breakfast :)
I will service your coffee needs
Happy customers at the top and me serving some more on the left. Thank you for the support :) good times. These pics are a bit fuzzy - using a blackberry curve o.O --- My camera got broken _*sadface....
Trailer---Shiny
So as you can see we have changed the way we position the trailer, it's at more of an angle and closer to the Pancake man, we will post more pics so that you can see the full effect.
It creates a more sociable vibe because the people that come and buy pancakes can glance right over into our trailer. It is also better because it is further away from the road and less noisy.
Michelle and trailer
Before we were kind of cut off and all people could see was our backdoor, not good for business I say.
Notice the sign, it says ----FILTER COFFEE / HOT CHOCOLATE --- straight forward and simple. We think it has been working for us, gaining new customers everyday.
setup
Me enjoying my first cup
Working stuff out
The new spot is also very shaded which will help heaps on those hot day's. Cant wait for summer to kick in so that we can try selling Ice cold Juice, Lemonade and Water.
K - that's it for the post, hope to see some of you at Morningbru sometime soon.
Eagerly looking forward to this coming week to see how many cups we get sold on the strip. Last week stands at 29 cups sold, let's see if we can better that in the next couple of day's.
Michelle and I had a totally productive weekend preparing for Organik. Stretch tent is fixed and gas appliances are ready for work. Oh yeah.
I'm sipping on some of our coffee right now, it inspired me to post something on the blog. Well done to the Springboks for their victory today. I trust you all enjoyed the match. :)
Sold a total of 29 cups of liquid heaven this week on the strip, meaning we are averaging 5.8 cups a day at the moment. It has been an interesting and productive couple of day's and we are looking forward to Monday so that we can do it all over again.
Hopefully cigarettes will be on the menu in the near future, still trying to get wholesale prices so that we can offer packs cheap! cheap! We want feet at our stall, what better way to get it than with a highly addictive drug o.O
Going to be a hectic week as we are preparing for Organik (Outdoor Trance Party) - We have some yummy treats for all the happy stompers :) Super awesome Hot Chocolate (with marshmallows), strong Filter Coffee, sweet treats and a chill out area under our stretch tent. If you going to be at Organik I hope you drop by and come say hi.
Looking forward guys, have a safe and groovy weekend.
Welcome back winter :) - weather served us well today. With the cold comes the need for hot drinks, sold twelve cups today and we are hoping to better it tomorrow. Feels great to have the permit and to be legal on the strip, where are the coppers now?
Morningbru bounced back after two days of only two cups a day :( --- rocking some new signage outside the trailer that are letting people know what we are doing on the side of the road.
We are not looking half bad for our fourth day back on the strip. Thank you all for the support and positive feedback.
New menu items to look forward to in the coming weeks
Cigarettes (not the healthiest option but hey, people want em!)
Mineral water (Ice Cold for those hot days)
Juice (various flavors)
Thinking of fresh lemonade, once we gather a following.
Slowly we are getting back into a steady routine and I am sooooo happy, damn it feels good to get up early, squeezing the most out of the day.
I hope all of you are having a great week so far and if you aren't, well, come have a cup of coffee we are always smiling even when the sales aren't there. Amandel Rylaan Next to the pancake man (Eddie) DO IT!!!
This morning was truly like a blast from the past, getting up nice and early brewing some coffee and heading out to the strip. We arrived just after seven with the hopes of selling at least two cups of coffee goodness for our first day back. We realized that we are basically starting from scratch here and it will take time before we can reach the numbers we want.
Today we sold six cups in total and we are totally happy with that. Tomorrow will be even better, well, I hope it will, one guy told us that he was wondering where we went, another pulled out of heavy traffic and chilled with his coffee until the traffic had cleared up. If you ask me that guy was smart, traffic was heavy this morning.
The large cups are working out for us, only one person actually bought a small coffee. The large cup looks impressive and totally kicks the smaller cups ass. If I wanted a cup of coffee I would take the large, no doubt. Morningbru is set to take off and we are excited about so many things at the moment.
I am aching to get a espresso machine so that we can start making all the good stuff. Of course we do need a generator first before we can even think of espresso and that sort of thing, in time I am sure we will get there. Loyalty cards are in the works, so soon you will be able to buy five coffees and get your sixth one free. Once we reach twenty to thirty cups a day we will launch the loyalty card special.
We are back and we are ready to sell some coffee :)
It was a hectic and busy day yesterday, lots of driving - a little road rage!(TAXI) and a permit acquired.
Yes people, you read that correctly, we are now fully legal to trade on the strip. Shirley Alexander was very helpful in the end and wished us well with the business.
Thank you Shirley, at times I wanted to come and blow up your offices out of frustration but patience has paid off and things are back on track.
The Vending Licence!
Apparently Shirley had a meeting with all the vendors on the strip to decide our fate and they had only good things to say, hence us getting approved for the permit.
So much politics o.O ---- but hey I'm not complaining anymore. Woohooo!
So if you don't know, that is what a vending licence looks like. I like the yellow edges. hehehe
The Elusive Permit
This is the permit.. It is only valid for six months before we have to renew it. But hey, at least we finally have it now. Good Lord we were losing hope. So there it is guys we are sorted and ready.
Stay tuned for our August O.C post!
Sadly the September O.C has been cancelled
:( BEEEEG SAD MOUTH!
Gives us a month off to change our strategy a little I guess.
The O.C will be back in October and we will be there ready for business.
Tomorrow at 11 O'clock we will be going to see Shirley Alexander, hopefully all our things are in order and we can get our permit on the spot. Very excited, if all goes well we will be back on the strip this coming Monday. A post will be up after our meeting, we might even sneak in a few pics of the process.
Permit happy face!
So much are in the works for Morningbru and we are feeling uber positive about the business. If you happen to be in the area please come by and support us by buying a fresh cuppa, we make good coffee ;)
Good news - Meeting up with Shirley Alexander on Friday morning to finalize the permit issue. So next week Monday we will be back in operation .... :) Our cup size has increased to 350 ml for R10.00.... and a 250ml for R8.00. Hope to see a few familiar faces on the strip next week.
The August O.C was amazing and a more detailed post will follow soonest. Have a great day and drink some coffee!
July O.C is upon us, we are excited to do yet another O.C event and we hope it will be a smoother ride than the last one. We are gonna rock the lan with bigger cups, tasty treats and our usual vibe of pure awesomeness. I hope all you lanners, leechers and magic players are thirsty for the good stuff.
We have solved the trailers "rocking issue" - the poor trailer was never really as stable as it could be. Two jacks have sorted it out though so we can say goodbye to sea sickness when working....hahaha. Our urn broke a while back but it is all fixed up and ready for work ----- will be using it to keep the hot chocolate hot and ready. The second urn will be used for hot water which will be available for free to all the lanners that need some.
The permit should be processed in the next month so we will be on the strip again, I can't wait it has been a long and drawn out process and finally we are getting some feedback from the authorities. Let's just hope that they keep their word and do what they said they are going to do. :/
The blog has reached 1200 views thanks guys. Once we get busy on the strip again I will have more to post about and we can really get this blog going. At the moment though Morningbru is struggling a little to survive, so we don't really have much to post but thanks to the O.C we will make it out alive. We have also gotten some feedback from a few trance parties --- excited for those. Morningbru will see you at an outdoor party this season!
Well we have to get back to preparations for this weekend --
Waiting and waiting for the permit we need.... beh !! Starting to feel really frustrated with this whole situation. I suppose the key here is just to be patient. Anyway as soon as we get it we will be BACK!!!
Oh, and as a added surprise, Morningbru will be serving 350ml cups as well. So you will have a choice of a 250 ml or a 350 ml.
Stickers are also in the pipelines --- just a simple oval sticker with the Morningbru logo on it.. I wanted printed cups but unfortunately it is very expensive unless you are buying like 100 000 cups... In the future perhaps but not at this stage.
Anyway this was just a quick update on the frustration that is the permit ....
Wow it feels alien to be sitting in front of my keyboard again, after these last few weeks of filming and not being able to blog or sell coffee... I am glad to be back and grate full for my experience with the film industry this last month, it was a real eye opener and a huge learning curve that left me with a feeling of accomplishment. Thanks Cuan and old Fanie for all the laughs and bitching and laughs and lets not forget the laughs...... :) hope to do it again guys.
JUNE O.C here's the low down on our little adventure --- it was insane, hectic, tiring, depressing, inspiring, emotional and an all out new experience for the both of us. The place was filled with lanners, leechers, magic players and spectators of all ages, colours and creeds. I had dropped Michelle off at the venue in the morning leaving her alone to cope with the initial setup.
Fortunately Michelle met the food vendor "Harry". He is a hardened veteran of the O.C events and has been vending there for some time now. He helped Michelle with a bit of set up and gracefully gave us some tips and tricks on how to handle our first Organised Chaos Event. Thanks Harry we look forward to seeing you for July O.C. ( your breakfast rolls were the business bru )
I got there at about 9:00 pm after I had knocked off from work. It was raining and really cold as well - I didn't plan on going through right after work so I hadn't packed in any warm gear. Anyway, after dealing with the fact that I was going to be getting cold all night I went in search of the elusive Morningbru Coffee trailer. AAAAH there it was in all its metallic glory standing ready to spew out it's coffee magic-hahaha. I was ready to become one with the caffeine.
We got insanely busy on the first night, really, really busy. It started picking up at around 11 with thirsty customers coming in bursts of four or five at a time. They just kept coming and coming in wave after wave. Luckily, Michelle and I managed to keep them all happy by serving them as quickly as possible...... this kept going on well into the early hours of the morning.... Hot chocolate was a great seller as well and, of course, the incredible brownies were going faster than we could unpack them. After 24 Hours on the job things started getting quiet and the rush was over.. .. .. . .
It felt like a lifetime of serving coffee and hot chocolate, and by the time it had become quiet we were both tired beyond. We took it in turns to try and nap but it didn't really help much :/ The chaos continued well into Saturday evening.
Saturday night felt like the longest night ever! It had become very quiet and we were doing a minimum of about 4 cups an hour. We had both decided to stay open right through the night, but eventually decided we should lie down for an hour or two. We closed shop at 4:00 am and opened up again at 7:00 am. We stayed open for 4 hours of business before we raised the old white flag and called it quits on the chaos that is the O.C
The total count on cups sold --- 750 :) this is the most the trailer has done in it's lifetime and we are hoping it wont be its last. To all the new friends we made and to everyone who supported Morningbru at the O.C we say a big thanks.... Hope to see you all at the next one.
It's tragic that I haven't been posting this week --- apologies :) This week has been interesting to say the least, we started out on Monday and sold only two cups -- we were bleak about that but I suppose any business has it's slow days. Tuesday came along and we flogged five cups in total, hoooraah. Then on Wednesday something amazing happened, we sold twelve cups!! Woohoo Today we sold thirteen !! So yeah it's looking good and people are digging it. Thanks for all the support guys we really appreciate it.
The cops showed up today to ask for our licence and well, we kind of don't have one yet so we had to leave:( As soon as we left though I managed to make a quick stop at the municipal offices to sort out the pending vendors licence that I had applied for and if all goes well we should be totally legal tomorrow morning.
Michelle and I suspect that the pancake guy called the coppers because we were the only vendors that got asked for our permits. Anyways I'm not gonna point fingers but I'm also not gonna trust the pancake guy anymore either. Karma will sort it all out for us :)
It has been a great week so far and we are starting to see progress, hopefully we will reach our twenty cup goal before the end of next week. If it carries on like this I'm sure we will.
Hope all you guys are having an exciting week so far :) Enjoy the rest of your day. The morningbru team will be going out for all you can eat Chinese tonight (I wonder if I will be able to finish a whole one this time) om nom nom!
5 days done, only 85 more to go before we can realistically analyze the business for what it is. We had a total of 17 customers in the last five days of which 2 came back. Grateful for the return business but we need more and with time I am still confident that we will get it.
Entrepreneurs must learn to be like bloodhounds. Except instead of sniffing out escaped convicts, lost children, or perhaps drugs in the handbag of a little old lady from klerksdorp, they must learn how to sniff out the unmet needs of the people they wish to serve. To win new customers, ask the golden question: "What's the unmet want and how can we meet this unmet want before anybody else does?
Working on a new sign, we need a more visible one that simply states COFFEE. Seems like a lot of people still don't know what we are doing on the strip. The loyalty card concept will be introduced soon as well "buy nine get one free" hoping it will bring in a few more regulars :)
All in all Morningbru was successful this week and the feedback was positive on all fronts.
Have an awesome weekend, drive safe and drink your coffee.
The Morningbru Team
