The opportunity comes only once in a year, the food fiesta that happens on the occasion of Raja celebration, as I wrote in my last post. Last year, I was not available with him, but this year, I decided to stay and give him all the necessary support. He did plan well, made some capital investments by buying two containers that helped him to prepare better and faster. This year he got a new flavor Grenadine apart from the Blue-Curacao for his mocktail counter. A business plan was made to calculate the matrix of possible sell vs profit and accordingly the price was set. Even though, the cost was on higher side, we decided to keep the price same as last year - the idea was to sell more. He was stacking ice in the fridge 4 days before as he needed lot of them. ON the previous day, we got lemon, mint leaves ( part from market and part from my garden. I was really happy to see the boy working hard - he went to his school and came back by 4 and then prepared the lemon juice. By that time I had cleaned the containers, extracted the mint leaves - putting some helping hands.
He turned up before anyone else and so as his customers. Kids just love his mocktail and waited for him.
To make things better he designed a small banner and I got it printed along with the scanner for digital payments.
The business was going quite well and four batches sold pretty quickly. However that is when the trouble started. I was with him collecting the money as most kids were coming with cash. We needed a third person to supply the ingredients that were kept at home. My wife did help twice, but then she had a guest and she was busy with her. And we had nobody to help till 9 pm, after which his uncle came. Also out of nowhere a competition surfaced after someone else started another cheap mocktail counter. Some people diverted there, and bought that drink. Initially they came and said the same blue lagoon drink is available at half the price. But then after some time those same people came and told, it was not at par with what our boy was selling. So may be he would not have lost his customers had he have enough amounts to continue the serving. Quality does matter and I have always guided him to never compromise on that. But at the end, the sell did not happen as expected. I would also blame myself partly - I left the counter after his uncle joined, it would have been better had I been there. We stayed till the end, and his last two batches were not finishing. When everyone else were gone, I advised him to distribute it free to people so that we can wind up.
Last time he did not have a single drink for him. But this time, we distributed a lot free to many people. Part of it was for some good cause especially for the support staffs who could not afford it. Had I been there, I would have advised to prepare the quantity in half - so I own that mistake.
And I love his attitude - the boy was happy to learn few things. It's not that he did lose, he did not make the profit that he expected. But that is what entrepreneurship - you learn from these experiences and get better prepared. Here is an interesting observations from him - last time he was circulating the drink in transparent plastic glass and people who would see that would be interested to explore where it is available because of the color fascinating them. The paper glass this time did not advertise the same - so next time we need to focus on a little marketing strategy. And also make sure we have everything at the right time, to not hamper the continuous sell.
Never loose your heart boy - this is how you are going to learn. After all life is an experiment and you learn to do better as you grow.
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