Show me the Cash Money

Our story begins last week Saturday. The Rhino and I had to get up super early so we could formally purchase Bloomy1, our very first food truck! Boss! We were so excited about this fact that we went to Rhino’s company holiday party the night before, which was being held at Chino Latino in Uptown, and proceeded to have one* cocktail.
* More than one

We then meandered over to Williams, which apparently has gone from an “early 20s preppie crowd trying hard to impress all the other early 20s preppies” that I loved dearly when I was 22 (somehow, just tossing your peanut shells on the floor without getting yelled at seems both devious and delicious, like you’re breaking the fundamental rule learned when you were three that “YOU DON’T THROW YOUR TRASH ON THE FLOOR!”) to an “early 20s hipster crowd trying hard to impress all the other early 20s hipsters” that, being an almost-30 grown up, now makes me cringe and think, “look at all those deviants just throwing their peanut trash on the floor. Would you do that in your own house? I don’t think so!” In any case, we had one* more cocktail before hailing a cab back home.
* More than one

We finally made it to bed around 3:30am and fell into a blissful sleep. Less than five hours later, my alarm clock started chirping, and we had to pry ourselves out of bed and go to Ham Lake to pick up Bloomy1. We were very, very grumpy. We are not morning people. 

We had procrastinated on picking up the funds for this purchase beforehand so needed to make a bank stop to take out a rather large stack of cash. No worries though, I had it all planned out. We would go to the Eden Prairie bank, take out the large stack of cash, and get to Ham Lake by our mutually agreed-upon time of 10:30. When we got to the bank, however, we discovered that their lobby was closed on Saturdays (despite what was noted on the website). What?! Ever the optimist, I responded by saying in a loud cheerful voice “Okay! We’ll just go to the drive thru!” Once in the drive thru lane, we were made to understand that the cap on cash withdrawals was $3,000. We needed more than two times that much. I started sweating.

At the teller’s advice, we drove to the Wayzata bank location, a mere 25 minutes away. Neither of us knew where in Wayzata this bank was, even though I’d lived in Wayzata (a city of just 3.2 square miles, according to Wikipedia) for two years before I met the Rhino. We fought. However, with the help of our smart phones, we figured out where the bank was (after at least one wrong turn) and I immediately realized that I had driven or walked past this very bank over 1,000 times before. The lobby sign said “closed.”

At this point, I decided not to be optimistic anymore and started having a whack attack. I figured that I would be forced to go to the drive thru and default to my verbal judo tactics in order to negotiate my way into the large stack of cash we needed, despite the $3,000 cap.

Here’s a transcript of what ensued:

KJ: Drives up to the teller window
Teller: “How can I help you today scary lady?”
KJ: <This is the point at which I cast my verbal judo spell using what I learned during Basic Training:* large words, distraction techniques, active listening, and street truths.>
KJ: Pause for response
Teller: “Well, you can’t take out that amount of money using the drive thru window so you’ll have to come into the lobby!”
KJ: “Wait, the lobby is open?!?!”
Teller: “It sure is!”
KJ: “Um…”
*I have never taken Basic Training.

So, needless to say, my verbal judo tactics were successful and we walked into the fake-closed lobby to get our dollars. By the time we were halfway to Ham Lake, we were both staring googly eyed at the stack of cash and saying things like “Do you need some change? Oh, well let me see if I have any!” and “Ok, it’s my turn to hold it now!”.

Rhino enjoyed holding the dollars.

The guy we were buying Bloomy1 from lives in a ginormous castle with a circle driveway and stone lion statues everywhere. I like pretending that I live there. He invited us inside to his office/library/museum and we spent the remainder of the time signing paperwork and trying not to touch any of his fancy museum pieces. We sadly handed over our cash money but drove away with our very own truck!! This moment made me remember the story about letting birds (money) go free and sometimes the birds (money) will come back to you.

Anyway, we are very gratefully storing Bloomy1 at Rhino’s mom’s house until we drop it off at the makeover garage for its transformation from empty truck shell to fully operational Bloomy’s on wheels.

Rhino spent the remainder of last weekend and early week learning neat things about food, as he had to take his official Food Manager exam on Wednesday at 1pm. This exam required all of the following things:

1. $175
2. Extensive preparation and completion of numerous learning modules
3. An easy-to-use flash card system created by yours truly (#goteam or #nerd, your choice)
4.  A one hour drive to the exam station, in Mankato, which necessitated 
5. That Rhino take a PTO day

I am happy to report that the exam went without hitch and the Rhino passed with flying colors! Now he spends his days informing me of proper food storage techniques, and I practice multi-tasking by both listening to him and reading the new (and very funny) Tina Fey book. I’ve had to learn to laugh on the inside.

Last Friday brought our first meeting with Mr. Mark “Awesome” Palm from Chameleon Carts. Mark is the brains and brawn behind the Bloomy1 makeover. We got to see the inside of another food truck makeover he had done as well as a warehouse stocked with equipment as far as my eyes could see. I stared, Rhino drooled, and we both got a little giddy. With Mark’s help, we are about 1,000+ steps closer to finalizing the details of the Bloomy1 makeover. And he gave us some kettle popcorn to boot. We ate all of it. We were happy.

The ensuing week was spent putting the dozens of Kickstarter reward packages together and making the handful of last minute holiday package shippers who were waiting in line at the post office very very very angry. After three Christmas celebrations and lots of laughs and memories with our families, the Rhino and I settled gratefully into our week of vacation time away from our day jobs.

So that brings us up to the present. I am attempting to convince the Rhino to make another video (for a top secret project) but it is a tough sell considering what happened last time. He’s avoiding my sales techniques and celebrating the fact that he won the Fantasy League chalice this year. <Insert Rhino comment here: "Whatever! It's engraved!">> We never put up our Christmas tree. Well, you can’t win them all.

Happy new year from these two food truck fanatics. We’ve had an amazing 2011 and hope you have too. 2012 - bring it on!

Peace, love & roast beef,

Rhino & Katie

Twist & Shout

Survey says that last blog’s format was a no-go, so you’re back to just Katie or just the Rhino. Too bad, so sad! We tried…

Alright, so we have a lot to talk about!

(1) Bloomy’s Kickstarter Efforts
Our project is officially closed and, after 60 days of promotion and hype and – well – pretty much begging, we’re very excited to share that not only did we make our goal, but we ended up with 56 SLAMAZING SLAMAZING backers who supported us to the tune of $10,885!!! What?! What?! Did that just happen? OMG. That just happened. You can only begin to realize how nervous we were about meeting our goal when you remember that we were still $5,635 short just 9 days ago. Yikes! But, thanks to our truly wonderful and supportive friends, family, and new Bloomy’s fans, we’ve exceeded our goal and are super incredibly psyched about the next order of business.

THE PURCHASING OF THE FOOD TRUCK!

Wait, did you think I was going to say:

THE PLANNING OF THE SPONSOR PARTY!

If you did, don’t worry. Jamie D and I are starting the planning as we speak. (I actually have not yet informed Jamie D that I need her assistance on this project but, seeing as we have been friends longer than we haven’t (nearly 15 years to be exact), I can pretty much tell you that she is going to be so excited she will immediately begin developing the most comprehensive event to-do list and may do one or all of the following things: (1) get a notebook/journal specifically for the event, (2) write down things we have already done so that she can cross them off. Adorable.). Another Bloomy’s backer and long-time Katie J pal has offered to help as well and, between the three of us, I know we can throw a killer paaartayy!

The Rhino and I also have some super fun sponsor party secrets up our sleeves for our backers and cannot wait to celebrate with those of you who have helped us get this far! Also, we will be sending around a survey this week to our sponsors so we can get you your goodies. Rhino has already started strutting around the house in his Bloomy’s tee, and I can’t wait to replace my former fave hoodie (circa 2004) with the new and improved Bloomy’s hoodie (for those who don’t know me, when I am at home – this is what I wear 80% of the time: brown velour pajama pants, a tank top, and a gray hoodie. The other 20% of the time, I wear: blue pajama pants, a tank top, and a gray hoodie). I’m sure the Rhino will be excited for my hoodie upgrade, for sure. Gotta keep things fresh, ya know? (That’s a piece of relationship advice for everyone.)

Anyway. I am also really excited about putting together the Bloomy’s Soundtrack. Now, you know that Bloomy’s is a throwback diner, so our music will consist of jamz from the 50s, 60s, and very early 70s. If you have any requests, leave a blog comment or e-mail us at eat@bloomysroastbeef.com. In order to conduct proper research, I have already started listening to Kool108 non-stop when I’m driving to and fro and, thanks to my intelligent SoundHound app, already have some fairly awesomesauce jamz on the list. However, the Rhino did have to explain to me once (as I was holding my SoundHound up to the car radio to catch the song) that “um, you know that the sound comes out of the speakers and not the actual radio right?” Right! Thankfully one of us is savvy about cars.

For those music junkies who have discovered the slamazingness that is Spotify, I’ve also started a Spotify “Bloomy’s Mix” in case you’d like to subscribe (it’s free and great!). Just a fair warning, Bloomy’s Mix may or may not cause you to break into the twist, the mashed potato, and/or the hand jive in your cubicle/car/home office.

So that brings us back around to this:

THE PURCHASING OF THE FOOD TRUCK!
We’ve received some great advice from our food trucker friend Josh (of the Smack Shack) and have subsequently learned where NOT to go to purchase Bloomy1* and where TO go to store Bloomy1 when it’s not rocking out on the road or at events. In any case, the Rhino is spending much of his days researching, sleuthing, scouring, and otherwise narrowing down our pool of food truck potentials. And, I’m no expert in this area or anything, but there seem to be quite a number of odd balls out there selling food trucks. For example, we were <this close> to partnering with a dude out in New York but were scared off by the fact that he didn’t want to take a bank check and didn’t want to provide us with anything that had his name or business name on it. So… we’ll take that as a firm tentative yes? Um, no. Moving on.

*Bloomy1 (noun): the first Bloomy’s food truck.

If you had worried about where we’d store Bloomy1, we’ve got it covered! No problemo! Due to zoning and mobile food regulations, we’re not able to store Bloomy1 at our place of residence, so we needed to find a storage facility/warehouse that would do the job. Easy, until you throw in the fact that we needed electricity and a fairly ginormous storage spot. As I mentioned above, our friend Josh (Smack Shack) tipped us off to the food truck friendly Gopher Towing, right outside of Dinkytown. My old stomping grounds! The Rhino has started conversations with our pals over there and decided that GT will be Bloomy1’s new home!

Side note: I find it very interesting that during the years of 2000 – 2003, I did absolutely everything in my power to avoid having to go to or speak to Gopher Towing in any way, shape or form. Being a U of M college student meant sometimes having to park your car in places you shouldn’t, and a trip to Gopher Towing usually meant having to scrape together lots of dollars I didn’t have in order to bail out my trusty rusty maroon 1987 Honda from the GT impound lot. Now, we’ll happily be storing Bloomy1 there. Ahh how the world turns.

So, in any case. By the end of the year, we will have Bloomy1 in hand and snuggled up in her new storage spot. Then we can begin the install of the super-duper-slamazing-slow-cook-ovens that we’ll be using to prepare our tender roast beef. But that’s Rhino territory, and I need to stay over here in Katieville where there’s event planning, apparel ordering, social networking, and media plugging to be done.

Until next time!   

Cue the DVR!

Introduction
Rhino and I wanted to shake up the blog this week, so below you will find a new blog format. K means written by Katie, and R means written by Rhino (obvi). Let us know what you think! 

 

The Purple Cole Slaw
K: A few weeks back, a new Bloomy’s friend e-mailed us to share his prized coleslaw recipe. Now, if you can recall, a few weeks back was also the time during which each of the following things happened:

1. Rhino asked for my hand in marriage
2. I was struck by a massive four-debilitating-day head cold
3. I was promoted at work (I know I don’t talk about my day job a lot, or at all, but I was promoted and alas this caused some delay with the coleslaw).

So, in any case, these fairly significant life events have challenged our ability to try new recipes in the Bloomy’s test kitchen. However, the timing actually turned out to be quite well – timely, and the first official taste tester of this coleslaw just so happened to be an Emmy award winner! (See “Hosting an Emmy Award Winner” section below).

R: Now that my Katie has given you the entire history of how we came to prepare the coleslaw recipe, I feel that it is due time to get to the point of this topic.  Dan’s recipe was wicked good.  However, during the “flair” that I truly enjoy putting on any recipe, my version turned out purple.  Wicked good, wicked purple.  Fortunately, we loved the purple results and neither of us had ever seen purple coleslaw, so we are keeping it (any correlation to the MN Vikings, Purple Pride, The Purple People Eaters,  I Bleed Purple, Purple Lovers Anonymous, or Purple Rain is completely unintentional and irrelevant to any content of this blog). Thanks Dan! Katie and I truly appreciate your contributions to Bloomy’s.

Hosting an Emmy Award Winner

R: As a result of Katie’s phone conversations with our visiting Emmy Award Winner, I was pretty excited to meet him and not so nervous about the whole being interviewed thing.  However, the immediate shock of discovering that your house is not only going to be on HD television, but that you also have to prepare sample food for HD television, was slightly more intense (by slightly, I mean immensely.) Now, in all fairness, Katie and I knew that we had an entire weekend of cleaning ahead of us as soon as we found out that we were going to be interviewed by Kare11’s Emmy Award Winning Reporter Boyd Huppert on the “Land of 10,000 Stories” last Monday.  Although we should have probably been the ones to bring it up, Boyd asked us if we would have samples available to shoot.  The answer to that question was so obvious that we were instantly making a list of necessities needed to make an accurately slamazing representation of the Bloomy’s Menu and factoring the cooking schedules into our weekend plans. 

K: So, I think the Rhino does not accurately describe how FREAKING INTENSE this whole “have a local celebrity over to your house to eat your food and tape you for tv” process is. In any case, I think that we both held it together pretty well. This is also evidenced by the fact that we didn’t fight ONE time and I didn’t have even ONE whack attack. (Apparently, we are adapting to increased levels of stress – aka two full time jobs, each.)

Getting back to the subject. When we found out that Boyd was going to head over to casa de Bloomy’s for the taping, I immediately went downstairs to dig out our industrial strength cleaning product bucket and requisite superpower cleaning gloves. Beginning Friday night and ending Monday pre-11am, the Rhino and I cleaned every square inch of Bloomyland. And I mean: Every. Square. Inch. In addition, we found time to do each of the following things:

1. Stop at the grocery (we actually had to go to two places because the roast beef at the first place wasn’t up to Rhino quality and he felt “like there was some sort of trickery involved” with the deli so we had to drive 25 minutes to find the perfect cut – which we did and it was worth it)
2. Get welcoming budget-friendly flowers (see pic below)
3. Prepare a full menu (this required my “taking one for the team” and getting up at 3:30AM to put the roast beef in the oven so it could begin its evolution to pure roast beef perfection)
4. Plate said menu, and
5. Host the Kare11 crew, make them laugh at least four times, and feed them a delish Bloomy’s lunch

Ps – I also forgot that we totally went to a super bonfire during this whole deal too! But the bonfire-hosters are our close couple friend, and we needed a mental break from Bloomyland. We met a new cool dude at this bonfire too who is now a future Bloomy’s customer. I love how the world works!

>> The Rhino and I also have to take a serious moment to sincerely thank Boyd & Jonathan for taking the time to come over, share our home, and learn more about Bloomy’s. It was an awesome experience for us, and we’ll never forget it. <<

For those of you who wish to view our TV debut “live and in action,” please tune into Boyd’s “Land of 10,000 stories” segment this Tuesday (as in TOMORROW, November 1) at 10pm on channel 11.

Ok, back to it then!

Bloomy’s Gear
K: The Rhino has been tasked with identifying the perfect Bloomy’s gear that will be given to our slamazing 26 (and counting!) Kickstarter Backers  who have helped fund Bloomy’s to the tune of $3350! 13 days to go. Can we do it? Yes we can! As fate would have it, the Rhino used to work with a guy who just so happens to do screen printing as a side business. Aric (I wanted to call him “Mr. Tee” like tee-shirt but Rhino wouldn’t let me) graciously mocked up not one but four Bloomy’s logo prototypes to select from. After review and input from our talented Creative Director, Miss Jamie D., we decided to go with a washed out vintage-style color logo for our backers and a classic washed out vintage-style black and white logo for our official sponsors. Dope! I’m currently working with Jamie D. on finalizing our t-shirt and hoodie styles but I can promise you that they will be out of this world comfy cozy.

R: Aric is truly hooking Bloomy’s up for our apparel needs, and I would be doing an injustice not to recommend him for custom screen printing and embroidery needs to anyone.  You couldn’t have wiped the sh*t-eating grin off my face with paint thinner when I saw our logo on those T’s.  I realize that some business owners put too much stake in their logo and website, but let’s face it; this is a part of our dream coming true and epic to Katie and me.  I immediately put one of the sample shirts on for the rest of the evening (partially because Katie hadn’t seen them and I was ultra-elated for her to see them when she first walked in) and proceeded to strut my way around the house like a proud father of sorts.  A TV interview and our OWN clothing in one week was quenching my thirst for Bloomy’s success.

Buying a Food Truck

R: We get a lot of questions about the Food Truck itself.  The good news is that WE have fewer questions about our “soon-to-be food truck.”  For starters, we know that Bloomy’s is raising the bar for food truck requirements.  Our desire to have a true Mobile Food Truck does not follow the traditional method of “Food Trucking.”  A lot of food trucks currently either prepare their wares ahead of time in a brick and mortar kitchen or utilize a more “freezer to customer” approach to cooking.  Since Bloomy’s makes our food from scratch and won’t have a kitchen to use, we require a unique set of full kitchen equipment on our truck.  This ended up being an ultra-awesome project for me that has also been a bittersweet brain teaser.  “To be continued,” as we have a very good idea of the who’s, where’s and how’s involved in our ongoing custom food truck design, and we are fully expecting to place an order in the first week of December.

K: I don't have anything to add to that as the food truck is a vehicle and therefore something I know absolutely nothing about. 

So, In conclusion, these have been some serious days filled with serious planning and serious cleaning. But, in spite of it all, we still find time to laugh and love - and isn’t that what life is all about anyway?

Remember to tune into Bloomy’s tomorrow night at 10pm. Kare11 baby!

Dollar Begging Initiative, Take Final

Alright people (or, should I say - dearest friends, family & Bloomy’s supporters)…

The time has come for the “official official” launch of the Bloomy’s dollar begging/fundraising initiative! The Rhino and I are very excited to announce that we’ve heard great news from our bank partner and our business loan is finally in the works. However, as you know from previous rants, we need to come up with 30% of the money ourselves. We’ve been scrimping, saving, coupon clipping, bulk cooking, conserving fuel, couch cushion searching, and otherwise counting our pennies over the last year and are left with just over $10K to raise to make Bloomy’s a go!

This is where y’all come in. The Bloomy’s blog has nearly 130 active readers now, and we need each and every one of you! Donate $10 or $1,000 – whatever your pocketbook allows. For each donation, you will get super sweet rewards including free food, stylish apparel (we promise that the apparel is actually stylish too and wearable outside of the house – pictures coming soon), event catering and more.  Those who donate $100 or more will also receive invitations to our invite-only pre-launch tasting event where you can enjoy the full array of our tasty treats and help us perfect our menu before we hit the streets.

We’ve launched our dollar begging initiative using Kickstarter.com and you can find our page here:

CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW!

In addition to the rewards you’ll receive, every time you see the Bloomy’s food truck on the street or at an event, you’ll get that warm fuzzy feeling in your heart knowing you helped our dream get off the ground. Hugs all around!

Thank you in advance for your dollars and support!  See following picture for proof of our thanks.

Stay tuned for more Bloomy’s news next week when we temporarily cease our dollar begging and get back to the adventure stories that we’ve been collecting in our pockets over the past two weeks (okay, so the Rhino said to insert a “Muahahahahahahahahaaaa” here but I said NO! GET YOUR OWN BLOG!). Jeez. Alright, we are off to dinnerland* so we’ll catch you later. Go find those dollars!

*dinnerland (as quoted from the Jamie D. dictionary) (n): this isn’t an actual place, but a general name for places where one goes to eat dinner.