🤠😖🥳😔2023 Recap & Thoughts

A second full year in business is completed. Again, when looking at it in hindsight, it flew by. At the same time, I can viscerally remember some 14 hour workdays just feeling like they would never end.

Time's relationship to experience is a confounding thing. I've been thinking about it in depth over the last couple weeks when reflecting on this past year and thinking about a path forward.

I'll talk about that more at the end of this. For now, let's get to the superlatives for 2023.

🎸🎶 Good Vibes Tune of The Year

We're always playing music around the tent/cart, so figured this should be a category. Have to keep the vibes high with some tuneage, now on to this year's winner:

Jack Johnson - Good People.

This is the vibe that we are constantly striving for. Chill, pleasant, polite. The soundtrack to our business.

👨🏻‍🍳 Employee of the Year

We appreciate all the volunteers that we had but there's only one winner here. Dom has been an A+ employee. Never late to a shift, never missed a shift. He always has a positive attitude, always is willing to learn, and is always willing to work hard. He made our lives much easier this year.

🤣 Funniest Customer Comment:

"Those were soooooo good! When I looked at them, I didn't expect them to be that good”- Kid at Bill's Best

Kids are hilarious. They just let it out with honesty most of the time even if it means a ricochet shot at you haha. Always love when we can please the kids.

⭐️ Special of the Year

Slab Bacon Taco

The details: smoked slab bacon sliced thick, white onion, monterey jack cheese, house-made habanero honey, and toasted sesame seeds.

This was the people's favorite, along with our favorite. A unique one of I do say so myself.

🍺Best Beer

Year 5 from Ten7. A fantastic stout. Had it all. Bold, barrel, bourbon, balance. *Chef's kiss*

💰 Highest Event Sales Day of the Year:

Manayunk StrEAT Food Festival

292 customers served and 742 taquitos sold over a non-stop 6 hours.

That's 1 customer served every 1 minute and 6 seconds and just over 2 taquitos per minute. Not bad for 2 people. Probably would have been a bit more if we hadn't had service issues with our point of sale.

🎪 Event of the Year

Obviously this one goes to the July Jam-boree with Crazy Chester at Ten7. Even though it was pouring rain, the place was packed. Best vibes I've felt. A close second was a backyard wedding we did where there was an adult moonbounce, people camping out, and guests riding dirt bikes off jumps during the reception.

😳 Meme of the Year

lol

📸 Picture of the Year

A tie!

The first one earned it's spot from perfect timing resulting in a hilarious, and high quality taquito advertisement.

The second is a different reason. Just looks like a normal picture from the cart. Why it's included is the meaning behind it. This was a Friday night. We were offering a shrimp taco special that we were excited about. Then we ended up doing like 10 total sales and losing money on the night. It's always tough to stomach nights like this when you live off of a business, but friends can help (hence the picture). We had friends that came out and hung around for most of the night, easing the blow to our egos and wallets. Times like these make me appreciate that strong relationships are more important than money.

General highlights off the top of my head: More parties this year, more day time events, branding improvement, processes all documented,

General lowlights off the top of my head: tough realizations,

Reflections Past & Future

Back to what I said at the beginning: time's relationship to experience is confounding.

I can look back on miserable moments in time and have a positive perception of the memory I have of that moment. Yet, there aren't any positive moments that I now have a miserable perception. Reflection is important to show yourself how struggles and failures are necessary for success. Everything will not always be sunshine and rainbows, so don't expect it to be.

Past

This year in business we had much more business overall and better business opportunities. We did many more private parties and corporate lunches. These are better for us as the income is predictable and guaranteed. The hours tend to be better as well. Many weekends we had more inquiries than we could take, so we were turning down business.

This is a good problem to have but one that I wish we were able to solve in the moment, as income is livable, but tight at year end. Capitalizing instead of saying no would have been preferable, we just weren't in the position to do that.

When the business comes in rapidly there's not enough time to plan, so you end up saying no. Then we have times like right now, where we have too much time.

The seasonality of this business is something I've struggled with. I've found myself soul-searching while washing dishes on at Saturday night at 10pm after sweating for 10 hours straight, thinking some version of "I took a 5 figure pay cut to do this? Is this what I'm meant to be doing?" Times like these have had me questioning my worth and my future. I'm sacrificing time to do something that just isn't something I would ever happily choose to do. But, I can't get around it, so just get it done.

When I reflect on these times they appear a bit brighter. I know I don't want to be doing that forever, but I know I'm learning lessons. As I sit here and write this I am the sum of all my experiences and I am happy with the person I am. Without these experiences I wouldn't be me, so how could I ever regret them? If I changed them then maybe I'd have a different opinion of the person that came about as a result of that change.

Stay true to yourself

I don't know who first said that. Obviously an over-used cliche, but I believe in it. I think that personal integrity is paramount. Knowing your values and sticking to them is meaningful. These are the core values that we laid out 2.5 years ago when starting and I feel we have stuck to them.

1. Integrity > Profit
2. Highlight our customers
3. Dependable
4. Empower Individuals (Creativity)
5. Pleasant, positive, and polite

Brendan texted me this a few weeks ago. This prompted my writing above.

"Going out on your own is scary and has been for us every step of the way. Scary and stressful, even physically painful sometimes. The fact that we have been able to generate income on our own and make a livable (albeit tight) wage is something I have to mark as a W. We’ve done it side by side and the rewarding days have been that much sweeter because of it. Much better than any great days I had at BP. The tough ones have also been worse knowing your salary depends on it and seeing the person you care most about suffer with you. This business has made me feel things I never felt through my “job” or “work” in general."

Future

We got into this for the business, not the kitchen, so we're trying to get ourselves out of the kitchen. We're at a point where there's a vision, well multiple visions and we're asking ourselves do we want to do what it takes to achieve this vision.

So while it's great there are visions of a path forward and great we have identified the importance of a decision, we need to make that decision.

While contemplating this decision I have begun to ask myself questions like: is there more meaning somewhere else? Is this what I'm meant to be doing? Great questions to ask yourself to determine where passion resides.

I've been thinking about passion a lot lately. More specifically when you should dive in to follow it.

Coincidentally we both share one main passion that isn't directly related to our current business. It's not really something mainstream but it is the subject each of us spends most of our mental energy on. We both have side projects relating to it more directly. We think about one day having it as an integral part of our career. We just don't know how yet.

Until then, we will continue to make assessments about the future and allocate our time with those assessments in mind. With that being said, we must not spend our lives waiting for the future to arrive. We have some decisions to make and work to be done.