Mad Munch Grilled Cheezer Co.

Follow the story below of Mad Munch: It's long strange trip from the prairies of Illinois to the sunny shores of Ocean Beach, San Diego....

19 January 2025

100 Farmers Markets

By the end of April 2014, Mad Munch had been open for a year & set up at it's 100th farmers market.  It was a big milestone at the time & Kate proudly posted about it on Facebook.  To commit to that many pop-up events for an after work side hustle, we both felt like we had a great concept that was really gaining traction.

Sales had improved at both OB & Golden Hill.  We were earning more regular customers every week.  We we getting close to paying off my initial investment.  We were ready to grow & take on bigger challenges.

We signed up to do the OB Street Fair in June, RB Alive Street Fair in May & CityFest in Hillcrest in August.  Each cost over $400 to have a booth but attendance at each was in the 50,000-80,000 range.  You were paying for the large crowd & the hope was to sell as much product as quick & efficiently as possible.

It seemed like the next logical step for us.  Kate & I had attended the OB Street Fair every year for many years, so we knew that grilled cheese would be a hit.  

I did some recon on some other street fairs & came up with a list to try.  There were many in San Diego County including:  Escondido, Carlsbad & Encinitas.  

We had to get a fire extinguisher, new screen walls with windows that we could serve through.  And, we decided to limit our menu to only OBC or Bacon Street to streamline the experience for both the customer & us.  

I think it took doing 100 farmers markets before we really got the hang of what we were doing.  Neither one of us went to culinary school or worked as a line cook in a kitchen, so we had to learn it on the fly.  After that first year, it felt like we had really accomplished something big & then graduated to the next level.            

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