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"Do you guys do SDSU?"  We got asked all the time, from both other vendors & customers at the markets.

"No, but I've heard it's a good market," I said.

"It is.  They don't have grilled cheese out there.  You guy's would clean up!"

I crunched the numbers & based on what I figured we could pull in at San Diego State, & it seemed easier & more economical than driving to Rancho Bernardo & Oceanside every Thursday.  

Based on other markets, the sales always seemed to follow a similar correlation:  Things would start off well, sometimes it would take a few weeks for us to get noticed, but then we found our groove & customer base.  But, then at some point, the sales would reach their peak & then begin to plateau or even drop off to their lowest levels.  

Kate & I usually gave a new market at least a month or six weeks to see how we measured up.  And, yes there were a few that cost us our time- we called those, "one & dones."  And others that we continued to show up at because there just wasn't any other option for that particular day.  

But, after being back in the thick of it for over a year, it felt like it was time for a change-up & college-aged kids were our target market, so it made sense.  We applied for both the SDSU (Aztecs) Thursday market as well as the UCSD (Tritons) Tuesday market for the next fall semester.

We heard from vendors at the La Jolla market down the road, that Tuesday's at the Price Center on UCSD campus were a money maker for hot foods.  They only had a handful of vendors, but they were making bank out there from 10am-2pm.  

Kate & I currently had Tuesdays open so we decided to butter up their market manager first.  I grilled up some Cheezers & delivered them to a super secret office, underneath their beautiful cliff top campus next to Torrey Pines & the Pacific Ocean.  I handed over four of our best Cheezers to one guy who thanked me & told us he'd get back to us.    

We never heard back, but I'm sure he liked those sandwiches.

SDSU was a whole different process.  After I took them Cheezer samples & they decided we were in fact, Aztec material, I had to go in two different times to talk to the head of dining on campus & to their own health department (a separate entity from the county).  I wasn't even for sure if we'd made the grade or not, but we kept on it, because we really wanted that market.

First, we had to up our insurance, then we had to fill out a bunch of paper work & had to register our car for a parking pass.  At one point I thought I was going to have to write a five page essay on why hot food was important to college students.

I did not & Mad Munch was finally accepted into the SDSU market.  They were expanding the hours this semester (from 10am-5pm instead of 10-3) & we would make our debut August 30, 2018.