Serving up authentic southern cuisine in the heart of California wine country
We recently held a second tasting party to give our new friends in the community and in the food and wine industry an opportunity to sample our menu and give us feedback. We had a great time getting to know everyone and even made some new friends! Thank you Oz for taking such delicious photos!
We are raising $15,000 to help us purchase our food truck, and we need your help! Check out our video, which tells a little bit about ourselves and what we are trying to do, and then hop on over to our Kickstarter campaign!
Please visit our campaign page to see our interesting and fun rewards and help us get our truck!
This summer, we were invited to vend at a magical concert series called Broadway Under The Stars, which is held inside the ruins in Jack London State Park.
An Inspiring Setting For A Concert
This event was a huge step for us. Previously, the largest group we had cooked for was 50. For the concert series, we had to prepare for almost three times that and be able to sell it all within only a couple of hours. We ordered from a distributor for the first time, called on several friends to help us, and battled incompatible fryers and insufficient generators.
Our First “Bulk” Order From A Distributor
By the end of the first night, we decided we had learned quite enough “lessons” for one day. The next day, we did it all over again a little better, and it was amazing!
Drums & Crumbs At Broadway Under The Stars
Thank you everyone who helped behind the scenes and who came by our tent during the event!
This week, we invited our new friends in Sonoma to bring a guest and try part of our menu that we have been perfecting over the last two months. We set up shop in the Sonoma Community Center Community Kitchen and had a wonderful evening of getting to know our friends better and making new friends. We also had a chance to share our vision and dream for Drums & Crumbs and receive feedback and suggestions. As an added treat, we were visited by members of a gospel choir who were gathering for rehearsal across the hall. Everyone was as excited about the business as we are, and the food got rave reviews.
Thank you everyone who came!
We recently had the privilege of catering the book release party for Clash: 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are by Hazel Rose Markus, PhD, and Alana Conner, PhD. The party goers enjoyed Baked Mac & Cheese and Rachel’s Blackberry & Strawberry Cobbler (with fresh whipped cream!). Everyone loved the book and the food, so we’ll mark that one down as a success! Congrats to Hazel and Alana on the fascinating book.
Hazel Rose Markus, PhD, and Alana Conner, PhD, authors of Clash: 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are
Yesterday we cooked for the first time in our new “home” at the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center in Marin County as a part of their Food Business Incubator Program. This program offers guidance and training to new food businesses, as well as a very clean and affordable commercial kitchen. We actually got in trouble yesterday because we didn’t do all of the tasks on our clean up check list, but this makes us love them even more because we are sticklers ourselves in how we run our business. The center hosts a lot of speakers and networking events, and we are excited about getting to know other entrepreneurs and, hopefully, future clients.
For those of you not familiar with Northern California geography, Marin County is the county between Sonoma and San Francisco counties. It has always been our plan to cover both of those areas (eventually Arthur and Rachel will chair their own separate jurisdictions), so it makes sense to start in the middle. The small downside is that the center is a 45 minutes away from our house in Sonoma, but even that is hard to complain about considering how beautiful the scenery is.
Things are roaring along up here at the Drums & Crumbs HQ (e.g. the coffee shop near our house).
Both Rachel and Arthur made their respective moves to Sonoma. In the interest of conserving finances and in acknowledgment of how much time we will be spending together during this start up year, we are now roommates. Its been a bit of an *adjustment*, but life is going pretty well up here in beautiful wine country.
In the last month, we have secured all of our required tax registrations and a business license. The business has a group health insurance plan (!!!) and will hopefully have life and liability insurance by the end of the week. Other active projects are shooting a short video for our Kickstarter campaign (more on that later) and having photos taken for our snazzy new website (in progress).
Most excitingly, we have been cooking a lot and even had our first catering job! We are still working on getting the financing to buy the truck, so, in the meantime, we are a legit catering company. We will continue to practice our recipes in the kitchen and perfect our cooking processes while also networking like crazy to get our name out there and drum up some new business.
If you haven’t already, please like us on Facebook! We post short updates on our Facebook page a few times a week, so it is the best way to keep track of what we are up to.
We were thrilled to recently cater the set of a short film. One of Arthur’s friends is the director, so we bartered a fried chicken buffet for 25 in exchange for helping us put together a Kickstarter video.
It was an unusual venue — a marina at midnight. We didn’t visit the venue beforehand (a mistake we’ll never repeat), so imagine our surprise when we showed up and were told to park in an empty dirt parking lot with only a single street light. There were no tables, so we opened the back of the van and recruited another car to park beside us and had an old fashioned tail gate party.
This was our first time cooking more than eight servings, so there ample opportunities to learn. Fortunately, Arthur and I ended the evening on speaking terms (just barely), and we have identified areas to improve and practice.
The food got rave reviews.
It took us a few months to define the brand that is Drums & Crumbs, but we have finally turned the concept into an image. A huge thanks to Nicole at Design Womb for creating our logo. We love it!
Yes, we are still trucking along.
Arthur finished the rough draft of the business plan, and we are feeling really good about our numbers. He’s also been working on our tax-related requirements. Rachel has been working on getting all of the necessary permits. Yes, starting a food business is almost as glamorous as it sounds.
Our wonderful graphic designer has had the challenge of finding a middle ground between our sometimes very different styles and preferences, and we are getting close to having something to share with the rest of the world.
We are about to make the big move up to Sonoma County. Up until now, Rachel has been living in Santa Cruz and Arthur in San Francisco. Once we get our stuff semi-settled, it’ll be time to get in the kitchen and nail down our recipes and processes. Rachel has been collecting vintage southern cookbooks for the past several years, so she’s excited about cracking them open as we perfect the classic dishes that will be on our menu.
We have loved networking with some of the other culinary professionals in the Bay Area and can’t wait to meet more people who love food as much as we do. If you are a food professional or even a food lover in the area, we’d love to hear from you!
