It was January and we had a little bit of time to kill, so we decided to put on a special event for Valentine’s Day, centered on the theme of extravagant desserts. I had never put on, promoted, or even planned for an event except my wedding reception, but unless you try something once, it’s difficult to know whether you can do it or not. It’s that old thing that if you don’t try, you automatically fail.
We spend a LOT of time deciding on the menu, and an especially long time developing the cake for the chocolate sushi. In retrospect, once things seem to be taking too much time, I should have cut my losses and moved on to another dessert. But it’s hard to focus when you have a certain idea. However, when you have a certain idea and are spending a lot of energy trying to make only that idea work, you aren’t always able to step back and realize there are other ways to achieve the same idea.
There were a lot of deadlines and milestones when putting on an event, so it’s difficult to keep it all together. The most important thing was selling the event, and we did a fair job doing that; however as the day got closer, we realized we needed to fill up the space, so John invited a lot of his friends for free, just so our paying customers wouldn’t feel awkward sitting in an empty space.
The menu was pretty great, starting with habanero truffles, lemon lavender tartlets, chocolate sushi, mini chocolate mousse mountains (garnished with dry ice), white chocolate passionfruit bonbons. It was an all-you-can-eat event, so we went around a few times to give seconds to people. The event was rather lovely, and we were quite proud, but all told it was not good for business since we lost a lot of time in product development and we didn’t really sell enough tickets to pay for our expenses. It could have been good for marketing, but mostly it was good for experience. The guests really had a great time, and that was a good feeling for me that lasted a while.
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