How To Ruin A Good Business - Newbie Guide

It's summer, there are festivals everywhere, one comes after the other and you don't know which one to attend. Today I've been to a festival, that has been on my radar for quite some time, but somehow I have never been able to attend. I can consider myself very lucky as it was a fantastic day that I'll never forget, for various reasons.

Festival season is the golden season for every vendor that qualifies as a festival vendor. It's the period of time when you can make some serious money, if you're smart.

This year there has been some changes in Transylvania, municipalities decided to focus on quality and order, rather than allowing every possible vendor to attend the festival. This way plastic garbage, labeled as souvenir has been banned from the perimeter of the festivals and street food vendors have also been limited to just a few dishes, like the traditional kürtös, lángos, papanași, sweet corn and so on.

This is both good and bad, depending on what you're selling. Eliminating the competition has given quite a few vendors some serious advantages.

When you visit a festival, you most likely are going to taste some of the food available as even though for many money is tight, a festival i a festival and tasting the food is part of it.

They say when choosing a street vendor or a restaurant, go where the queue is longer or there's a crowd as that means the food is good.

Today we wanted papanași as it's heavenly good and I don't make it at home, so restaurants are the only place where we can have it.

Papanași is a Romanian and Moldovan traditional fried or boiled pastry, doughnut shaped with a small sphere on top. They are usually filled with a soft cheese such as urdă. Papanași are served covered in heavy cream or sour cream and with a sour jam topping. The word papanași may come from the Latin papa or pappa, which means 'food for children'. source

This was one of the places serving papanași. I took the photo in the morning, when there were only a few people roaming around and no one wanted papanași so early. The place may look terrible from outside as the wall looks like crumbling, but please note, this is a medieval building, that is protected and considered a monument. This means restoration has to be done to meet some requirements and keep the original aspect.

They were selling two things, lángos and papanași. The prices are festival prices but no surprise there as that's exactly what we were expecting.

By the time we decided it was finally time to buy the papanași, there was already a line. We stayed in line for about 10 minutes, till there were only two people in front of us, this medieval guy and a woman. Then the guy left, the woman wanted two lángos, but they had none, so she was told she had to wait a few minutes till the new batch was done.

While waiting I was paying attention to what the workers were doing. There were 3 guys inside. One was serving customers, the other was making the lángos, which meant taking out the dough from a bowl, rolling it out and then throwing them in oil. Basically he was the key person in the process, but it seemed like he was the only one not recognizing that as he was moving with the snail's speed. He was singing while he was rolling out the dough, chatting with the others and it looked like he had no concern about the queue getting longer and longer.

After 10 minutes of waiting, the woman got her order served and was finally my turn. I ordered 2 papanași, which turned out were not ready either. While waiting I was again watching what they were doing. So the guy at the counter took out one portion of papanași from a stainless steal box and placed it in the boiling oil. I already saw that the quantity he took out the box was not enough, but could not say anything, as the guy was busy chatting with the dough guy.

When it was ready, he asked me if I ordered one or two. I said two. The he took out another portion of papanași and repeated the whole process. This could have been avoided if he would have paid attention to what I was saying. In the meantime I was waiting and waiting, just like the people behind me forming a queue behind me. Then finally my order was ready.

If you don't know how papanași looks like, here it is. This is the dish I had to waste 20 minutes of my life today.

Its basically like doughnuts, just not rolled in sugar. It has sour cream on top and berry jam. It tastes heavenly good because the sour cream and the berry jam go well together. Don't ask me how many calories one serving has as today I don't want to know.

So while I was waiting, was thinking how much money these guys are losing per day, if they are working like they did today. They could have had the papanași and the lángos ready in the same time and serve those who wanted papanași, while waiting for the lángos to be ready, but organizing the process better was not a priority for them. They were not in a hurry, that was obvious from the start.

Without any thinking, it was clear that these guys were employees, not the owner and I suppose the owner has no clue what's going on there.

When I see this kind of behavior I can only think of one thing, that these guys are under payed and there's no possibility of reaching an agreement with the owner.

Incentivizing workers is key in any business and finding the best system that can maximize profits is also a must. What I saw today is simply incomprehensible. With the inflation we're having, buying power is decreasing day by day and what people are giving up is exactly what they are selling. When there's a high demand, you need to capitalize on that but these guys were not interested. Time is money and waiting is what every customer hates.