In the last few weeks we have traded at our semi-regular haunts Stirchley Community Market, on New Street and at Digbeth Dining Club. All of them involved a jaunt up the M40 into Birmingham, and all of them included a selection of our lovely regular customers. It’s brilliant; these days we trade in Birmingham so much that we are actually familiar. People there have heard of us, or more likely, of the Manwich, and recognise the name. No doubt this is partly because the name is some guy off Star Wars (you’re thinking of Jabba The Hut) or that film by Monty Python (you’re half right, it was directed by Terry Gilliam) or something to do with Alice in Wonderland (yes! Through the Looking Glass but that totally counts!), but the main thing is they came over for a chat and a toastie.
The familiarity is wonderful. There is a lovely warm feeling when someone comes and has a toastie because they enjoyed one a while ago at Moseley Folk Festival, or the week before on New Street. Rarer, but as special, are those people who have only heard of our toasties and wanted to try them. It has become such a habitual nicety that when on Friday we were trading at Digbeth and were asked if it was our first time my initial reaction was to be mildly offended.
How could this poor lost soul possibly not have heard of us? We have traded at Digbeth every month since it restarted in March, often several times. At roughly the same time it occurred to me that Birmingham is actually quite a large place. There are a great deal of excellent street food vendors here, and to have not heard of us is not actually unlikely or grounds for offence. So we embraced the opportunity to feed them instead of being outraged. I hope they liked it.
Outside the big smoke though there has historically been a lot less work available. However last week Leamington Eat Street opened for the first time on Regent Court, and despite mixed weather we exceeded our (admittedly modest) expectations and will be back again every Friday. Even better than that, we met some of our Warwickshire street food regulars who have seen us before in Leamington or Stratford, prompting more warm feelings.
Familiarity is our key to taking a bigger slice of the street food pie and why I’m extremely glad that the Beast, long may he thunder, is slow and prone to breakdowns. It means that right from the start we didn’t stray far from home, and now this, initially accidental, strategy is paying off. We will always lose trade to burgers and hog roasts, and these days we have largely come to terms with this, but I’m confident that we do delicious food (with the exception of occasional 3am sleepless nights when I’m pretty convinced that the whole van was a bad idea) and that people who have tried a toastie will see us again and hopefully want another. Staying local and having a regular couple of pitches means that we keep that repeat custom coming back, and have to explain the origins of our name to fewer people every time (it’s because we love Star Wars).
Thank you to all our customers, but especially those who keep coming back. We love you shit loads.
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