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You will need:
15 friends, with varying degrees of enthusiasm
1 box pre-assembled noodles
1 box non-pre-assembled fried rice
1 box cold spring rolls
2 microwaves
2 desks
1 floral tablecloth
cups, forks and spoons
a sense of misplaced optimism in the whole proceedings
CREATIVITY
Every year at school, we have an event named ‘Harmony Day’. On this day several of the senior students are expected to run stalls at lunchtime, each one selling the cuisine of a different country. This year a group of friends and I were given the responsibility of running the China stall. I’m not sure exactly how it was supposed to inspire interracial harmony as I spent much of the time having a verbal war with the Canadians about table spaces and then stealing Britain’s sticky tape. All the same, though, we had been told to run a table. And run it we did.
However, this is not a post about simply setting up a stall. This is about setting up a stall CREATIVELY. ANYONE can run a Harmony Day stall. The REAL challenge is in running a stall in as creative a way as possible. And so, I’ve provided these handy instructions for anyone who might need them.
For some reason I was the only one in our group to have a double free before lunchtime, which means it was my job to set up the stall.
The way I see it, creatively setting up a tiny stall to purvey shoddily assembled Chinese-like comestibles in the space of an hour and a half can be done in five main steps. In case you need help remembering them they can be known as the five ‘S’s. The first is STALL; the second SIGNAGE; the third SAVOURIES; the fourth SUPPLIES; and the fifth SELLING.
1. STALL
The first step is to set up the stall itself. If you are living in an ideal, creative world, you will have a professional shop area, exciting and unusual foodstuffs to vend, and countless blank slate opportunities to scribble all over with the phenomenal creativeness of your mind. You will also live in a castle, have a butler named Jeeves, and ride a unicorn-drawn chariot to school every morning. This is not an ideal world.
If, like us, all you have available is two desks and a floral tablecloth, you should nonetheless be prepared to set them up in as CREATIVE a way as possible. First it will be necessary to move (steal) desks from your French classroom. I recommend using a friend to help you with this. I chose to use Brandine, despite the fact she wasn’t actually one of the group of people supposed to be helping with the stall. It is quite difficult – nay, tantamount to impossible – to lug a heavy desk around by yourself. I discovered this when Brandine left shortly after helping me move the first desk, leaving me with the second. It was painful. I ran into two walls. Luckily, the protection provided by the desk prevented any part of me from actually making contact with the wall. Unluckily, the wall was in contact with the desk, which was in contact with me, which led to a not insignificant amount of pain and bruising.
Move your desks to where you want them. Here is a great opportunity for creativeness. Why not leave the desk in the middle of the main quad? Place it upside down in front of the science classrooms? Push it down the stairs in front of the canteen?
Odds are, however, that if you want people to actually come to your Harmony Day stall, you’re going to have to set it up somewhere accessible. After some deliberation I went with putting the desks under the arch in front of the library. But I’m sure you can still think of some way to set them up CREATIVELY! You could … well … well, let’s move on to the decoration. There are LOTS of creative things to do with decoration.
Having moved your desks to wherever you want them you will then need to apply some form of decoration. What kind of thing, exactly? You’re a creative person! Cover the table with origami wolverines! Create a world map out of interestingly coloured stones and bits of glass!
Unless, of course, all you have is a mildly stained yellow tablecloth covered in daisies. In which case it will be a little harder to attain creativity. Still, I’m sure you’ll think of something interesting to do with the PLACEMENT of the tablecloth. Peel a couple of bits of spilled wax off the tablecloth – or don’t, you creative person, you – and decide how you want to place it. Underneath the desks? Perhaps on a different stall altogether?
Given that you want your stall to actually look like a stall, maybe you could consider placing your tablecloth ON the desks and spreading it over them. But whatever. I’m the last person to want to restrict someone else’s CREATIVE URGES. It’s just a suggestion.
2. SIGNAGE
Aha! Finally a chance for some REAL creativity! The signs are of vital importance to your stall. How else are people going to know what you’re selling?
As we had the China stall, I made a giant poster to tape on the wall next to us. You don’t have to be restricted by the limitations of a POSTER, of course. A piece of sculpture will do just as well. If you’re willing to give up your whole lunchtime to performing it, you could even try some interpretive dancing. But, you know, for general convenience, a poster works pretty well. And it should probably have the name of your stall on it. And I personally chose to make my poster look like the Chinese flag. But you can make it look like a CREATIVE Chinese flag, if you want.
You’ll also need price lists.
Even if you can’t be as creative as you’d like to with the poster, I’m sure you can go absolutely crazy with the price lists! There’s no LIMIT to the amount of creativity you can cram into that black-and-white A4 sheet!
But you should probably include the names of the things you’re selling on it as well. You know. Just in case people want to buy things. You’ll need the prices too.
You know, at first it seemed so EASY to run a stall creatively, but this is just … wait! Savouries! That means FOOD! Food is creative!
3. SAVOURIES
Savouries is where the creativity REALLY begins to flow freely. There are so many things you can do with FOOD! Tofu ice cream! Tibetan goat cheese kebabs!
Or, yes, well, it is a CHINESE stall, so you’ll probably need Chinese food, but you can still be CREATIVE!
Unfortunately most creative foods are extremely difficult to make. We ended up with a box of fried rice, one of noodles, and one of spring rolls. Myself and Vyvyan – also someone who wasn’t actually in the group responsible for the stall, so I’m not sure exactly why she was helping – had to reheat them in the Senior Common Room.
Except it wasn’t ALL reheating. We had to assemble the fried rice – the rice, egg, and ham were all in separate boxes.
CREATIVITY TIME!
We had to mix them together and heat them in the microwave with some water in order to, essentially, cook them. You might think that there’d be little opportunity for creativity in there, right? Well, you’d be WRONG.
Due to the fact that we had a very small microwave and a very large box of rice, we were forced to frantically shovel the rice into a smaller plastic box, warm it up enough so that while it may not technically have been COOKED it was at least a good temperature. Hmmm. Not much room for creativity so far. I suppose, if you wanted to, you could do something quite interesting like gently warming the rice in the loving light of the sun, or placing the ingredients in the toaster, which Vyvyan suggested doing twice. Except that really doesn’t cook the rice enough to allow you to serve it. Damn this dearth of creative opportunities.
We warmed up the noodles at the same time in another microwave, and this time we actually left them in the box. Which was virtually exactly the same size as the microwave itself, meaning it didn’t have room to turn. That’s a little bit creative, isn’t it? It’s different, anyway …
Although we ended up causing the carousel in the microwave to fall out, which, while certainly EXCITING and UNUSUAL, will not help you in your stall-running aims. So while I certainly am not going try to restrict the creative nature of any one, ever – that would mean actually making assertive decisions – DON’T do this. Not ever. Never.
Well, you’ll have finished making the food by this point, and yes, I know it hasn’t been very creative so far. This is so DIFFICULT. At least you can be creative in the way you carry the food down to your staid, boring, non-creative stall. BALANCE the noodles gently on your head whilst gently tossing the box of mostly-warmed-up rice from hand to hand. Form the spring rolls into some kind of head dress and warble native songs as you walk carefully down to your stand.
Or just carry them. Which, you know, given they’re kind of hot ‘n all, and the lids come off easily, might be a bit safer. Or …
NO! NO! We CAN be creative! You could … or … or maybe … PLEASE TELL ME THIS ISN’T ALL THERE IS. There MUST be more opportunities for creativity! Please …
4. SUPPLIES
You can do supplies creatively … can’t you? It is possible? Well, yes, I suppose … of COURSE it is. EVERYTHING is creative to creative people like us. It is now in your hands to decide what it is people are eating FROM, what they’re eating WITH, and WHAT they’re putting on it.
Being a creative type I’m sure you like to see people turning back to nature, but your customers might not enjoy eating noodles from their bare hands. I know, I know, they’re just not as creative as you are. It’s probably best to provide some kind of disposable cup or bowl. We went with cups. They were cheaper. But you know you can still give people the OPTION of eating unrestricted by the tawdry plastic containers you’re giving everyone else … you haven’t sold out COMPLETELY … there’s still some creativity here … isn’t there?
Not to worry! You can still be creative about the type of cutlery to provide!
IMAGINE the range of eating implements you can provide. How about some sporks, to begin with? Then … wait, why be hemmed in by traditional cutlery? Give each customer a clarinet to eat with! Finally, we’re allowed to use some CREATIVITY!
Except forks and spoons are cheaper, so we ended up buying a packet of each of them and giving customers those.
We also provided a bottle of soy sauce for customers to season their food with. You could provide something else, I suppose. Maybe your customers would be interested in having hand-ground sugar gently sprinkled over their noodles or fried rice. Perhaps you could completely get rid of any CORPOREAL idea of seasoning and just chant a short, self-composed poem over each cup.
Or, you know, you could stick with the soy sauce.
Oh, God, this is so DIFFICULT … I joined this group because I thought I could finally use some of the CREATIVITY I’ve been telling people I have … they told me, they told me I’d have to do some things seriously, but I didn’t realise quite HOW MUCH … oh, lord, DON’T MAKE ME FACE LIFE FOR WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING CREATIVE I CAN DO AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHH NO … I’m sure I can feel my chakras clogging up.
5. SELLING
Selling is the most important part of any of these steps because this is when all your HARD, CREATIVE WORK comes to fruition. The savouries, supplies and signage should all be set up on your stall. At this point, CUSTOMERS will begin to come around.
Customers, unfortunately, aren’t generally creative people. While I’m sure that if YOU were a customer you’d approach it in a highly original way, most people are simply interested in purchasing comestibles from you and moving on. Philistines. Luckily, there are LOTS of creative ways to RESPOND to customers.
Generally speaking, the customer will begin by saying ‘I’d like a cup of noodles, please,’ or words to that effect, and offer you some money. At which point you … well, do whatever you want!You could leap over the stall, clutch the customer to your breast dramatically and cry ‘Comrades, the revolution is here!’ You could throw a spoon at them and then sink slowly down behind the stall and out of sight. You could predict their future with some of those magical healing crystals you bought online.
Actually, in THIS situtation in might be helpful if, I don’t know, you took their money and put it in the change box. And then you should probably give them the noodles. Because as creative as it might be to take their money and NOT give them the noodles, it’s also technically against the law.
I CAN’T MOVE IN THIS CREATIVITY-BARREN SOCIETY! WHY can’t I be creative? IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
This is so STRESSFUL … I’m going to take a minute out to listen to Enya.
Except to do that I’m going to have to put my iPod headphones in my EARS, instead of out the window, or in the vegetable section at Coles, which is so STAID, and EMOTIONLESS.
I CAN’T LIVE IN A WORLD IN WHICH SELLING FOOD IS PRACTICAL AND UNINTERESTING.
WHAT am i doing here I CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS TELL ME I CAN MAKE THIS CREATIVE, PLEASE!! PLEASE!!! LET ME HAVE THIS … I NEED CREATIVITY!!!!
At the end of the day, pack up the stall, wash up remaining boxes and return everything to its rightful place.
And THAT, my friends, is how to run a food stall creatively.
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