Hunger Trends

Tonight was a food truck night.  Every Wednesday, as a matter of fact, is a food truck night.   Each Wednesday of the summer, June through August, we set up in St. Cloud, MN, at the Summertime By George music festival.  Sales start at 4:30, music starts at 5:00, everything ends at 9:00, we pull out at 9:45, I'm back to my house at 11:00.  We did the same thing last summer; twelve Wednesdays of building nachos and flingin' funnel cakes to music lovers and food seekers.  Tonight was our third week but first really busy night.  Also our hottest night, which made for a tiresome combination.  Hydrate...hydrate......

This will astound nobody but me, but it's late and I need something to write about.  Through the weeks last year and so far this year a trend has held pretty steady week and week out with regards to what customers order and when.  Potato chip nachos are our most popular item, but like clockwork 90% of our nacho sales occur during the first two hours of the night, and we almost never sell them after 8:00.  About the time the nacho sales taper off we begin getting orders for corn pups (no, they are not a corn dog....they are 450 times better than a corn dog)....so from roughly 7:00-8:30 we are hand-dipping and frying deliciousness on a stick.  Hardly ever sell them prior to 7:00.  At 8:00 the funnel cake orders begin, and like corn pups we sell very few early in the evening.  Most nights the only item we get orders for after about 8:15 is funnel cakes.

I got into each week wondering if this will be the night we get an anomaly in the pattern....but it never happens.  Nachos, followed by corn pups, topped off by funnel cakes.  We have other menu items that get ordered here and there during the evening, but for whatever reason those three things fall into tidy time slots.  I suppose an appetizer/main dish/dessert structure could be the reason for the timing.  Maybe the nacho customers are eager to get an order right away, 'cause they really are pretty phenomenal.  Oh, and here's another weird trend with the corn pups: during nacho time we get lots of customers who ask about the corn pups but don't order them.  But during corn pup time nobody asks about them, they just order them.  The humans are interesting creatures.

So yeah, that was about as intriguing to you as a wad of gum stuck to your tire.  If the patterns of food consumption on the shores of Lake George ever change I'll be sure to let you know.  Don't hold your breath.