2010/12/28
2010/12/14
BGI Beat - Closing Remarks
This post is the final installment of my BGI Beat on Sustainable Food and Portland Food Carts.
I set out to highlight some of the carts, as well as some of the challenges with, sourcing local, organic and sustainable food in Portland. The food cart phenomenon speaks to my heart in many ways and I appreciated this opportunity to delve into it and publish my thoughts. I started my food service career in 1992 as a dishwasher and ended it nearly six years later as a kitchen manager of a small, locally owned restaurant. Since leaving the heat of the kitchen, I've harbored dreams of opening my own little dive/diner serving my special recipes to happy customers. A food cart represents the ultimate new start up, to me, as it's essentially just a kitchen with a (usually) very reduced menu. The low cost of entry into the market and expanding slate of venues promoting and housing carts around town make it an attractive option for ambitious, but under-capitalized, entrepreneurs.
The issues I identified are not new - sourcing from limited supplies, the hard choices small volume businesses must make to keep costs down, interest or indifference on the part of customers, and all of the other non-food, but still sustainability-related decisions that must be accounted for, as well, including energy, waste, and packaging. More than one food cart vendor expressed a desire to see more sustainability-centered guidance from the City of Portland or another independent agency. Some have already taken steps towards collectively sourcing from area farmers. Others participate in cart-pods with a "green" mission. But, for the time being, the next step has not been taken because it can't be taken alone. And, as recent headlines and word on the street indicates, the City of Portland seems more intent on regulating food carts on their structures, rather than helping them source their tomatoes and bok choy from local farms.
As to the particulars of this Fall Term assignment, writing about a single topic related to sustainability, I end it satisfied with both what I've produced and the delicious nature of the work. I haven't written about a single topic in successive posts before and I found that to be an enjoyable endeavor. I also relished the opportunity to speak with so many cart owners about their food and their experience as entrepreneurs. From these conversations, I've gained a fresh and more seasoned perspective of life inside the food cart. I believe keeping this project focused on local, "real world" business issues helped keep my words and thoughts grounded and accessible. I remain open to reviving this Beat in the future, but - like many carts - will shutter it for the winter and focus on other projects.
Thanks for reading my BGI Beat on Sustainable Food at Portland Food Carts. I especially wish to thank the efforts of those foodies over at Foodcarts Portland, without whom everyone from cart owners to cart food lovers would be less well fed. And, thanks to all of the food cart proprietors who took time to speak with me and tell me their stories. I look forward to eating with you again, soon.
* * * * * * * * * *
Here's a link to the 2010 Food Cart Year in Review over at Foodcarts Portland. Bon appétit!
I set out to highlight some of the carts, as well as some of the challenges with, sourcing local, organic and sustainable food in Portland. The food cart phenomenon speaks to my heart in many ways and I appreciated this opportunity to delve into it and publish my thoughts. I started my food service career in 1992 as a dishwasher and ended it nearly six years later as a kitchen manager of a small, locally owned restaurant. Since leaving the heat of the kitchen, I've harbored dreams of opening my own little dive/diner serving my special recipes to happy customers. A food cart represents the ultimate new start up, to me, as it's essentially just a kitchen with a (usually) very reduced menu. The low cost of entry into the market and expanding slate of venues promoting and housing carts around town make it an attractive option for ambitious, but under-capitalized, entrepreneurs.
The issues I identified are not new - sourcing from limited supplies, the hard choices small volume businesses must make to keep costs down, interest or indifference on the part of customers, and all of the other non-food, but still sustainability-related decisions that must be accounted for, as well, including energy, waste, and packaging. More than one food cart vendor expressed a desire to see more sustainability-centered guidance from the City of Portland or another independent agency. Some have already taken steps towards collectively sourcing from area farmers. Others participate in cart-pods with a "green" mission. But, for the time being, the next step has not been taken because it can't be taken alone. And, as recent headlines and word on the street indicates, the City of Portland seems more intent on regulating food carts on their structures, rather than helping them source their tomatoes and bok choy from local farms.
As to the particulars of this Fall Term assignment, writing about a single topic related to sustainability, I end it satisfied with both what I've produced and the delicious nature of the work. I haven't written about a single topic in successive posts before and I found that to be an enjoyable endeavor. I also relished the opportunity to speak with so many cart owners about their food and their experience as entrepreneurs. From these conversations, I've gained a fresh and more seasoned perspective of life inside the food cart. I believe keeping this project focused on local, "real world" business issues helped keep my words and thoughts grounded and accessible. I remain open to reviving this Beat in the future, but - like many carts - will shutter it for the winter and focus on other projects.
Thanks for reading my BGI Beat on Sustainable Food at Portland Food Carts. I especially wish to thank the efforts of those foodies over at Foodcarts Portland, without whom everyone from cart owners to cart food lovers would be less well fed. And, thanks to all of the food cart proprietors who took time to speak with me and tell me their stories. I look forward to eating with you again, soon.
* * * * * * * * * *
Here's a link to the 2010 Food Cart Year in Review over at Foodcarts Portland. Bon appétit!
2010/12/12
SW4SX Learning Journal 10
This is the final Learning Journal for my Using the Social Web for Social Change class at BGI. Here's a link to everything we all produced online over the last three months.
Elluminate Sessions
After a year + a quarter at BGI, this is the first class in which I felt the Elluminate sessions rivaled the in-person time we experienced together at the three Intensives of the term. Despite the fact that I work in Instructional Design for online learning, I believe that generally, people learn better in face to face, experiential settings. But, online learning can be effective for a variety of purposes, and this class touched on many of those. I particularly liked the virtual circle, which if memory serves me, were slightly different each week - ranging from pictures of ourselves to images portraying our moods or emotions. I also liked the check-ins within a shared Google document with 24 students live editing together.
Course Readings & Work Load
It was a challenge to keep up with everything in the first half of this course. I appreciated the "pick one optional reading and make a slide" aspect of letting each student present to the whole class. This helped lighten the load and exposed us all to each other's presentation styles. I admit I rarely put as much time as I should have into making these slides sing with good design, often throwing it together at the last minute.
The overall workload, for me, was manageable, if a tad overwhelming at first. It took me a few weeks to get caught up after enrolling late. I imagine that for others with less experience using the Web in all its glory, it may have felt even more harried up front. Chris A warned the class was front loaded and it's no small task bringing all of the various threads of social media, social networking and the social web together.
Personal Branding
Just good plain fun and something everyone should do on a regular basis. Who am I? What are my values? Why am I here? What's my story? These questions and more extend into many of our LPD, Marketing, Creativity and other courses. Finding my voice has never been a problem, but honing it requires ongoing practice, discipline and refinement. I loved the post-it note exercise at the first Intensive and anticipate using it and adapting it with groups in the future. I felt this was a great way to prompt people into thinking about our online presence and how our choices shape other people's perceptions of us.
The BGI Beat Blog
This assignment spanned the bulk of the course and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In speaking with others, I believe my choice to go narrow, local and tangible made a big difference in my experience. Generating more material involved doing one of my favorite things - eating great food at food carts in Portland. Motivation never suffered. If anything, I had too many choices. I'm still waiting to decide whether to continue the beat. I have a few outstanding pieces started but unfinished, as well as some "I'm going to email you" promises from cart owners to follow up on. With Winter right around the corned and many carts shuttering for a month or three, perhaps I can take this topic up again in the Spring.
Social Bookmarking & Google Reader
I've never really been as big a fan of social bookmarking as I've felt I should have been. Knowing this, I didn't anticipate liking or finding much use out of Google Reader or Delicious bookmarks, but I set out to clear my mind of these assumptions and dive in. Here's a link to my Delicious page for the class, which shows 82 links marked and tagged. My problem is I generally never go back to these things once I've marked something. I put in quite a lot of time on this in October and November, but fell out of the habit near the close of the term. I think I made it a couple of weeks with Reader. I suppose I have too many "set in my ways" habits of online reading, along with an aversion towards anything that says I have over 1000 unread items to wade through.
Social Change Project
Nina, Darren, Bria, Suzanne and I scripted and produced a pretty cool little 3 minute pitch on sharing. I loved drawing out the sketches as time permitted, as well as working with Nina to produce the script one Saturday morning via a 2 hour Skype call. It was also interesting to see how the Facebook page, in its own small way, took off with people posting stories and other thoughts on sharing. I loved that there was room for me to express my creative side in more than just Creativity class.
Rapid Video Project @ December Intensive
I was not feeling super well, respiratory-health-wise, at this Intensive. Thankfully, this project really got my "have fun" juices going on Saturday afternoon and evening. I think my enthusiastic BGI-Night Live performances were propped up by the joy we shared as a group in SW4SX class making this. Big, big, big thanks to Julie, Julie, Brian, Kim, Suzanne, Peregrine, Michael and I'm sure I'm totally leaving out three or four other people. It was very confusing having Alumni in class, too, that day, plus my brain is a little frazzled after a 5 hour extra long drive home from Bainbridge Island. Our topic, more or less (I know I'm mangling it a bit): What "Cultural Artifacts" of BGI speak to you or are things that you think could help change the world?
Elluminate Sessions
After a year + a quarter at BGI, this is the first class in which I felt the Elluminate sessions rivaled the in-person time we experienced together at the three Intensives of the term. Despite the fact that I work in Instructional Design for online learning, I believe that generally, people learn better in face to face, experiential settings. But, online learning can be effective for a variety of purposes, and this class touched on many of those. I particularly liked the virtual circle, which if memory serves me, were slightly different each week - ranging from pictures of ourselves to images portraying our moods or emotions. I also liked the check-ins within a shared Google document with 24 students live editing together.
Course Readings & Work Load
It was a challenge to keep up with everything in the first half of this course. I appreciated the "pick one optional reading and make a slide" aspect of letting each student present to the whole class. This helped lighten the load and exposed us all to each other's presentation styles. I admit I rarely put as much time as I should have into making these slides sing with good design, often throwing it together at the last minute.
The overall workload, for me, was manageable, if a tad overwhelming at first. It took me a few weeks to get caught up after enrolling late. I imagine that for others with less experience using the Web in all its glory, it may have felt even more harried up front. Chris A warned the class was front loaded and it's no small task bringing all of the various threads of social media, social networking and the social web together.
Personal Branding
Just good plain fun and something everyone should do on a regular basis. Who am I? What are my values? Why am I here? What's my story? These questions and more extend into many of our LPD, Marketing, Creativity and other courses. Finding my voice has never been a problem, but honing it requires ongoing practice, discipline and refinement. I loved the post-it note exercise at the first Intensive and anticipate using it and adapting it with groups in the future. I felt this was a great way to prompt people into thinking about our online presence and how our choices shape other people's perceptions of us.
The BGI Beat Blog
This assignment spanned the bulk of the course and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In speaking with others, I believe my choice to go narrow, local and tangible made a big difference in my experience. Generating more material involved doing one of my favorite things - eating great food at food carts in Portland. Motivation never suffered. If anything, I had too many choices. I'm still waiting to decide whether to continue the beat. I have a few outstanding pieces started but unfinished, as well as some "I'm going to email you" promises from cart owners to follow up on. With Winter right around the corned and many carts shuttering for a month or three, perhaps I can take this topic up again in the Spring.
Social Bookmarking & Google Reader
I've never really been as big a fan of social bookmarking as I've felt I should have been. Knowing this, I didn't anticipate liking or finding much use out of Google Reader or Delicious bookmarks, but I set out to clear my mind of these assumptions and dive in. Here's a link to my Delicious page for the class, which shows 82 links marked and tagged. My problem is I generally never go back to these things once I've marked something. I put in quite a lot of time on this in October and November, but fell out of the habit near the close of the term. I think I made it a couple of weeks with Reader. I suppose I have too many "set in my ways" habits of online reading, along with an aversion towards anything that says I have over 1000 unread items to wade through.
Social Change Project
Nina, Darren, Bria, Suzanne and I scripted and produced a pretty cool little 3 minute pitch on sharing. I loved drawing out the sketches as time permitted, as well as working with Nina to produce the script one Saturday morning via a 2 hour Skype call. It was also interesting to see how the Facebook page, in its own small way, took off with people posting stories and other thoughts on sharing. I loved that there was room for me to express my creative side in more than just Creativity class.
Rapid Video Project @ December Intensive
I was not feeling super well, respiratory-health-wise, at this Intensive. Thankfully, this project really got my "have fun" juices going on Saturday afternoon and evening. I think my enthusiastic BGI-Night Live performances were propped up by the joy we shared as a group in SW4SX class making this. Big, big, big thanks to Julie, Julie, Brian, Kim, Suzanne, Peregrine, Michael and I'm sure I'm totally leaving out three or four other people. It was very confusing having Alumni in class, too, that day, plus my brain is a little frazzled after a 5 hour extra long drive home from Bainbridge Island. Our topic, more or less (I know I'm mangling it a bit): What "Cultural Artifacts" of BGI speak to you or are things that you think could help change the world?
2010/12/09
Social Change Video - Share More Now
I was part of a team that produced this short video about the power of sharing.
2010/12/04
BGI Beat - Cartopia
This post is part of my BGI Beat on Sustainable Food and Portland Food Carts.
Cartopia & Elk Burger from Over the Top
How do you see sustainable food fitting into the Food Cart scene?
It's something that seems more difficult to do in a cart, compared to a traditional restaurant. People seem generally more accepting of "regular" food from carts, especially the ones downtown that serve the lunch crowd during the week. Sustainable food practices still seems like a luxery item, and not something people will be likely to demand as much when they're spending $5 or $6 on cart food. But, that being said, there are some carts that are developing enough of a following based on their product where people are comfortable paying for higher quality ingredients.
Has the Portland food cart scene peaked?
Yes and no. There are always going to be carts that get weeded out over the winter when business slows down. And, the increased competition and development of all these destination cart pods means that a great product becomes more and more important. In the end, it's all about the product you create and how people respond to that. But, as we're now seeing, with success comes scrutiny from local government. I'm hoping government can be a resource to encourage responsible business practices, rather than creating a hostile or antognistic environment.
What's the future look like for food carts?
I think it would be great if something a little more official could come into being, sort of a Food Cart Guild that could organize cart owners and advocate on their behalf. I think we may also see an evolution from carts to shared "micro" retail spaces as more and more landlords begin to realize there's money to be made from multiple tenants pooling their resources, rather than waiting for one renter to come along. The economy is changing and food carts are a symbol of that change.
How is the book being received by folks outside of Portland?
Really well, actually. We've had sales in 30 states so far. Places like Austin TX, Cleveland, D.C., Atlanta and others all have emerging or established food cart scenes. I think Portland's style of food carts may be uniquely our own, but it's interesting to see how these concepts get adapted and fitted to the cultures of other cities around the country. We're also working to get books into stores in New York and New Orleans, among other places. It's an ongoing process to get the word out and sell books.
2010/12/03
2010/12/01
SW4SX Learning Journal 9
This TED Talk touches on many of the issues I'm seeking to highlight in my BGI Beat Blog about Sustainable Food in Portland food carts. Change depends on knowing what to do - as this video highlights in many ways - but also equally depends on people learning how to actually implement ideas into concrete actions leading to true change.
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