by Thom Whalen
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Funnel cakes surprised me. They were fun to make. They tasted great. And it seemed that everyone in town except me knew all about them. Customers who had never ordered dessert before wanted to add a funnel cake to their meal. Kids came in just to have funnel cake and Coke. Sales of pie and cake from the bakery dropped off, but Mrs. Everett didn’t care. The take from funnel cakes more than made up for the loss.
The next surprise was that people started ordering them to go. We always got the occasional order to take out – maybe a half dozen a week – but we sold a couple of dozen funnel cakes to go on Sunday night alone. Nothing like that had happened at Elsa’s Grill before.
Mrs. Everett didn’t like it. “We only get twenty-five cents for a funnel cake,” she said. “I need customers to come here and eat meals, not eat at home and have my funnel cake for dessert.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Eggs didn’t cost much and the flour, milk, and sugar cost even less. I earned only minimum wage. At least twenty of the twenty-five cents was pure profit.
“How many funnel cakes can people in Wemsley eat?”
Her question was intended to be rhetorical but the answer in my head was, a lot.
“I think that we should stop selling them to go,” she said. “We should only sell them to customers who have eaten their meal here.”
That didn’t sound like such a good idea to me. “People might not like that,” I said.
“Well, I don’t like them coming here just for the funnel cakes.”
“It’s probably just a fad,” I said. “Once the novelty has worn off, you probably won’t sell any more funnel cakes than bakery cakes.”
“You think?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
At the time, I couldn’t understand how any small business owner could hope that any part of their business would go down. Now, having seen a lot of small businesses fail, I’ve come to realize that it’s more common than one would think. A lot of small business owners aren’t very good at business.
I mentioned to Katie that Mrs. Everett didn’t like selling so many funnel cakes to go and she laughed. “She doesn’t want anything to change,” Katie said. “It makes her nervous. Most people are like that.”
Katie was wiser than she looked.
“Are you like that?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I always want everything to change.”
That I did believe.