Right now we're hard at work smoothing out some last minute details before we go a-crawling this Thursday. Based on the inquiries I've been getting in response to the crawl invite, I thought I would share a bit of how that works.
1. Lots of reading and surfing. We'll look around at the word on the street for what's good for, well, anything. As some of you may know, we've done samosas, brownies, tacos, hot chocolate, and of course the food that started it all...dumplings. But as always it needs to be small and easy to carry out.
2. Callin'! We always work to make sure folks know we're coming and roughly how many we'll be. This is the biggest reason why we've been pickier about the RSVPs as of late. One of the frustrations we occasionally hear about from crawlers is that hosting establishments are overwhelmed, and this is something we work very hard to avoid. It irks folks who are kindly letting us descend upon them to briefly sample their wares and it makes for unhappy crawlers. Both undesirable outcomes. Trick is, we don't have a very reliable metric for giving our kind hosts an estimate. RSVPs are one of the more efficient ways of doing this while staying accessible to everyone. (And you don't even need a Facebook account to RSVP: rsvpfoodcrawl@gmail.com)
3. Maps - a crawler's best friend. Another strategy for keeping things going smoothly for everyone involved is writing up different routes. If we stagger when our groups swing by, it lessens the wait time for crawlers and increases the patience of the folks kindly serving us our portable treats. And don't forget crawlers, be kind to the tip jar when there is one! It still takes time for these folks to give us snacks even though they are small ticket items. So please, stick to the route order.
And this, my friends, is why we don't release meet up points right away. A lot of thought and research goes into them, and if we're going to do something, it's worth doing as well as we can.
Can't wait to see you this Thursday! Happy fooding, fellow crawlers!
