TheBanyanTree: It's All About the Food

[Margaret R. Kramer]

We’ve gone to the Women’s Expo for the last seven years or so from my
recollection.  It’s always been fun seeing all the different stuff that
vendors think women might be interested in buying.  For example, one year it
seemed like every lasix surgeon had a table at the Expo.  The next year it
was like every massage therapist in town was there.  This year it was
windows.  I must have seen 50 tables featuring window installation.  New
windows would be great, but I’m trying to sell my stupid house, and the
future new owner can do that.

But the highlight of every Expo was the 20 or so aisles of FREE food
sponsored by Cub Foods, a major grocery chain in the Twin Cities.  There was
pizza, yogurt, milk, fruit, cookies, potato chips, coffee, and free stuff
like deodorant, razors, shampoo, and lots of other things.  Ray and I used
to come home with two full bags of free stuff and spend an hour or so
sorting them all out.

OK, free food sounds great, but the worst part of it was that the lines were
miles long and it took about an hour or so to go through the 20 aisles of
stuff.  On top of that, there were always rude and obnoxious people who
think the world revolves around them, so they would shove and push and butt
in line to get at the free food and samples.  I guess it got so bad last
year that Cub decided that their exhibit degraded women by promoting such
outrageous behavior and pulled out as a sponsor.

In Cub’s place, the Expo added a wine tasting area.  Well, that was nice,
but Ray and I don’t care about wine, and from the scarcity of bodies around
the wine bottles, I don’t think wine tasting is at the top of other people’s
lists either.  The Expo did have free food samples scattered around the
convention floor, but a small cup of wild rice?  A little dinky piece of
chocolate?  And a yucky tasting soy milk drink?  That was it.  It’s a good
thing I had lunch before we left or otherwise I would have been starving.

Ray and I wandered through the rows of vendors.  I found a neat purse to buy
for only $30.  In past Expos, there was a table that would have earrings
priced at 10 sets for $5, but that table wasn’t at the Expo this year.  Ray
picked up an emery board from a table and got his hands slapped, because it
cost 60 cents.  We came home with a freebie ice scraper, an atlas, and some
cheap plastic champagne glasses.  Hmmmm . . .

It’s difficult to admit, but the food definitely made the Women’s Expo what
it was.  It was fun to look at the vendors, but the highlight was food and
the free food stuff.  Perhaps another way of setting up the food exhibit
could have been found or Cub could have developed better policing of the
lines.  Or maybe the cost of setting up wasn’t worth what Cub felt they got
out of it.  My women’s organization stopped having a table at the Expo,
because it was $500 for three days and what we got from it wasn’t worth the
cost.  I notice a lot of familiar tables were missing this year, so they
must have jacked up the fee.

Ray and I left the Expo with empty bellies and empty bags and we felt a
little bit let down.  I heard similar comments from other people around me
as we left.  Next year, we’ll skip the Expo and go to Twins Fest instead.
Twins Fest doesn’t have free food, but it does have good looking baseball
players to look at.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a
list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance
the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for
flaws, but for potential.
~Ellen Goodman