AG Food Show

Jeff, before retiring, had managed a medium sized perishable food warehouse in Birmingham, Alabama. I tried full time retirement for 2 1/2 years but 2 years ago, my VP called me and ask if I would like to come back and work part time and manage this warehouse for the company again. We talked and had lunch together a couple of time and after a week, Jeff wrote up a contract and I have been back since. They have not run me off, so I guess I can work another week.

The warehouse, agsouth.com, is located in Tarrant City, an eastern suburb of Birmingham. They do a great job with our product and I was fortunate to have been a part of the sales group and went with the first perishable delivery into the warehouse too many years back to remember. Good memories.

AG has a booking or Food Show twice a year, one is July and another in January. AG rents the main auditorium in the BJCC (Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center) and the vendors are ask to rent space or booths to book product for two days. This is good exposure for us, the supplier, as the new stores and owners and market managers come to the show and we get to introduce them to some product they may now have in their current meat case sets.

Two of us set up our booth Monday and put up banners and signs about the Zeigler company. I rented power and an addtional table for the booth and make sure the computer set up worked so we were prepared to book product the next two days. We sampled smokey bratwurst and cheesy brats and then our all beef and pork jumbo franks. I had 6-12lb. boxes of product and I will tell you these customers and vendor ate us out of house and home.

My demo lady worked the samples and Jeff talked to them and booked the products they desired into AG's computer system. We booked product for 3 ad weeks in August, September, and October and have committed ads and product for those ad period with most of the larger ad groups. I had generated a copy of the booking sheets and mailed each to our salesmen so now most of the owners and market managers came to the show with these already filled out, being presold by our salesmen.

I will not go into further detail of this as it is boring, boring, boring to the casual reader. I worked 6 hours Monday setting this up, and 10 hours each day of the show, so you see I have been busy and of course, feeling some better. My energy is not at 100% yet, so I had to pace myself a little bit. Lots of water, lots of gatorade, to keep hydrated during this very hot summer here in Birmingham. It was 97 Tuesday afternoon with a heat index of 107. That is hot in any body's book!

Thursday morning a I get to sleep until 6:00am. I had been getting up at 5:00am the last 3 days and working until after 5:00pm, so I looking forward to kicking back a little today. Have a wonderful day. Jeff

 Evan Jones

I feel strangely hungry.