BCM Food Fare 2018

The team of ....happy & fun loving people

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I were asked if we would like to help out in Bible College Malaysia (BCM) Food Fair and we could not pass up this opportunity as we wanted to do our part for BCM and also to help out our friends/ church workers, Jaren and Daniel who are both students of BCM.

I must admit that we did not do much preparation as it was covered by Jaren and Daniel who does most of the pre-food fair work. Later, we came to know that we would be selling coffee and roti kok ( bread sticks ) in our stall. Naturally, I was excited as it was comfort food from my childhood days. Soon Ling and SYuen met up with Jaren and Daniel while getting the information on what to decorate the roti kok. So, in days prior to the event, there was a lot of excitement and duties were listed for the team. SYuen and Soon Ling were experimenting the home made chocolate drizzle to go with the roti kok ( bread sticks )

 

The team of fun loving young people.....

When that day came, we prayed and sought God’s heavenly intervention for a great day ahead before embarking our journey to BCM. Traffic was smooth and it was cold chilly morning as we left about 5.30am in the morning. It was nice to meet up the rest of the team comprising of Jaren, Daniel, Loreen, Esther, Joel, Ramesh, Rita, Melvin and Jacyntha while we were informed that Sheniel and Moses would join us from KL later on. It was a good cheery mood as we left for BCM that morning.

The team getting ready.....

We arrived shortly before 9.30am at the BCM vicinity. There were already a lot of people there. We immediately unstuffed our stuff and set out to do our preparations. There were many food stalls that day. It was a carnival feeling and it was fun. There were churches representation with their food fare and they look yummy indeed. I must say that if you are on a diet or trying to get slim, it would be wishful thinking of slimming down by the looks of the food fare on offer!  Chicken rendang, nasi lemak, Hainanese chicken rice, chee cheong fun, cakes, Nyonya acar , mee hoon goreng, kueh teow goreng , yam cake , ice cream, top class bottled honey and many other foods were on display that day. What a sight to behold! 

SYuen & SLing decorating the roti kok....

Anyway, I was told that the organisers had toned down the participants this year and not as many stalls were set up this year. "What? Reduction in stalls?", I thought to myself. I had a feast in the eyes just by looking at the food and drinks stalls! I was particularly impressed with one particular stall that ran their own concoction of multi colored soft drinks in a special message bottle. It was ingenious, fun, captivating and refreshing indeed. The other big surprise for me was the char siew and roasted pork food truck! The roasted pork was magnificent, succulent , crispy in the skin and melts down the throat lovingly, I tell you. Mind you, that food truck was one of the earliest to close their stall as it was the hottest selling item at the food fare.  Away from this, there is a bargain store for food items and decorative products in the food fare. I was glad that I got a lovely Sarawak coin pouch for RM 2.00! What a bargain!

Kopi uncle, Daniel with SYuen & SLing....

Coming back to our stall, the sales team comprising of Sheniel, Ramesh, Rita, Jaren, Esther , Joel, Melvin, Moses and myself started our sales pitch as soon as the food fare was officially opened for business at 10.30am that bright and lovely morning. It was fun working with these young people as we cajoled young and old to try our specially decorated roti kok and local Melaka, Bintang coffee. I realized that many middle aged and older folks would drop by our shop to buy a cup of coffee and roti kok. I guess, it was a historical “down memory lane” trip for them! 

Jaren at her best sales pitch.....

Yeah, I would do this too if I go to a food fare and see such a shop as roti kok and kopi-O are synonymous and nostalgic indeed. As we pitched and do our best, the young ones tend to enjoy the other fares on offer.  I must say, we never gave up and we pitched for sales at every opportunity we could. We shared much laughter and fun together. We even gave out samplings and we were generous at times with the helpings of extra roti kok when a customer buys it from us. Afterall, I always believed that as we are generous, the people would know and the success will come. That day, we had a target of RM 1,000.00 or 500 coupons to garner to enable us to give this amount as support to BCM. We really did our best and continued pushing ourselves to do our best.

 

Esther & Joel.....

At one moment, we need another 150 tickets as the clock drew nearer to the closing of the food fare. There seemed to be a little damper in our spirits but a quick pep talk to everyone helped to perk up our spirits. Anyway, I informed the group that we shall not be defeated in our quest to support BCM and by experience, I told the group that there will be late comers and prospective customers who would be looking for good coffee powder and unique roti kok for their family breakfast. These goodies would sell definitely; we just have to be patient. Moreover, these late comers would spend what they could at the end of the day as they would not want to waste off their coupons. We were all very positive, supportive and we all did our part to pitch in the sales part. Lo and behold, the last minute crowd came and we managed to sell a lot of our stuff including coffee powder packs ( Bintang, 434 and even premium Rengit coffee sachets packs ) and roti kok ( long, squarish (big) squarish (small), sugared short and even margarine types ). 

It was fun to see brisk sales being made and we were happy that we gave our all in this food fare. When the final tally of coupons were counted by Esther, there were 514 coupons in our till! Praise the Lord, we had raised RM 1,028.00 that fateful day! It was such a satisfying feeling for everyone indeed. I am especially thankful to Daniel and Loreen who manned the coffee station churning out lovely and hot coffee while Soon Ling and SYuen manned the piping of goodies onto the roti kok. The home-made chocolate drizzle made by Soon Ling and SYuen was delicious, actually!

 

Roti kok...lovely..

I also must thank Jaren & Esther who were superb in their Mandarin speaking sales pitch. They did most of the sales as most of us including me were unable to speak proper Mandarin to our customers. For me, it was satisfying to know that patience and hard work prevailed at the end of the day. It is never easy in such difficult times today, hot and sweaty day but food fare has always been special. Anyway, the event was to raise fund for BCM and it was an honour doing what we did to help out BCM. 

Delicious roti kok.....

I am particularly impressed that there were so many young people around manning the stalls, store and even the games section. It was heartening too to know that every purchase made goes to the fund of raising more young leaders in our community today through the medium of our faith. I noticed with joy that the crowd was a mixture of Malaysians. That brightened up my day a lot. It was a good day indeed. A day I cherished and enjoyed a lot!