Social Media @ Work

First there were the food trucks. Sandwich cookies, artisanal ice cream, pizza and schnitzels flying over the Manhattan Bridge to sate the finicky appetites of Midtown Lunch-ers.

Then there was the Brooklyn Flea, a homespun hub of folksy branding for purveyors of lobster rolls, vintage cowboy boots and kimchee-strewn hot dogs.

Now there is the Greenpoint Food Market, an incongruous oasis of scrumptious micro-enterprise in a church basement in North Brooklyn. You can only catch it once a month, and I was there for the May edition on Saturday, May 22nd.

I admit that what drew me initially was the novelty of what was, essentially, a bake sale in hipster drag. I wanted the chance to scope out what a new generation of culinary mischief-makers would plate up in a subterranean space much better suited to church mixers and girl scout troop meetings.

To wit, hand pumped hibiscus soda:

But in between mouthfuls of handmade chocolate and pork buns, I had to stop and marvel at what a weird and wonderful time it is to be a creative person with an idea and just a little bit of gumption. It takes risk to start a business, but thankfully venues like these make that risk much more manageable.

In social media circles, we talk a lot about the notion of “self-branding,” that is, bringing all of the disparate channels of your online self into a coherent package. Nowadays anyone with can appropriate the trappings of “branding” from an elite world of ad agencies and corporations. Bring incubators like the Greenpoint Food Market into the picture and a robust trend toward micro-branding can transcend a set of snapshots of your pooch or plate of brunch. It can suddenly make creating a business within the reach of a lot more people.

I stumbled across Greenpoint Food Market not through press but through social media channels. I was watching a “haul video” and the young woman at the center had just received a package from a baked goodie company called Fanny & Jane. As soon as I heard the word “chocolate-covered red velvet cake,” I was on the case. A few Google searches connected me with not only the Market’s website, but also some of the vendors’ blogs and Twitter presences.

I’m well acquainted with a whole constellation of craft blogs that extol the virtues of the “passionately handmade” and it was enjoyable to see the hand-made food crowd doing much of the same, while trading the yarn for free-range eggs.

Jen Curran of Fanny & Jane runs a blog that is called, appropriately, Follow My Bliss, about her path from desk job to baked goods artisan and comedienne. The baked goods at the Market did not disappoint, and it looks like Jen and her partner have set up a great online shop with very reasonable prices and shipping for what are products of exceptional quality. I would highly recommend one of these bundles as a gift.

Another nascent business I found fascinating was Milkmade Ice Cream. I frequently make ice cream and consider myself a tough critic. The friend I had brought to the event was skeptical of Milkmade’s pricing structure–$50 for 3 pints of their ice cream, delivered to your door on a monthly basis. However, I tasted the product and after checking out the various web properties of the small company, I have to say I’m rooting for this duo to succeed.

They’re doing three things really, really right:

• Their ice cream is not a product, it’s the manifestation of being a part of a very small and selective club. Like the late-night TV pitchman says: “This amazing ice cream is not available in stores!” To get it, you have to buy a three month membership. At the Film Society, we’re currently working on membership campaigns and this sort of model, applied to ice cream, appealed to me. Instead of a simple transaction, it creates a relationship–and to me that’s essential for a grass-roots business to succeed.
• In cultivating scarcity, they enhance their efforts. Building off the above, offering fans membership into a small, select group, Milkmade further burnishes the specialness of the experience by vowing to never make the same flavor twice. I’d be more than willing to pay a premium to enjoy an incredibly rare experience.
• They are using the web and social media to great effect. Blog, check. Facebook page, check. Twitter, check. The photography they’ve got going is utter food porn, and the only pointer I might give them is to create a luscious gallery of those images on their site. That, paired with a list of flavors that just aren’t available to anyone else, is sure to drive up the mania for their product.

My excursion into Greenpoint was just a taste of the vitality that’s been gathering steam in Brooklyn over the past few years. And even though the Greenpoint Market was filled with whimsical notions that would surely make your typical product marketing manager blanch, I was thrilled to see  all the initiative–and the creativity packed into this unlikely space.

This post is tagged blog, brooklyn flea, Facebook, Fanny & Jane, greenpoint food market, kimchee, midtown lunch, Milkmade Ice cream, schnitzel truck, Treats truck, Twitter