Season 6 Episode 2b
As a business school graduate, one thing I learned about quite a bit was elevator pitches, 30-second speeches you give when networking or trying to sell a product. That's not the main message of the episode, but it plays a big part in how things pan out. We see the montage at the beginning of the various characters trying to sell stuff and having success, with a variety of tactics used, some more time-honored than others.
Another business/customer service mantra, however, is that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Buster, unfortunately, succumbs to that during his first run at selling the chocolates, although to be fair, I'm not sure a third grader would necessarily know what "mouthwatering" and "delectable" mean exactly. An observation: the folks in Elwood City are a tough crowd when it comes to funding the band. Maybe Buster just picked the wrong neighborhood to canvass, but still–if he did this in my hometown where there was lots of support for music in schools, he would've sold his whole supply in one afternoon and then some.
The ultimately fatal blow here, though, is Buster breaking rule number one: never snack on your own supply. That's probably why when I was in high school band, we had fundraisers for our band trips by selling Yankee Candles or doing things that didn't involve food. This is one of those times where Buster made it worse by trying to make his own product and drawing the ire of everyone in town. He probably would've had to work off his debt anyway, so why make it worse by selling chocolates with soy sauce and tomato in them? But he gets the last laugh by being able to capitalize on his *peculiar* chocolates by selling them at Jack's Joke Shop. Also, shout-out to Jack for supporting the band, because the rest of the town sure didn't.
By Guthrie Edson
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