Name: Valerie Luu & Katie Kwan Profession: street food vendors, creators of Rice Paper Scissors, a Vietnamese Pop-Up Cafe Location: San Francisco Website ricepaperscissors.tumblr.com/ Valerie’s food business: Little Knock Katie’s food business: Kitchen Sidecar Twitter: @littleknock & @kitchensidecar

Bio

Valerie Luu (aka Little Knock) and Katie Kwan (aka Kitchen Sidecar) are San Francisco-based street food vendors who launched Rice Paper Scissors, a Vietnamese Pop-Up Cafe. Valerie and Katie first joined forces to put on a streetside dining event to celebrate Vietnamese New Year. Their events have drawn crowds from across San Francisco and the Bay Area and firmly established the two entrepreneurs in the local Pop-Up dining scene. Rice Paper Scissors was recently profiled in The New York Times.

Read their story and watch the video, which follows them as they plan and host their latest event in the Mission District of San Francisco. Their next pop-up will be happening in the coming weeks. Check out their Tumblr for more details.

Evernote, Everywhere:

• Mac
• iPhone

We use Evernote for…

We wanted to create a guerilla style of dining in an unexpected setting that drew from our cultures and travel experiences in Vietnam. Planning a pop-up dining experience is equivalent to opening a new restaurant every time you hold an event. There are so many moving parts —from finding a location to creating a theme to buying ingredients to keeping track of expenses and figuring out logistics. Evernote plays a starring role in helping us plan and execute our events.

Here’s a look at the some of the ways we use Evernote to plan a Rice Paper Scissors event:

1. Location

We’re always on the lookout for great locations for our events. We’re inspired by streetside food vendors in Vietnam who serve their food to patrons on tables surrounded by little red plastic stools. We wanted to bring their spirit and their food to San Francisco. We typically focus on finding something off the street like an auto garage—a common gathering place in Vietnam—or ally patio. We snap photos of potential locations with Evernote on our iPhone—we can then review and discuss potential locations later.

2. Menu Planning

The menu has to be smart and efficient because we prepare food to order, with minimal equipment. The food we serve has to be tasty and relevant to the specific food region we’re highlighting, which changes with each event. We do a lot of research prior to creating a menu. We’ll visit shops and restaurants and do tastings of dishes and ingredients, noting our tasting notes in Evernote, snapping photos, and tagging everything ‘RPS.’ From there, we create a menu plan. We’ll create a grocery list using Evernote’s check-box feature and pull it up while we’re out shopping. Being able to check off items we’ve purchased keeps us organized.

3. Concept/Ambiance

Since each event is a pop-up, creating ambiance is important—everything from the place settings to the music has to be spot on. Evernote helps up keep track of options for places settings, artists and equipment (like the little red stools that have become our signature). We capture inspiration with Evernote whenever and wherever it strikes. We’ll jot down ideas for potential dishes, clip articles and images from the web, snap photos of bowls and throw them all in Evernote. We’ll note cookbooks that we want to purchase in Evernote and also take photos of decorations.

4. Collateral Creation

We work with different graphic designers to create posters promoting our events. We post them online and also hand out physical posters. We try to use different graphic designers for our events. We keep a collection of posters and artwork in Evernote, so they’re always handy.

5. Logistics and Finances

Throughout the planning process, Evernote helps us stay within budget and keep a record of our costs. We capture all of our receipts into Evernote, along with contact information for vendors and location sites. We typically draft and send out a press release prior to each event, so we keep promotional materials organized in our Rice Paper Scissors notebook, too.  On the day of the event, the most important thing we have to focus on is the food and our customers.

The cool thing about Evernote is that it’s this amazing business tool for us, but it’s also a place to store and track all sorts of ideas. We keep track of ideas for home decor, writing projects, and conversations with interesting people.

Favorite Feature

We’re very visual, so we rely on taking a lot of snapshots. Because images are searchable, we can take photos of receipts and business cards and be able to find specific ingredient prices and names quickly—Evernote will search for text inside of images. We love making check boxes—they keep everything buttoned up.

User Tip: Evernote for Hard-to-Remember Product Names

I feel like there are certain things that I just can never remember. For example, there’s this type of bread that I love called ‘Pain Epi.’ It’s shaped like a leaf. I keep a picture of it with the name in my Evernote so that when I’m out shopping and inevitably forget what it’s called, I can just pull it up on my Evernote and know exactly what to ask for at the counter.

Evernote Tip

For location scouting, take advantage of search by location. When you snap a photo with you smartphone, Evernote will actually capture the latitude/longitude of the note. In the map view, you can see where notes were created, so you can easily retrace your steps.