Who We Are
We are Brett and Paul - two tech industry stalwarts finding happiness and comfort in the kitchen, whether it be cooking, eating or hosting!
We met on the job at a video game company and immediately bonded over nerdy food things like sous vide machines, freeze drying ice cream and making homemade sausage. Eventually we started entering competitions as a team, with Brett's organized and whip-cracking wife Shrie as our project manager. Turns out... we're kinda good at this cooking thing.
We've won multiple chili, queso and mac and cheese cook-offs here in Austin in the last couple of years as The Cream Team. Now it's high time we up the ante by taking our homegrown culinary skills on the road to the World Food Championships in Vegas this November!
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What We Need
Traveling for competitions and cooking with fancy pants ingredients can be a pricey endeavor. We're saving up cash now, but could really use some help to get things rolling. Our goal of $1000 isn't enough to pay for our trip, but it will help offset the costs tremendously. Here are our total approximated costs:
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Driving expenses ($800 - gas, hotel, food) for trip to Vegas and back; we're going to be carrying some specialized kitchen equipment, so flying is a no-go
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Lodging ($700 - hotel, fees) two rooms for three nights while we're there plating up awesomeness
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General 'being there' expenses ($1000 - food, fun) food, last minute needs, incidentals, slot machines
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Cooking and grocery supplies ($500 - specialty cooking supplies, ingredients, kitchen equipment) to make our food taste better than everyone else's
Total: $3000
Your contribution will go towards operating costs - getting us there and back in one piece, hopefully returning with a huge new trophy. ANY money we can raise will go strictly towards paying for our trip and supplies for this trip only.
Risks & Challenges
We're local foodies, snatching up all the contest winnings we can, but we are realistic enough to know that there will be A LOT of people competing in Vegas. Really talented people.
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We realize we may not win anything. This is not ideal, but an outcome we're willing to face as long as we get some really valuable experience, make a few influential contacts, and learn a lot along the way. Oh, and fun. We'll have some of that.
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We will be competing with heavyweights. Many of the people trying their luck and skills in Vegas are professional chefs or have written cookbooks. A good amount, though, are home-taught cooks toiling away just for the fun of it, like us.
Some things are working in our favor though....
How You Can Help
Some people just can't contribute dollars to help us out, and we get that. If you can't hand over that paper, you can give us a shout out on social networks! If you need a hint, you can share the following message about us:
"My friends, self-taught home cooks The Cream Team, are traveling to Las Vegas to compete in the World Food Championships! But they need a little help from you. See what they're about, and how you can help make their gastronomical dreams come true: http://igg.me/at/cream-team"
Tell your friends and family about us any way you can, even if it's just regular email. You can even use the handy dandy sharing tools available to you on this IndieGogo page (underneath the big pic at the top).
Stay in Touch