Creative Marketing for Rochester Soup Swap

Taking an icon and making it so much better, the folks in Rochester, New York obviously rule. I love this snowy land.

This is what Ellen has to say,

On a freezing Rochester, New York night on Saturday, January 26, I hosted my first soup swap.

My friend designed the invites to look like a Campbell’s Soup can (thanks, Pete!). (To see a larger image of this, click here.)

Eight guests arrived, bearing, if not tidings of great joy, at least soups of great flavor. After a few hours of wine, hors d’oeuvres, and nice company, we gathered in the dining room for the Telling of the Soup.

We discovered one common element among all the soup makers: people did a lot of research before making their soups! Websites were searched for what soups freeze well; online customer reviews of particular recipes were pored over; sites that help you double/triple recipes were consulted.

The soups were Curried Pumpkin; Beef, Mushroom and Barley; Chicken Tortilla; Ultimate Baked Potato; Cream of Watercress; and Hoppin’ John.

I like the idea of soup spoon prizes. We’ll do that next January, at our second annual Soup Swap! Thanks for the idea… loads of fun.

Maybe you folks can make invites for everyone! Wow! It is so excellent! Thanks for sharing your good times with us and we hope to see you and all the towns that participated outside of Rochester again next year (or later this winter again...I think there is a lot of winter left up there)!

Henrietta, NY Warms Cold Day with Soup Swap

We received the following email from Kim, who types in cold upstate New York,

Hello Knox!

I'm so grateful that you introduced we found Soup Swap to us! We started our first swap with just nine people - it was so much fun! We had four soup spoon prizes - Best Soup Story, Heartiest Soup, Most Decorative Soup Container and a prize for who volunteered to host next! Here is a picture of our group! Thanks again!

The italics are ours, because the whole point of soupswap.com is that all these groups share their great successes (and minor mishaps) and in doing so, inspire others in their neighborhoods, cities, and yep, right across the country to do some good home cooking and sharing. We love that!

Another UpState (NY) Soup Swap

From outside of Rochester, where people are buried alive in snow and discovered years later (or so I hear), comes the Henrietta Soup Swap.

Kim writes, "We'll be getting together on Sunday, 1/27/08. We are starting with a small group of MOMS Club members (Mothers Offering Mothers Support).

I saw an article about the Soup Swap in the newspaper - many of us belong to a veggie co-op farm so we are really excited to share some recipes with each other and to save time by having a variety of soups on hand!"

Yep, that's right, the power of swapping big pots of soup for a more tasty variety. We love it.

"I visit your site regularly and it's so exciting to see so many people having fun sharing good food!" We think so too!

For information on the MOMS Club and their soup swap, email Kim, here.