BK Swappers

Hi Swappers, 

A million thanks to those of you who came out to the Mealku loft last Thursday for the swap! It was a truly fantastic night, with friendly people and crazy-good swappables. You all are totally inspiring. 

There are a few lovely photos from the swap up on our Facebook page, taken by photographer Jeniffer Almonte.
And here’s one swapper’s blog post detailing her haul: cider, pickles, cookies, granola, relish and more. Nice.
If you’ve got photos from the swap, or you wrote your own blog post about the event, let us know on our Facebook page! 

Many more thank yous to the fine folks of Mealku for hosting us in their fabulous Tribeca loft space. Their Mealku Market program is an great opportunity for swappers to offer their homemade goods outside of a swap event; register with Mealku to share products and meals with your neighbors in Brooklyn and beyond. 

More swap news:  

- We encourage everyone to check out the Food Swap Network (which was launched by BK Swappers founder Kate Payne and Los Angeles swap founder Emily Ho). The Food Swap Network is launching a fundraiser to help cover the costs of creating an updated website, making the FSN site a functional, helpful resource for existing and new swappers. Here’s a link for swappers to contribute directly to Food Swap Network; or throw a swap in your own community, collect donations, and tell your friends in other cities to start their own local swaps too!  

- There’s been some nice press about BK Swappers and the swapping phenomenon across the country, yay! 

- Did you know that BK Swappers has its own page on Kickstarter? It’s a great place for us to promote Kickstarter projects that we find interesting and worthwhile. If you have a Kickstarter project you’re working on, let us know! 

- The next swap is tentatively scheduled for early December, in Brooklyn. More details to come soon. 

Thanks everyone, see you at the next swap. 

Love, 
BK Swappers
bkswappers@gmail.com

BK Swappers, Local Roots NYC and Krrb present A Food and Kitchen Swap! July 26 from 6 to 9pm.

RSVP now! http://foodandkitchenswap.eventbrite.com/

For this special event at the Krrb HQ in Williamsburg, we will be coordinating a combination food and kitchen swap where you can bring both edible items and non-edibles like cooking gadgets, housewares and cookbooks.

Food swappers can bring jars of homemade pickles, jams, flavored syrups, batches of cookies, whole pies or loaves of bread, spice mixes, hot sauces, anything that you make yourself. Homegrown herbs, backyard eggs or containers of rooftop honey count too, as long as you grew it or foraged it yourself.

You can also bring in your old kitchen appliances, serving platters, cookware, books or anything else food-related (working and in relatively good shape) that you’d like to trade.

We’re going to do an online preview for this swap. Simply post your swapping items to Krrb - a fun, friendly and free site to buy, sell and trade with your neighbors. Make sure to tag your posts with BKSwap so we can all see what you’re bringing! Check out the current offerings here at Krrb.com.

All the swaps are barter transactions: my hand-blender for your jar of tomato sauce, or trade your vintage cookbook for someone else’s pickled jalapenos.

When you arrive at the event, you will display your swappables on a table. We provide swap cards for everyone, and you’ll fill out a card that will sit next to your items. You write what your item is, any explanation about it (e.g. vegan! extra spicy! gently used!) and then people will “bid” on your items by listing what they are willing to you trade for. Swap-card bids are not binding, and are just so you can find who is interested in your stuff.

After eating, cheersing, browsing and bidding, the actual swapping begins. We all wear name tags so you can figure out who wants to make the trade. (“Are you the one with the salted caramel sauce? Would you swap for this raspberry jam, or maybe we could trade for this set of linen napkins?”) The negotiations are fun, friendly and freeform—you can accept or deny any trade you like.

As hectic as it sounds, it always works out. You’ll go home laden with delicious foods homemade by your new friends, and cool new stuff for your kitchen! Plus, your poor, ignored blow-torch kit will find a new home.

There will be a potluck too, so bring extras of your edible swappables, or another potluck dish to share. Awesome prizes to be awarded for the best swap item and best potluck dish! 

Tickets are $5 and are available here: http://foodandkitchenswap.eventbrite.com/
See you there! 

Here’s some information on how the swap works:

Most people bring anywhere from 5 to 10 items, some more, some less; all the trades are one-for-one barters, so you’ll leave with as many items as you came with.

Think of a jar of jam as the baseline — whatever you trade should be roughly equal to that in value/worth, that is, you’d be willing to trade your item for one jar of jam, whether you’ve got a loaf of bread, a jar of caramel sauce, a small batch of cookies, half dozen backyard eggs, a quart of cider, a tiny bottle of homemade bitters, whatever. (There are no hard rules as to size/quantity, these are just general guidelines.)

We provide swap cards for everyone, so you fill out a little piece of paper that will sit next to your items on the table. On that card you fill out what your item is, any explanation about it (vegan! extra spicy! make sure to keep refrigerated! etc.) and then people will “bid” on your items and list what they are willing to trade on your swap cards.

Bids are not binding, and are just so you have a sense as to who is interested in your goods. We all wear name tags so you can figure out who is who, and when swapping begins you just approach people you’d like to trade with and swap away. It’s rather freeform and totally up to you to accept or deny swap offers as they come. 

As hectic as it sounds, it always works out and you’ll go home laden with delicious stuff homemade by your new friends.