#venio

Definition:

The act of intervening

Intervene: To occur or be between two things.

Origin: Latin, intervenio, intervenire. This Latin verb literally means "to come between."

For those that haven’t signed up yet – yes, this blog is made for you too - here’s a tip. Spend half an hour on a Sunday, or any day really, planning your meals for the week – and if you’re feeling ambitious, plan for the month. And if you’re felling SUPER ambitious, for your unborn grandchildren. All you need to do then is just spend some time buying the groceries, and you're good to go – as long as you don’t forget something. Venio helps with that too.

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, there are people who spend 8 hours every Sunday, planning AND cooking their meals for the month. We imagine these are the type of people who would spend 6 hours brushing their teeth if it meant they didn't have to do it again for the rest of the year. Come on Colgate - make it happen. Anyway, they store their food in their ginormous freezers, and whenever they're craving a meal, all it takes is for it to defrost. Now we understand that some people won't take it to that level, but the idea is finding a method that fits you. And the more important thing is to make sure that the food you’ve got planned out is right for your body and healthy. Venio helps with that too.

Have we mentioned Venio?

Do you use Venio already? How do you prepare your meals? Way in advance, or do you make every single meal when it’s time to eat it? Share your tips!

Last week, a few members of the Venio team attended the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival, put together by the Toronto Vegetarian Association. Let me start off by saying, “wow”.

Before attending, we did a bit of research to find out exactly what we’re getting involved in. My colleague Peter made the innocent mistake of searching “vegetarian festival” [WARNING: graphic link] in Google Images. We spent the next hour trying to unsee what couldn’t be unseen. After that, we found out about the 40,000 un-pierced, to moderately pierced people attending the event, which blew us away! We were ready to veg it up.

Friday started off kind of slow with most of the foot traffic being mostly from exhibitors. We loved what we saw though! Some of our favourite booths included Fresh City Farms, Vega, Sweets from the Earth, Live, Culinary Groove, and Front Door Organics. And the samples - oh the samples! I got the chance to break down sample-taking into a science:

The initial “interested” look reading the various marketing materials

Then the look of “surprise” that says, “Oh! I didn’t know you had samples! I guess I’ll take one”

Then the un-insulting, slow backing away from the tent while still looking somewhat interested.

The deceptive overcast weather Saturday morning set a gloomy tone for the beginning part of the second day, but the sun appeared out of nowhere and cheered everyone back up. We got the chance to talk to a few attendees and they varied from the life-long vegetarians, to the newly converted, to the “omnivores” that admitted so in a cute, innocent way. We got to hear about the challenges and motivations of being a vegetarian, which I’ll write about next week! However, 40,000 attendees seemed like a long shot, and I got a bit upset that I was fooled by my own people (Marketers). Then Sunday came about.

Sunday was packed more than a veggie samosa. There was great energy that spread through the Harbour Front Centre throughout the whole day. So many people together in a environment which completely harboured their beliefs, their tastes, their lifestyle. It was inspiring to see - yet sad to see it wrap up.

Writing your first blog post is almost like that feeling of taking the first step into a fresh blanket of snow. Your excitement to make an impact – your plan for what seems like an eternity to take the perfect step. Then you just jump in and do it.

So first – let us introduce ourselves with a question: What is Venio? Let me answer that! Venio is that place you go to when you’re feeling determined, when you’re feeling inspired, when you’ve got it all figured out, or when you have to figure it all out. We’re not an application – we’re a solution.