We recently connected with AJ & Pat Sales-Maralit and have shared our conversation below.

AJ & Pat, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

Picnic Point AZ started with $600 dollars that my old partner Jaimee and I put together. We went into our backstory in our last article with Voyage Phoenix, but to catch you up on how we started – we basically saw an opportunity to go shopping and set up dates in the desert. Little did we know, we would sell out our Valentine’s Day special in a week! From there, we just hit the ground running.

In November of last year, Jaimee decided to focus on other projects, so I brought my husband Pat, on to the Picnic Point AZ team as the new partner! With picnic growing the way that it was, we just had to take the opportunity and both go full time.

Pat was a sushi chef in Scottsdale at the time. We both had a tough past few months because we lost both of our grandparents, Rosita & Ernesto, earlier that year.

We’ve grown from doing 5-10 picnics a month to now averaging that per week. Yes – It’s crazy!!! It’s still a lot of juggling until we can find the right balance.

We went from sitting around in between picnics to now working 70-hour weeks!

With that kind of increase, we were definitely worried about the quality of our picnics and service. We didn’t feel that we were ready to hire on a team, but we also knew we were wearing thin.

Being a husband and wife team has its own pros and cons. We definitely can tell when we’re both tired. We’re on edge, we’re irritable, every little mishap will send us spiraling, the list can go on – but we knew it wasn’t a healthy way to continue if we wanted to keep the business. It was a tough decision, but we chose to close off days and literally schedule in our weekends.

This helped tremendously after the surge of picnics in the fall and winter. We even got to schedule a month out of the country into the calendar!

Before Picnic Point, Pat & I were major homebodies. We could stay inside all day, every day. So being outside 6 out of the 7 days of the week was a huuuuuge change for us. I feel like we’re still figuring out how to have our old “do-nothing” days. Being an entrepreneur really is a 24/7 job.

Little breaks here and there really help us refocus and recuperate. I’ve found that we always do our best work after a few days off.

While this is what’s working for us now, we know it’s not long-term. You can only juggle all the jobs for so long. We’ve been planning and testing new ways to raise our standards of quality as well as find new ways to sustainably continue this crazy business we just jumped into.

We plan to hire over the summer as we expand and continue to grow.
We are also adding new services and updating our website!
We can’t wait for you to see what we have in store.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Picnic Point AZ is a husband and wife team that specializes in setting up luxury picnics and events.

We are your BFFs when planning for any event. Whether it be a date night for two, a bachelorette for when you’re in town, a large celebration of life, or for no reason at all. We’re here to make the event planning easy for you – all you have to do is show up.
We know how stressful it can be when planning a proposal, baby shower, or even a birthday party. With our experience and expertise, we’ll connect you with all our amazing local vendors, find the best location, and take care of all the prep and set up, so you can focus on what’s more important.

We love being a part of life’s special moments, let’s just make it even more beautiful with some Picnic Point AZ magic.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think we really built our reputation and community by going to and organizing so many events! We put community over competing all the time.

Pat and I moved here in 2018 and we didn’t know that many people. Just the few coworkers from our jobs and my siblings. Besides that, we didn’t have a lot of family or friends out here. Jumping into the picnic business, we started meeting so many people. From small business owners to photographers, to even other picnic companies.

It always was weird when we came across people that weren’t friendly or that didn’t really match our values so we made it a point to always reach out to other local businesses and creatives in the area so we could really expand and meet people in the area.

We both have built lifelong friendships with some of our vendors and even some of our clients. Being kind goes a long way and we live by “treating others how you want to be treated”. We’re all trying to make something happen. We should all be lifting each other up. There’s more than enough business for all of us to thrive in this beautiful city.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

A few months ago, we had one weekend where we had 3 really large events. We were on the last one and burnout was creeping in. Pat and I were not on the same page that day. We were both exhausted and we still had so much to do for our last event. On the drive there, we were really contemplating letting go of the business. We were both in tears and we were questioning if we ready to give up the whole business.

We then powered through the last setup of that day, which happened to be someone’s birthday. She came out to see the setup and she was so happy that she was almost in tears. She kept saying how beautiful everything was and thanked us for all the work we did to make her birthday special.

She gave us a little pep talk about how great the business was and how much she appreciated our hard work. After we left, Pat and I both sat down and decided that we love this business of ours too much to just let it go.
We love the clients that we get and all the people we get to meet through it. We love being a part of everyone’s special moments. It’s truly an honor.
After all, picnics and events are really all about connecting. We’re so lucky that we get to call this our job.

Contact Info:

• Website: picnicpointaz.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/picnicpointaz
• Facebook: facebook.com/picnicpointaz

Image Credits
Cha Taccad with @chataccadphotography – https://chataccadphotography.com/ Brittany with @sageandhoneyphoto – https://www.sageandhoneyphoto.com/