Phyllis’ Blog

Here I am in the Green Room at QVC, the TV shopping network. It’s 5:15 in the morning, and I’m heading down to the acre-sized kitchens to see whether the food stylist has any questions for me. She’s preparing eight finished recipes for the set of the show where I’ll be appearing in about an hour. Today’s beauty dishes are Thai Chicken, Saucy Turkey Breast, Convenient Slow-Cooker Lasagna, Apples ‘n Yams, Creole Green Beans, Upside-Down Chocolate Pudding Cake, Blueberry Fancy, and Hot Mushroom Dip - all from the cookbook, Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient Favorites: Comforting Slow-Cooker Recipes. All are made with real ingredients and are edible, despite being called “beauty dishes.”

I’ve been on QVC several dozen times in the last two years, usually during daytime or evening hours, sometimes selling 1,000 books a minute. But QVC is on-air 24 hours a day, so guests are booked around the clock, and today I got my turn at the trough time.

So How Does All This Work?

When I’m notified that I’ve been booked on QVC (usually three to five days in advance of the date), I immediately line up a food stylist. I usually work with Chef Bonne, who’s got a great touch with food and accessories, and is no-nonsense and fun to work with.

Then I choose eight recipes (just the right number for the space we work in during my time slot) from the cookbook being featured and send them to her to prepare for my appearance. She shops for the food, cooks it, and arranges it on the two-tiered gurney that becomes the visual centerpiece of my conversation with the host.

Next, I line up an appointment at the QVC Salon to have my make-up done before I go on-camera.

Then I check with the Studio Operations Desk to find out what time I need to arrive in order to meet my host before she begins her shift. (Sometimes the host is a man.)

Since a host works a solid three-hour block on-camera without a break, she meets all the guests she will interview in the one hour just before she goes on-air.

Today I am to be a guest on “Cooking with Q,” a one-hour show from 6-7 a.m. Gabrielle, the host, begins her slot on-camera at 4 a.m., which means that I (and all her other guests) need to be in the studio by 3 a.m. Yes!

On-Site Before the Show

We sign in when we arrive and list which Green Room we’ll be in so the host knows where to find us. We wear buzzers, too, so we can be notified when the salon is ready to do our make-up and when it’s time for us to be miked and have our earpieces inserted.

Things got a little more complicated than usual the other evening. Sleet and freezing rain began falling over our part of the world at mid-day the day before. When I left our office parking lot around 6 p.m., a thin sheet of ice covered the car. The forecast predicted the wintry mix to continue through the night. When we got home, we flipped on the TV and saw that local events were being cancelled, and school openings for the morning were already being delayed.

I had planned to leave home at 2 a.m. so I’d be at QVC by 3. Merle and I decided that we’d both sleep better if I spent the night at a hotel near the QVC Studio, so I hopped back into the car and headed out. There was lots of rain, little traffic, and, thankfully, no freezing on the roads yet.

Before I left home, I got directions to the hotel from MapQuest - and discovered an email from Chef Bonne. While she was prepping my recipes, she sensed that was being nailed by the flu and just could not finish my food. But she had quickly lined up Jeri, a skilled stylist she often works with, who would be there to meet me in the morning with the food beautifully prepared.

I made it to the hotel safely and parked the nose of the car as close to the side of the hotel as I could to discourage ice building up on the car windows. I caught some soup and salad and tucked in early, trying to talk myself into falling asleep fast since I had to get up four hours later.

The trees were burdened with ice when I left the hotel at 2:45 a.m. But the roads were quite passable, and I got to QVC just a few minutes late.

I went through security, got my badge, and signed in at the Operations Desk.

At that moment, the on-air host and his guests were selling cleaning supplies and heaters, and then they switched to bedding. Large monitors hang in each Green Room and in the salon, so it’s always clear what America is buying!

And then, suddenly, a guest you just saw on-screen appears in the Green Room. And just as quickly, a person you were talking with only moments earlier shows up on-camera.

All QVC shows are shot live, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Green Room

The Green Room is not a quiet, solitary place. People are pretty friendly. And they offer their opinions about whatever’s happening on-air. They’re all there to work, and everyone knows you won’t be invited back if your “sell” is under-par.

Four computers in a little annex to the Green Room show the hard numbers to anyone who wants to look.

Every item being offered for sale in the show that’s currently under way is listed. The amount of inventory which QVC has in stock of each item is shown, as is the number that have sold thus far in the show, plus the dollars sold per minute for each item, and the total dollar amount each item has sold. The number of callers placing orders appears on a graph. Plus, the number of calls in the queue waiting to be answered are shown.

Gabrielle came into the Green Room calling my name around 3:15 a.m. We hadn’t met before. I showed her the Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient Favorites cookbook I would be featuring, and the eight recipes for finished dishes we’d be talking about. She asked what I wanted to highlight about the book in our eight or nine minutes on-camera. And I asked her if she’d like to taste the Upside-Down Chocolate Pudding Cake and the Blueberry Fancy. I figured that they’re sweet and breakfast-y and might be a fit for that time of the morning. She said, “Oh, yeah, I’ll be hungry! And did you say you’ll have Lasagna? I’ll want some of that, too!”

It’s always good for sales when the host tastes the food enthusiastically. Some hosts won’t eat, because they’re dieting or because they have quite particular food preferences. So I’m in luck with Gabrielle!

Time to Go On

At 5:15, I walk to the kitchen to see how Jeri’s coming with the food prep. The Thai Chicken and the Hot Mushroom Dip are already on their individual platters and in position on the rolling table. The Lasagna, Chocolate Cake, and Blueberry Fancy are each in a slow cooker, waiting to be placed on the gurney. Jeri is carving the turkey and finishing the vegetables.

I check to make sure she’s got three large serving spoons on the set, plus individual plates on which I can put Gabrielle’s slice of Lasagna, scoop of Pudding Cake, and serving of Blueberry Fancy. They’re all there, along with forks and spoons for her to eat the food.

The food glows. The color is rich and appealing. The slow cookers are burbling.

Gabrielle loves the food. She’s newly married. She explains that she requested a slow cooker as a wedding gift, got one, and now is hunting down recipes for it. She says on-air as she holds up a copy of Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient Favorites, “I want one of these cookbooks for myself!”

I’m on for eight minutes and 34 seconds. No “T-Calls” today; maybe it’s too early in the morning. These testimonials are spontaneous word-of-mouth endorsements from viewers who call in. But the host has given her own, and sales are good, I see, when I get back to the Green Room and check the figures on the computers.

The Green Room has cleared out except for two upcoming guests. The one warns me that she heard, while driving into the Studio, that the roads are treacherous in the area where we live. The other woman is looking for coffee; her hotel had no heat overnight or hot water this morning. How was I so fortunate?! My night was short, but I was warm.

As I drive home, the car shows the outdoor temperature to be fluctuating between 31 and 32 degrees. There’s enough traffic to keep the roads from freezing. I’ve been gone for about 12 hours in order to do an 8 ½-minute sell, but a bunch of Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient cookbooks found new homes!