I work for the California Avocado Commission, and every year, my team and I do our level best to come up with a new exhibiting idea for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) show. Unfortunately, sometimes an idea that looks cool on paper is not so great when you actually get it on the show floor, as was the case at a recent PMA.

A critical component of our display is a professional chef demonstrating delicious ways to cook with avocados. We use a 20-by-30-foot exhibit space, and usually the kitchen-demonstration area is just one section of the display. But our big new idea for the upcoming PMA show was to put a full-size food truck in our space – it would be huge, but it would look urban and on trend. What's more, it was bound to be an unexpected sight on the highly competitive trade show floor.

We contracted with a company for a truck that its reps said was 24 feet long, which would leave just a few feet on the end of the space for our storage area that holds collateral, produce, tchotchkes, and so on. In fact, because of the size of the vehicle, the booth contained little else. So on setup day, we didn't have much to do except wait for our big, great idea to come rolling onto the show floor.

When the driver pulled up in the truck, I just stood back and watched him jockey the massive beast back and forth into place in our booth. As he backed up the last few inches to the storage closet, my head started spinning at the realization that this truck was not 24 feet long, and a good 2 feet of it was still sticking out in the main aisle – a definite no-go with show management.

I approached the truck driver and told him we were supposed to have the 24-foot truck, and he told me that's what we got. Apparently a foot or two isn't a big deal for the food-truck industry. Well, it's a big nightmare for the trade show industry.

I had two chefs and a team of helpers who were supposed to be cooking all day in the truck and serving up fare out of the windows. If the truck went, I'd have no food stations. Worse, I'd have a big, empty space with no furniture, nothing. Our great idea was about to turn into a catastrophe.

Desperate and short on time, I went to the show's general services contractor and pleaded for help. Someone came over to the booth and eyeballed the situation, pronouncing that the only solution was to disassemble the 50-square-foot storage closet and give the truck more room. I had no idea where we would store stuff, but we quickly started hefting it out while workers pulled the panels of the room apart. Gratefully, they reconfigured the closet to leave a little storage space.

With the newfound space, the food truck backed the rest of the way into the exhibit, and our crisis was averted. Losing the storage cloest meant we had to find places to stash things and lug stuff back to our hotel rooms, but at least we had an exhibit.

In hindsight, that old "measure twice" adage came to mind, especially since our entire display depended on it. Also, I realized that no matter how great an idea seems on paper, it's not a truly great idea until you see it working in your exhibit.

— Angela Fraser, marketing manager, California Avocado Commission, Irvine, CA