A Spoonful of Sin

Headed to NYC

I'm headed to NYC tomorrow to attend the Annual Fancy Food Show at the Javitz Center.  Imagine a huge convention center filled with about 1,500 specialty food vendors, all trying to offer you samples of their wares.  I've learned from experience that you have to pace yourself or its all over by 11 am, and you will find yourself sitting on a chair somewhere looking and feeling like a beached whale. 

I've decided to expand our product line, and build an online commerce store for gourmet desserts and sweets.  So this is a buying trip to meet potential suppliers.  I'm also looking for better packaging for our shipped sins.  I am not crazy about the insulated boxes we're using right now.  I'd like to try and find something smaller, and a little more "green".  And I'm interested in some of the new techniques for flash freezing pastries.  So I'm sure I'll have lots of photos and info when I return late Sunday night.  Its' going to be a long day though!

Back to Posting

Well, I'm back to posting on this blog.  Things are going well with Spoonful, we are holding steady right now.  I've been trying to figure out how to make this business scale.  Eventually we're going to run out of pastry chefs in the local area.  And I read about great pastry chefs everywhere!  So we're thinking of hiring a good pastry chef here in the local area and asking well known chefs to provide us with their special recipes for us to create for our subscribers.  Then we'll make the desserts each month in the commercial kitchen.  I'm going to poll some of our subscribers and find out if this would be a problem.  We'll continue to showcase the different chefs and their creations, but it will allow us to gain access to a much broader group of great chefs.

The first shipment

Well, the first shipment went out.  It took us two days and two shifts to get everything coordinated.  Luckily for us, Patrick & Susie are not only great chefs but also extremely patient.  I spent the previous week having nightmares about deliveries, lost boxes, and unhappy customers.  But we got great feedback and everything seems to be working out well.  I've got a list of 100 names - these are people who pre-registered for Spoonful of Sin.  I was afraid to notify any of them that we were now shipping until I got the first delivery under my belt.  Now I'll send out the email to everyone!

Fortune Small Business

I got a call from a reporter at Fortune Small Business Magazine.  She wanted to interview me about A Spoonful of Sin.  How cool is that?  I'm a big fan of this magazine, and I was pretty excited about the interview.  We connected yesterday, September 24th (which co-incidentally was my 45th birthday!  It was a great interview but at the end of it all she had to regretfully inform me that FSB only covers companies that have between $1 million and $100 million in revenue.  Hah.  I better start selling a lot more desserts!  Meanwhile, I asked her if I could tell everyone that I had been interviewed by Fortune and she said absolutely.  So there it is, my 15 minutes of fame.

Launch Party was a Success!

People came!  They ate!  They had a great time.  So the launch party was a great success.  It was a wonderful event and the people who mean the most to me were all able to attend.  Roland Mesnier was as charming as always, and really entertained everyone.  Susan and Patrick of Praline Restaurant did the catering, and the food was incredible.  Christiana Vodka was also a sponsor and the martinis were flowing. 

I did have one bad moment, when I got up to thank everyone and introduce Roland, I completely FORGOT to thank the Flashpoint Gallery for allowing us to use their venue.  I felt like a total idiot, and apologized profusely afterwards but it really didn't fix the mistake.  Next time I have to make a speech I'll probably carry a cheat sheet.

Insulation

We planned everything, the boxes, the labels, the shipping, the cool packs.  But we forgot about INSULATED boxes.  Why did I think the law of physics wouldn't apply to our cool packs.  If you put a frozen cool pack in a regular box, that puppy is going to melt just like an ice cube.  I need insulated boxes.  I feel like an idiot.  So now we're going to have a luscious decadent dessert in a container, in the Spoonful of Sin box (wrapped in gold shredded stuffing) and then that box will be in an insulated box with a wrapper around it.  Good grief, by the time our subscribers work their way down to the actual dessert they will have EARNED the calories.

Our first chef!

We've had conversations with about 35 pastry chefs in the DC area.  They all said they love the idea and are very interested in being a sin of the month.  But we've got our first chef -- Patrick Musel of Praline Bakery and Restaurant in Bethesda.  I met with Susan Limb (his partner - she's a chef too!) and got to taste test several of the pastries.  The one we selected for our first Sin of the Month is incredible.  I love this job.

Market Research

Got to attend the International Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center in New York.  Pure Nirvana.  Imagine 2,500 vendors lined up and they all want you to try their gourmet food.  I spent 2 days there eating my way through the aisles and then waddled out to the car.  It cost me $50 bucks a day to park in NYC.  I only drove because I have a customer appointment in New Jersey on the way home (for my other company.)

We've finally selected our box (from a vendor at the show).  Maybe this is going to come together after all!

Launch Party

We've figured out the venue for the launch party, which we're scheduling for September some time.  Geoff Livingston, our PR guru has come through for us once again.  He's on the board of the Flashpoint Gallery in DC.  The gallery is perfect, and conveniently located near metros, etc.  Now I have to figure out the budget.  What if nobody comes?  God, I hate this.

NASCAR Sponsorship

My husband Bob decided to take up NASCAR race car driving as a hobby.  This is an incredibly expensive hobby, and requires an inordinate amount of his time.  My brother told me to be happy that Bob's mid-life crisis is a car and not a girlfriend.  Well, I can tell you right now that a girlfriend would cost less money, take less time, and I wouldn't have to watch.  So the jury is still out on that one.

However, one plus is that Spoonful of Sin is a sponsor of his car.  So our logo is plastered on the back. How cool is that? 

My husband the race car driver.

The money pit.