The hamster wheel, chocolate edition!
Our little enterprise is growing steadily, and we have you, our wonderful customers, to thank!
But our team is just five women strong, so we have to be ever more efficient in making our products. This involves our core formats with chocolate boxes, but also our wide range of confections. So let me take you behind the scenes, as Sarah and Bri, our production gurus, make their key production decisions.
We will start with late Spring: do you think our 450 Advent Calendars (about 12,000 pieces of chocolate/confections) are created as we casually relax through our slow season? Sarah and Bri are charged with figuring out every single one of the 25 Advent offerings, and they routinely have it buttoned up by mid-June. Each team member contributes to the roster of goodies, and everything is in a deep freezer by early fall.
Mid Summer is also when we all create our new chocolates, and when Bri will do a keeping study on those contributions to the following year's menu. The keeping study assesses the chocolates for consistency in taste and shelf life over a period of about six weeks.
By the time Labor Day rolls around, Sarah and Bri will have decided which 20 chocolates will grace our monthly display and what to produce in large batches. The goal is to have optimal mixes of dark and milk chocolates for classic and daring palates, all in time for the busiest time of year, the Holidays. They also take into account our growing base of corporate orders, where we hew to safer choices.
But sometimes shortages will throw a wrench into the best laid plans, as this past November when we ran out, altogether, of our dark 72% couverture. Sarah and Bri immediately switched to just milk production, with a focus on producing more hearts, because those would be needed in massive numbers for Valentine's Day.
Their balancing act meant that in January, we were still able to offer you 17 different chocolates in the case and online! Not the usual 20 at a time, but pretty darn great in my book!
(By Catherine)