prairiegirl

I think I will try these tomorrow. Cooking them that is!

My husband handles the retail store. I do my production at another location and it works better for me to go in at night and do larger production runs. During the day the pastry chef is in doing all his production. If you go to my website the bestseller is the Tahitian blonde which a Grand Cru natural vanilla in a pyramid mold. Norman Love is correct in saying that colours sell. That is also the case with us. People hate to eat a nicely decorated chocolate because of it's beauty!! We say eat up and buy more!! We are a busy household with 4 kids. The two younger are 12 and 13 years old and they both play competitive soccer. So during the day I am busy driving them to school and then getting at least one of them to soccer!! We have some part time staff that take over at 4pm so my husband can get home, eat , and then drive to a soccer practice/game etc!! We have been open for about a month and people keep discovering us every day. this week has been slow as it is a holiday time. We find that the store is quiet until about noon and then business picks up in the afternoon. Our challenge is to get proper advertising out and I will use a variety of sources. For example, Kijiji, and even Bargain Finder. Anywhere that I can get free advertising. I also kave some connections with radio personalities locally, and I will contact these people to see what they suggest and what they are able to do over the airwaves. Another challenge is to speed of my production time. Much of what I do is so artisan that it is swallowing up too much time and I am not producing the quantity I would like. Airbrushing with different colours is time consuming and then swapping out differnet chocolate is also a time factor. Making purees is also a time factor. But it is what differentiates me from all others. We have tried chocolate all over the Western Canada and Oregan and Seattle and nothing really compares with what I am making in flavour.

Not all my photos are uploading properly. But here are some of the retail store. We have limited space but our designer did a great job of decorating. The display case is much fuller now!!

I have been working all night and sleeping all day for the last 5 days!! Every day more people discover the chocolate store.

I am looking for insert trays to use for storage. I want to get them customized to fit my storage boxes. Currently I load my bonbons in a box but as stock gets used the left over chocolates get tossed to and fro. If you know of any businesses that specialize in this please share!! Thanks

I tell people I am an artisan chocolatier in that I make all my own fillings and hand mold or hand dip all my products. I explain to my customers that making bonbons is like building a house. It is very labour intensive. I also explain what makes a product good (tasty) are the ingredients. I source the best I can find and I choose companies that are passionate about their products. I also like a good story behind my products. Maybe the organic sugar cane comes from a plantation in Brazil, or the vanilla beans are from a plantation in Mexico... The more my products have a story the more my customers are drawn in. Don't worry about your competitors, focus in on how unique you are. Get your products tell a story.

Yesterday was the opening day and we put the "open" sign up. It was very slow for the first 2 hours or so because the neighborhood didn't believe it yet!! Plus we had a snow storm the day before and it took people time to come out of hibernation!! Word in the neighborhood got around and we got much busier. We offered hot chocolate drinks in which I use an induction hob and a bamix and it works great. When the day comes that I need the hot chocolate machine as mentioned somewhere in the postings, then we will buy it. I premixed the hot chocolate mix using 3 kinds..1) a regular dark hot chocolate 2) Ecuador with it fruity to floral flavours, and the 3) Mayan..spicy sort of drink. I not happy with this one yet and will switch over and use Mexican chocolate from the following source. Terra Spice carries this but I will contact the source directly for bulk. http://www.chocolatedeoaxaca.com.mx/2006.htm Help Wanted: We hired 1 part time person. The journey began with advertising through an internet job site for about $300. The goes out into cyberworld and we started with Customer service. Well, I got alot of generic resumes in which everyone's goal is to be the next CEO of XXXX BAnk!! We received some other resumes and we interviewed several people. Instant elimination if the person never looked at my website. We did not get any vibrant magnetic personality types thru this job search and I realized that we should be posting our ad under a different category. We needed hospitality or restaurant. We ate at a diner a few times and my husband loved the service we got from the waitresses and that was the type of person(s) we were looking for. Got some more resumes from that, a few that are okay. Finally, we put a help wanted on the front window and it stayed there for 3 weeks during the renos. We were bombarded with resumes and some of them stellar. We hired a 17 year old grade 12 girl and she is amazing. She is very artistic and great with people so she busy reorganizing the store and making the displays much prettier before we got busy. She wants to study at Parson's next fall. The other person I am eyeing for part time is possibly an 18 year recent highschool graduate guy who worked at Starbucks for awhile over the last few years. Very outgoing and loves to challenge people to try something new. We did have some mature adults who we interviewed and could be a consideration but I am leaning towards the young. Why? These kids have the right personality, they love chocolate, but most importantly they have previous retail experience and the retailers they worked for have trained them extremely well on how to sell...suggestive selling etc., and also with customer service. We did not know if we would open Saturday so now I need to scramble and get large plates/bowls/baskets etc. as we received requests from the customers. I will post pictures when I get a chance. Must run.It's time for church!

Hi Erika, Congrats. We are in very simular positions. We hope to open our store this Saturday. The last inspection will be Friday and then we get the official permit to open the front doors. I will post pictures soon of all the renos. We have a very small bay. It is 400 square feet but is suffice for now. Rents are still very expensive in my city and our parking rates are the second highest in North America. So any cost reductions such as square footage is helpful!! We plan to offer some different hot chocolates, and also a few frozen drinks.

My colleague is an engineer by profession but now is a full time pastry chef (pursuing his passion)! He has been using two regular kitchen ovens plus one commercial (and inefficient) oven. He has been at several restaurant supply shops looking for a commercial oven. He is looking at a convection oven (commercial grade) that will have several racks to put all his cressoints, and other pastry items on. What do you use in your shop? What oven would you recommend? All ideas and opinions are greatly appreciated. His budget is approximately $3500.

I have about 100 empty cups and plan another 100. I follow the same procedure as Kerry.

Fine ground almonds...go to a middle east store, Italian etc. These ethnic stores usually have these products and probably at a better price than regular grocery stores.

Sorbitol: Also contact diebetic stores.

Thanks Scneich for that info. I have finally sparked my wheel machine on for the first time. So I will read my box instructions carefully. Any other things I should know? Hints or tips on using a wheel machine.?

My cousins had a marble business and they always had plenty of kitchen cut outs from sinks. Call or go to a marble business and tell them you are a homemaker who likes to bake and could they give or sell you a small slab of marble. They will know what type will be the best for what you are doing. This should be had for well under $100. Remember some people are nice, and others are not!!

From my understanding, the juicer is for breaking down the nibs. I have the juicer and have done crude chocolate batches. The juicer uses metal little teeth to chew up whatever you put in the machine. It also heats everything up because of the friction. This may affect the texture of the chocolate if you put sugar into the juicer with the nibs. I have never done so. I do use a vita mix or now the thermamix to blend in sugar. I rarely make chocolate from scratch so this is my experience. Hey, I do plan on getting a melanger for small batch production soon!

Nice job!

my concern with ddl is that there is no glucose therefore producing crystals. I have played with the greweling recipe in his book with..yes...coffee. The thermomix recipe for ddl is awesome!

I would challenge you to run your financial calculations exclusively on chocolate...and artisan chocolate at that. The beauty of your model is that you have a variety of products ...as you said you win (profit) on some, and barely make it on others. Reminds me of Walmart! Working with high end chocolate is expensive, using organic or high quality ingrediant is expensive, and above all else it is a labour intensive job. I have played with the numbers and ran the cost/profit projections and wholesaling is not woth the trouble. Also if you live in a depressed economy area where the recession is in full bloom, rents, and other overhead are lower which may make your business model attractive. Wholesaling..twice the work for half the profit. Debra BBA

I have a grain grinder so I have the actual grains in large 20 pound bags! I now store them in a huge plastic container to keep mice out. I thought my garage was mouse free and they got into some of my grain and I had to throw everything away. Once I have ground my grain I put the left over flour into the fridge or freezer because they do contain fresh oils that will go rancid if left in the cupboard. If you make a cake or whatever else, if the taste is off that is a good indication of rancid flour. Most commercially purchased flour has been stripped of most goodness with very little added back.

I am looking for different hot chocolate ideas...Mexican, Brazilian, etc... My kids have a recipe they developed which is 1 T Cocoa and 2 T sugar for 1 cup milk. What is your favourite recipe?

There are 2 books that I received. One was the "Everyday Cooking" I don't remember the other and it is at the shop right now. Still haven't told the hubby!! Yesterday I made the herbed chicken balls and potato pancakes from the recipe book. I had it all done and in the oven and/or frying within 1/2 hour. Hubby said to me this morning that the supper must have been a lot of work. I just nodded in agreement!!! I have been making the ganaches. Usually when I have something new I usually stare at it for a few weeks! I decided I need to get right on it and I used the machine Monday morning. I have been heating and mixing the chocolate on low and then added my hot cream but I think I will try mostlylana's method tomorrow. I am enjoying the machine.

The gave me aome cookbooks, and a silpat.

okay, I did it. I now own a Thermomix. Hubby will be a tab bit upset!!

Anymore opinions or experience with this machine? I might get one this Sunday but I need to know if will be a big help for ganaches.

i am getting quite annoyed with all my suppliers as I find they all have to many middlemen and everyone wants their cut! The wholesale price of chocolate is getting ridiculous. I am seriously looking at bringing in my own container. Possibly next year. And maybe with Valrhona. I have alot of research to do on the import part of this and also I am very busy with getting my retail store up and running. Anyhow, I want to put a bug in people's ears because if I do this I will have lots of chocolate to move!!