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Colorado Chocolate Festival


Desiderio

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In the real world of chocolate!!!!

I have to say that was a stressful week. LOts of things I would have love to have or make but not enough hands and time .

Anyway, its over now and I can say that was a great experience and the networking with the other chocolatiers and customers was awesome.

I ended up making over 2000 pc of chocolates plus some raspberry marshmallows and nougat. Some chocolates sold faster, but I did have more of some than others. But now I know what goes better right? Good feed back from other chocolatiers and people, some of the contacts may lead to more business so it was great.

The first night was terrible tough.The pomoter advertised heavily on the FREE SAMPLES, and as soon as they open the gates ( cages !! ) we go completely attact by ords of people that wanted free stuff!.I was overwelmed and a little bit irritated as well, we were all kinda surprised. The next day I had chance to talk with other booth owners and everybody told me they had the exactley same experience and they were not pleased with it, so I wasnt alone on that.The saturday show went much much better, more family oriented and people took their time to visit the booths, also we drastically reduce free samples and people werent expecting it .

The overall experience was positive and I am glad I got to do it, now I know what to do and how better organize everything ( also payments etc, I am glad I set up the pay pal virtual terminal so I could get credit card payments as well with my lap top).

I will attach some pics, I have to be honest I didnt take many because I was more focus on the rest :raz:

The pics were taking at set up, after that I was stuck in the booth all night :wacko:

Edited by Desiderio (log)

Vanessa

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Vanessa,

Wonderful looking chocolates as always. I really like the mirrored displays - shows them off beautifully.

What percentage of what you took along would you say you sold? Did you run out of any items? Do you have plans for what you have left over?

How did you deal with the sampling issue? Did you cut up chocolates for them to taste, or did people expect a whole chocolate as a sample?

Tell me more about how you used paypal to collect payment on site? That seems very practical - but does it require people to have paypal accounts?

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Thank you Kerry,

The displays were an idea I had then my hubby developed, but since he was gone for the entire week I was stuck with the building of all of them :huh:

I would say I have 20 to 30% left ( I have some of the boxes left mostly sea salt caramel because I made lots of those!

I am planning to try to sell them at work maybe and maybe going around the town to direct sell and sample to other business.

We cut up the chocolates in 4 pieces ( or two if they were too small ) and served in paper cups, the second day we limited the samples to the flavors we had more of and eventually only on request get the other flavors out, you can tell if they are interested in buying or not. The nougat didnt go as well as the other because to my great surprise , americans are not too familiar with it, so I started to sample more of that later on. We sold more of the Marshmallows in small bags of six.

Customers are not required to have a paypal account, the virtual terminal is like anyother credit card company, only the owner need to have an account , you pay a monthly fee of 30.00 dollars plus the fee at transaction ( standards like anyother company) but paypal allows you to accept almost all the credit cards. The process without a wireless terminal ( fro sliding the card ) is a little bit longer because you have to put their actual address along with the credi card info, I post the info needed for the credit card payment with the price list so they knew what and how.

The merchaindise mart we were at had wireless internet but you have to pay by the day, I wasnt aware of that so it took me little bit to set it up, if I knew it earlier I would have been ready faster :raz:

Vanessa

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Wow, great questions all there Kerry!

As usual, Vanessa, you have not failed to impress! Beautiful job!

Here's what I've concluded:

1) Pace yourself. It's ok if you take a while to get out more samples or if you run out of them. One chocolatier was telling me that they will sample 5 of the 6 flavors in her assortment and people really like them all but won't buy because they haven't tasted the 6th. :blink: For some, it's more about getting the freebies than anything else...

2) As they say about the stock market, "past performance is no indication of future returns." What I mean by that is that just because a certain flavor has done really well today, be careful because a different one may capture the attention tomorrow. Some days at the Farmers' Market, one flavor will fly off the shelves and the next week, it's something else. You just never know.

Best of Luck and continued success!

John DePaula
formerly of DePaula Confections
Hand-crafted artisanal chocolates & gourmet confections - …Because Pleasure Matters…
--------------------
When asked “What are the secrets of good cooking? Escoffier replied, “There are three: butter, butter and butter.”

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Thank you John!

I absolutely agree with you.Next time I will be more prepared on the sample matter.

There was one chocolatier that was sampling her ganache fillings instead of her chocolates.She had many small glass bowls and hand down little plastic spoons for the people to try.The question is will the experience be the same as if they try the entire thing put together and also, what if the double dip in the other bowls??

Anyway maybe that was a smarter idea, more practical.

I didnt try many chocolates , actually only one from Olive Kita, one of the few , or maybe the only one, not local, he is from NY and had a chance to chat little bit, he made me try one that is called Opium I think, has an interesting smoked flavor but the most impressive thing was that the second bite I took was completely different from the first , totally fruity and then at the end the smoked hit me again, very very interesting.

Unfortunately I am not much into chocolates at this moment because I am expecting :rolleyes: , so funny that chocolate is my leastes favorite food right now ( can you immagine making hundreds of chocolates and feeling kinda yack! )

Vanessa

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Gorgeous displays! Gorgeous chocolates (as usual, of course). Congratulations on a successful event. And congratulations on the expecting - birthing a business and a baby at the same time is going to be a challenge, but I'm sure you're up to it!

Tammy's Tastings

Creating unique food and drink experiences

eGullet Foodblogs #1 and #2
Dinner for 40

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Thank you John!

I absolutely agree with you.Next time I will be more prepared on the sample matter.

There was one chocolatier that was sampling her ganache fillings instead of her chocolates.She had many small glass bowls and hand down little plastic spoons for the people to try.The question is will the experience be the same as if they try the entire thing put together and also, what if the double dip in the other bowls??

Anyway maybe that was a smarter idea, more practical.

I didnt try many chocolates , actually only one from Olive Kita, one of the few , or maybe the only one, not local, he is from NY and had a chance to chat little bit, he made me try one that is called Opium I think, has an interesting smoked flavor but the most impressive thing was that the second bite I took was completely different from the first , totally fruity and then at the end the smoked hit me again, very very interesting.

Unfortunately I am not much into chocolates at this moment because I am expecting  :rolleyes: , so funny that chocolate is my leastes favorite food right now ( can you immagine making hundreds of chocolates and feeling kinda yack! )

Actually, I just logged on to say exactly that... try sampling the ganache fillings instead. It's a lot less work for you and if they're serious about buying, then they'll get a good idea (though not perfect) of what the chocolate will taste like. I have just started to do this and I think it'll be fine. I got this idea from one of the vendors at the Farmers' Market who sells savory tarts. She samples the fillings and it seems to go over just fine.

For my ganache samples, I have started adding some chopped up couverature so the balance isn't totally lost.

--J

John DePaula
formerly of DePaula Confections
Hand-crafted artisanal chocolates & gourmet confections - …Because Pleasure Matters…
--------------------
When asked “What are the secrets of good cooking? Escoffier replied, “There are three: butter, butter and butter.”

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Can you tell us more about what you took to sell? What/how many were in the pre-pack boxes, or were you packing everything to order? And what were you selling the boxes for?

I took a variety of chocolates and caramels, about 10 different flavors total.I think I had over 2000 pc with me of the chocolates, and several ( I would say 5 lb ) squres of chocolate cover nougat and marshmallows.

We run out of some flavors because I made much less of those, and apparently people is very intereted in buying a product that is almost completely gone from your inventory, we had to pull the brandy vanilla out of the case untill the last one because they figured that would have been the best ( wich I have to say it was ).

We prepacked boxes of three different size, 6, 8 and 16 pc, but we also made sales of 2 piece etc in little cello bags, when we got there ( around 2 pm and the opening was at 7 pm ), we did some caramels only box as well. We did also pack on order , make your own box type and that was popular.I have bought some good 5 lb boxes with plastic trays that were absolutely a great investment, because made the transportation so easy , and also the storing thru the production.

Vanessa

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I have bought some good 5 lb boxes with plastic trays that were absolutely a great investment, because made the transportation so easy , and also the storing thru the production.

Do you have a link anywhere to the 5 lb boxes? i'm always contemplating storage!

Edited by tammylc (log)

Tammy's Tastings

Creating unique food and drink experiences

eGullet Foodblogs #1 and #2
Dinner for 40

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Everything looks great - as always :smile: For easy mirrored displayds, places like IKEA sell chep, framed mirrors that can be customised without too much fuss.

Congratulations !!! on the future addition to the family - going off favorites is very irritating though - especially chocoale

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Lovely! COngratulations! I am not sure I understand what the boxes with the morror effect are, but it looked just great! Bet you are glad it is over!

Thank you, yes I am glad, I only wish I had more time to enjoyit.I relize I havent work with customers in a long time and was little bit hard to get my skills back and feel relaxed.

The mirrored boxes are display cases to show the chocolates, people really like them and had the feeling I wanted to give to my chocolates, jewel like effect.

Vanessa

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I have bought some good 5 lb boxes with plastic trays that were absolutely a great investment, because made the transportation so easy , and also the storing thru the production.

Do you have a link anywhere to the 5 lb boxes? i'm always contemplating storage!

Tomric, they dont have those online, just call them or send them an email they have those in storage. I think the 500 plastic trays were 119.00 and the boxes ( bottom and bases ) were areound 36.00 each. I am gonna take a pic and post it so ypou can see how they are, I have to tell you that was more than what I wanted to spend ( this festival was expensive for me but worth it ) but I was totally happy with those.

Vanessa

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Wow congrats on your festival and new baby.

Those box's look like a great way to store you chocolates for traveling. Thanks for the tips. I'll have to check those out. What brand of razzle dust to you use on the leaf chocolate? I think there are the maple leaf? not sure.

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I have bought some good 5 lb boxes with plastic trays that were absolutely a great investment, because made the transportation so easy , and also the storing thru the production.

Do you have a link anywhere to the 5 lb boxes? i'm always contemplating storage!

Tomric, they dont have those online, just call them or send them an email they have those in storage. I think the 500 plastic trays were 119.00 and the boxes ( bottom and bases ) were areound 36.00 each. I am gonna take a pic and post it so ypou can see how they are, I have to tell you that was more than what I wanted to spend ( this festival was expensive for me but worth it ) but I was totally happy with those.

Do you have an item # for those?

Mark

www.roseconfections.com

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Yeah, that sucks that the sampling was such a focus of the festival. I hate that Costco vibe when it seems like cutstomers are just in it for the samples, and not to buy. It sucks that you were sort of "forced" into sampling because really, I feel sampling just decreases sales. I found the year I stopped sampling at the farmer's market, my sales more than doubled.

However, that said, I do believe sampling is so important in the beginning to get feedback and really start to understand your customer base, target market, etc. So think of it as an investment in your business; a marketing expense.

One trick that seems to help is to only sample one flavor at a time, if you sample 5 out of 6 of the flavors, people are going to want the 6th. Choose the flavor that best represents you as the chocolatier; if you like spicy chocoalates, do something that will convert the sceptics.

Stephanie Crocker

Sugar Bakery + Cafe

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Good point! I think you are right, because people were almost surprise that we had all the flavors available, so I had the feeling that I souldnt have sample everything :laugh: .

As for the ganache sampling I had one of my customer ( that now is in love with my products and try to promote them ) said that when he was at the booth were they were sampling ganaches he saw at least 3 times in a row people that double dipped and was disgusted so just moved on , that was my fear, people grabs huge scoops of ganache and also double dip ( not all of them but you know ).

Vanessa

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Good point! I think you are right, because people were almost surprise that we had all the flavors available, so I had the feeling that I souldnt have sample everything  :laugh: .

As for the ganache sampling I had one of my customer ( that now is in love with my products and try to promote them ) said that when he was at the booth were they were sampling ganaches he saw at least 3 times in a row people that double dipped and was disgusted so just moved on , that was my fear, people grabs huge scoops of ganache and also double dip ( not all of them but you know ).

I think I would address that by keeping the ganache out of customer reach and scooping out a tasting spoonful to hand to the customer instead of letting them help themselves.

Tammy's Tastings

Creating unique food and drink experiences

eGullet Foodblogs #1 and #2
Dinner for 40

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Good point! I think you are right, because people were almost surprise that we had all the flavors available, so I had the feeling that I souldnt have sample everything  :laugh: .

As for the ganache sampling I had one of my customer ( that now is in love with my products and try to promote them ) said that when he was at the booth were they were sampling ganaches he saw at least 3 times in a row people that double dipped and was disgusted so just moved on , that was my fear, people grabs huge scoops of ganache and also double dip ( not all of them but you know ).

I think I would address that by keeping the ganache out of customer reach and scooping out a tasting spoonful to hand to the customer instead of letting them help themselves.

you could also get those cheap portion cups and just pipe some ganache into each one. use a start tip so it is slightly decorative. that way, you can bring your ganaches already made in piping bags for easy portability.

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