Lead Time for Large Event Orders - chocolate companies

[Sweet Impact Mama]

Hi! 

I recently had to turn down an order for a corporate event for 150 large, luxury chocolate variety boxes, because they weren't going to make a decision until mid next week and needed the product in North Carolina by April 23rd. Since all my product is made fresh, I was fairly certain that we couldn't get it done and shipped (or flown down if they needed us to set it up), in 10 days. 

 

So now I'm curious, what sort of lead time to you require from customers?  If you keep stock in hand, how much? How much time would it take for your company to get 150 luxury boxes (customer choice), 1500 custom truffles, 300 Dipped Caramels, 150 hand painted bars, and 150 hand dipped turtles? I know I'm too tiny to pull it off in their time, but I'd like an idea of what the competition can handle.   

 

 

[pastrygirl]

Is the 1500 custom truffles the contents of the 150 luxury boxes, or in addition?  Molded, hand dipped, or rolled in cocoa?

 

If you have nothing else to do, 10 days might be possible.   If you have molds that make 30 pieces and can make 10 at a time, that's 5 batches, that's do-able.  A couple days of truffle production, a couple days to do the rest, a couple days to package.  Assuming you can get all the packaging and ingredients in a timely manner.

 

I don't keep a ton of inventory, usually only 2-3 dozen of any one item.  If I got an order like that right now ... I'd probably try to take it on because April is otherwise really slow, but it would take way longer than I want it to because these thing always do and there would be late nights when I questioned my life choices. Ideally I'd want confirmation 2 weeks in advance for an order like that, they are cutting it close especially since you have to ship it.

Edited April 5, 2018 by pastrygirl (log)

[Sweet Impact Mama]

1 minute ago, pastrygirl said:

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I don't keep a ton of inventory, usually only 2-3 dozen of any one item.  If I got an order like that right now ... I'd probably try to take it on because April is otherwise really slow, but it would take way longer than I want it to because these thing always do and there would be late nights when I questioned my life choices. 

Lol! I hear ya. My biggest concern was that I don't currently have enough molds of any one kind to knock them out that fast. And I'm one person doing all the mold painting and all chocolate work. I'd need to order a bunch of stuff before I could start... which takes shipping time on the front end. Heavens, I'm still working with just 2 3kg Mol d'Art melters that i use after hand tempering. Getting a $5K order done in that short of time would have required a bit of scaling up. 

The hand dipping of all my Tipsy Turtles and Bourbon Salted Caramels was what had me in the biggest quandary. It takes forever to toast all the pecans, assemble and then dip/drizzle all of them. I can bang out a few dozen of them in a couple hours, but not on top of doing all the other stuff. Sucks to be middle aged.