Biz Connect - "Buying Local."

I am a part of a "leads" group that nonetheless passes leads to one another. We meet every Tuesday morning at the YMCA located in Sherwood at 7:00 am. This week I was the speaker and decided to do something different by leading a discussion versus just speaking on a topic. The subject - buying local. What makes one decide to buy local? Money? Product? Quality? Support? The input was awesome. The group was very open and honest. This was a very productive meeting and I felt like I accomplished much with an open forum type of talk. I came away with two thoughts. One, it seems as if the ones making comments about buying locally grown foods or made foods are either those who are also growers/producers or are educated about what they are eating. Secondly, money was a big driver when it came down between convenience and health benefits. One of our group members grew up on a farm and had a thorough understanding of what it meant to buy locally grown or made goods. The other men in the group spoke mainly of buying the closest to quality without breaking the piggy bank. Nice, I thought.

I like getting input from the group. I value their opinions and take their suggests to heart.
The Pastry Cart was awesome today. Looks like the rainy weather played well on our side as we practically sold out of our pastries that we brought around.

~Jamie

Profitability

Most things have an expiration date on them and pastries are no exception. Buying enough inventory to make all your goods are like a time bomb ready to blow if you over buy or do not sell fast enough. It really hurts your bottom line when you are throwing away food/inventory and have to buy the same staples to replace the expired ones. Ahh... sales are at a slump as they all tend to be during the early fall season. We're getting into our rainy season now in Oregon and Santine and I are hoping this will help push more pastries with their coffee/tea in the mornings. The pastry cart is doing well with new customer's weekly. We're finding that the dental offices have been our biggest fans so far. Who would have known? Actually we shouldn't be surprised at anything...we both are a shock to our own community as weekly go around as the "pastry cart."

Santine is doing great with her selection of pastries. I find that selling scones to those who haven't seen our brand before is a bit of a push but, they still find themselves buying them after they've tasted it. I've started to bring around coffee and that seems to be working in a couple of locations. Yeh!

Keeping things going is the first challenge for myself. Running a full time tea business, part time software business (Quasitime.com) and raising a family is nothing short of obstacles and lack of enough time. My family is healthy amongst the many that have the flu...atleast for today. That I am grateful.

Crossing my fingers for a more profitable month. It's the 20th of October and it's looking very slow for the business.

-Jamie

Gaining Momentum with the Pastry Cart

This week was a little challenging in a couple ways. First, I spent 8 hours in total at the hair salon to fix a problem with my highlight, time that I could not spend to prepare my baking for this week. Monday and Tuesday, Dick was in California for work, so that makes life busier for me anyway. Tuesday, Hank felt UP the stairs at school and busted his eyebrow, luckily I was still at school so I was able to help him. The rest of the week was pretty hectic. Wednesday it's Dick's guitar lesson day, so we have several students coming to our house. I babysat two kids this week after school. We had piano lessons and Youth Group, and home work and play dates.

Friday was the home coming game, a big event with a parade and then the football game in the evening. Saturday was home coming dance. We had six teenage girls in our house getting ready for this big event. It was their first official dance and they had a great time. And... after waiting for almost 6 months, our chickens lay their first egg. That was pretty exciting.

Business went very well this week. I got a call from a dental office with the question if we were able to bring coffee to go with the pastries this week. And a call from someone who had a staff meeting and was wondering if she could get a plate with different pastries from the Pastry Cart. This all happened before we headed out that Tuesday. Later that day, a doctor called with an order for Dutch Apple pie and Dutch Almond Buttercake.

On Thursday we went to some new businesses in Sherwood. One of them is owned by the State and is not allowed to buy from us, but the other business liked the idea of the Pastry Cart very much. We definitely go back to them. It was the first time I sold 20 pastries with the Pastry Cart.

Per Jamie's suggestion, we made a flyer from the De Roover Bakery with the option for businesses to order a variety of Dessert Trays for their meetings. I left those flyers while we were visiting those businesses with the Pastry Cart. That same morning I got my first order for a Pastry Tray! A little scary, because now you have to make your promises come true. With buying this weeks' ingredients and 100 baking boxes, I spent almost $100 dollars. But still with all those new orders I was able to make more profit than the week before. I feel like we're gaining some positive momentum here with our new venture. By the end of the week I got one more phone call from the editor of the local newspaper. More about that next week :)

~Santine