Met with the very cool ‘Eddie’ of Continental Bakery in North Hollywood. Eddie’s place is pareve, so we can’t private label our mandel bread there, but he offered lots of great advice about the food business (and the Burbnak schools) and turned us on to Cake Monkey, these ladies have an awesomely cool product line (lots of upscale knock offs of grocery favorites like pop tarts and ho hos). Cake Monkey is not a retail front, but they have a small bake shop, and I spoke to the Monkey ladies today, they are looking for a retail space, if they find it, then they will be selling their space in Burbank. This could be just about right for Aunt Erma’s.
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On the airplane flight back from San Francisco I sketched out a design for Aunt Erma’s booth at the summer Fancy Foods Show. The booth will include a video display with a loop of the Donny Deutsch piece and the mini doc I made last summer, We’ll also have rotating mandel bread sticks on cherry ood towers and a small toaster style oven to bake mandel bread on site (mostly for aroma).
Here’s where we are with Aunt Erma’s.
Awaiting: the articles of incorporation to be processed by the state, which will allow us to open the business bank account, send the boxes off for printing, and file for Trademark.
Still waiting to hear from the Jewish Free Loan Association and I’m thinking about getting an SBA loan as a back up in case the JFLA thing doesn’t go.
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I flew up to San Francisco for the day to the gigantic “Fancy Foods Show.” Took some samples of Aunt Erma’s, took a few pictures and made some notes on what we should do if we decide to participate in the summer show in NY. The interesting news is, though there were many repeat products, many many different types of olive oils, sauces, cheeses, chips, cookies, energy drinks and herbal infused drinks…..there was no mandel bread. So maybe we’ll be first to market? Or maybe nobody is interested in mandel bread.
I’ve been working on some sketches for the NY booth. Post’em later.
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While awaiting our corporate filing to be approved, I submitted Aunt Erma’s business plan to the JFLA – The Jewish Free Loan Association. If approved, this loan will help us kick start our business and provide the initial $15,000 needed to begin making and baking. The hi-res box prototype is printer ready, at least as photoshop file – the kosher symbol is not on this version of the box. I figure we can stamp it on later when figure out where we will be baking. Monday is San Francisco, and the Fancy Foods Show. 
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Met with Charles Rogers our packaging broker at his house today i Rancho Santa Marguerita. Most of the major obstacles have been over come (FDA requirements, UPC codes etc.), now the challenge of converting my photoshop file to a hi-res Adobe Illustrator file. Charles also had us do some moisture tests on the mandel bread and the results left more questions than answers. The batch held in a zip lock bag fared the best of our samples (paper bag, zip loc with desicant, zip lock no desicant, and unpackaged). But there was still some moisture loss compared to our fresh batch. The plan now is to bake another batch of mandel bread and in 1/2 hour intervals and put the mandel bread in zip lock baggies, straight out of the oven, 1/2 hour out of the oven, 1 hour out, and so on. This will be a one week test to determine which holds the moisture the best.
On the legal front - Aunt Erma’s, Inc. will be incorporated as an S-Corp this week. Just a few small things to take care of there, corporate records books, and filing with the state. From there we have 1 year before we will owe a minimum $800 tax for the right to have a corp. in California. The filing should be mailed this week.
Finally, on January 19th, I’ll fly to San Francisco for the ‘Fancy Foods Show’ for a day of research. If this is a viable show we will travel there to New York for the Summer Show!
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