So we’ve been sending boxes of mandel bread off too family and friends as part of our beta test program. mainly we want to see if the mandel bread holds up in shipping, tastes ok on arrival, and how much USPS shipping costs are. We’ve made several successful shipments to the east coast – only concern is shipping is really expensive – currently we are subsidizing the shipping costs for any online customers, $4.00 flat rate anywhere in the US, but in reality – sending 1 box of mandel bread from California to Maryland costs 7 -8 dollars. Meanwhile, my friend Eddy over at Continental Bakery suggested we try again renting from our temple kitchen – This time I contacted the facilities manager directly instead of the caterer that has a contract with the temple. They were very happy to talk to us about our mandel bread business. Tomorrow is the meeting. Our understanding is that their rabbi charges $100.00 to certify our ingrediants in their kitchen and I’ve been doing a little cost analysis to see how much mandel bread we have to bake to break even renting the temple kitchen. Should be fun!
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So we’ve got the boxes, and I’ve already been to a couple of local places in LA peddling Aunt Erma’s mandel bread. One local grocer was only interested in Aunt Erma’s if we are kosher certified. So I surfed the net and stumbled on something called EarthKosher. These guys promote themselves as a cost effective solution to kosher certification. The kosher certifing Rabbi quoted me ” $3,750 a year and a $750 Initial Inspection fee.” I responded by saying that that would be my single largest expense to date on this project, and he simply replied that he could set up a payment schedule. What a bunch of horse shit. What do these guys do anyway ?!? I’ll keep looking but I feel like I’m going to get a shake down from these ‘kosher certifiers’ …. stay tuned.
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Today, 10,000 packaging boxes for Aunt Erma’s mandel bread arrived safely in Burbank. I ‘turned on’ the web site – basically adjusted the inventory for the $4.95 pack as “in stock” and made some tweaks to our former ‘GrandCentral number” (now Google voice) – I’m amazed that the transaction with our overseas provider worked so flawlessly. When the overseas printer had trouble accessing our ftp to download the hi-res file for printing, I simply sent the entire 500 meg file over SKYPE.
Now the hard part begins – hitting the streets of LA trying to sell Aunt Erma’s to the masses!
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More on the international shipping learning curve. The boxes arrived in to Long Beach last Sunday (April 5). The shipper – the forwarder charged me $132.00 to get the stuff to their warehouse in Torrance. But now I discovered that I need a customs clearing broker to complete the transaction of getting the stuff cleared. Don’t really know if I’m getting hosed on this deal – really it’s a mystery, but another $311.00 later and the boxes should be at my door by Thursday. So I paid a full 20% of the total production price just to get the boxes from Long Beach to the house. A lot to spend, but across 10,100 boxes that only adds about 4¢ each to the total box price per unit. So in the end (and this is asuming the boxes look ok) the boxes should be about 27¢ a piece. Now I have to start thinking about shipping boxes – crazy…
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More on the international shipping front. Our packaging is expected to float in to Long Beach on Sunday. From there the forwarder (which I gather is the shipping company) is responsible for getting the product off the boat and to their warehouse. In our case this involves a few more unexpected fees for local trucking, port security and pier fees. Amounts to $135.00. Adds about 1.3 cents per box to the overall packaging price. Now I need to get the items cleared through customs. Doesn’t make complete sense to me as the forwarder will have to take possession of our shipment and get it to Torrance, but I now have to find a Customs broker to clear the items and also need to arrange for shipping. So I have a referral from Immortal Shipping of Inglewood, we’ll see what their rate is to get all 10,100 boxes to the house. Phew….
Sister Jill sent a link to a cool site Foodzie
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