This afternoon Crystal and I went over to the rental kitchen for a test run. We met our 86 year old kosher certification Rabbi Goldblatt on location where he spent more time showing us his biceps then anything else. Meanwhile, Crystal unloaded the recently blessed raw ingrediants and we got to work with the 4 available blenders in the kitchen. I fired up the rack oven and off we went. Two things really hurt us in the end. #1 the temperature of their kitchen is much higher than our home kitchen so the raw dough softened much more quickly. #2 the rack oven temperature varies, and I made the newbie mistake of not turning on the convection fan until the first cycle of baking was done. The end result was 4 full sheet trays in varies states of unusability. The middle tray (the one with the oven thermometer) had the most promise, until I fired up the convection fan and basically blow torched the mandel bread. While trays 2-4 were in various states of mush. It was a train wreck to say the least, but a good learning experience and the property manager graciously only charged us for 1 hour of baking even though we were there for 2.5 hours. Rabbi senior muscles didn’t charge us a thing, so we were only out some of our time and a few buck for raw ingredients. The other thing that is a killer is when we get in to volume baking we must have a custom die to slice the mandel bread. Measuring and slicing as way too time consuming to be cost effective as is the flipping of the pieces…..
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Here’s our packaging at the International Packaging Expi in Hong Kong.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
Thanks to the fantastic online service GetAFreelancer Aunt Erma’s web site got a nice refresh. Cleaned up the look slightly and made it easier to find the Donny Deutsch and Erma documentary. Found food product liability insurance through The Hartford with special thanks to Michel Algazi, founder of the totally awesome Food Networking site LA Fine Foods Group
The next step, and hopefully a final step – is coordinating the kosher certification rabbi, the distribution first drop off at the temple, and the our first trial run with the rental kosher kitchen. Meanwhile, our credit union has ceased their business loan programs – thank goodness we got in when we did, our loan still remains in good standing – and now the Team Mandel Bread plan is to do a 1.5 hour trial run in the kitchen, and take the experimental batches to sell at a farmer’s market.
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Who says Los Angeles isn’t business friendly? Business Permits in the City of LA are free. For the first two years, new businesses pay no city tax on their sales. After that, sales up to $100,000 annual are also city tax free. The catch is that you have to renew and maintain the permit in a timely fashion. City tax office reps told me that lots of people blow off the permitting process and then get nailed for tax. If they had only filled out a form they’d be city tax free. Conversely, The California Board of Equalization charges no tax on food products. Not that that’s unusual I guess, but they don’t require a seller’s permit registration at all, which I thought was a odd, considering LA’s filing requirement. I’ve got leads on 4 food product liability insurance brokers – all leads from the LA Fine Food Group – and as a bonus, I can play a little insider baseball and post all of their quotes on the LA Food Group site, so the food entrepreneurs will know if they’re getting the most value of not.
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Lots of business things to take care of today: Forms for seller’s permit, business license (which is just an excuse for Los Angeles City to tax me), cheaper shipping (USPS is too much!), Called Rabbi Goldblatt about kosher certifcation (interesting, more on this later.) Meeting the distributor GS Foods for King Arthur Flour tomorrow at 8:15 am at Adat – and still working out the cost analysis – which is set up in Google docs with a 46% margin enterered for the retailer, I just plug in my costs and it calculates my best price wholesale cost. Our baby niece arrived Saturday too! Can’t wait till you’re old enough to try mandel bread Alexandra!
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
