Here we are in our new spot on the shelves in the cookie isle at Whole Foods Beverly Hills. Sold about 5 boxes the last four days (Mon. – Thurs.) and we’ll see what the weekend brings.
I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this place on the blog yet. But if you are a budding food entrepreneur in Los Angeles, then you should know about Star Restaurant Supply in Van Nuys. They’ve got everything you need there, from pots and pans, sticks and stirs, trays and full blown professional cooking appliances. And here’s a tip. Tell them you’re starting a food business and they’ll give you a nice discount.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
This week Whole Foods Market Beverly Hills was restocked with Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread. Sales are brisk at our one lone store. We’ve delivered 9 cases of mandel bread in about 5 weeks, averaging just under 2 cases a week in sales. The other news is that we finally found a rental kitchen that will work for us. Once we lock in I’ll post a link.
I also wanted to share links to some of the entrepreneurs that inspire me.
Leo Laporte, an old school radio and tv guy, parlayed his Tech TV celebrity in to the most successful tech based news network on the web. Check out his live broadcasts daily at live.twit.tv or tune in to one of his fourteen different technology based netcast shows he does weekly at Twit.tv.
Jason Calacanis, a true web 1.0 and 2.0 celebrity sold his start-up Webblogs, Inc. to AOL for an estimated 25 million back in 2005. He now hosts a totally interesting weekly web cast called TWIST (This week in start-ups).
Evan Kleinman is the owner of Angeli cafe in Hollywood, but most notably is the long time host of “Good Food” on KCRW. I’m sure she must get paid practically nothing to do this, but constantly books interesting guests from the world of food. Here it is: Good Food on KCRW
I don’t know a whole lot about this guy. But his tiny auto-biography about the birth of his cookie company is the branding model we are following at Aunt Erma’s. You might never have heard of Wally Amos had the one time talent agent not started bringing homemade cookies as a calling card to client meetings. But that’s what made him famous.
more to come in following posts.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
BREAKING
Friday, October 23 2009
The Whole Foods Market Beverly Hills has once again sold of Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread. Check back Monday October 26th for restock.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
Michel Algazi’s awesome group The LA Fine Food Group is a bunch of Los Angeles based food entrepreneurs, from the total new guys like me, to huge successful operations. They’re an invaluable resource for all sorts of information. All free, and totally cool. Next meet up is on the October 29th in Encino. Check their site for details.
Cousin Scott Spiro helps little companies weather the financial crisis with a way to freelance your companies IT support. Scott’s streamlined company, CSG is local here in LA and he’s a total tech geek. For a flat monthly fee you get unlimited support, without snarky in-house guys, or over priced ‘bill-by-the-hour’ guys. Outsourcing overseas is ok, but when it comes to computer support, it’s nice to know there’s somebody close by to have look.
But if you really don’t want to deal with all that IT stuff, get a Mac.
Finally – So what are those ads on the right side of my blog? It’s Google Adsense. Google is awesome at so many things, not so hot at instructions. You’re better off Googling ‘How do I put adsense in to my blog’ then relying on Googles very own explanation. For you WordPress people just go to your admin, click on Appearence, then Widgets, then Text – and paste the Google Adsense code in to the box. And if you want to help out Team Mandel Blog, click on one of those ads right now.
I’m on Twitter @philweinstein, but hardly ever post a tweet, and on SKYPE philtogo
Hey, check out our competition! -
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
Last week while driving around Burbank we saw a couple of interesting leads on kitchens in the city to move Aunt Erma’s operations too. One afternoon, while surfing Google for more information on one of those places I stumbled on a bakery called Aunt Joys. The location was 5 minutes from my office, and even though I’ve driven that route dozens of times, I never noticed Aunt Joy’s place. So, I grabbed an empty box of Aunt Erma’s mandel bread and headed down to meet Aunt Joy. Aunt Joy has the perfect commercial kitchen. Their business primarily caters to craft service in the entertainment industry, high end cakes and other delicious desserts. Joy herself is somewhat of a celebrity, check out her scene from Cool Hand Luke. They have a large revolving oven that can handle volumes of baked goods. Just an eyeball estimation, we could bake at least 2 cases of mandel bread in that oven at a time, maybe more. Crystal and I were excited about the possibility of working in their space after hours. Sadly, I found out today that the landlord of the property is not keen on the idea, so we’re still on the hunt for a local operation. But it gave us a good visual of what our ideal kitchen should look like. The $50.00 per hour kitchen in North Hollywood isn’t going to cut it for us anymore.
Meanwhile, I was contacted by Rabbi Allen Silver at Kosher Technical Konsultants, he read my post titled Kosher Certification Rip-Off and called to defend his company and their practices. Rabbi Allen says lots of people complain about the same thing, and I have been left scratching my head over this whole kosher issue. I’m still uncertain of the value of kosher certification, it seems like the large majority of cookie consumers could care less. The kosher audience of course would insist on kosher, but my goal is to reduce costs as much as possible. If I want to compete with large corporate brands I’ve got to supply a quality product at a competitive price. The certification fees only force my wholesale price up, and the last thing I want to do in this economy is raise the price of my product. Still trying to figure this issue out.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
This morning I received a final sales tally from Whole Foods Beverly Hills on Aunt Erma’s inital run. Of the 6 cases we sent over, 10 boxes had met the expiration date, meaning we sold over 5 cases of Aunt Erma’s finest. Now we have to replace the expired stock with good stock, or issue the store a credit. 13.8% of the stock didn’t sell in time for the expiration, pretty good for an initial run with zero promotion. I’m going to offer to replace the stock to get some fresh stuff back on the shelves in lieu of credit, which brings me to the next update.
This afternoon I toured what I think will be the perfect commercial kitchen for Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread. Located right here in Burbank, we’re hoping the owners will like us enough to consider letting us rent their space during off hours. And this is a great space! The perfect oven, prep area, mixers, etc. I’ll post a link when we hear a definite yes or no on the space. The plan is to get the new place to agree to a test run, at which time we’ll fill the Whole Foods replacement stock and bake an extra case for samples as we begin to approach other Whole Foods markets.
I also went back to see Silviano at 3D Stainless to have another custom tool created for our budding mandel bread business. This time he created a custom device for extracting the sliced mandel bread from the cutting tool. Pretty cool stuff.
Finally, a mention that my brother-in-law Rick, a great attorney located in the DC Metro area has launched his first blog. You can ask Rick just about any legal question, Rick specializes in criminal law, but the law firm he belongs to is full service. So feel free to post any question. It’s your chance to get free legal advice. Click here to ask Rick.
Is Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread coming to the Big Apple?……
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown
Stopped by the City of Burbank today to check out their zoning maps. Was warned to be careful where we rent because if the kitchen is not zoned, and the owner gets busted – we’ll take a fall too. The Los Angeles business license is a pretty good deal for start-ups, with no city tax for the first two years of operation. Next up is Burbank, which only charges a fee per employee but I have to check the license code to see if there are any other fees attached to operating a commercial kitchen – worst is our neighbors southeast of us. The city of Glendale has no business license fee, however, you will pay a tax on equipment depreciation and gross receipts. So we’re trying to stick with Burbank for the easy operation. Meanwhile, Snookies Cookies is relocating down the block and looking to sell their old equipment. This leaves Crystal and I wondering if we should consider renting our own space and buying Snookies ovens and tables. Would be a bigger start-up cost but if sales get moving then our kitchen costs would average way down. So many decisions to make on a limited budget. Next week we’ll finally get access to Temple Emmanuel in Burbank, another possible lead for a commercial kitchen rental.
Team Mandel Blog Development Countdown