Maybe the single most exciting news we’ve had since we landed our first Whole Foods Market back in September. The wrap testing at our co-pack cookie factory was a success! So what does this all mean? The next step is to see if the cookie factory can bake the mandel bread just like Aunt Erma bakes it. Not an easy task, they have to partially automate what up until this point has been a 100% ‘by hand’ process. If the test run goes well then we have a green light to push for regional distribution. This of course doesn’t mean anybody will buy Aunt Erma’s mandel bread, but based on the bit of success we’ve had at our four stores, I think if they try they will buy. Fingers crossed.
Important happenings this week in the mandel bread business. But, not ready to share the details yet. Hopefully we’ll be ready to announce some important changes and news shortly. In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the web statistics for auntermas.com. If you’re new to the web, all web sites have what is called a control panel, which is basically like looking under rhe hood of your web site. Here is where domains are hosted, email is managed, files are stored and tons of other activity is done. This is the access to your domain, your hard drive ‘in the cloud.’ One of the very cool tools in the control panel is a little software called ‘Awstats.‘ With Awstats I can track all sorts of information about auntermas.com. For example, I know that last month over three hundred people read this blog, almost five hundred watched ‘The Story of Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread’ and almost six hundred found the homepage of auntermas.com. There were fifteen thousand hits to the web site, and though they were overwhelmingly hits from the US, we did see a little traffic from far away places like Latvia, Syria and Finland. Thirty seven percent of you hit auntermas.com using microsoft internet explorer, almost thirty percent used Apple’s Safari, and a surprising twenty three percent used Firefox. This month numbers are strong too. We’re hoping this steady climb in internet traffic will expand our brand awareness once we hit our stride and get regional distribution…..
Yesterday, Mama’s kitchen had an open house for the community. Here’s a newspaper article about the event. Mama’s was the second commercial kitchen we tried for Aunt Erma’s mandel bread. Though we really like the place, unfortunately their mixer was too small, and we quickly out grew it. Nonetheless, Mama’s was nice enough to invite us to participate in the festivities. Here’s a video walk through of the place. That guy holding the mandel bread is Bill Bogaard, the mayor of Pasadena, who showed up for the fun.
