I had trouble sleeping a few weeks back. It was 3:30 am, and unable to fall back asleep I wandered downstairs and sat in front of the computer to surf. We’ve been in four Whole Foods Markets since late last September, and I haven’t wanted to expand to more stores until we could find a suitable co-pack partner for Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread. Fantasy Cookie was and still is the best fit for our product, but with business booming for Fantasy, they never found the time to do a test bake run of Aunt Erma’s. When we toured their factory they even found a mould that looked to be about the right size to put Aunt Erma’s in their production chain. Fantasy also did a packaging test for us which worked great. We still have one of those sealed boxes, which almost 6 months later remains fresh in the box. But without a sizable order, and Fantasy’s already busy schedule we were caught between a rock and a hard place. I had stopped checking in on our stores, only those that used the DVO system were getting orders filled, otherwise I figured I’d wait until Fantasy was ready for us before requesting a regional push. But in the early hours I started to have other ideas. I sent an email to the regional buyer at Whole Foods Southern California. I asked for consideration for regional coverage. This would mean I no longer go store by store and instead deal with the regional buyer. I already knew what the regional buyers response would be before I sent the email. We simply didn’t have strong enough sales for regional consideration. And this is exactly what she said in her response at 7:45 am that morning. But, as I pointed out in my reply to the buyer, we started at one Whole Foods Market late last September, two days before the Jewish new year. The first day on the shelves we almost completely sold out. From Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) and past Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) we sold about 8 cases of Aunt Erma’s mandel bread, averaging over 1.5 cases a week at that one store. Here is part of my reply to the Whole Foods buyer.
“So my thought was maybe we could try a special once a year thing when you guys have your Jewish holiday stuff out? We could take back any unsold stock after the Rosh Hashana Yom Kippur window peters out.”
The buyer responded by saying that she’d like to get some samples and pricing. I was excited that she was even going to consider the idea, and confident that our combination of being the only branded shelf ready mandel bread that contained Whole Foods acceptable ingredients, and a great tasting product, might do the trick. Even our wholesale pricing gives Whole Foods a greater margin than their average grocery item. I also offered to take back any unsold stock after the Jewish holidays were over.
Which brings me to the sticker.
Back when I first tried to get in to Whole Foods Markets I made the newbie mistake of not checking carefully the list of Whole Foods unacceptable ingredients. Turns out, Nestle Mini Morsels (in Aunt Erma’s original recipe) contain vanillin, an unacceptable ingredient. At that point I had already printed thousands of boxes with Nestle Mini Morsels ingredients in the nutritional panel. We switched to Wilbur chocolate drops, virtually identical in size to Nestle mini morsels but Wilbur chocolate contains vanilla, an approved Whole Foods ingredient. And the Wilbur chips taste great! So, I made a new nutritional label with the Wilbur chocolate drops ingredients correction and stickered over the old nutritional panel. We’ve been baking with Wilbur chips ever since. ( btw – I have three cases of leftover Nestle mini morsels in the closet at home, enough to make chocolate chip pancakes everyday for my kids for the next 50 years.)
Little did I know what kind of impression that little sticker would have. Noticing the sticker label, the regional buyer peeled off the sticker on her sample box of Aunt Erma’s to reveal the original nutritional label underneath. She became suspicious of our ingredients and said so in an email. I think the net effect is that she thought I was trying to put one over on her.
All I could do was explain why I put the sticker on the box in the first place. I’m waiting on a response from the buyer, but it was definitely a curve ball I wasn’t expecting. I think I need to stop sending emails at 3:00 in the morning.
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