Team Mandel Blog

The face of rejection

Team Mandel Blog — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:32:05 +0000

Here’s a rejection letter we received from PEET’s coffee, a large chain of coffee shops out West. We pitched the idea of selling Aunt Erma’s in a small three piece box, Coffee Bean (based in Los Angeles) got the same three piece prototype.

Behave Hair! press time!

Team Mandel Blog — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:12:07 +0000

Waiting for the jewish holidays. We have one store waiting for a re-order and a local customer needing one case of mandel bread, but volume is volume, so we’ve asked customers waiting for Aunt Erma’s to hold off for about 3 more weeks when we do a large run of Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread for the jewish holidays.

The one exception, our favorite customer, a 97 year old in Wisconsin woman who has been quoted as saying “I’m dying for some more of that wonderful mandel bread you sent me.” Will get her mandel bread right away!

Meanwhile. here’s a little ad press for our friends at Behave! hair. Really an awesome product. Check it out!

Thank you !!

Team Mandel Blog — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:44:30 +0000

Thanks everybody who jumped in and answered the questions on Survey Monkey.

Every so often I go thru and delete the pile of spam in the comments section and find someone who wrote in. Just a reminder that I have turned comments off due to bot spam.

If you’d like to contact me directly it’s phil@auntermas.com

Thanks!

Survey Monkey and the Atmosphere project

Team Mandel Blog — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:36:26 +0000

If you’ve ever thought about doing market research for your new product, but didn’t want to spend any money, then here’s a great resource. SurveyMonkey.

Survey Monkey allows you to create survey’s that you can email out. It’s super easy to use and the basic account is free. So let’s say you’re trying to figure out if

people would be interested in your Gluten Free Protein Bars, or you’re wondering what exactly compels a consumer to buy one sphaghetti sauce over the

other? The label? The price? With survey monkey you craft your survey any way you like and they analyze the results. Pretty Cool

Here’s a SurveyMonkey survey I created for a piece of software I’ve been developing.

Click the link below, and by all means answer the survey (Only 5 questions, check it out)

The Atmosphere Project

Small updates..and check grandma’s phone bill!!

Team Mandel Blog — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:43:40 +0000

I was surprised to get a re-order from Whole Foods Pasadena, the one store that was nice enough to carry Aunt Erma’s mandel bread, but definitely outside a region with a large jewish community. Meanwhile we’re about a month away from a big push for the Jewish New Year, and some top secret stuff happening on the side, still not ready to mention yet, but fingers are crossed.

Now about Aunt Erma and her phone bill. The real Aunt Erma is doing well in Maryland, still living in the same house my grandmother lived in (the house pictured on the mandel bread packaging.) Aunt Erma will be 90 in September. She’s getting to an age where she needs help paying her bills. It’s not a financial problem, Aunt Erma has always been quite frugal. The problem is actually remembering to pay the bills when they come in. So my parents started picking up Aunt Erma’s mail to pay her bills. They made an interesting discovery when they took a look at Aunt Erma’s phone bill. Aunt Erma has been paying a rental charge on her telephone. This is a crappy old rotary dial phone that you could buy at Target for 10 bucks. Turns out Aunt Erma has been charged on average $15.00 a quarter to rent her phone, and brace yourself – for 47 years! This is pretty damn outrageous. I did some surfing and discovered that this scam, this shake down of the elderly is a problem for over a million senior citizens who simply don’t know that this charge on their phone bill is completely unneccesary. My parents think Aunt Erma has paid almost $3000.00 in rental fees over the years. She is not alone. There is a company out there, QLT making millions off this. This company should be ashamed of themselves. I’ve put a few links below to various news stories, including a class action law suit from 2002. I’ve also created this online form for people to fill out if they have a loved ones who are getting hit with this crap scam. Please check the phone bills of your loved ones. Any thoughts on what we can do to stop this scam?

Consumer Warning Network

StopTheCap

KIRO TV

ABC7 News

Class Action Law Suit

TownLoop and Mandel Bread?

Team Mandel Blog — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:21:54 +0000

My friend Erick came up with great twist on the Groupon idea. TownLoop. TownLoop is just like Groupon, LivingSocial, Dealfinds etc. but with a fantastic approach to giving back to the community.

Pretty simple how it works. Sign up with your email and pick the school of your choice. Elementary schools, private, public, doesn’t matter. Everytime you buy a deal on TownLoop (and they’re just like Groupon, usually half price deals) they will take 20% and donate that money back to your school.

I don’t know about you all, but I’m tired of buying crappy wrapping paper and cookie dough, and feeling obligated to buy overpriced books at the ‘Book Fair” just to raise a few dollars for the school. TownLoop is awesome. You get a great deal on something you might actually want, and your school benefits everytime.

They’re just out here in SoCal, but expanding quickly. Check it out!

TownLoop.com

Happy July Fourth and lower online prices

Team Mandel Blog — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:33:58 +0000

Here we are on the shelves at Whole Foods Market Sherman Oaks. Good shelf position. We lowered our online price to try and help offset the ridiculous shipping prices. Aunt Erma’s retails for $7.99 a box at Whole Foods Markets, but for our online customers the price is now just $5.99.

Happy July Fourth!

and another store reordered…

Team Mandel Blog — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:55:03 +0000

Though adding new stores has been slow, the five Whole Foods Markets we are in are doing well. While we were away on vacation, Whole Foods Markets Fairfax ordered another two cases. Normally, this would cause a small manufacturing panic, but now with a co-pack manufacturer and stock on hand, it was a simple drive at 5:30 this morning to deliver the goods. Which reminds me of another cheap and free tool we use for managing the business. Google Docs. No need to provide a link, simply google “Google Docs” and sign in for access to a great free suite of tools for spreadsheets, letters, even presentations. It’s all managed and saved securely online, all you need is web access and all of your documents are instantly available from anywhere in the world. We track our sales calls, deliveries and manufacturing costs using google docs. The last delivery to Whole Foods Fairfax was exactly four weeks ago, (according to my google spreadsheet doc), so we’re currently selling two cases a month at that store. Beverly Hills ran thru two cases in about a week and a half. The other three stores were added later, time will tell if they sell at all, or enough to trigger a reorder.

I also wanted to send a shout out to another start-up in the San Francisco area. Talk about awesome recipes. Check out the videos at TheEasyIndian.com and stay tuned for their products! TheEasyIndian is bringing back the flavors of authentic Indian cooking with a mind towards the freshest organic spice mixtures currently unavailable in the market.

And a special thanks to Jonathan Packman, who, while employed at Whole Foods Markets in Northern California challenged Aunt Erma to a Mandel Bread bake-off against his grandmother’s mandel bread flown in from her home in Florida. Jonathan’s early guidance of the Whole Foods ecosystem helped us land our first Whole Foods store back in 2009. I finally got to meet Jonathan at his new employer Andronico’s Family Markets and say hello in person while up north. Thanks again Jonathan.

and we finally got in the fancy one…

Team Mandel Blog — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 06:21:25 +0000

Starting tomorrow (June 12, 2011) Aunt Erma’s Old Fashioned mandel bread can be found at Whole Foods Markets Tarzana!

email

Team Mandel Blog — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:29:12 +0000

One of the coolest things about this blog is hearing from all the entrepreneurial people out there who are trying to get started in the food business. I’m only a couple of baby steps ahead, but happy to share what I’ve learned. This email came in yesterday, I thought it was worth posting:

Hey Phil!

My husband and I are on the verge of starting our own company, much like yourself. We both are young, but have the hearts of entrepreneurs and are eager to be self-employed. I have a question for you….we are still fine-tuning our product and would like to carry it in whole foods, but as I am doing research, it becomes discouraging because there is just so much competition and the supply seems to outweigh the demand in most situations. My question to you is, how do you set your product apart from the others, or create a demand for your product when it “appears” that the market is saturated? Does that deter you To want to be in a market less saturated, or do you think there is still a good profit to be made in a market that is rich in supply?

Thanks for your advice! Your blog has encouraged my husband and I to dream big and be determined!!! Thank you for writing it!!

My reply:

Congrats on starting your own business! I wouldn’t worry about the competition too much. If you

believe in what you’re doing, just go for it. The details will work themselves out. As far as setting

yourself apart, I guess it depends on what you guys are coming up with. But I can’t think of a single

food category out there where some one hasn’t come along and set themselves apart. Nobody

would have guessed frozen yogurt shops could be wildly popular again, I can’t imagine the

pitch that the founders of Pinkberry made to the banks for financing! Howard Schultz

took a little company in Seattle named Starbucks and changed the way the world enjoys coffee. Sprinkles

took a cheap grocery store bakery item, dressed it up and started a national cupcake craze.

In the stores I think of Lara Bar who created a space for themselves in the over crowded health bar category.

Smart Water made drinking boring old distilled water cool, DiGiorno made frozen pizza sound as good as takeout.

There’s always room for more, I really believe that.

The best advice I’ve ever heard about your business was a quote I heard once and pasted in an old blog post.

“Your business is a story wrapped around you.”

Good luck and keep me posted!

Phil