Greetings 2021! We hope that this update finds you all happy, healthy, and prosperous.
The Christmas shopping season for us was much busier than we anticipated. This was both a blessing and a curse because we did not have the ability to prepare or keep up once the orders started coming. Jackie was an absolute machine; for weeks, she put in 10+ hour days baking and decorating treats, fulfilling and shipping out orders, and taking care of customers at the register; seven days a week. I don't know who the hell decided to remake Wonder Woman, but I know whoever it was screwed up when they failed to cast the real deal.
My twelve-year-old son Xander and I did as best as we could to help. With him distance learning full time from the house, I would spend the first half of the day in the office or on the road delivering orders. As soon as school was done, we would head to the bakery and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening doing whatever Jackie needed. The hardest part was that no matter how much work we all put in, we could not keep the product on the shelf!
Now, if we are honest, not being able to keep up with demand is a good problem to have in most cases. The vast majority of our customers were incredibly understanding of our lack of inventory and increased turn-around times. Still, we realize it is not sustainable, and that is why we are so excited for the new year to have begun.
Our immediate goal is to raise $50,000.00 in this campaign and close it out. We are so close, only a few hundred dollars away!
The funds from this campaign, coupled with our recent ECIDA grant/loan of $35,000.00, will enable us to rebuild our inventory, increase awareness and sales through marketing, and get Jackie the help she needs in the bakery so that she can focus on creating. I hope to place an order for fifteen-thousand pounds of biscuits by the end of this month, which equates to approximately thirty-thousand individual units that we want to be sold by the start of Q2. Then, we do it all again, and again, and again. You get it.
To those of you who are currently committed to investing; Thank you! There is no better time for those on the fence than now to join our pack, and time is running out. We made it through the last five years and a pandemic with nothing but grit and passion. The sky is the limit from here!
~John