NATURAL CANDY FACTORY

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Michael, however, had an idea and got right to work on it. For a few days we lived with dates and bowls of coconut, sesame seed, poppy seed and whatever all over the place. Finally it was finished: ten pounds of Almond Date Balls, neatly boxed. When we took this first "production run" to a friend who ran a natural foods restaurant, he said he'd be happy to sell them for us. So we arranged the balls on an oval plate near the cash register . . . and, to our delight, almost every customer left the restaurant with one in his hand (or mouth!).

Then we went into business! We found that we could buy 70 pounds of pitted Iranian dates from a wholesale bakery supplier at a very low price ($14.00) . . . and could also get coconut, almonds, poppy seeds and cinnamon from the same source. At first Michael made his own boxes but soon found that 54 balls fit very nicely in the bottom of a Continental Yogurt carton (cut down with a razor knife).

To pack our candies, we covered the bottom of a box with paper toweling and arranged nine rows of different flavors, six pieces to a row. After some trial and error, we finally came upon a very attractive display: We placed granola-coated balls at both ends of a box, followed by sunflower, then sesame, then coconut and finally poppy in the center. The single dark row stood out well against the white of the coconut. We then taped a piece of clear plastic wrap over the top of the package to keep the candies clean and fresh . . . and voila, the box was finished.

Finally, we inserted a homemade sign, supported on colored toothpicks, into the side of each box, and set off with our product to the various health food stores all around Vancouver. When we entered a shop we simply held out the candies. Invariably the salesperson oohed and aahed: "Oh! Doesn't that look good!"

Almond Date Balls, in fact, sold themselves. Our market soon expanded to include the university, an avant-garde cinema, an herb shop and some local groceries . . . and before long Michael and I couldn't make enough to meet the demand.

Success, however, brought one minor hang-up: sheer bulk. Each box of 54 balls weighed about three and a half pounds. That gets heavy in large numbers, and the soft candies crush and damage easily . . . so we soon purchased a used Volkswagen bus to make our deliveries.

Here's how the finances worked out: Almond Date Balls retailed at 15¢ apiece, the stores bought them from us at 10¢ and each ball cost us a little less than 3¢ to make (not including labor, or distribution expenses such as gasoline). In other words, every box sold, wholesale, for $5.40 and brought us $4.00 gross profit on our material cost. The average shop took two batches at a time, although some would buy as many as five or more.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print