- Registered LLC
- Got my food handlers card
- Attended free class, Entrepreneurship 101, at the local community college's Small Business center
- 250 thank you cards
- 140 stamps
- 2000 2"x2" stickers
- 39 small hinged tins for 4 piece
- 96 medium windowed tins for 12 piece
- 96 large tins for 24 piece
- 72 ceramic mugs (that's the minimum order!)
- 7 Sweatshirts
- 31 small tins for hot chocolate mix
- 21 large tins for hot chocolate mix and caramels
- 100 cellophane bags for marshmallows
- samples of boxes for s'mores bars
- 14 small tins for caramels
- 4000 #3 brown paper cups
- 2000 #4 brown paper cups
- 4 colors foil wrappers for S'mores bars (flavors will be color coded)
- 165' roll of bubble wrap
- 3' wide wire shelf to store all this stuff on
- A used chocolate tempering machine
- Cocoa powder for hot chocolate mix
- 45 pounds of chocolate for the early bird backers truffles and S'mores bars
- 2 small scoops for scooping truffles
- An Oregon shaped cookie cutter
- (5) Geodesic Dome chocolate molds (I grew up in a dome, it was an obvious choice!)
- (5) shallow dimpled cylinder molds
- (2) breaker bar molds to experiment with
Not done/ordered, but allocated for in the budget:
- 67 hours in commercial kitchen in Jan and Feb
- Another 60 or so pounds of chocolate
- Ingredients for S'mores Bars
- Ingredients for caramels (thinking apple cider, plain, chocolate and perhaps pumpkin)
- Flavorings for whatever flavors win the vote
- Food Processor License
- Insurance
- Set up online shopping on website.
- Apply for a Doing Business As, so I don't need to include "LLC" on all my labels
I am planning to make the Early Bird chocolates mid-December so I can ship the week before Christmas. I should have my machine on Thursday and hope to play with it this weekend while I make some chocolates for Thanksgiving!
I made a map of the zipcodes that have backed me (not counting the one in Switzerland!)
I also made a pie chart of who my backer are, friends, family or strangers. Kind of amazing.
It's pretty amazing that I reached my goal when I did (day 11 of 30). But I'm not really surprised that I did. I put a LOT of work into planning my project, planning out reward levels and making sure that I would be able to afford to do the project and not end up having to pay for a lot of things out of pocket. Here's the breakdown of the funds from one of my many Post-Success spreadsheets. I will do some comparisons once it's all over and done with. One of the biggest hits is always shipping, so I tried to budget enough for it.
 |
| Green = 49.20%= Rewards Grey = 17.62% = fees/licenses Blue = 33.18% = equipment/kitchen time |
| Kickstarter and Amazon Fees | $694.34 | 8.19% |
| License and insurance | $800.00 | 9.43% |
| Tempering machine | $1,200.00 | 14.15% |
| Chocolate molds | $248.27 | 2.93% |
| Kitchen supplies | $366.57 | 4.32% |
| Commercial Kitchen time | $1,000.00 | 11.79% |
| Packaging/ labels | $1,469.36 | 17.32% |
| Anticipated Shipping | $1,301.30 | 15.34% |
| Ingredients (remainder) | $1403.16 | 16.54% |
I sure do love me some charts and graphs! I am also working on plotting my ability to participate in the farmer's market this upcoming summer (with pretty much no plans for a life outside of professional work and chocolate work!) I still want to make the breaker bar that was my second stretch goal but I'm hoping I have an affordable work around to test the concept with the breaker bar molds I purchased. Once I get them I'll be giving it a try. I'd love to be able to sell chocolates, S'mores bars, big chocolate chip cookies, hot chocolate mix and seasonal breaker bars at the farmer's market. I have a long ways to go including making labels and getting them approved, getting my food processor license (which I plan to do in January, unfortunately it is not pro-rated and goes from June-June rather than following the calendar year. So part way through the farmer's market season I will need another $325 to renew). I want to get a DBA so I do not need "LLC" on all my labels.
In my planning I realized too late that I didn't include the cost of commercial kitchen time in my goal. So it's a good thing that I exceeded my goal!
Planned
54.82% = Reward Fulfillment
13.39% = Fees and licenses
31.79% = Equipment
Projected at end of Kickstarter
49.20%= Reward Fulfillment
17.62% = fees/licenses
33.18% = equipment/kitchen time
I don't know how to rotate it in Google Docs. I will follow up with actual when the project is done, in February.
And now that it's almost 3 hours after I said I would go to bed... off I go, to dream of chocolate making and spreadsheets.
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