Market season is over

Well, another year at the market has gone by, and it's been a few months since my last post. It's hard to believe how fast the time flies.

August was filled with some crazy times. Mid-month, I pulled some muscles in my neck, which had me laid up in bed for a week, and unable to bake. I was pretty miserable at the market on August 15 (just a few days after my injury), and I was unable to bake for the market on August 22. After days of trying to find relief, I was put on medication that helped with the pain, and started adjustments from my chiropractor. I'm happy to say that I've been pain free for over a month now.

September and October were really busy in our house. My daughter started first grade, and my husband was coaching volleyball (5th and 6th grade girls). It seemed like there were quite a few Mondays where my husband had a volleyball game, so he was unable to help me at the market. Typically, he would get home from work, pick up our daughter, and then head down to the market at 6 pm. This allowed me a restroom break, plus I'd typically find dinner from one of the vendors or Subway. Then he'd help me tear everything down at the end of the evening, load it in the car, and then unload it at home. But for all those weeks he had a game, I had to pack us dinners to eat there because I couldn't take a break go go and find food, I'd have our daughter's caregiver drop her off at the market, and then it would be up to me and Lila to tear everything down, load it in the car, and unload it at home. This was hard work, and not fun to do without hubby's help. Add to that the horrible weather we had this year, and I was quite miserable some Mondays. Winter coats, hats, gloves, rain. It was just a shame, and definitely hurt my sales. But for all of you that still came out and supported the market those weeks, I thank you. And to those of you that didn't come out, I don't blame you at all. It was yucky.


So here I am now in November, trying to figure out what to do with my life. Where do I go from here? If all I'm ever going to do are farmer's markets... well.... I'm just not sure that it's worth it. It's a lot of work for not a huge return. Initially last year when I started this, my plan was to do the markets to get my product out there, and to find some followers, and so I was ok with the small return—I saw this as the price to pay for great advertising. Well, I think I've accomplished that goal. So it's time to think about the next step. 


Wholesale.


My plan right now is to spend the next few months investigating options. First, can I put a commercial kitchen in my home and how much would it cost? If you know anyone that is in this line of work, let me know. Alternatively, how much would it cost to rent commercial kitchen space that works for me (i.e., where I can go at times that are convenient to me, where they have enough space to store my ingredients and product)? Or even an alternative to that would be to rent a space of my own, and buy or lease my own equipment, so I could go whenever I wanted.


Second step will be to determine how much money I'd have to make in order to pay for whichever option I chose for kitchen space (my house, renting time/space at someone else's business, or renting space of my own with my own equipment). 


Third step will be to determine if I could physically manufacture that much.


Fourth step will be to get a commitment from enough accounts that, in turn, would make the money I need to be making to cover costs and a salary for me.


So in addition to still fulfilling orders for Thanksgiving and Christmas (more on my site soon about this), I'd like to have all of this research and planning done by the end of March, 2012, so that I know what direction I'm going for the 2012 Farmer's Market season. If I go wholesale, I still see myself doing the farmer's market, and still fulfilling orders (miscellaneous small orders and/or weddings, birthdays, graduation parties, online sales, etc.). I think this could be the perfect launching pad to the next phase, which would then be a retail bake shop. But I need to build up to that. Owning a bakery can be hard if you're the primary person doing everything. So my goal is to make enough money for a while doing wholesale that I can eventually afford to open a bake shop where I can hire people to do most of the work. I'd love to be able to come in and bake for a few hours every day, wait on customers for a few hours every day, and just run the place, and make it be what I want it to be.


I know, these are big dreams and aspirations. Some days I feel totally defeated and think that there's no way I could ever make this happen. But when I think about giving up, it really makes me sad. So for now, I'm just going to do my research, and see where it takes me. Who knows, in the end, I may end up with a completely different plan than the one I just spelled out here, and that will be ok. I'm just always happy when there's a plan. So I'm going to sit back and let God lead me. I'll let you know where He takes me.


Until next time, have a yummy day!

What's been going on with HappyJack Bakery?

You may be asking yourself this very question, as it's been about a month since I last blogged. A lot has been going on, so I'll try to catch you up as succinctly as I can (although, if you know me at all, you know you're in for a long read).


In mid-July, I had a meeting with an inspector from the Allegheny County Health Department. We met at The Grand Residence, a retirement home in Upper St. Clair, as I'm going to start using their kitchen to bake when I have orders to fill. The meeting went well, and I received my permit in the mail last week. I think I'm going to go this week, maybe Friday night, and see what it's like to use their kitchen and their ovens to bake my weekly stash for the market. I'm hoping that it will save me some time, especially in the ovens, as they have a convection oven that will fit several batches of cookies, and that bakes faster than my oven does. But I have to try it to see. My bigger goal for having access to the commercial kitchen is to fill orders (especially for holidays and weddings), and perhaps even try to market to coffee shops and the like. We'll see how that goes. I need time to do that sort of thing, and I'm a little short on that at the moment.


Last week, my husband, daughter, and I traveled to York, Maine, for vacation. We had a lovely time, but I was shocked when we went into a pie bakery and discovered that they charge $32 for a 10" pie. While food in restaurants is slightly pricier up there, it's not THAT much more pricey than down here in the 'burgh. They said they make 50 pies a day. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. It's a good day when I can sell just one pie at the farmer's market.


Prior to vacation, I had to bake cookies for the two weddings I was doing. I baked for about 6 hours two nights in a row, and was able to knock it all out at that time. I had a few things that I had already baked and froze a couple of weeks prior to that, so that helped, as well as already having all of the dough made. I was mostly baking regular drop cookies, so it took a lot of scooping to make that much. My wrist was pretty sore by the end of the second day. But both weddings turned out lovely, and the cookies were a hit. I was invited to one of the weddings, so it was fun to be standing in line at the cookie table and overhear someone behind me tell the person they were with, "You HAVE to try the chocolate chip cookies. They're the best ever!"


We got home from vacation this past Friday evening, and we had the wedding on Saturday, and spent the night at my in-laws. This left me with little time to get cookies baked for yesterday's market, but I had already pre-made the dough, so all I had to do was bake it all. It still took time, but wasn't too bad.


Yesterday's market was a lot of fun. The weather was good—no rain, but it was pretty hot. At least the wind helped make it semi-comfortable. As I've said before, many of my customers are repeat customers, but there's nothing like a repeat customer that repeats in the same day! I had two of those yesterday, and that really makes me so thrilled! 


So I'm thinking about expanding, but I'm not sure in what way. I may soon start to investigate doing online cookie sales—add an online order form to my Web site, and start to ship cookies to those that want to buy them but can't get to the market. If you know of anyone that would be interested in this, let me know. At some point, I'll start to advertise, which will probably include some direct email campaigns to get the word out.


Until next time, have a yummy day! 

Thoughts of the week, plus wedding plans

This past Monday at the market went well again. I sold most of what I took—I only ended up with one pack of oatmeal cookies, two packs of brownies, and one pie. The pie will come in handy because I'm on dessert duty for a family picnic this weekend, so I just stuck that bugger in the freezer as soon as I got home. It won't be as wonderful as freshly made, as the textures will change from being in the heat and then frozen and thawed, but it will save me from having to bake another one. It will still taste good!


Most of my regulars stopped again this week, and that makes me so happy that they keep coming back. I'd bet that almost 90% of my sales this week were from repeat customers. I think that is one thing that can be a downside at the market is that there are probably not a lot of new customers stopping by each week to the market in general, not just my booth. I think the crowd is often the same crowd, and I would guess that after a while, some of them are going to get tired of eating my baked goods. I hope I'm wrong.


The market is not open on July Fourth, so I get a week off (more on that below). But I think for the week we're back, I'm not going to make my oatmeal cookies or my brownies. This past week, neither of them sold. I only had 3 packs of oatmeal, and I sold one. I ended up giving one away to the sweet Amish girl who gave me a loaf of bread at the end of the night. And the brownies—I only sold one pack, and the heat wasn't even that bad on Monday, but it still totally melted and steamed up the other two packs, making them look terribly unappetizing (although I was happy to see that the competition's cookies did the same thing).


Last night, I hosted my HappyJack Chat at the Whitehall Library. It went very well. I don't think everyone showed up that signed up, but I still had maybe 10 or 12 people. They all enjoyed it very much, and loved the samples I had at the end of the demonstration. Maybe there's another career in there for me somewhere!


So since I have this weekend off from baking for the market, I am going to start preparing for the two July weddings for which I'm making cookies. It's pretty overwhelming how many batches of cookies I need to make, but I have no doubt that I'll get through it all this weekend. My plan is to make all of the dough this weekend, and then bake it all the week before the first wedding (one is on July 23, and the other July 30). I'll be refrigerating and/or freezing the dough from now until then. In addition to making dough for the two weddings, I also have to make dough for the farmer's market on August 1. We're going on vacation around the time of the weddings, too, so I won't have time upon return from vacation to make dough and bake cookies in time for August 1. I figured if I at least get the dough done now, since I'm making loads of dough anyway, it will give me a leg up on July 31.


In a nutshell, my July Fourth plans are to make cookie dough, clean the house, and visit with family. It will be a crazy weekend. I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend with your family as well. Until next time..... have a yummy day!

You want to buy a pie, don't you?

I tend to gauge how well I did at the market based on whether my pies sell or not. It's probably an inaccurate measurement, but since they are my highest priced item, when they don't sell, it hurts. This past Monday, only one of them sold. In fact, I was panicked about my HappyJacks selling that I texted a friend that I knew would be interested in buying some to see if she wanted me to bring her one home (of course, she requested two; I was relieved).


The day started off kind of slow. The crowd was there; they just weren't buying what I was selling. At one point, I had this woman stop by my booth that had never been to the market before. Usually first-timers are very curious about what I do, where I do it, and how I manage to stay so thin (bless their hearts for telling me I'm so skinny... these are words that I have NEVER heard in my life, and might actually be starting to believe now that strangers are saying it). She asked a lot of questions about my cookies, and seemed very intrigued by my pies. She thought they looked fabulous, but I was her first stop so she wanted to look around, and promised to come back. I can totally understand not wanting to buy a pie at the beginning of your shopping trip, because then you'd have to carry it around. But, I was skeptical that she'd be back, so I said kindly, "I hope you stop back!" She assured me that she would, but she didn't. I lost a sale. I don't know if she ended up buying from the Amish or what, but she didn't buy anything from me. Wah-wah.


In the end, Jack (the Jack of HappyJack... the one I make happy with all my baked goods) was very happy because he's been dying for me to have leftover pie. Pies don't keep to the next week, so we have to eat them or give them away when they don't sell. It was good that we got to eat this one, though. It reminded me of what the heat does to the topping on my pies—it makes them super soft. They're chock full of butter, and in that heat, they just get soft, and almost gooey. It's not the lovely crisp texture that they're supposed to have. So I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm considering refrigerating the pies this week so that they're nice and cool when I take them to the market, so that when they're out in the heat, it's more about them getting to room temperature, and hopefully the butter stays in tact longer. I've also considered freezing them before I bake them, and sell them frozen. I'm not sure this is a good solution, though, because part of what makes them so good is knowing for how long to bake them. And that's not something I can easily convey to someone off the street buying an unbaked pie. How long they bake it could make or break how good the pie is. It's almost like a loss of quality control if I leave the baking up to the buyer, and I don't think I want to take that chance.


All in all, though, even though I didn't sell one of my two pies, I sold most everything else. I only had 6 packs of cookies left, and that's pretty good. I wasn't happy with how my chocolate chip cookies turned out this week, so we ate those three packs (well, Jack ate them, and gave some away). The other three were cinnasnappers, and those freeze very well, so we'll try to sell those again this coming week. If they don't sell then, well, then we get to eat them (again, when I say "we", I mean mainly people other than me—don't get me wrong, I'd love to eat them all as they're one of my favorites, but because of that, if I eat one, I'll eat all six in a pack; I must stay away).


Also, a new thing I tried last week was making double the dough that I needed for each of my cookies. For some of them, I actually made the balls of dough and froze the balls, so when I was ready to bake them, all I had to do was defrost them a bit on the counter, then put the balls on the cookie sheets and bake. This saved a lot of time for this coming week's market. I was able to bang out all of my cookies on Thursday in a short amount of time. So today, I'm mostly working on pies and HappyJacks.


In less than a week, I'm doing a baking demonstration at the Whitehall Public Library. I'll be showing the class how to make my Chocolate Chip Snowballs, as well as a strawberry pie that I make. The class is free, so if you're interested, sign up and join me!


Until next time.... have a yummy day!

Week 2 weather: fabulous!

Well, I'm almost a week behind schedule, but I figured I'd try to catch you up on what's been going on anyway.

This past Monday's market was beautiful. The weather was as lovely as lovely could be. The sun was shining most of the time, and the temperature was somewhere in the 70s. It was perfect. Everyone else must have thought so, too, because I swear there were more people this week than last week. But the weird thing is that my sales were down. I don't get that, but who understands the buying trends of consumers anyway? It's so darn unpredictable, it's not even worth predicting sometimes. For instance, in the first week, I sold about 86 units (a unit is a pie, a happyjack, or a 6-pack of cookies), and I didn't think the market was very crowded. In the second week, I sold about 61 units, yet the market seemed much busier. So if you were me, how much stuff would you make for week 3? Well, I'm counting on the 61 being more of an average, so that's the number I'm aiming for. We'll see if I was right. Oh, and this coming week, I'm going to offer my A-maize-ingly Lime Cookies as my 50¢ cookie of the week. Come and give them a try if you haven't had them before. They're delicious!

At the market this past week, I purchased some butter lettuce and nectarines. I was bummed that the nectarines weren't very sweet. They had the right texture and reached the right ripeness in about a day, but the flavor was very bland. The butter lettuce was fine, and a nice add-in for my lunch salads where I also use spinach, shredded carrots, and grape tomatoes. Anyway, I also splurged and bought a piece of fudge. Dang, it was delicious. Peanut butter and chocolate fudge all in one bar. Pure heaven. I tried to just eat a few bites, but soon found myself having eaten the entire thing. For dinner, we opted to just get sandwiches at Subway. While I love the food at the market, it's more fattening than I was in the mood for that night, so we went with the chain restaurant instead. I felt like such a traitor.

And that bread I bought at Loafer's last week? It's STILL good! I don't understand how it hasn't gotten moldy yet, but it hasn't. And there's no preservatives in that stuff. Weird.

In preparation for week 3, I started making cookie dough on Thursday. I then refrigerated what I made, and baked some of it Friday evening, and baked the rest of it today. Although, the good news is that I made a lot of extra dough, and some of it I even already shaped into balls and put back in the freezer so that next week, I might not have any dough to worry about making... just baking. So that could save me a lot of time in the kitchen.

I had a weird thing, happen, though, with my refrigerated dough from Thursday. My chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies both turned out kind of flat this week. I have to do some research to see what could have caused this. Maybe my baking soda suddenly lost it's oomph? It's weird, though, because I've refrigerated or frozen dough before without incident. So what was different this time? I like a good challenge, so I'm hopeful I'll figure out what went wrong. The cookies all still taste good; they're just not exactly what I would have liked them to be.

So that's about all I have for this week. Tune in next time for another exciting adventure in the world of HappyJack Bakery (end sarcasm).

Oh, and one more thing—I'll be doing a baking demonstration at the Whitehall Public Library next Wednesday, June 29, at 7:00 pm. I'm going to show how to make my award-winning Chocolate Chip Snowballs, and a strawberry pie. Hope to see you there! Or at the farmer's market!

Until next time...have a yummy day!

Week 1 of the 2011 season

This past Monday marked the opening day of the farmer's market for the 2011 season. I've got to say, I wasn't completely overwhelmed with customers, which bummed me out a little bit. Don't get me wrong, I was extremely grateful for the customers I had, and I think that I did well considering how many customers were there that day. But I guess that's the part that bummed me out—a few vendors weren't there that normally would have been, and the crowd just wasn't what I expected for opening day. Perhaps this was because kids were still in school, so it was harder for parents to get down there. Maybe it's because gas costs an arm and a leg these days, and people are choosing not to drive if it's not absolutely necessary. Maybe it was because the weather was pretty warm that day, and a lot of people stayed in because of that. I don't know. I can only hope that next week's turnout is at least the same and that my sales are about the same, because at some point, it becomes not worth it for me to continue in this endeavor.


The market is sometimes hard for me. I love it, but it's hard to make much money doing it, so it really is a labor of love. In order to be able to make decent money, I think you need to sell at more than one market, and with my practically full-time career as an operations manager for a communication design firm, plus with being a mom and a wife, I can't manage more than one market. So to those of you that have been loyal to me, I'm grateful, and it's because of you that I'm back. I know that I would be baking anyway, so I might as well bake and get a little bit of money for it, and at the same time, make all of you happy with yummy treats.


I was grateful to have my husband with me for moral support that first day. We left work in enough time to not be rushed during setup, and I was pleased with my booth's new position on the other side of the walkway. We now have the sun to our backs, so it's not melting my cookies. But as a result, I think it's made it a bit hotter for me as the sun is now hitting more of my body than just my feet. And that sun and heat are energy zappers for sure! By 6:00, both Jack and I were feeling the effects of it all. He was worse off than me, but we muddled through the last hour and clean-up. The cold shower I took when I got home felt so good.


Fran was the first to get to my table shortly after the market opened at 3:00. Then the regulars just kept coming, which was so cool. Margie stopped by, as well as Martha, Alicia, and Faustino. Then Tony and Margot came, and Jess grabbed a goody, too. Jan was back, and Heather had to pick up some Apple HappyJacks for her daughter. Karen and Tom, and Alan, Deb, and Melissa stopped, too. And I was happy to see JoAnn, Maria, and Sarah. There were some of you that stopped that I remember from last year, but I don't know your names. But I appreciate every single one of you, and every cookie and pie that you purchased. To those that had never had my cookies or pies, I hope that you enjoyed what you bought, and will be back again this coming Monday.


This year, I decided to try something new and actually buy some groceries from the vendors at the market. The past few years, I've subscribed to a CSA, but this year decided that it would be better to buy my fruits and veggies from the vendors at my market. It was a good decision. We got some great lettuce from Paul's Orchard, and fantastic strawberries from Kern Farms. I also got a loaf of honey wheat bread from Loafers, and a jar of pasta sauce from Colaizzi Brothers. I even bought a cookie from another vendor: a gingersnap from Fabulous Homemade Cookies. And then my daughter and I shared a root beer snow cone from Wu's Shaved Ice, and my husband and I had sandwiches from Rowdy BBQ. It was all delicious!


Well, that's it for now. Until next week, have a yummy day!

What's new, and getting ready

It's been over five months since my last post. Did you miss me?

A quick rundown of what I've been up to:

-I had my first HappyJack Chat demonstration at the Whitehall Public Library back in March where I showed a group of about 20 people how to make my pie crust.

-I was asked to come back and do a second HappyJack Chat, which is scheduled for June 29, 2011, where I'll be demonstrating how to make my Chocolate Chip Snowballs, as well as my refreshing strawberry pie.

-I've tried a new chocolate cake recipe, which turned out to be super yummy!

-I started making two kinds of pound cake: blueberry sour cream, and cranberry orange. While I won't be selling these at the market, they're available for special orders (delivery at the market) for $10 each.

-I'm pretty close to having a commercial kitchen to bake from for when I'm asked to do orders, wholesale, or weddings. Hopefully all of the paperwork will be in place by the end of June.

-I've added a new cookie to my offerings, replacing the confusingly named PBL Dreams. The new cookie is called Flourless PB&Cs (equally confusing), and is a flourless peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie. You'll be shocked at the texture, wondering how they taste so much like a normal cookie.

A quick rundown of what I'm doing to get ready for June 6, the first day of the market this year:

-I bought as many ingredients as I could to minimize my trips to the strip district.

-Consequently, I had to buy a shelving unit to store all of the hundreds of pounds of flour and sugar that I bought.

-Decided on a few new methods for selling my cookies each week, including offering one cookie each week as a single offering for 50¢ a piece.

-Checked in with my mom and mother-in-law to re-borrow the baskets and dishes I used to display my cookies last year, only to discover that I never returned them in the first place, and they were all still in my basement. My bad.

-Pre-mixed all of my cookie dough this weekend so that next weekend, all I have to do is bake. Last year, I sold almost twice as many packs of cookies on the first day as I did every other week, so I thought I should get a leg up and do some pre-mixing. If this method works and saves me some time, this will help me through the summer when I have two weddings to do, one week apart.

-I committed to not working on Sundays this year, except for packaging, which is a family affair in my house.

So that's about it. In another week, I'll be blogging about my first week of my second year at the market. I'm really excited about starting up again, and am hoping for another successful season. Oh, and I'm also looking forward to buying more produce from the other vendors this year since I cancelled my CSA subscription.