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Post by danikiser on Jul 23, 2016 13:00:18 GMT -5
Hi All.
So I loved tinkering with small batches of chocolate. I loved every part about it. I also learned about fermenting and farming.
So I dumped some money into a chocolate business.
I have equipment, a factory, gorgeous packaging. I have contacts with lovely farmers and indigenous folks. I have made some great contacts with folks to sell my product.
Everyone loves our product and what our company stands for.
I like roasting the beans, designing the packages, formulating our recipes. I like building the website and organizing the factory. I love teaching people about chocolate including my one employee (who just can't seem to do it on his own).
I absolutely hate molding chocolate. Hate it.
I hate wrapping the bars.
It is just such tedious work. Its no fun.
And also, being american and trying to learn how to do business in South America is challenging to say the least.
I'm hating it. I'm wishing I was back to just tinkering. Literally, for the amount of money I've got invested I could've just lived here, lived a nice life, without working for a couple years.
Did anyone else feel this way?
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Post by kevin on Jul 24, 2016 11:20:49 GMT -5
You are not alone. So few want to admit that they too hate it because it goes against the grain that chocolate is supposed to be about smiling faces and happy talk. To admit that you hate the business makes you kind of like a heretic. So few make any money at this but who wants to owe up that they work hard for next to nothing. Pride will not allow it. I think many stick it out because they have sunk costs in time and money so they labor on hoping to recover them. Good luck.
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Post by Brad on Jul 25, 2016 23:56:43 GMT -5
I commend you on your honesty, and have said many times over on many forums that business is about MONEY, and not smiles. A smile doesn't pay the rent, and the landlord isn't smiling when he locks your doors for trying to pay the rent with smiles.
When you start looking at your business AS A BUSINESS and properly calculating margin, labour costs, food costs, fixed costs, and so forth you will eventually find that you don't have to wrap bars anymore. Either that, or you'll move to focus on products that have more margin.
You've now learned that eating a chocolate bar is romantic. Wrapping 1,000 of them isn't. So.....
1. Calculate how many bars you can wrap in an hour. 2. Calculate how many bars you can make over a 5 day period of time. 3. Divide the hourly rate into the total you make over that five days. 4. That gives you the manhours you need to find an employee to work for. 5. Find an employee who will work those hours (usually immigrant labour is best, as they truly appreciate having a job and will do tasks like wrap bars) 6. Hire them and then work the labour cost into the cost of the bars.
Then... Make LOTS of chocolate and make LOTS of bars at once. Then you don't have to do it all the time. Or apply the same formula as wrapping bars to pouring bars.
The bottom line here is that you need to calculate your costs appropriately, and also enable your staff to do the tasks to a certain standard of quality.
It's tough to do, but once you put in place the right infrastructure, you won't have to wrap bars ever again.
I don't wrap bars, and I generally have a few thousand in stock at all times.
Cheers Brad
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