The First Step

For a couple of years, people have been telling me that I should start working for myself.  I should open my own restaurant or sandwich shop.  I should be a personal chef or give one-on-one cooking classes to people in their own homes.  All of those ideas could happen someday.

This year I was approached with a challenge from a good friend of my wife. 25 candy boxes for holiday gifts, using recipes I've been testing and developing over the years. My first reaction was nervousness, as I had never created such a large number of packaged products from start to finish. How many pieces of candy should I put in a box? What kind of packaging should I use? How do I plan for overhead costs? Am I really organized enough to plan this out and have a product delivered in a timely fashion?

I realized I could walk away from the offer, or accept it and use this experience to learn about what it takes to work at home and for myself. I accepted and got to work.

My wife, Sahra, helped me organize my thoughts and form a plan. At this point my confidence was shaky, but she really helped me feel as though this project was going to be a success.  For years, my chocolate-covered peanut butter squares and homestyle caramels have been a hit with friends and family, but this was going to be their first trial in the hands of clients. We ran test batches to figure out our yield and critiqued each item endlessly. The peanut butter squares were too large. The chocolate coating melted too quickly when picked up. The caramels could use a touch of extra vanilla.

I put a lot of work into refining the recipes before starting production. Fixing the vanilla in the caramels was simple - just add more!  The biggest issue was the texture and melting point of the chocolate. I have to say, chocolate is both temperamental and challenging. I made an executive decision to increase the quality of the chocolate we were using. Goodbye to Nestle's, and hello to Couverture!  I used a 54% Cocoa dark chocolate coating. 

I researched and learned how to temper chocolate, which involves pre-treating so it dries hard and shiny.  I had never done this before, but I could not wait to try it out for the first time!  I got the chocolate chopped, my double boiler on, and I waited, stirred, and watched the temperature rise and fall accordingly. The texture looked perfect - the only problem was the temperature in the kitchen was too high to properly cool the chocolate. It took almost 30 minutes of constant stirring and icing to get the chocolate ready to pour. I filled the molds with walnuts and covered them with my tempered chocolate.  I cleaned up the edges of the molds and chilled them and anxiously waited for them to set.  A few hours later I pop 'em out of their silicone molds - holy crap it worked!  A fairly polished looking chocolate that did not melt when picked up.  I was thrilled with the results.



After a successful test run I felt ready to tackle the packaging. I wanted a presentation that was minimalistic but appealing.  Not too polished or fancy - that wouldn't be me.  I love recycled materials and natural motifs boxes and simple designes. We found a recycled box, some colored raffia, and created a beautiful sticker logo for my newest business endeavor.

At this point I was feeling really optimistic, so I took on an additional order for 15 boxes. The night we made the first batch, I packed up my supplies and had a blast making everything in my in-laws' kitchen. As much fun as we had that day we learned an important lesson about time management. We ended up working until almost 2am finalizing the boxes. The cranberry-colored raffia we picked looked amazing and the bow turned out nice, thanks to Sahra's sister Lisa.
          

I need to thank everyone who supported my effort making this season's batch of candy! Thank you Sahra, Mom, Matt, Grandma, Annette, Ronna, Al, and Lisa for your support and your late-night help in assembling the finished product.



I got both my orders for 15 and 25 boxes completed on time and received excellent feedback from satisfied customers. I may open up shop again for Valentine's Day but for now I need to put it down and take a breath!  I am so grateful for the opportunity to move towards working for myself, and proud of what I have accomplished.


-Kevin