It Looks Like.....

. . . . . a Peep!















. . . . . a frowny face.


If we collect enough these funny looking cookies,
I just may start a museum.

Ushering in Spring and The Sewickley Farmers Market

Our stall at the Sewickely Farmers Market.

This past Saturday was the first day of the Sewickley Farmers Market. It was a beautiful day- sunny, blue skies and air that was cool, crisp and refreshing. Spring has definitely announced its arrival in Western Pennsylvania, and not a moment too soon! I was all but ready to throw out my long johns in protest of the frigid weather we've had for the past four months.

The Sewickley Farmers Market is located in the parking lot of St. James Parish, which is located very close to downtown Sewickley. If you've never been to Sewickley before, it is a charming, picturesque suburb of Pittsburgh that include some really beautiful Victorian homes, impressive mansions and a main street so cute you might think you were on a movie set or in Cape Cod. In fact, the 1995 film "Houseguest," starring Sinbad, was set in Sewickley and much of the film was shot on location. Sure, this seems a little obscure, but who doesn't love Sinbad?

Back to the market. Since it is early spring and we have been having pretty cold weather, many of the farmers that sell their fruits, vegetables and flowers at the market haven't been able to harvest their crops just yet, so there were only five other vendors there this past weekend. But we were pleasantly suprised by the good turnout, despite the fact that not all booths were present. There were lots of people walking their dogs, riding bikes and running errands, who stopped to try a sample or pick up a box of our cupola cookies or cupola clouds. The individuals we spoke with were also very supportive of our initiative to donate 10% of our sales proceeds to the anti-hunger non-profit organization Share Our Strength.

Over the next few weeks the Market will begin to fill out a bit and I'm sure we can expect to get even more visitors at our booth!

Farm to Table: A Recipe For A Healthy Pittsburgh

Last week, my mom, Theresa and I attended a conference held downtown called Farm To Table, which aims to bring together local farms, businesses and individuals that support sustainable agriculture and the local food movement in the Pittsburgh area. We had never been to this event before, but thought it would be interesting to attend, since we are part of the small business community here and also sell our baked goods at a local farmers market.

The conference was set up in a hall where attendees could visit the exhibitor booths. Exhibitors included local farms, food purveyors and organizations involved in nutrition, health and wellness. Since this is only the second year for the event, the number of exhibitors will probably grow in the coming years. It was nice that the hall was set up like an indoor farmers market, so you could mosey from booth to booth.

I think what we enjoyed most about the conference though, were the seminars that were held throughout the event. With the regular cost of admission, we were welcome to attend any of these talks, with topics that ranged from the importance of organic foods to sustainability and the consumer.

My favorite seminar was called "Steps Towards Developing a Sustainable Business,” and was given by the Director of Sourcing and Sustainability for Eat n’ Park Hospitality Group, which owns and operates a food service company as well as a large number of restaurants in the region.

Even though our company is technically not a foodservice business and we don’t operate in the restaurant industry at the moment, it was really informative to hear specifically how a large company working within the food industry is making strides to become more and more sustainable. And hopefully, once our company gets a bit bigger, we could apply similar initiatives to our day to day operations. Some steps, such as implementing energy efficient lighting, are things we can do right now. I also learned just how innovative those Europeans are when it comes to using resources as smartly and efficiently as possible. They have even come up with a way to harness methane from farms and use it to generate energy (fuel and electricity).

All in all, an environmentally enlightening experience.

sofi Awards

Hello everyone! Apologies for the spotty blog entries recently. We have been really busy with the launch of our improved, more natural cupola cookies and our brand new savory snacks, cupola clouds. Our days have been spent touching base with numerous retailers and sending them samples of our products. The response has been positive overall, but with the Easter holiday upon us, many of our contacts at the retailers where we would like to get on the shelves have been quite busy.

Since cupola cookies and cupola clouds are now available in custom-printed boxes, which are simple but more visually appealing, higher quality and more shelf-friendly than our previous packaging, we are able to approach a lot more retail locations than we were in the past. So far we've reached out to more retailers in PA, OH, NY, VA, MA, NH and FL.

But today, I wanted to talk about the sofi Awards, because they have been on my mind a lot lately. Up until last year, the sofi Awards used to be called the Product Awards. The competition is sponsored by NASFT (National Association for the Specialty Food Trade and is the specialty food industry's premiere product competition (The Oscar or Tony Awards for the specialty food industry if you will). This year, there are over 32 different award categories, such as Outstanding Pasta Sauce, Outstanding Salad Dressing and Outstanding Chocolate.

It's pretty interesting to see what products and companies have won awards in the past. NASFT features this information in the Product Awards section of their site. I warn you though, that you will work up an appetite as you check out the award winners and finalists.

Each year NASFT receives about 2,000 entries for the competition, so the competition, in the words of Christian Siriano, winner of this season's Project Runway, is FIERCE! But we think our cupola cookies and our cupola clouds have that something special, so we're going to enter them into the competition this year. Whether we place or not, I think it will be a good experience for us and we'll learn a lot about our products and how they measure up to the competition.

On your mark, get set, eat!

Blogging About Blogs

I thought it would be ironic, and kind of fun to do a post about blogs on this blog. Since I've started blogging, I've paid a lot more attention to blogs in general. If they're written well, blogs can be witty, entertaining, while still providing good information. The thing that I love about blogs is that they can be as personal or impersonal as you want them to be. Some people blog with their hearts on their sleeves, others censor themselves a bit more, but all blogs provide bloggers and readers an opportunity to say what's on their minds.

The only downfall to finding a blog that you like, is that as a reader, they can be addictive. I'll be the first to admit that I read a mixture of blogs- most are related to food (naturally, I'm a bit biased towards this particular genre), but others are about current events, pop culture or the arts.

One of the best things I think I've gotten out of starting this blog is that it makes me stop every so often and reflect on what we've been doing with the business. I think this is important, especially with how busy we've been lately. As a kid, I attempted numerous times to keep a journal or diary of sorts, but was never dedicated enough to making regular entries. In fact, I think I still have a slew of bubblegum pink and Barney purple notebooks, each with just two or three entries. A testament to my lack of commitment as an 8-year old, really. Since I've started this blog in July 2007, I've done my best to update it with new post and articles at least every other week.

A blog is a great space to discuss, to inform, to vent and to applaud. If you think you might want to start a blog, here are some links to a couple sites that will help you set one up for free:

Blogger
MovableType
WordPress

I also thought I'd share a couple of the food blogs that I've been following:

SimplyRecipes.com- a constantly updated collection of great recipes, peppered with entries about specific foods and eating. I love that each recipe has a little bit of a narrative or background story to go with it.

EAT- started by a 20-something foodie from Pittsburgh who moved to New York and chronicles his eating, dining and cooking experiences in the Big Apple. his mom chimes in from time to time with a post or two.

Happy Blogging!

Boxes are the best!

Earlier this week, our long awaited boxes arrived from the printers! Considering the fact that neither my mom nor I have had any previous experience designing packaging and neither of us have any formal training in graphic design, we think the boxes turned out quite well!

From start to finish, the whole process of designing and producing our new packaging took about 2 months. Here are some pics I took so you can check out the finish product for yourself. Now that we have the new boxes, in the next several weeks we will be sending samples to as many retailers as we can. Some are smaller individual specialty food stores while others are larger purveyors of fine foods, with multiple retail locations.

We have also given our website a mini-makeover. After getting some much needed pointers from my web design professor, the site is cleaner, simpler and easier to read. She pointed out that the text and logos on the previous site were much too large- definitely a good call. The site also features the most current product information, including details on our new line of savory snacks, Cupola Clouds.

The main updates made to the site:

• We've added a section that talks about the health benefits of our cookies
  
• We've added a gallery where you can check out even more delectable photos of our baked goods
• Our "How to Eat" section now has recipes and suggested beverage pairings for our products
  
• For now, we are going to hold off on selling our baked goods over eBay as we have in the past. Based on customer feedback and our current marketing and sales goals, we decided that it would be better to sell our products directly on our site once we have the capabilities to do this. This way we'll be able to provide you with a variety of payment options, (instead of just PayPal) and a quicker, easier and yes, more enjoyable online shopping experience!
  

Drumroll please....Product Updates!

In the last couple weeks, I've been a bit vague about what we’ve been working on in terms of product development, packaging and the like- but all with good reason. This is because we have been working hard on hashing out the related details and timing. We definitely have a much better idea of the direction we are moving in and we are aiming to launch a new, improved product line (including the addition of some savory snacks!) in March.

We also felt we owed it to our current retailers to share this information with them first. Now that we’ve relayed these details to them, I am excited to share some updates with you all! I’ll also pass along additional info throughout this month, leading up to the actual launch.

Marketing

• The cookies are getting a new name! In March, the cookies will be debuting as:
  

Why, you ask? Because after some time in the market and speaking with customers and retailers first hand, we realized that our cookies are quite different (in taste and recipe) than the traditional European meringues being sold. Traditional meringues are typically very sweet and contain lots of sugar, but our baked goods are lightly sweetened. In addition, meringues are primarily made out of egg whites and sugar, but our cookies also contain all natural ingredients such as garbanzo bean flour and nuts. To sum it up, we feel we need a unique name to describe our unique cookies.

Product Development

• The cookies (Chocolate Cashew, Chai Pistachio, Espresso Walnut) will be made with organic evaporated cane juice instead of sugar, making them even healthier and more natural.

• Per cookie calorie count will be 11 calories instead of 24 due to a new and improved recipe. But don’t worry, the taste and texture of the cookies are still the same.

• We will be introducing a line of savory snacks, made from real cheese. They will be called:

Packaging

• To make it easier for you to eat our cookies on-the-go, we are making them slightly smaller, but you will get the same exact amount of product in each bag. This is because we’re increasing the number of cookies in each bag from 5 to 7.

• The cookies will soon be available in boxes, which will contain 15 cookies- the boxes are simple and (I think) visually appealing. Great for sharing and to give as gifts. A larger package means they’ll last around your house a bit longer too!

More to details to come soon!