Wholesale Journey

I woke up this morning with the resolve to get my product ready for the wholesale market. With a fresh notebook and my favorite pen I started the list of things that I still had to accomplish. Within 20 minutes I had three pages of my outline done, most items devoted to labeling.

What a task it is going to be! First of all you must gather together all of your recipes. Mine just happen to be loose sheets of notebook paper with notes scribbled into the margins where changes have been made. So I realize that step one has to be a basic recipe binder with typed recipes.

Next step, taking those recipes and putting the ingredients into spreadsheets by weight and assigning a nutritional value to each ingredient along with a calorie value. Add up each column and divide by weight so that a nutritional value label can be created. Boring but necessary!

Then I went to the FDA website to read up on the requirements for the labels. Way to confusing, endless pages of reading. Why reinvent the wheel I ask myself, so off to the internet I go in search of a label creator program.  Success, they are plentiful, easy to find and free. http://www.shopncook.com/nutritionFactsLabel.html This is just one example I found, a quick search turns up quite a few free ones as well as some inexpensive programs. My next step will be to refine my labels to include this information. I am starting with granola. Did I mention I love granola!

I have already created my wholesale catalog, so all need now is a salesman's kit. This kit should include; the catalog, business cards, order forms and samples. So of course, I must stop and sketch up a pattern for a carrying case for all of this stuff. Because after all, a simple brief case will not do.

So at the end of day one:

1)  I have accomplished my outline
2) Started a recipe book
3) Created the layout for the spreadsheets for nutritional labeling
4) Found a label that works for me

I think that's a good start and now after all the tediousness of the paper end I am going to let my creative side shine and create a salesman's sample case. Mix a little pleasure in with the drudgery and your life will be a lot more pleasant. I'm off to the sewing machine.



I feel as though I have accomplished a lot over the last two days. I have been ferevishly typing out nutrition labels for all of our products. I have managed to finish all of the granolas and now I am setting my sites on the peanut butters.