There’s No Crying In Baseball (Jumping in on the End of Year Wrap-Ups)

Photo by Allison Jones

The past year has been frightening enlightening, and while we reached for our goals (like some below), it was tough not to get sidelined by every hurdle, sand storm and trial by fire this tough economy has thrown at us. In many ways, it’s made me a far better manager and (I think) stronger business owner, while reminding myself if running a business was easy, everyone would be doing it.

So, how did we match up to my goals for 2010? My philosophy with the goals to make some progression large or small, keeping our momentum moving forward.

Here’s a brief recap of a few of them:

Gluten-Free Tarts: Soft launching and test marketing a gluten-free line of tarts. From past posts you can tell we spent time (lots of time), working out our gluten-free crust. The response has been highly positive - to the point of a few emails from fans crankily succinctly requesting we add them to our online store. Working out how support a larger scale production of them (which includes investing in some additional equipment) will be part of 2011.

Expanding our Social Media: I’m social! I really am, if you were sitting next to me in a bar, on a plane or in the stall next to us at a farmer’s market, would you hear an ear-full about all sorts of things. Just starting this blog was a huge step. I like the tweet and try not to over load anyone who likes us on Facebook. I aim to tell you more about our company culture, what we are working towards and what I like/dislike. A content plan is something to aspire to, until then, I’m shooting off the cuff.

Growing our Distribution/Sales Region: The year was about loss and gain. We lost some of our smaller coffee house clients but in turn upped our sales and distribution a bit to larger clients (I’m not going to say our sales wildly grew, however I see a chance at a turning point in making gains). We’re dipping our toe into the Seattle market (w/PCC Natural Foods) and we’ll see where this takes us. 

As the year wraps up, I’m pretty grateful that I was able to keep us floating through. More than a few of my peers can’t say the same, and while there’s no crying in baseball, every small business owner has some emotional attachment to the thing they’ve built and some days, just opening the door and turning the lights on is the largest (and most satisfying) goal achievement.

2011 goals are rattling around and being vetted, then we’ll be social. Really!

Oh, and a friendly elf promised me a new phone soon, so with a better camera you might actually get some decent pics to peruse. Progress, eh?

The Figlet Made Me Do It (or What We’ve Been Occupied With)

Holy carp have the holidays landed on us like frozen turkeys falling from the sky and I can’t say I’m complaining (well, my feet might be a bit more tired and there’s certainly less laundry getting done at home, but who really complains about not doing laundry?).

I haven’t abandoned you, my few readers, but the coming weeks will be a bit content scarce as we truck ahead on our projects, like making pies (Pecan, Vegan Pumpkin, Apple Cranberry) for New Seasons Markets.

The photo above is one of the specialty items we’re “trying out” with them. This one is a fig tartlet (smaller format than our regular tarts), with our vegan crust and a spiced fig filling. At the sampling I did back in September, one person remarked that it “tasted like Christmas”. Hopefully customers will enjoy them enough at Thanksgiving we’ll have them through December. It is a little product trial by fire, but I am thankful to have a supportive client that is willing to take a risk.

Upcoming things I’m thinking about (when not scaling pecans or corn syrup in my sleep):

-       Website revamping (or at least updating)

-       Review of goals from the past year (I’m sure I wrote them down somewhere)

-       Goals for the coming year

-       List of cleaning projects around our kitchen (see top parens)

-       A better camera… maybe… someday

So bear with us as single handedly split our kitchen into sweet & savory, which I’ll recap once I unglue my fingers from the sugar and cranberries (and our regular tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms…)

Am (Not) Public Speaking Goddess… New Seasons Market Hawthorne Store Opening

A few weeks ago I received a call from one of New Season’s marketing staff asking if I’d be willing to say a few words at their new Hawthorne store grand opening. New Seasons is a very supportive (and large) client of ours, so of course I would want to participate in their grand opening in some fashion. In my mind I assumed there would be a few of local companies invited to speak…no, I was the only one (the other speaker outside of Lisa Sedlar the CEO was from FISH a local food bank partner).

While you might be thinking “eh, what’s the big deal, it’s just a grocery store”, the fact that I/LPPCo. (one of many possible local vendors) was asked to be part of the event, speaks volumes about the importance of building great relationships with your clients. And really, I was excited and thrilled to be able to support such a great client back.

Many of you following along outside Portland (and some that weren’t able to attend), ask for some pictures and wanted to know what I said. Below is the excerpt, in which I tried not to bumble and stumble through - along with a few pic’s.

Photo by Jill Oppenheim

When Lisa was introducing Little Pots & Pans Co. & myself, she touched upon why I don't call our tarts pasties (pah-sties). Perhaps she read our blog post. Below she's standing on a step-stool to project over the crowd (and is not actually 7ft tall!).

Photo by Jill Oppenheim

Here's the text of what I said:

Good Morning, What an exciting day to be part of the New Season’s community!

The Daily Grind, who was formerly here, holds a special place in our company history as they were one of LPPCo.’s first clients. When New Season’s announced they were taking over this area for their next store, I knew it would be an opportunity to come full circle in offering the community a local grocery store filled with unmatchable local products.

It’s only been a couple of years that we’ve had the opportunity to work along side the talented team at New Seasons Markets who are consistently remarkable in their support of locally produced sustainable products and are truly interested in building relationships with their vendors.

My own relationship created the opportunity for Little Pots & Pans Co. to produce custom holiday themed fruit tarts and pies, adding to New Season’s already enticing offerings.

Today is an exciting day for us at LPPCo., not only am I thrilled to be here as part of the New Season’s Markets Hawthorne small vendor family, we are also celebrating our own 5^th year anniversary this week as a company.

I look forward to growing my relationship with the New Seasons Hawthorne team members and wish them all the success they deserve in this fantastic new location!