Shipping: it's not all it's cracked up to be

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy: Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

To most people product packaging is a simple fact of life. You go to the grocery store and your product comes in a little plastic wrap covering a plastic tray, and that's that. Costs are kept down due to the sheer amount of groceries in any one shipment, and the usage of preservatives.

Packaging on a smaller scale without the use of preservatives rapidly turns into a complex problem. Logistics problems include wrapping the product securely, packaging for transport, and then actually shipping the product in something that resembles a decent time-frame.

To give readers a glimpse into the planning and logistical problems, I'll run some of the numbers. I hope this also explains some of the pricing detail I have set.

My American style cookies run about ~20 grams of dough per scoop, and about ~17 grams after baking. This means that I need to fit roughly 26 to 27 cookies in a single box to reach 454 grams of product.

I now know that I can fit that many cookies in a container with about 13 cups / 3089ml of space, and that such a container will fit nicely in an 11" x 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" shipping container.

Then there is the question of how long will the cookies last. I can take some steps such as sealing the cookies in air-tight containers to prevent staling, but there is a hard-limit to how long the cookies will remain fresh without freezing. Ergo I need to get my product to the consumer in a reasonable amount of time.

These are factors that go into why I settled on USPS priority mail. USPS will, on average, deliver within 2 days of shipping on priority mail. A medium flat-rate ups box is about 11" x 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" and costs $11.35 before tax to ship through the USPS.

Once I include my packaging, e.g. plastic protection container, inside wrapping for the cookies, and bubble wrap or paper wrap for package stability... the actual shipping cost per USPS medium box is around ~$15 (US).

In comparison a FedEx box is around $23 for two-day shipping. A UPS also ships at around $23 for their 2-day air shipping, specifically $23.97.

For shipping a single pound of product, the USPS is clearly the best option to get the product to the purchaser within a time-frame that the product is still very much delicious. For shipping larger amounts of product?

* * *

This is where things start to get a little dicey. Safely packaging, and shipping, larger orders becomes almost prohibitively expensive. At the originally listed $35 mark for 2lbs, properly shipping places the cost at ~$27 to $28 for second day delivery... while the actual ingredient cost doubles on less overall return.

In other words, the original price for 2lbs of product just simply isn't going to work.

Which means that I need to re-adjust my pricing, and re-adjust my shipping. These particular elements will be spread out over the other pages as I hammer in the details.

The original $25 for 1lb of product will stand. This is about 30 American cookies or around 60 Gingersnap cookies if my math is consistent. Shipping will remain with USPS priority mail for 2 day delivery.

The 2lb product will be bumped to $40 and the 3lb will be bumped to $50. These will now go out on UPS 3 day Select or UPS Ground. To try and maximize product freshness these servings will be delivered to UPS for shipping on the same day they are baked.

As always, the more people that are told about this, the more it helps.

Ordering Tab

In the pursuit of trying to make this site into a semi-proper storefront I am trying to update with new features and functions. The latest item pushed is a new page for placing Orders.

For simplicity's sake I just have a stock Google Checkout placeholder button placed with options to select either a single, double, or triple serving.  Unfortunately the button doesn't account for the options that are available, which I'll need a proper checkout basket for. Which one is coming... when I figure out how to work through Google Checkout.

Now, why use Google Checkout instead of Paypal or Amazon?

Well, in regards to Paypal, you can drop by my Zerias Blogger pages and check the 2011 posts for some problems that I ran into Paypal. Short version, I can not in any good conscience recommend that anybody else use the Paypal services, and I would consider myself in boycott of Paypal at this time.

In regards to Amazon, well, no other reason than I'm on a Google website, and I can integrate some of the Google Checkout functions into Blogger with HTML skills that could be described as Passable.

Breads, or rather the lack there-of

Given that I describe myself as a specialist in Artisan Breads, I have been asked why no breads are listed for sale. The reason for this is simple: I do not use preservatives.

The average shelf life of breads I baked can be measured in terms of hours. Yes, there are certain steps I can take locally, such as par-baking and freezing, that allow me to serve various breads on demand.

That being said, shipping frozen products tends to get a little expensive. Given this practical limitation between when the breads are actually baked to when they are stale, short of choosing next day air, there is no reliable way that I can deliver a tasty product to your doorstep.

With the products I do offer, I have put them through various tests, e.g. vacuum sealing and storage, and thus am confident that a product I ship will be a perfectly delectable treat when you get it.

Experience Food / Costing

I guess since I created a semi-food blog, I guess I should talk about food, or rather the business of making food. One of the things I learned back in school was costing, which goes beyond simply figuring out how much any particular ingredient costs for any particular amount of product served. Costing also includes the total amount of money spent to prepare to any particular dish including the labor, resource costs, and distribution costs. Distribution here is defined as anything from shipping and handling, to the busboy picking up your dirty dishes, to the dishwasher cleaning the plates after you have finished your meal.

When pricing any particular product all of these factors need to be taken into account. One of my notes indicates that when looking for a job, one of the factors we needed to keep in mind was just how much of the product price was reflected in the ingredients. One of my notes indicates that a desirable food-cost level places the ingredient costs at around 30% or so of the purchase price.

If I understood my teachers correctly, if you add up the costs of the ingredients used in your meal, roughly 1/3 of the price should cover the ingredients. Where this gets turned on it's head is when you start talking about Experience food versus Practical Food.

Practical Food is like you Burger King fast food restaurants.  You pay a set amount of money for a set amount of product, and there is no production or fanfare. Nobody goes to a Burger King for a romantic dinner, and please don't link me to any Youtube videos that say otherwise.

Experience Food is like your P.F. Chang's or Chop House Grilles. You go and spend far more money for an experience while you eat. You pay extra for an atmosphere, an environment, or a show.

Thing is, I describe myself as an Experience Food Pastry Chef. I don't bake breads and cookies, or prepare breakfast pastries that are for quick eats. I make products that are supposed to be enjoyed, and savored. I make products that with just one bite your tongue should be amazed at the flavor. To this end, I try to use the best ingredients possible for any particular dish. Ergo, my own ingredient pricing is set fairly high per the pound on local products.

* * *

These costing consideration were some of the factors that I kept in mind when I started performing market-research into how much other people were charging for quote/unquote gourmet cookies online. I know what my own ingredient pricing is like. I also know the rough size, and shape, and what it takes to package each individual product.

For example, I prefer to use parchment paper to wrap my products because it feels more professional than wax paper or plastic. However, Parchment paper costs more than wax or plastic. So deciding to use parchment paper wrapping means that my incidental cost goes up.

Another example is the shipping. I can look online and get a handle on how much any particular box is going to cost, and an idea on how much it is going to cost to ship to any particular location. I settled on the US Postal Service as the baseline rather than FedEx or UPS for several reasons. I don't have a corporate account, and thus a corporate discount. USPS will give me boxes that I know can be safely sealed for food transport ahead of time. In trying to keep my costs down, and in turn keeping the price I pass onto my consumer manageable, USPS was the best option I could calculate.

To continue with shipping, then there is the matter of actually packing the products. For example, if I wrap the cookies in parchment paper, say 5 to a wrap with a twist on top and a ribbon, now I have the problem of securing the cookies for transport. For me the solution is placing the package in a vacuum sealed pouch, which is then secured inside a simple roll of bubblewrap. This types of details continue to add to my underlying cost(s).

As I kept trying to get a handle on these incidental details I began to understand the prices that I was seeing when searching online for gourmet cookies. 

* * *

Before I started sharing this particular webpage around the web I circulated the site within a few friends. Some, like Shen, gave feedback on the design and layout, hence the tabs at the top. Others like Foxcat had other input to make. Specifically Foxcat said I should put how many cookies were in each shipment, rather than by weight.

So here's the explanation I gave Foxcat: Cookie Size Varies: Weight does not 

I hand-scoop all of the cookies I bake. This goes back to the Experience Food bit from earlier, in which I'm trying to make a product that the consumer knows I worked on personally, not something that was spat of a machine with no thought. This means that the individual cookie size can change from cookie to cookie. I also scoop my American-style and Cinnamon-Snap cookies at different sizes. By settling on a weight amount rather than a numerical cookie amount, whoever buys cookies can rest assured that they will be getting their money's worth for that batch.

The weight amount gives me a bit of flexibility as well. Nobody is going to complain if they get more product per price by weight than what they paid for. Let's say for example I'm packing 5 cookies averaging 1oz each in a parchment wrap. Nobody's going to complain if I wrap an extra 4 cookies up to make an even presentation bundle of 20 cookies bundled in 4 groups of 5.

Pricing by weight minimum gives me more flexibility to deal with orders than by committing to a specific cookie count. Incidentally, the specific pages in question have now been updated to reflect this.

Greetings and Salutations

Now I just need a Spider, a Pig, and a heartwarming tale.

Since I don't have those, welcome to the freshly launched Genie Breads and Desserts. Don't let the titles fool you, my specialty is artisan breads and breakfast pastries, but I do fancy myself a master of the Cookie Crumb.

Alright, so, the launch notes. I've been murmuring about this on my main G+ thread for a while now. I completed the price-mock ups based on local food prices, looked at what my potential online competitors were shipping, looked at local grocery store bakery prices, dropped by a Great American Cookie Company and nearly had a stroke; and once I recovered basically said: Sure, let's give this a shot.

For those interested in the pricing breakdown, my online prices are largely based around:

• expected shipping costs through USPS Priority Flat Rate
• ingredient cost with taxes
• expected cost of labor @ ~$10 an hour

Incidentally, this is why the cakes and brownies cost more. They can be harder to package, and my own spin on Banana Bread requires a few days notice to prepare.  

I am also going to state here that my baked products use the best ingredients possible. As noted on the product page itself, I use liqueurs to flavor my goods, not extracts. Why? Because I can tell the difference between a cookie with a Dekuyper Creme'de'Almond flavoring and a cookie with an Almond Extract. If I can tell the difference, so can you. If I can tell the difference between King Arthur flour and Pillsbury, so can you. 

All of my baked goods have to meet my expectations for taste and flavor, and that means you get a product that will knock your socks off.   

What I need from you dear readers is not just to place an order, but to Pass The Word!

Pass this site onto your friends, family, co-workers, and anybody else you know who wants  mouth watering experience.