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.
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