Going out of Business!

Tiffany and I have decided that it’s time to close Honey D’s I’m afraid.  We just can’t continue to support it any longer.  It wasn’t an easy decision to make.  We’ve been at it less than a year but we just don’t have anything left to pour into it to keep it afloat.  We sure did have a good time though and learned so much in the process.  It turned out to be a most expensive learning process though, which stings a bit. 

It was a wild ride and I’m glad we took it.  I’m mostly glad that we were very good friends when we started this and we still are now that we’re ending it.  I think that says a lot about our friendship.  There were remarkably few hiccups along the way, even when things started to circle the drain.  We were stressed but never at each other’s throats.

We are going to continue to be open for the next few weeks, Tuesday through Friday from 10am to 5pm.  We will sell sandwiches, soup, cookies, cupcakes, and cheesecakes until we exhaust our supply of ingredients and we will take special orders for cookies, cupcakes and whole cheesecakes during that time as well.  We’re also leaving the facebook page up so that you can continue to request special orders once the store is shut down.  You can also contact us at honeydelightcookieco@gmail.com anytime if you need something special or would like us to consider catering something for you. 

If you have purchased a gift certificate NOW IS THE TIME TO USE IT!  If you have haven’t visited us before, get here before it’s too late!  If you have visited us, THANK YOU!  We appreciate you so much.

The special order menu can be found in the notes section of our facebook page.

Thanks again!

M

The Heart of Sheridan!

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Get something unique for your Honey!  We are ready to help you find the perfect gift!  We have a wide variety of desserts, as always, but we've added several sweetheart products for this very special occasion!  So, come by and check it out!  Don't wait too late!!...but just in case you do, we'll be OPEN Sunday, Feb 13th and Monday, Feb 14th, during our usual business hours 10am - 7pm. 

• Gift Baskets - Includes cookies, candle, stuffed bear, and honey candy
• Cupcakes: Strawberry or Red Velvet - Mini, Regular, and Heart contained
• Truffles - Chocolate or Peanut Butter - Buy a teaser box with our new Cheesecake Petit Fours or take home a complete dozen!
• Chocolate Dipped Strawberries - Need I say more?
• Giant Cookies - Round or Heart-Shaped
• Honey Pecan Party Mix - Honey coated pecans and cereal for a sweet savory snack.

We can't wait to see you!!!!

Tiff

Taxes and Breakfast

Well, we've managed to hang in there for 3 months now!  It's not profitable but it's still alive.  Since we opened in October, the 3 month mark also happened to be the end of the year.  That means a whole slew of new things we have to learn.  Yay! 

We've been rolling along with payroll using Intuit's online payroll system since we still don't have a computer at the office.  It was a logical choice since we had also used them to create the website.  They charge us a base monthly fee and then an additional amount for each employee.  Once we get that office computer we will purchase quickbooks or something similar but it works great for now and it's really user friendly.  It has a nice To-Do task list on the front page and sends email reminders when it's time to do payroll.  The payroll process itself is simple too.  It will handle the federal and state reports and withholding payments too. 

So that part of the quarter end and year end was pretty much taken care of.  We printed W2's easily and got all that squared away.  Now we needed to figure out what we wanted to do with the business taxes and year end stuff for which we knew nothing.

I contacted the CPA who Tiffany and I had consulted with during our partnership start up.  She was such a help to us then that I knew we wanted to have her help us through this process as well.  The good news is that even though we don't have a computer, Tiffany and I are meticulously detailed and keep up with the business on spreadsheets and on paper very well.  Most of the things she needed we could provide easily.  The one thing that didn't occur to me was that we needed to inventory our unsold products and supplies at year end.  Woops!  Now I have to go back and to the best of my ability, calculate how much 'inventory' we had.  Some items are not a big deal, we can estimate packaging pretty easily and whole packages of certain products, cheese, butter, etc.  But the amount of flour, sugar etc.  No idea.  Anyway, it should be fun.

It will be a relief to have the first yearly tax hurdle over with.

Now, on a different subject, breakfast.  We open at 10:00am right now and we have almost no customers until 11:00 or 11:30 but we still get folks in asking if we have donuts.  Currently the only breakfast item we serve is cinnamon rolls.  We're not able to fry anything at our current location so donuts are out.  We could provide muffins, bagels, biscuits and gravy, breakfast wraps,scrambled eggs, fruit and yogurt, and oatmeal or granola.  Maybe even pancakes, french toast or breakfast pizza. 

It's cost prohibitive to try to make specialty coffees but we could add hot chocolate and tea, milk and orange juice.  The question is would you be interested in these items if we offered them and opened early enough?

We have no drive thru window so that's also a disadvantage.  We are kicking the idea around so your input would be appreciated.  Let us know what items you would like to see on a breakfast menu, and if you would be interested in having us open at 6am to provide those items, or if it's "No donuts, don't bother".

Thanks,

M

So... How's Business?

Well, we have completed a second month of business.  Two binders worth of daily cash register balancing, two months of daily sales tax calculations recorded in the ledger and we are still learning something new every day.  Some of those lessons can be painful when you are operating on a shoestring budget like we are.  So now I’m getting asked every day, “How’s the Business?”  I realized that we are so busy trying to run the store now that we have forgotten to document it the way I intended when we started this blog.  So let me catch you up…

We opened October 8^th to the public after a ‘trial run’ the Friday before with friends and family.  We had 4 employees, two that worked during normal business hours with Jimmy while Tiffany and I are at our paying jobsJ, then two others that alternate evenings (my son and niece).  We started off rocky because we had decided on a ‘soft’ opening.  That means that we didn’t advertise it and hoped that word of mouth would drive people in but not rush us on the first day.  In that way, we could all get more comfortable in our duties without the pressure of having 10 people standing in line.  It was a good theory.  The problem was that we had almost no business.  That was really scary.  We now had payroll to consider.  We were paying labor and weren’t generating sales.  We had to send employees home early on several occasions.

So a couple of weeks later, we had our Grand Opening, where the Chamber of Commerce came out and we did the ribbon cutting.  The local paper took pictures.  We were excited because we thought that once it got in the paper, we would start seeing more customers.  Well, it took weeks for the paper to print the notice.  By this time it was November and we were more than a little frustrated.  So it finally came out and we did see more folks come in, and then it just seems to have died.  We were doing less in daily sales in November than we were in October.  So what’s up?  Frankly we aren’t sure.  We did really good business the day before Thanksgiving with people ordering whole pies and cheesecakes but the lunch sales were way down and dinner sales had all but dried up.  The word we’re hearing is that the sandwiches are good, the cheesecake is good, the cookies are good, the soup … well its hit and miss.  Some are more popular than others, which is fine, we’ll learn what works and settle on a solid selection.  So then, why the drop off?  It’s hard to say. 

As I said earlier, we are operating on a shoestring budget here.  What I mean by that is that all our money went into getting the business open.  There is no stash of cash in the bank accounts of the business, Tiffany or Jim and me to keep it afloat.  It has to make money every day to pay the bills, and payroll, etc.  Neither Tiffany nor I take a salary and Jimmy doesn’t either at this point.  So the company is not paying us anything , and it’s very difficult for either of us to add any additional funds to the business to keep it in the black right now.  So every day is full of stress.  We finally sat down and gathered all our bills, including rent, utilities, insurance, credit cards, packaging, and food costs, etc. and worked out how much per business day a month on average that we would need to make to pay those bills.  Then we added our expected daily payroll expenses.  That gives us a target every day we are trying to exceed.  I think it’s a great tool.  Some days we are over that magic number but more often than not lately, we are under it which is not good at all. 

So, how do we hit the magic number or God willing, exceed it?  WE DON’T KNOW!!!  Maybe it’s just the economy, everyone may be feeling the same tightening of the financial belt that we have recently, maybe it’s just the holiday season and everyone is cutting back because they have so many other things they have to budget for, maybe we don’t have enough variety of lunch items to keep them coming back, maybe our menu is too confusing, or maybe our pricing is not in line with what our customers want to pay. 

So, we had to do a very tough thing and layoff one of our employees.  It's now just Jimmy and one other handling it during the work day.  That was really hard but we couldn't support the expense.  Also, today we introduced a new sandwich to the lineup, a Turkey Bacon Swiss Panini which has mushrooms, fresh spinach leaves and avocado slices which has already become the favorite of Tiffany and Jimmy (I’m still holding out for the Chicken Zucchini).  We’ve also introduced two new cheesecake varieties, Eggnog and Peppermint for the holiday season.  I think the eggnog is wonderful but I’m told by my 10 year old daughter, that only OLD people like eggnog.  So I guess that tells you how old I am.  And finally, we adjusted the pricing on several of the items including the pie and cheesecake slices.  Lets hope these changes will see an improvement to our daily sales.  Maybe we can hit that magic number more consistently.

Well, this is getting too long so I will stop here.  Next time I will fill you in on the total dollar cost to get this thing up and running, and talk about finding payroll software.

(PS:  My daughter denies the eggnog comment)

M

The Forgotten Utility

So, we just found out this week that our gas had never been turned off by the former tenant and apparently they just realized it.  Everything we cook with is electric, so we weren't planning on worrying with it until winter because the only thing gas is used for is to heat the building.  Well, it's winter (close enough), and it never even crossed our minds until the "gas man" turned up, letting us know that we needed to call and set up our account right away so he wouldn't have to disconnect us. They're about as bad as the electric company with their security deposit, but we learn by experience, so the first thing I asked was if there was any way it could be waived.  As expected, there was...by a Letter of Irrevocable Credit from the Bank or a Surety Bond from our Insurance Company.  Again, from experience, I knew the letter of credit wouldn't save us any money, so I called the insurance company.  Thankfully, they will do multiple surety bonds, and they're all on top of it.

Little by little, everything is coming together.  We finally made the paper, and more people are coming in that never even knew we were here in Sheridan, and open.  A lot of people also don't realize we're locally owned; they think we're a franchise - I guess because of our theme-y look.

We're still kind of watching the sales.  What days/times are best, etc.  We're planning on giving it to the end of the year to see what our final hours will be, but we appreciate all of our customers, and we want to make sure you have a tasty experience with us.

I'm adding a new poll, so vote for your favorite soup!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy the holiday and God bless!

Tiff

Step by Step, Day by Day

As Melinda mentioned, we are novices at the whole starting-a-new-business thing, and it's been a roller-coaster of emotions.  From exciting to stressful, then looping around enlightening several times, but it's nice to be open and past the construction.  

I really can't express how great it is to have Melinda as a business partner.  We seem to fit so well as a team.  I'll go nuts with stress over some things, and she'll be as calm as stilled water.  When she's flipping out, it's usually over something that doesn't seem as important to me, so we're constantly talking each other down.  We've both kind of taken certain things under our wing as well throughout the whole ordeal.  She's got her cheesecakes and cookies, obviously.  I've got the cupcakes and candles.  (I tried branching into helping with the cookies, but got fired from that real quick!)  She's added cinnamon rolls, and I've added brownies.  She did all of the paperwork for the sales tax permit and getting setup for Coke and Sysco; I programmed the cash register.  The latest of these are paying payroll and sales tax.  It seems as though she's got Payroll under control, while I'm tackling the Sales Taxes.  The stressful part is just making sure it's done right.  So, with it being the end of our first month, I sat down last night and calculated our Gross Sales and Taxes, and the total was shocking.  None of us realized how much we'd made, and therefore didn't really know how much taxes would have to be paid now.  I've been pushing separating taxes and payroll on a daily basis for a while, but we've needed the money to replenish inventory.  Now, I think we see the greater need to put the money back as we get it.  It's difficult as a new business to do payroll bi-weekly and taxes monthly without depleting our bank account.  As a matter of fact, with the economy the way it is, I'm sure that's been difficult for even established businesses.  But here we are: alive and kicking.

Another epiphany were our Hours of Business.  Before we had opened, we researched and found statistically that Mondays were the lowest sales days for a business, so we decided to close.  Jimmy has still usually been there baking, and noticed customers trying our doors, wanting some lunch.  I've stopped by the store myself the last couple of Mondays during my lunch hour, and there were people planning to eat, and unfortunately disappointed.  I hate losing sales!  We've noticed slow times as well.  Sunday after lunch is dead, and so we've decided to tweak our Hours of Operation.  Sunday we'll be open from 12 to 3 instead of staying open until 5, and Monday we will be open 10 to 3.  So, don't be shy, come on by!

Tiff

Are you guys a chain?

Apparently our little bakery has a very theme-ish feel to it.  I don't know how many people have asked if we are a chain!  I wish.  I've started saying "Not Yet".  Wouldn't that be awesome?  But first, we need to pay our own bills and keep our inventory supplies up before we could ever consider opening another store or franchising.  Still, it would be awesome to see our logo on shops on every street corner LOL.  Right now I guess I will settle with what we do have.  Now that the ball has started rolling, we are getting more and more business.  Last Friday (October 22nd) we had our grand opening where the Chamber of Commerce came out, and the local paper and we did the whole ribbon cutting and everything. 

That was kind of cool.  Our sign did get there the day before and Jimmy put it up at 9:30 that Thursday night so it made it in time for the pictures as you can see above. 

We will add a post soon about the day to day operations and how we are faring with those challenges like running out of to-go boxes, handling time cards and payroll, sales tax, etc.

M