And so, the first of September for me, means eyes down and focus until the end of December. We can only do a certain amount of preparation prior to this, as we want our chocolates to have a good shelf life to last beyond Christmas.
We were back at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair this year after taking a year out. The event is rapidly becoming bigger than the visitors can cope with, and the cost of exhibiting is beginning to get prohibitive. Couple that with the fact that breaking down and driving home on a Tuesday evening is a logistical nightmare, make the show less and less desirable to us each year. That said, we do get a number of good leads from the event.
It’s a great opportunity to catch up with other chocolatiers though, and this year brought much amusement as we discovered we’d all been scammed by identical ‘complaint’ emails. The lengths some people go to for a free box of chocolates is astonishing. We’ll be talking to each other much more from now on!
