A look back in time

Tilling the soil from which we eat

I don’t drive a DeLorean, but we did manage to take a short trip back in time last weekend. The North Carolina Work Horse and Mule Association hosted their Annual Corn Planting Day at Indian Ridge Farm in Linden, NC and we headed out for an afternoon of [...]

Don’t Look Back

We’ve not had much snow lately in North Carolina, but last week we did see a pretty good dusting. Enough to allow me to take Anna over to the park for a short ride down the hill on a sledding tub. I was reminded that in life and business, you need to watch where you are going.

Have you checked your company’s cholesterol?

I’m not great with New Year’s Resolutions, but I do like to be reflective this time of year and try to think about what I have learned, how I can improve, and whether or not I need to adjust my sails. Earlier this past summer, my wife and I went in for our every other year annual physical and it turned out to be a learning experience.

Could Lagniappe be a Solution?

Instead of focusing on ‘cutting back’, maybe one solution to keeping your employees and customers happy, and attracting new ones, is laniappe. Thanks to one of our customers from New Orleans, it’s become one of my favorite words.

Fresh Pumpkin Muffins

Fresh Pumpkin Muffins

We cleaned and cooked pumpkins for our famous Fresh Pumpkin Cheesecake again this year, and found we had some leftover puree. I like to make muffins for one of our customers on Saturdays as lagniappe (see my other post) and decided to add the pumpkin. They were very tasty! If [...]

Recycle your cardboard

Our vanilla supplier, Nielsen-Massey, just switched to using all recycled corrugated containers for their shipping. Does that really matter?
Here’s a quick factoid:
For every ton of corrugated cardboard that is recycled, this preserves 17 trees, 463 gallons of oil, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space.
If a ton sounds like a big number [...]

No, we don’t offer fried cookies

If it can be fried – you’ll find it at the NC State Fair.

I have not been to state fairs other than North Carolina and Kentucky, so I can’t speak for what their vendors offer in terms of food variety. If you are from North Carolina and have been to the State Fair, you [...]

How to save 86,000 barrels of oil

In my post about going green, I mentioned that we switched to dishwashing soap from Seventh Generation. It is plant based and contains no dyes or petro chemicals. Here is a statistic from their label:

“If every household in the U.S. Replaced just one 25 oz. bottle of petroleum based dishwashing liquid with our [...]

A New Perspective on Going Green

I attended a seminar on October 1 titled “The Business of Living and Working Green”. It was put on by a local group called Chix in Business and hosted at McKinney, a world-class creative agency headquartered in Durham, NC. My friend, business associate, and former coach, Susan Maravetz is in charge of special events and Anna’s Gourmet Goodies was again happy to sponsor a door prize at this event. We have always incorporated elements of ‘green’ into our company and I must admit, I walked out of this seminar with a renewed interest in making sure that Anna’s Gourmet Goodies does everything we can to conduct business in a manner that demonstrates respect for the world in which we live.

Holiday baskets in the warehouse?

On Saturday, Anna and I made our weekly trek down to the ‘warehouse’ store to stock up on supplies for Anna’s Gourmet Goodies. I’ve noticed displays of those ‘cookie tins’ showing up over the past few weeks, but they have now rolled out the gift packs in quantity. I guess the early season for holiday shopping has begun – I spotted a large center isle display of those shrink wrapped gift baskets with candy canes in them. Is it really time to see this in stores?