Damaged Goods

Photo by Yoshiko Wong

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! - with lots of good food, family and friends, and laughter all around.  I had so much fun bustin' out all the SweetPotatoMaya orders.  When I was making the deliveries, I got to see customers and wish them a nice holiday in person.  That was an added bonus :)

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I need to fix something.  Shipping.  Some SweetPotatoMayas were sent to New York and California, and it was, an epic fail.  Inside the box were 6 pies in a cellophane bag, and the crumble topping fell off and scattered everywhere inside the bag.  What an embarrassing mess.  This is not how I want to start off my business.

So what's next?  What do I do?   I packed an extra package to keep in my garage for several days.  I tossed it and shook it, let it land upside down and all around.  I was doing this in my garage, and I was sort of enjoying it.  But my kids stared at me all wide eyed - I guess they've never seen me throw things before.  Needless to say, when I opened the tester package a few days later, it was a mess.  It looked like the work of  that mean Gismo - wet newspaper wrapping pulled and torn, smashed up against misshapen wet sticky pies...  Absolute horror.  Definitely not acceptable, and I would like a chance to redeem myself.  Operation Re-ship to New York and California, is a go.

So yesterday, I baked up some extra batches, picked up new shipping boxes with different dementions, and bought a FoodSaver.  Have you seen these things?  I'm not big on buying gadgets just for the sake of convenience (I'm kind of old and crotchety like that).  But I think it's just the thing I need - and what an amazing tool!  You can put your things in there, and it sucks the air out, and seals it tight.  And thanks to the Mr. who enjoys figuring out new gadgets, he set everything up for me, showed me how to use it, and even put the empty cardboard boxes away.  So here we were, in our kitchen on a Tuesday night, running test vacuum seals with salami slices and having a hoot of a time.  Talk about a party getting out of control.

This morning I mailed out two new packages with vaccum-sealed SweetPotatoMayas inside.  We'll see how it works.  Go, my SweetPotatoMayas... Go!