Digging out…

On Sunday, our long production day went easy. Yesterday’s production day felt like an eternity that would never end.

I made boxes we needed to fill some of our orders; they towered over me. Ok, I am only 5’1” but you get the drift.

Making spätzle isn’t something I have ever gotten tired of doing. That’s the fun part of production. I love it! The dishes? They suck. 

The dishes take me over 2 1/2 hours to do. Marty suggested he clean the big tilting kettle while I finish up the dishes. It was worth a try.

With Marty helping with the clean up as opposed to start weighing and packaging spätzle himself; this saves me 30 minutes and we both get to start packaging the product together. This is working and I am happy. Yay! 

Once we started packaging the spätzle I kept look over at the towers of boxes. It became daunting. Then, whenever I looked over at the big bin of spätzle he was working on, it always looked full. It was like a bottomless bin; and there were 9 of them. 

It took hours to finish but when we were done, we were pleased with our days work and closer to filling all of our wholesale orders. 

Today, we finished up all the orders even though we cut production short since we have deliveries to make this afternoon and a show tonight. We kicked ass this week to get it done!

Now, I know some people who are reading this and are probably thinking, “Wow! They must be raking in the dough!” Unfortunately, trust me, this isn’t true.

We learned very quickly that farmers, cheese makers and food manufacturers make the least amount of money. You see, the distributor needs to take their cut then the retail stores need to take theirs.

The first two ingredients in our spätzle are local milk & eggs. We feel strongly about using local ingredients and supporting the farmers near us. The eggs have tripled in price and the milk has almost doubled. 

The flours we use are all non-gmo and cost more; again we feel we need to use the best ingredients for our product. The packaging supplies like our retail packages, bags and cardboard boxes have tripled as well.

I don’t have to tell you about the cost of gas when we travel to make deliveries, we are all suffering greatly from this right now. Our distributor had to raise their price to help cover the fuel for their delivery trucks.

We are hanging on and slowly but surely we are continuing to establish our brand and growing the business. 

We are very blessed and grateful how far we have come in 5 short years. We couldn’t do it without our customers who are spreading the spätzle love.❤️

We are completely caught up for the moment which feels pretty good! Tomorrow and Friday we will focus on making spätzle for the farmers market on Saturday. 

Now, I am going to try to take a power nap before getting dressed up, help get the delivery boxes loaded up, and on our way to a fun afternoon & evening in Schenectady. 

I’ll let you know how the show was and if we were successful finding a good gluten-free dinner out. Fingers crossed!