Stamp This.

We've been looking at ways to streamline certain parts of PJP to make us more efficient and 100% less stabby and irritable when we waste time because we are out of something we use on a regular basis.  And our pie boxes might think this post is about them (pie boxes are so vain), but we've already determined that unless someone gifts us $25,000 and a warehouse in the near future, we are stuck ordering several cases of boxes at a time and being generally annoyed when they are backordered on mrtakeoutbags.com.

This post is actually something I haven't complained about a lot on the blog, but you've probably heard us ranting about it in the store...STICKERS.

When we opened our doors 14 months ago, we stickered each pie box with a printed Avery label that had our logo on it and the pie type.  This meant that someone, namely me, had to buy the Avery labels and print the Avery labels and take the Avery labels to the shop and the alphabetize the Avery labels in our organizer folder thing and CAN YOU TELL I DIDN'T LIKE DOING THAT VERY MUCH?  I don't have anything against Avery labels per se, but I'm just happier when someone does them all and delivers them to me.

A few months in, and after we consistently ran out of Avery labels due to everything I just listed in the previous paragraph, we started working with a local printer to have nicer labels made that incorporated our logo in a 2.5 inch round circle sticker (full color!) and also included the pie type.  Instantly, our boxes looked nicer.  Except the printer is on the other side of town and we would consistently run out at different intervals and never was there any time to drive 15 minutes to pick up a few sheets of one type of pie sticker.

Proving the theory that I'll generally go with whatever option makes life easier for me, someone who we had done some creative work with over the holidays offered to make us the stickers for less cost AND deliver them to us (or have us fill out a spreadsheet each week of the quantity on hand and then he would print anything under the "par" value...I still laugh out loud when I think about that because on a list of my ten worst qualities, I would include a) spreadsheets, and b) consistency).  Eventually this poor kind soul learned that a last-minute panicked text of "Help!  We need stickers!" was probably more legit and it has worked super well since then.

Our source will provide us with logo stickers for shipping boxes and various other items that we use them for, but we use A LOT OF LOGO STICKERS.  And I don't know if you've been pricing the sticker market lately, but stickers aren't cheap.  So Jeanne suggested we buy a stamp and we would stamp our logo on the needed items and pie type sticker the rest.

Except I just Googled "logo stamp" and my brain nearly imploded.  When exactly did stamps become such a thing?  I swear that at the root of all this stamping is Pinterest because I can't figure out when else...or why else...one would be such a stamping enthusiast.  Apparently now everyone just includes stamping as part of their crafting skills and because I lack that skill set, I'm out of the know.

So before you can ask me in the morning, Jeanne, no I did not order the logo stamp.  I couldn't decide if we needed rubber or self-inking or the x-stamper (whatever that is) or if I should buy it from Amazon or Vistaprint or be fancy and choose Etsy.  And then when I got on Etsy, I saw that you could buy stamps that stamp soap and leather and even if I wanted a regular stamp, I could choose about 12 different sizes and 100 different colors of ink pads.  So I just closed the browser so I could write this blog post and watch an episode of Orange Is The New Black, wherein Piper will make a lot of bad choices...but not about stamps.

So what I'm saying really is...Jeanne, will you order a logo stamp tomorrow?