It's A Marathon
Every year, I really forget that December is the most challenging month of the year at PJP. We put such an intense focus on the busiest three days of Thanksgiving week that December creeps up on me and catches me by surprise. And now that we are in the second week of the month, I remember that December is a marathon and not a sprint. Today alone, we fully stocked the store with pie, baked for all the orders, made chicken pot pie, made Jeanne’s famous cookies, and shipped out 38 six-packs of Jelly Jar pies. That’s a solid - and average - Monday in early December.
And as for the rest of the month…well, we are going to be a busy pack of pie-baking, Jelly Jar making people.
So I really hesitate to tell you this, but here we go:
Next week, we are baking 12,000 tarts and 24,000 cookies for a local customer.
I KNOW.
Let’s break it down:
To start with, we are exceptionally thankful for such an opportunity at the end of a completely bizarre pandemic year. This customer works so hard to always utilize local businesses for their events and that makes me want to climb to the top of a 24,000 cookie mountain and shout how much we appreciate it.
No, we have no solid plan for accomplishing our goals for next week and yes, we know that is SO MANY BAKED GOODS. We always seem to figure it out and we are girls that love a solid challenge, so there was no backing away from this one.
As always, math is our stumbling block. Jeanne came over yesterday and we sat down to order all the packaging supplies we will need. We ordered 2,000 tart papers and about eight hours later, I realized that if we are making 2,000 gift boxes, we need 12,000 tart papers. I had to email the supplier and confess that I miscounted by 10,000. Entrepreneurial pro tip: get a Director of Procurement that has the most basic mathematical prowess.
Trucks should be arriving this week with all the cute packaging supplies, but I’ve learned that semi truck drivers really don’t care if the contents of the pallet are adorable…they really just want someone to sign the invoice so they can move on. (Business idea: transport company that gets super excited about the contents of your shipment. That’s an untapped market.)
And next week, we will mark “bake our biggest order ever” right off our bucket list and move on to Christmas week, where the work really begins. Gulp.