I'll Order Now.
Today we mailed out over 500 tarts for a corporate client to destinations all over the United States. We were baked, boxed, and to UPS by 1 pm and if you’ve read here for long, then you know we are feeling rather accomplished right about now. Travis and I were discussing today that just a few years ago, we would have delivered those boxes steaming with tarts directly from the oven to UPS at 5:57 pm and at least one person would have cried during the day - probably me.
Of course, you might remember too that we ran out of pie boxes and bags on a fairly regular basis for the better part of years one through five of PJP because I’m a terrible procurement officer. I’ve finally become a decent procurement officer, though we now face a global supply chain crisis - ironically. Our baby pie boxes were scheduled to be delivered on Friday as we used our last ones in the store. Except they never showed up, stuck somewhere in middle Tennessee. On Saturday morning, the website updated to say the boxes were in the FedEx facility in Columbia.
And you know if there’s one person in the world apt for the job of going to the FedEx distribution facility to demand possession of a shipment on a non-delivery day, it’s Jeanne. She marched right out there at 7 am, but they were closed. So she went back when they opened at 9:30 and pounded on the door until someone was willing to help her. But by then, our boxes of boxes were buried deep on another semi-truck for delivery and we couldn’t have them until today. If Jeanne couldn’t get our boxes off a semi-truck on a Saturday morning, then who the in the world could?
Really though, as we all know - Saturday wasn’t the first time we’ve run out of boxes. And goodness knows it probably won’t be the last. So we sold baby pies in gable boxes leftover from last Christmas’ VU holiday light show and half our customers thought it was completely adorable and the rest didn’t seem to notice or care their pies were in an oversized box with a handle. I guess if we have to find a silver lining of the last 18 months of pandemic, it’s that we’ve all adjusted to items just not in stock or arriving late. And what’s a baby pie box shortage in comparison to the toilet paper shortage of last year?
When our boxes did arrive today, we basically swarmed the FedEx driver to take the boxes directly from his arms. We had already sent a number of baby pies home in gable boxes this morning while in the mess of boxing up tarts for shipping. Plus we had paper shred from filing the boxes all over the floor, another packaging component we started during the VU holiday light show that we kept because it is so cute for the overall tart box presentation.
After we were finished today and all cleaned up, I finally sat down in the office to answer email and guess who called? VU. About this year’s holiday light show. I’ll order the boxes now.
