So, I’ve sold at the Century City Farmers Market twice so far, and it’s very thought-provoking… probably b/c you spend so many hours standing in your tent and looking out at people, pretty much all you can do is think and observe…

Here are my musings so far:

It reminds me a little of camping. You only have what you bring, and if you forget something, you do without, fashion something, or ask others. There is, of course, a mall across the walkway, but it’s far for me to run and grab something. This week, I remembered to bring twine to tie my tent to the fence to prevent it from flying away, but I forgot scissors. I ended up tying up my tent with my plastic bags-as-rope instead.

I’ve taken to calling out some variation of “Handmade Candy Bars, Caramels, and Marshmallows!” when people go by (the market is in a pretty big plaza, so there’s a wide distance btw the vendor across the path and me; people aren’t forced against your booth like at some other markets). I didn’t have a banner the first time, so it was really necessary b/c my products aren’t exactly prominent enough to speak for themselves. If I see that they’re already looking at my booth, I say “free samples!” but I don’t generally look directly at them.

People expect to sample anything they might buy, or just expect samples in general. My marshmallows aren’t selling all that much so far, and I think it’s in part b/c I haven’t brought samples of them yet. The Health Dept permit dictates that I pre-wrap all of my samples. I usually cut marshmallows into 4 pieces for samples, so I’ve just been putting off the process of individually wrapping such tiny marshmallows pieces for the market (but I’m going to try it this upcoming week). People don’t really seem to be influenced by my Gourmet clip that I put next to them. Only a couple have actually read it, but anyone who glances at the marshmallows is innocently informed that “Gourmet magazine said that they’re the most fabulous marshmallows they’ve ever tasted.” The usual response is just a nod.

The market is really like a race, and this one is especially short — only 3 hours at most to get rid of your products. Hence, my calling out to anyone within earshot.

To display my bars, I ended up printing photo-quality sheets with their cross-section pic and description to put in frames, and I use leftovers from previous weeks as my display bars, so it’s ok if they’re damaged from the heat as long as they don’t look too melty. I had them propped up the first week, but one fell from the wind and the glass shattered. This week, I took off all the glass, and taped the pic’s into the frames as neatly as I could and put them flat. I have to look around harded for those clear acrylic frames in 8×10 so that they will stand up and it’s ok if they fall (I could only find them in smaller sizes last week)

The best feeling so far is when you can tell that someone is walking straight to your booth and they already know what they want to buy. I also liked it when someone came up to the booth on her cell phone excitedly saying “…she has a flavor she didn’t have last time…” And of course, when someone comes back with friends/colleagues to show off the products.

I get thirsty from the heat and calling out, but I don’t want to drink too much b/c going to the bathroom is a pain (far from my booth) and kind of gross (johnny on the spot).

Just like with my online sales, I wholeheartedly worship repeat customers, and feel a little weak-kneed when I’m around them.

The scale of purchases is very different from online. My most popular items online are boxes of 6 candy bars, which is $30. Most people at the market by one to three bars, and if they buy more (or even not that much sometimes), they almost always ask for a discount. I don’t really know what to do about that. I’m sorry, but a 4-bar sale is not a rare or huge sale for me, no matter how appreciative I am of it. The best I can think of is to throw in a couple extra caramel samples. I’m going to bring extra gift boxes so that I can put them together on the spot for people, but I hope they don’t expect a discount on them… That’s just not the scale of my business. I use less packaging at the market, but I still have to pay set fees every week that I have to cover and factor in.

People attempt to bargain more than I thought they would, or sometimes pick a price out of thin air. “I’ll take one of these candy bars… It’s a dollar….” as the customer opened her bag. “Um, no… it’s five dollars…” She scoffed and walked away. A few people have been scared off by the price, which I’m sure happens online, but it’s something to see their faces and hear their voices in person. If they’re nice about it and regretful that they can’t afford it, I practically force them to take an extra sample or two with them, because I genuinely want people to eat good candy. But if they’re rude about it, I let them go. I also try to explain why they’re so spendy.

It’s come to a point where I get completely giddy when people give me exact change. My candy bars are $5, but my marshmallows are $6 and my caramels $7 so I have needs for singles. I always leave with fewer bills than I brought — few ones, many twenties. Vendors generally help each other out if you need to break a $20. I dread the day I forget to go to the bank for $1s and $5s if I’m low…. though the market is surrounded by banks, so it shouldn’t be huge deal. But I hate to leave my booth/things alone, even if the other vendors will watch out for it.

I am between a hummus stand called BabaFoods and the ThinKrisps stand (which sells crunchy baked discs of parmesan and cheddar cheeses in different flavors), and all of their vendors are friendly and helpful. I’ve become addicted to both of their products, and especially with the hummus people, I’m hoping that our trading system keeps up (they especially like my cinnamon almond caramels) — I will not rest until I have had a container of all of their flavors, and will then choose what I want based on my mood. This week, Pesto Hummus… Yum! I even dipped some lemon-pepper parmesan crisps in it… Yum!

I admire the Hummus people, btw, for how much setup their booth requires that they go through. They bring lots of coolers with ice b/c the hummus is in a sort of indented table on ice for the whole market. It melts and gets wet, but they pack and unpack so cleanly. They get there maybe 2.5 hours before the market officially starts.

I bring two coolers, and one is a medium max-cold and one is only a mini. It was 70F my first time and 80F my second time. I put extra ice packs in my cooler the second time, but I think it got too cold — I saw a kid kind of gnaw at the orange bar sample that she had. I use my handy laser thermometer to monitor the temp, but it is a little uneven in the cooler.

I bought my tent used for $40, but it’s old and heavy. Another vendor guessed it was made in roughly 1964. They’re much lighter, and cleaner now. I don’t have a dolly, so I bring everything piece by piece across the plaza (though I’d probably be able to borrow a dolly if I inquired around, but part of me likes the exercise). I also have to move my car from where we unload… to a lot that charges $9 to park!

One customer suggested that I ask for people’s business cards so that I can add them to my mailing list for corporate holiday sales (which by the way, is a major reason for my selling at this market), which I think is a fantastic idea. Maybe I should offer a once a month drawing for a free box of 6 candy bars (or something??) as an incentive to give their business card? I could get a little jar for them.

A lot of people take my business card even if they don’t buy anything, which is great.

Just a little blurb to say that for all of my whining about wholesale, I’ve met some really wonderful people who own and work at stores.   I love walking into Market Gourmet in Venice to restock my products, like I did today.  I’ve done two demos there (and had two cancelled b/c my products sold out, thus negating the need of the demo), and I know the people there and they know me.  It makes such a big difference!  After I drop off my products at a store, it can be oddly hard to figure out what happens to them beyond whether they sold or not, and whether employees are aware of them –  I’m just not there, and it’s not like I can stakeout the joint. But when I go to Market Gourmet just about everyone who works there who sees me makes a point to tell me about customers’ reactions — like how someone has been calling them daily to find out the availability of my bars, how people are so happy when they buy them, how a lot of people are buying two at a time (great when your smallish products are $5-6/ea), how my products fly off the shelves, and how I’ve developed a following.  It’s just so very nice.

Come to think of it, Metropulos and The Candy Store are also very good about sharing customer (and employee) reactions.  The only difference is that they’re out of town, so I don’t get to see them in person.  And at Chefmakers, I hear about and see customer reactions all the time… but I do work there, so it has an advantage. But it’s that communication and awareness of each other as human beings and business people that makes wholesale good.  Otherwise, when it’s impersonal, careless, or purely based on the bottom line, it’s just draining.

I’d never been to the Market Gourmet before I went to give them samples of my products, and actually, when I’m not looking for the people, my eyes wander on the shelves.  There may be lots of cupcake and frozen yogurt shops in LA, but true, well-rounded mom and pop gourmet stores are few and far between so if you can, check it out… and if your eyes wander to the shelf where my products are placed, so be it… and tell them that I said hello…

I didn’t make the food in this picture… And it doesn’t even contain chocolate…. But it symbolizes an important part of BonBonBar’s development… not to mention ritual, and I think that it qualifies as part of my work.

As I never fail to mention, the business keeps me either busy or tired almost all week long. During the weekends especially, which are filled with sprints of production, and Mondays, when I package, I barely have time to eat, so after I go to the post office and UPS as late possible in order to protect the packages from heat for as long as possible, I’m usually very hungry and tired.

I usually go to California Chicken Cafe (CCC; which is mercifully near UPS) to get a Low-Cal Chicken Caesar Salad to take home, eat, and then digest while taking an evening nap. I happen to like that salad a lot, and in a good way, it always reminds me of the weekend that I got overwhelmed preparing orders for Valentine’s Day.

I was extremely tired and hungry after that difficult weekend, and I went to Urth Caffe for a green salad with grilled chicken. As I sat there, alone at a sidewalk table, I remember feeling hyper-aware — in a comatose-sort-of-a-way — of every sensation that I experienced… the feeling of the most wonderful fresh air against my face… the initially-cold metal chair that was in contact with as much of my back and legs as I could manage in order to support them… the lacing sunshine and shadows covering the tables and sidewalk… the varied voices of the patrons around me, discussing business and pleasure… and most of all, the way that the lettuce in the salad snapped, so refreshingly and satisfyingly. I found myself eating the pieces of lettuce one by one, savoring the cool crunch of each bite. A bite with chicken meant a little chewiness, a new flavor, a welcome occasional addition.

I knew I must have been quite a sight — tired, probably disheveled, and marveling at each bite with a stupefied smile — but I didn’t care — and don’t care how weird it may seem to write about it now — I can still feel that sense of relief and goodness that I knew that early February evening, eating that salad.

Salad can easily get short shrift. Some people see it as the go-to healthy option, but it’s often not — because it’s often drenched with dressing. But if dressed lightly or not at all, it really is a way to savor fresh ingredients; or if you like a ton of dressing, like I sometimes do, that’s great, but not healthy. I think of Suzanne Goin as the master of salads. In her cookbook, you can see how salads become a way to combine fresh, individual ingredients so that they can be appreciated for their flavor, texture, and color individually and in combination with each other. Part of her genius method is to arrange salads on plates, instead of bowls. I think it makes a huge difference. A bowl of food is something like an inverted pile… and I tend to plow through those without much thought (they are, in fact, my own staple, fast meals). But a salad of fresh ingredients laid out on a plate — again, not as a pile — has a striking poetry to it. You can’t help but taste it.

The beauty of the CCC Low-Cal Chicken Caesar Salad is that it has squares of toasted pita in addition to the lettuce and chicken. The dry crunch of the delicate pita, the bursting wet crunch of the lettuce, the cushion of chicken, the “sauce” of dressing… really, it’s quite luxurious. I always thought that cubes of croutons were too harsh to put in a salad, so the thin pieces of toasted pita are just brilliant to me. Oh, and the low-cal caesar dressing is salty… wonderfully salty. Others have railed against the mediocrity of the chicken caesar salad, but when done right like this, I love it — with layers of so many textures and flavors.

Anyway, since that V-Day weekend, I usually have a half-size Low-Cal Chicken Caesar Salad as my meal on Monday, and I’ve also made it a point to try something new — a pastry or variety of fruit, usually — every week as a way to be inspired. I haven’t really taken pictures or blogged about it, but it’s something that I take seriously. A year ago, I would have thought that only one inspiration a week is… well… weak… but when you’re busy, it’s just enough to avoid overload — and non-blog-posting guilt.

So… this week, I got a bad CCC salad — overdressed with NON-low-cal dressing (ie, regular Caesar dressing). Despite some popular sentiment, I don’t think that fat equals flavor. It can maintain heat and carry some flavoring, but often, I think it mutes flavor… and makes me feel greasy besides. Plus, the dressing wasn’t as salty as I liked. It was just a bland, limp, fatty salad.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt that my weekly inspiration shouldn’t just be a pastry, it should be a meal. So, I drove out to Square One Dining… and had just the most perfect experience ever. I was tired and wasn’t planning on taking a picture, but after I took a bite of the grits with cheddar and bacon — and experienced the slight pop of the cheese-inflected grits surrounding a piece of perfectly crunchy, smoky bacon — I just had to capture the memory.

And then there was the French Toast with Butter and Maple Syrup. Amazing… the airy brioche, with a curiously light and flavorful eggy batter as a coating. Again, I was in my signature hyper-aware-yet-slightly-comatose state, and I tried to figure out how they did it without asking (though the staff was super-friendly; I just felt like solving a puzzle, and as a backup, had a vague memory that someone asked for the recipe in the LATimes).

And you know how I’m not a big fan of sweet, eggy dishes… but this french toast didn’t taste like eggs… It tasted like heaven; it didn’t at all need maple syrup or butter, except as occasional novelty. I saw little black flecks, and deduced that maybe they infused the cream/milk for the french toast with vanilla beans before adding the eggs to the batter. The result was a combination that was a balance of eggs and vanilla that produced almost a new flavor — not quite one or the other. And incidently, they use local/organic whenever they can, and they use same eggs that I do for my pecan nougat — Mike & Sons.

When I got home, I found that the LATimes had indeed posted the recipe… and that the eggy batter was actually a creme anglaise! In culinary school, we were taught that eggs shouldn’t be cooked twice, so I’m a bit impressed at how Square One so flagrantly QUADRUPLE cooks its eggs in this dish — technically, the eggs in the anglaise are cooked twice and the eggs in the brioche are cooked twice.

It was also the first time that I’ve asked to take home leftovers from a breakfast-based meal, because I couldn’t imagine letting it go to waste. I thought that the leftovers would pale in comparison to the fresh version, but amazingly, they were delicious — cold, and then heated for under a minute in the microwave. Quintuple-cooked eggs… yum…(!)

And what does this have to do with candy bars and marshmallows? Well, I should mention — I’ve come a long way since that V-Day weekend, three months ago. I’ve sent out orders much larger than that weekend, still all by myself, with much greater ease, but I still feel humbled — and in a way, appreciative — of that experience… Even though now, frankly, I’m feeling a little fierce, or at the very least, more able. The new summer-related challenge is to make sure that they don’t melt after they leave me, but with fingers crossed, I’m feeling up to it.

And the inspiration of new food is so important. I taste my confections constantly because the process of making them has so many variables, but I’m always aiming for each to taste like one thing… and that can be a little confining, no matter how delicious. There are so many flavors and textures — that is, products — that I still want to explore and make. Consistent inspiration and quality is vital to me… and my company.

And Tommy, if you’ve read this far, I’ve finally thought of my Six Word Memoir:

She Tried To Do Things Right.

(with full awareness that “right” is subjective… after all, I’m not tagging anyone with this, b/c I just tend not to :))

Will close tomorrow (Saturday) at Noon PT.  They’ll be mailed out on Monday.

But if you live in LA, you can tune in to 94.7 The Wave every day next week during lunch to enter to win BonBonBar candy bars and marshmallows for Mom!

Check it out — Katie Ricketts, the community/market organizer for the Southland Farmers’ Market Association, has written a wonderful post about her experience with me and my BonBonBars on the “Emerald City” Green Living Blog of the LATimes. You can also follow the SFMA link above to read about their “Celebrate the Market” Gala Dinner and Auction on May 18. In addition to many other fantastic things, they’ll be auctioning off a basket of my candy bars and marshmallows.

And yes, I do respond to “marshmallow lady!”

And thanks so much to everyone for the caramel feedback! I’m going to respond to the new comments and post the results of my recipe trials before the weekend.