Posted on Leave a comment

The Rise Of New Flavors

As we gained new customers, they asked what other crepe mix flavors we offered. Some customers even had suggestions. How about a rich dessert crepe to use for a crepe suzette? Another suggestion was a Buckwheat crepe.

We have developed all our products as complete mixes. You just add water.

We added extra eggs and vanilla to the Original mix and it became our Golden mix. It makes a great dessert crepe. We added cinnamon and vanilla to the Original to make our Hungarian mix. Try it with apple filling and vanilla ice cream. Or my favorite…mascarpone cheese and maple syrup.

The Buckwheat crepe took some time. We made two trips to France to find a taste we liked. We went to St Malo in Brittany on the North Sea. It is an amazing old walled city with a creperie at every turn. We ate at different creperie for every meal. We found a taste we liked and duplicated it for our Buckwheat mix.

The Chocolate crepe was an endurance test. The first attempts failed. The batter tasted like chocolate, the crepe smelled like chocolate as it cooked. The crepe lost its chocolate taste from the heat of cooking. We tried over thirty different cocoas before we found the one that kept its great chocolate taste.

Our Whole Wheat and Japanese crepe mixes were developed from customer suggestions.

Then it was on to gluten-free crepes. We purchased a mixer that is totally dedicated to our gluten-free products. We had three food science students from Ohio State as summer interns. They helped us learn how to replace the gluten items in our mixes. It took some time to perfect the texture and taste. Our gluten-free products are so good….you can’t tell they are gluten-free. We now offer gluten-free Original, Golden and Buckwheat crepe mix.

We have regular and gluten-free Pancake and Waffle mix.

We also have gluten-free Waffle Cone mix in three flavors. We have Original, Chocolate and Gingerbread. They are so good, the ice cream is just the ‘icing’ on the cone!

Posted on Leave a comment

Persistence Pays Off

More than fifteen years ago my husband dreamed of starting his own business. Once he decided on making crepes and using his grandmother’s recipe, the rest was smooth sailing. NOT!!

The first thing he needed was persistence…that’s the first “P” word.

A few examples of bumps in the road……

The recipe was excellent, but needed to be reworked. He tried freeze-drying, but that failed. He decided to use all dry ingredients and after months of work had a recipe that needed just an equal amount of water to make our crepe batter.

He settled on a co-packer in Michigan. After just a few short months, the co-packer decided we were too small and we were asked to find another for our product. He did find another and they were less than twenty miles from our home.

He placed an order for a needed ingredient and was told that it was unavailable, due to an outbreak of the avian flu. A mad scramble ensued and a new supply was found. The bad news was the price would be three times higher than previously paid. OUCH!!

And so the highs and lows continued but persistence paid off.

Now we needed new products to help grow the options available to our customers. Products will be the second “P” word.