wholesale

 

Sophisticated Establishment - one of my new bread customers

Check out those wagon wheels, what a shop! well its more like a little bar actually or "Baraka" as they call them here.

After months of slogging away for more sales I've changed direction and moved away from trying to sell the odd bread here and there 'retail' and tried to find some wholesale buyers. So far so good and I now have 3 or 4 regular customers who take approx. 30 breads each. Of course, to enable them to make a mark up I've had to drop my price by 20% but for the number they are buying I think its worth it for now. My profit margin is slimmer but hopefully the volumes will make up for it. I'll let you know how it progresses over the coming weeks but for now all seems well :)

the worst 4 x 4 x far

 

another happy customer

Following last weeks flour theft episode (see previous post) I have been behind on stock of ingredients. Today I have a new regular customer - see pic above, a shopkeeper - who wants 30 breads. Great so make him the breads! If only it was that simple. With no flour today and stock only due in tonight from Maputo I have sent a friend off to buy some flour in the local town (at an extortionate rate). My friends car got a flat tyre this morning so he took the Land Rover.

Not 5 minutes later I get a call: "the bottom has just fallen out of the car!".

Great! that's one car in Maputo, one with a flat tyre and the other along the way with the drive-shaft sitting on the road... This could be an interesting day. I have to try and get the car rescued first, then worry about how I'll get hold of some flour...

Burglar bars installed

 

Burglar bars - a necessary evil

"Let me out!" - Hendrik doing the fitting

Finally getting the necessary security in over the windows, you can see from the bottom picture above the mosquito netting on the window is still broken. Just in time as we had new ingredients arrive last night which I really can't afford to replace.

The one bag of flour we had stolen meant we couldn't bake yesterday so that is lost earnings. Good news is I secured an order of 50 breads for delivery this afternoon. That's quite a large one off order which hopefully will bring repeat business!

Flooding

 

Waiting to go up in the helicopter

 

Flood damage to crops and house

 

our rice - fortunately survived

Flooding can be both a good and a bad thing...

Today I have news of both. On the negative side there has been some severe flooding of the local population's farm land with some corn fields and a neighbouring rice project particularly affected.

Not all doom and gloom though as a veritable flood of new orders for bread have come in this week so far. including a possible contract to supply +/- 100 breads a day to a local business down the road. I have ordered a larger 'production run' already of which i'll take 50 with me tomorrow and see if we can get them sold first. If we can it will be a great start to getting things back on track!

Is it almost xmas?

Coming as I do from a cold and wet island in the northern hemisphere, I'm finding it pretty difficult to relate the weather here right now to Christmas... Its mid-day and easily about 38/40 degrees C (about 100 / 105 fahrenheit) the temperature alone isn't the killer but the humidity, I've given up on wearing a t-shirt today as it was soaking wet by 9am... surely its going to be too warm for Santa to visit tonight in his big red fur suit? Lets see... fortunately my folks very kindly posted up some goodies for me the other week, so I have some good reading to get stuck into and nice colombian coffee beans!

Yesterday I went for a quick blast around on the quad bike to sell some breads, as one does when you're a quad-baker. Sales didn't go too great but on the way home I saw a car stranded on the side of the road. Pulling over to see if they needed help I saw their brand new off road trailer had lost an axle, poor luck... anyway with 6 young children between 2 families I took them back with me and we helped them get the trailer off the road and it's now stored here. The funny thing was seeing the young children, I took them into our TV room to watch some TV and they immediately saw all of the left over toys from the xmas party, they thought they had died and gone to heaven! needless to say my early morning doze was pierced by the shrill cries of children running around playing, not such a bad thing though, we were happy to help.

Get on your bike

Having lacked the transport of late to go and make bread deliveries, I have just come into some luck. I've been lent a quad-bike (a 700cc Suzuki King-quad) to be precise. Its nice and powerful and even subtly camouflaged, handy should I come across any bread bandits... Not sure there's too many of them around, but you never know!

This afternoon will be the test run, I'll take 20 breads with me on my lap to the local 'shop' and see if I can make any sales. Wish me luck!

Sad Sales

It is with great regret that I have to let you know Mango is no longer with us. Having 6 real people to look after as well as 80 staff, 15 goats, 11 horses, 105 cows, 7 dogs and 1 cat I just couldn't provide Mango with the full time love and attention he deserves. Don't worry though I have found him a wonderful foster family at the beach about 30km from here where he is being well looked after and can spend every day with this glorious view!

Hopefully his new parents will allow me visitations when I get through to the beach camp...

The title of the post is sad sales as in a run of bad events thats how the sales figures are looking for this month. In order for me to really get the bakery profitable (rather than just covering costs) I've found that I have to get out there with a bag of breads on my back - or in the car - and sell the breads myself. As I have been distracted with various other happenings that required my attention I have had to step back and wind down production somewhat. All of which disappoints me greatly :(

During December the local population here increases, as a lot of people who have jobs working in neighbouring South Africa in mining or construction come home for the holidays complete with their festive pay packets. It could be a great time to get production up again and make some profit to drive us into the new year and complete all building works and look for expansion. Lets wait and see but I will remain as positive as ever! :)

Things to do...

...When its been raining for the last 4 days solid... well make a swimming pool out of a puddle of course, complete with a little ladder to dive off.

Yes we are suffering from a touch of cabin fever!

The rain is however great for the rice we planted two weeks ago. Not having to use the diesel pump to pump water has saved us big bucks in diesel expenses.

Fortunately for the Bakery the work on the oven now has the temporary roof covering and insulation so we're not losing too much heat in the oven. I even made some rusks  (see recipe here) yesterday which turned out great and didn't actually look like burnt muffins this time, that's because A) they didn't get burnt... and B) I found a small baking tray on which to cook them.

Not a great week for sales so far though as we're down to one car again and its not always available for me to borrow and transport breads to Bela Vista for Alfonso's wife to sell. Anyone have a spare bakkie/truck lying around they don't need!?

glorious monday's

The beginning of another enthralling week here in the bush. We've punched through the 10 thousand sales mark (10944 and counting) and still waiting for the electricity box to be installed. With regards to the electricity meter, I thought we might actually be getting somewhere when a van from the local electricity authority arrived, complete with six uniformed workers, wires, new boxes, a tall ladder etc. Anyway they took a good look then said they'd be back 'later'. This is Mozambique so I don't have my hopes too high but its now 4 days later and no sign of them... Perhaps a polite phone call would do the trick... If only I spoke Portuguese...

Luck doesn't seem to be on my side of late, as I had two flat tyres on the same vehicle on Friday. The first time the wheel with the flat tyre wouldn't come off the car, some fancy 'security' feature I thought. So we tried everything, handbrake off, ignition on, ignition off, twist this way, twist the other way. Still no luck.... eventually with my pride in my pocket I phoned my friend, the cars owner, and asked if there was any 'special way' to remove the tyre. "Climb under the car - which is jacked up - and kick the tyre off from the inside" wasn't the answer I was expecting, dangerous is the word that springs to mind. Luckily I had the bakers helping me although they insisted on telling me "see! it does have anti-theft"...

milestones

A good feeling today, we have passed the 10,000 breads sale mark! Woohoo! Currently sitting on sales of 10,364. Well actually someone just came in wanting another 4 but I have to find change somewhere....

The oven outer walls are progressing. Ready now for the concrete support ring beam then we can carry on taking the walls upwards.

Photos to the left show the master builder Rungu and his apprentice Jaime

Sales up... again!

Another week and another one of my little graphs. Sorry but I just can't help myself as they just seem to be heading in one direction at the moment...up!

The graph above shows the weekly cash sales for each of the 9 weeks since we started baking. As you can see the last 2 weeks where we started selling much more bread in Bela Vista have given the graph a nice spike :)

Expansion

I've been talking a bit of late about the increase in sales, but it warrants an explanation.

Alfonso, the chief baker has started to find me customers in the local town, starting with 5 here, 10 there etc. Then he came to me and said there's a fair sized demand for bread in the area he lives. "Cool" I said, take 20 breads home, sell them and bring me the cash tomorrow. Which he duly did - he's good like that. Then we went up to 50 breads a day and yesterday was 100! Now he doesn't sell these alone but has his wife in charge of it, and of course I can't let her do this out of the goodness of her heart, she must be paid.

As with all things involving money here, a sit down meeting was called, which also warrants the services of a translator. Luckily I have my friend and colleague Pedro who not only speaks Portuguese as a first language but also knows a thing or two about local labour etiquette so looked after my side of negotiations. I am of course exaggerating, and wasn't fighting for cheapest labour but needed a gauge on the going market rate. With that sorted I now have a third employee, albeit a casual and not on the books, but a daily rate.

Dropping off Alfonso one night with the consignment of breads I noticed he was carrying something else. In the car headlights I saw it said "Vende se Pao" ("Bread for Sale"). He had made his own sign with some left over paint and a piece of roof sheet off-cut I had at the bakery. Who said Africa can't do entrepreneurship! I'm really happy he has done this under his own steam, so much so that I went to Bela Vista - where he lives - to see where he had put the sign up. That's obviously what the photo above is of, although please note it isn't me standing there but my friend Mike.

A good week

The end of another week. Quite an interesting one it was too. For starters yesterday we sent our car (yes, the Nissan again) on a re-supply trip to the beach camp. It was due back yesterday afternoon but is still stuck there after a "clutch pipe" broke. Not being so mechanically minded, despite liking cars, I have decided the only course of action I can take to avoid this in future is to get rid of the Nissan down at the nearby quarry and hope it never comes back... A bit extreme perhaps but this car really has been giving us problems of late!

To add to my mechanical know how we have just received a MAN truck engine from South Africa this evening to be re-fitted to our broken down truck (another story). That may sound well and good until you realise the engine alone weighs around 1.5 tons and we have no mechanics here, let alone cranes to lift the engine off the bakkie. One theory involves setting up a winch system with poles and then towing the engine off the car with a land cruiser, I don't actually want to think about it right now!

All is not lost though, to the left is another of my little graphs and it illustrates what a jump we've seen in sales this week. Due mainly to some active marketing and beginning to sell more breads in the local town as word is spreading.

bread bonus

I'm really impressed with the way sales are totting up so far for October. In the first 6 days alone I have sold more bread personally than we did in 26 days last month! (this doesn't include the farm my contracted customer). I can attribute this to the previously posted "Bazza bonus", as well as just getting the word out there that bread is for sale here! I have also tried to ensure that I always have breads on hand to sell, any of the days produce not sold is donated to the afternoon's soup kitchen that's run for children in the community, so is not in my view a huge loss anyway.

After much deliberation, and more than a little internet research I have come to the conclusion that yesterdays snake was in fact a female boomslang and not a vine snake. Apologies to all Herpetologists (I think that's what snake experts are called). A boomslang, male or female, is of course still a deadly snake and one worth avoiding!!