Chocolate Covered Edamame

I'm really not trying to be a Scrooge or a whiner.  But Halloween always brings out the stories about the dangers of eating too much candy from Trick or Treating. 
Nutritionists are called into play and even a recent article in the Tulsa World gave a list of candy which is TOO bad for your kids to be eating.
Of course the candy on that list is what we refer to as "junk candy".  Most studies on the world wide consumption of candy show that lots of folks prefer to spend a little more to eat a better, finer brand of chocolate or candy while at the same time relishing the good candy over handfuls of junk candy.
Halloween is, after all, a one day holiday.  When I was a kid, it was one of the most fun days of the year.  People actually made popcorn balls and candy apples and cookies to give as treats.  We were never afraid of eating candy and our parents didn't have to go through our treat bags to see what we had been given.  Nutrition wasn't part of the picture and after a few weeks, all the candy was either old or gone and we didn't have to worry about what it was going to do to us.
Then came the days of the Halloween scare.  People were putting razor blades and glass in candy, or opening packages and tainting the candy.  Parents stopped wanting their kids to go Treat or Treating.  And there was good reason for that.
Families, churches and groups started having parties on Halloween so that kids wouldn't be out in the neighborhood facing what could possibly be a dire consequence. 
Now comes the days of the Nutrition Question.  How good is it for kids to have candy?  I am not advocating that parents turn their kids loose, letting them eat and eat until they are sick.  But it seems to me that every day of the year we all should be balancing our eating habits with a reasonable approach to veggies vs. sweets.
And how come we aren't overwhelmed with articles about the nutritional quality of candy on other holidays?  Christmas is by far the biggest candy holiday, closely followed by Valentine's Day.  But those holidays don't produce such articles.  It's just the kids' holiday that calls into question how and why kids should be rescued from candy.
Okay.  So I am a little bit of a whiner.  Afterall, I have a store which sells candy.  But Sweet Tooth avoids a lot of the "junk stuff" in favor of manufacturers who take pride in the ingredients they use to make their sweets.  We work to bring the best Sugar Free chocolates to our store for those who need to avoid sugar.  We are on the look out for possible new candies which are organic, are gluten-free and aren't made in factories which also use nuts.
Our staff knows how to check ingredients and to find answers to the nutrirional value of the candy we sell.
There are responsible ways to incorporate a little sweetness into our lives.  And by the way, the latest candy item on the market is chocolate covered Edamame....so the day of mixing veggies and chocolate is already here!

It's Getting Close to Turkey Time

I am thinking about Thanksgiving which is only a few weeks away.
I was flipping through the November Southern Living magazine.  Looking at the recipes in the magazine, I began to wonder what ever happened to down home Thanksgiving food?  Like yams with marshmellows on top or my least favorite Thanksgiving food:  green beans with those canned French Fries?  One friend wasn't satisfied unless she could see the ridges which formed on the jelly cranberry sauce in the can!!
Everything now is a gourmet twist on holiday food.  If you don't put something spicy in your beans or potatoes or you don't dolly up your cransberries and your stuffing, then you are really out of step with the rest of the world.
I always thought that holiday meals gave us the opportunity to relive memories of holidays past.  We could sit around the table and tell the story of how my Dad thought it was okay to give our 10 month old daughter some pumpkin pie, with all those spices.  The result of that taste of pumpkin pie created some interesting diaper moments.
We always looked forward to that special Turkey.  Years ago we didn't eat turkey during most of the year.  It was a dish we saved for Thanksgiving and my Mom's turkeys were always the best.  Our Dad loved the neck and the giblets...no one dared touch any of those pieces without his permission.
Pumpkin pie didn't appear on an everyday menu either.  What about mince meat pie.....ugh! we thought, who would eat that mess? but it was always on the dessert table.  When I finally got up the nerve to try it, I had to admit that mince meat wasn't so bad afterall.
Around the store we always chuckle about Thanksgiving questions from our customers.  It's just like St. Patrick's day....not a candy holiday.  Chocolate makers have attenpted to get into that market, but for Thanksgiving the most we can do is sell foil covered chocolate turkeys or the Big Mr. Tom Turkey which weighs 3 pounds!
Nonetheless pumpkin has become an addition to Fall chocolates...pumpkin malt balls, pumpkin caramels, pumpkin bark and pumpkin truffle.  When Thanksgiving is past, we will still have customers ask for one of these pumpkin candies.
People complain that retailers skip over Halloween and Thanksgiving in a rush to put out the Christmas offerings!!  There is some truth to that comment..our society has definitely over-commercialized winter holidays.  Looking at the situation from the retailers point of view, though, it is the 4th quarter of the year which makes the entire year financially successful.
So give us retailers a little slack...shopping locally will insure that our doors will be open year around.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

You may not know this, but the gift industry is very involved with charitable causes.  HIV/Aids and Breast Cancer are 2 important causes which are extremely important to retailers, manufacturers, sales reps and other vendors.
Every trip to the Dallas Market is highlighted with signage about supporting a cure for HIV/Aids  and lots of manufacturers donate funds from their sales to support research on Breast Cancer.
Yesterday late afternoon we looked south on Harvard and saw the pink police car parked in the Kiddlestix parking lot, lights flashing and people coming to talk to the officers, cars driving by honking their support.
It made me think about one of my most favorite gift lines which we have carried for years, since we met Meredith Baxter (actress and Breast Cancer fundraising supporter) at the Dallas Market
Meredith Baxter was promoting the sale of CAREN Products, a wonderful, luxurious line of lotions, scientifically developed to give your hands, your body and your feet a source for dealing with dry skin.  Caren Products have light scents which don't interfer with perfumes or colognes, while still having the effect of reducing dry skin.
I personally love this lotion and use it every day.  In fact I carry around the little sample jar which we have given out to our customers and refill it religiously so that I am never without a soothing scoop of that hand cream.
But most important is that Caren has formed a partnership with Breast Cancer Alliance and has also been a supporter of Enable of Georgia, Inc. which supports adults with developmental disabilities to live meaningful and active lives.
In 2009 Caren Products made a $130,000 donation to flood victims in the Atlanta area as well as other groups, by donating thousands of bath and body products to those people challenged by the flooding in that area.
Now when I reach into my pocket for a little scoop of hand lotion, or doctor my feet at night before bedtime, I can also feel just a little bit better that I am using a product whose developers and owners put their money where their mouth is.

We Know Your Name!!

This past Wednesday evening Sweet Tooth had a special guest.  We easily referred to him as "Michael" but in fact he is the President of Trollbeads USA.  He came to Oklahoma from Princeton, NJ to travel this territory with our new Trollbeads sales rep, Myra and he especially wanted to visit with us.
Our staff gathered around the Trollbeads case, snacking on grapes and cheese and listened to Michael talk to us about the new USA organization of Trollbeads, a company headquartered in Denmark.
Why is this such a big deal, you ask?  Well, for quite some time our store has been the outpost for Trollbeads.  There is no other store in Oklahoma which carries this wonderful bead line, artisan based and uniquely created.
I imagine Michael wanted to know what has kept us going all these years, with the revolving door of showrooms and sales reps which have never stayed long enough to really become a partner to Sweet Tooth.
Our answer to that question is that we respect this line, its beauty, the jewelry artists who work to create it and the Denmark family which has owned and operated the company for many, many years.
These days it is necessary for retailers to wade through all the knock offs, all the mediocre gift lines and jewelry lines to find those special manufacturers whose mission and goal is to put their customers and collectors first.
The USA Trollbeads group is such a manufacturer and our customers who purchase Trollbeads know that they are wearing jewelry which really does stand out above the many other bead lines which from a distance are pretty and shiny but upon close inspection are simply uninspired copy cats of a lot of other bead lines on the market.
And what makes Sweet Tooth different in this regard?  We do not want to be cashiers who ring up sales but have no real knowledge and commitment to the items we are selling.  Boring!!
We like hearing Michael's insider stories.  We enjoy being the first to know what is coming up in the future.  We want to be the store where everyone who works here can tell our customers something special about what we sell.
You hear lots of talk about customer service, but where do you really find that sort of approach?  Is it at the department store where you have to search for a sales person because the company she works for doesn't think it important to have staff on hand to serve you?
Is it standing in line at the grocery and having to listen to the conversations of one employee with another, while you are practically ignored or have to interrupt their conversation to get your questions answered?
I'm not saying Sweet Tooth is perfect in this way, but I am saying that we strive to put our customers first and get their questions answered.
Sweet Tooth's goal is to be a "home away from home", a place where people feel wanted and comfortable.  We want to be the place where it is fun to shop and just like in that great sit com "Cheers", we know your name!!

I Want Some More...

Last night a friend asked me "what is the latest trends in candy?".  I was literally stumped for a minute, trying to flip through the long list of candy items in my mind and see if several of them actually constitute a "trend".
My response, at last, was kosher salt and spicy ingredients mixed with chocolate.
Not being completely sure that I was giving an authentic answer, I clicked on Google today and put in the words "candy trends".  The Google meter indicated that there are 58,500,000 results to those words.  Wow!  Let's try to narrow that search..
So I put in the words "U.S. candy trends"....only 43,000,000 plus results under that title.  Finally I put in "Oklahoma candy trends" and what came up was a number of candy stores in our state.
Not really having the time to read even 100 results on Google, I decided to rely on my own impressions of what is happening in the Mid-west.  Here goes:
Kosher salt on chocolate...whether it is in a bar, on a truffle or on a cream, kosher salt is showing up all over the chocolate industry.  So is spicey combinations of pepper and chocolate.
Artisan:  that seems to mean candy which is hand crafted and local.  Of course there are lots of small candy stores which make incredibly delicious candy and many people are willing to pay the cost of an individually produced, hand crafted chocolate.  And yet, most stores don't really carry that kind of candy....I suppose the demand is not yet strong enough to support the cost.
Reinterpreted Retro Candy is another category.  I can swear to that trend, since at Sweet Tooth we do get lots of folks who oooh and aaahhh over Clark bars, Bit O Honey, Neccos and Nik L Nip, to name a few.  This trend is fueled by parents wanting to introduce their children to the favorite candies from their childhood.
Recent concern about obesity in the U.S. has created a trend in itself.  Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water!!  Candy is a snack, not a replacement for a meal.  And judging by the annual increase in sales of good candy (and I'm not talking about the junk stuff you find at the convenience store!), people are finding the means to purchase a treat which has a more meaningful flavor and greater value.
And judging by those gummi vitamins I take every night, even a candy store owner works hard to combine nutrition and chocolate.  It's sort of a "S'more approach"....and I want some more.

Hats off to Gary!!

Here's what I was doing on Tuesday.  I have been doing this same thing over 40 times in the last 20 years.
The first time I did this was in our original Sweet Tooth store right after we bought the store in September, 1992 and I have been doing the same thing 2 times a year since then.
It's no secret that I have a special relationship with our candy sales rep, Gary.  We first sat down together at Sweet Tooth #1 to order candy for Christmas, 1992.  Our back room which served as office and storage was so tiny that the back of my desk chair was up against the bathroom door.  And I worked alone for those first few months, so sitting down to order candy was a real challenge.
It used to take about 8 hours to order Halloween/Christmas or Valentine's/Easter.  We have gotten that time down to around 5 hours, 5 intense and sometimes humorous hours.
Gary brings his big catalogue binders and samples of candy.  He spreads out the samples on the counter and we tenderly hold each one, while at the same time judging whether this candy item is going to sell in the store.
We go through our last year's seasonal order, telling Gary which items sold well and which were a big mistake.  It is amazing that Gary is able to keep every comment in his head and remind me when I lose track of what happened a year ago.
We joke about some of the candy experiences we have had.  We hem and hah and occasionally Jeff and I differ in our opinions.  Just to be frank, I usually win the debate.  Or sometimes when we each have such differing opinions we joke that one of our names is going on that item and if it sells, we get the credit.  If it sits on the shelf and has to be put at 50% off after the holiday, then that person gets the ribbing and the blame.
The real trick, though, is that we have to think at least 6 months ahead.  We are just getting into the Halloween season, but we are ordering candy for Valentine's and Easter/Spring.  How do we really know what the trends and tastes will be 6 months from now?? 
For the past 20 Easter seasons we have ordered the same item every year:  I call it DUCK WITH A HAT.  It is a foil covered chocolate duck wearing a hat and it used to be the first Easter candy to sell out.  Now my favorite duck sits quietly on the shelf, not attracting much attention anymore.  It doesn't sell out, but there is a special sentiment attached to that Duck and we will keep ordering it until it is no longer made.
There is no crystal ball.  There is no survey of candy favorites.  There is no history of what sold which could guarantee us that certain candies will sell again.  We pretend that what happened last year will happen again or be even better next year.  And most of the time we get it right.  But we couldn't do any of this without Gary whose years of experience, conversations with other retailers, sales meetings in Dallas and his own "gut feeling" that really counts the most as we go through each seasonal order.
So hats off to Gary, to the real work of ordering candy, the sampling (of course!!) and to 2013 when we will find out if we were right when we sat down on October 2, 2012 to place our seasonal candy order.