Lil’ State of the State
We took a two-day break at Minifactory on July 4th & 5th. On the 4th I went into the shop for 30 minutes to mop up some water from defrosting a freezer and finish cleaning out the oven. I’ve kept up an aggressive pace of work for years as I grew increasingly single-minded about making this dream of mine come true; building V Smiley Preserves in Vermont and opening a brick & mortar location.
Opening Minifactory without a leadership team or managers and only a few experienced people sprinkled between the coffee bar, front of house and the kitchen, meant I’ve been working 115-hour workweeks since the end of March. I was used to and in shape for about 84 hours/week, but that was jam company hours, which is a lot of sitting. Restaurant hours are completely different. The morning bake transitions into a 6 hours service which transitions into baking prep and ends with a little bit of computer work. As Minifactory opened, we welcomed a new jam-maker, Evelyn, and Eli, our fulfillment lead, took on a larger role while I semi-disappeared as we got Minifactory onto its tracks.
I think the last 3.5 months have likely permanently altered me as a person. What that means, I’ll be spending the next several years figuring out. I still love food and I cherish this jam company immensely. Built slowly and with great intention, V Smiley Preserves is a pure expression of the places I’ve lived, the stories I’ve read, the people I’ve worked alongside and the customers I’ve met since starting out in 2013. While I figure out how to run a restaurant that serves our community, feels true to and expressive of my strengths, and provides a financial path for me personally (aka a way to make a living), I refer to VSP constantly to remember who I am and what I love about food and service.
This coming week, we welcome our first chef into the Minifactory kitchen. I will be handing over the baking side of my Minifactory duties to pastry chef Andrea Quillen and the pastry case at Minifactory will start to look more like it was intended and dreamed about.
A mental space has opened up in my brain in anticipation of this exciting transition and this week I’ve been able to dig into V Smiley Preserves in a way that’s been impossible for months. All the while, the cost of business has sharply increased. Our glass jars shot up another 20 cents each. Our apricots used to cost $2.75-3.50/lb. They now cost $4.30-5/lb. In light of this, we are preparing for an adjustment of our retail prices.
In August (the start of our 9th year!) our base price for 6 oz Core Collection Flavors will start at $15/jar. These are the flavors we produce in quantities to supply all year. Marmalades with their high labor cost will maintain their differential of being .75 - $2 more than the jams/conserves. Our super seasonal flavors land in the $16-19 zone. Our Featured Flavor, aka the monthly discounted 6oz flavor, will go to $11.
This means we are still priced variously above and below some of the brands we most admire, Ayako & Family / Sqirl / Girl Meets Dirt, while making honey (4x the cost of sugar) sweetened, no added pectin preserves.
I deeply appreciate your support over these 9 years.
Always, we are working to find the path between our values, pleasure (yours and ours) and service.
With gratitude,
V
