Want some very, very, very good chocolate?

You’ve come to the right place. That “uh oh” batch of chocolate I posted about here, has been corrected and the result is delicious. Really, really, really delicious.

And this was made possible by some rather talented and patient people.

I wanted to take the opportunity to chat a bit about “who”. There was an issue with the last batch- things were rushed and I didn’t get a sample, as requested. The result was not good enough, and it had to be redone (it wasn’t a tiny amount, either), which was a bit of a pain for all of us.

That, I believe, is an example of a bit of a mess up. Nothing catastrophic, though, by any means. Things should have been handled differently prior to manufacturing, but they weren’t, and they are well on their way to recovery now. Rushing a production run and not being totally thorough is something that most humans, when put in the appropriate position, would be capable of orchestrating. I think we’ve all left things to the last minute and scrambled to get a project done, just so we can move on to the next thing or make a deadline. I know I sure have (hello, all nighters!).

But that’s just human nature! Not the best trait, but a very common one, and by no means a deciding element of a person’s being. People mess up- sometimes for a long time and often more than once (some of us, on a daily basis. Or hourly basis. How do I actually get anything done ever let alone still exist? Pretty impressive!). Each situation has to be handled carefully when it comes to sentient beings, in particular.

There are only a couple of things I remember learning in university (and look at where those years have gotten me!) -

1. Your customers are more important to you than you are to them. Think, for example, of a major retail store selling a variety of chocolate bars. Is anything really bad going to happen if one of those lines of chocolate bars drops off the planet? Probably not. But, if that major retail store drops off the planet, the chocolate bar company would feel it.

2. Your suppliers are more important to you than you are to them. Think, for example, of having some employees. They supply you with skilled labour and hours of work that you yourself could not get done within a reasonable amount of time (… unless we’re talking 24 hour shifts in the kitchen- with only a good 12 of those hours being after everyone goes home for the day. That’s totally reasonable. As is taking cat naps on concrete floors waiting for the chocolate to finish melting at 2am.). If you really rely on them, as much as many start ups do, their leaving you or abruptly reducing their work quality could be hugely problematic. When you’re the boss of your own business, you are not the boss. At least not for a little while, because you need all the help you can get and will jump pretttttttty high to get it.

So, my “suppliers” could have just walked or said “Well, it’s too much work to have us redo the batch and you’re not that vital to us anyway, Emma of Zimt.” and have moved on with life. But they didn’t. They made two different test batches to make sure that we were absolutely solid and, I am happy to say, have the chocolate getting perfected as I type.

Good people, not perfect people, are the key.

And these are some very, very good people making some very, very good chocolate.

Hope you enjoy it! The batch will be wrapped next week =)

Emma