A pretty EPIC day!

I am blogging this, as I want to have a written record of the craziest thing that happened today!  I have been aware of an opportunity that might happen for around 2 weeks now, but as I was waiting to hear news on whether there would be a "green light", I wasn't able to say much...until today!

While there will not be a picture in this post (I know, that's cheating, as I am supposed to blog a photo a day for 365 days), but I hope you can picture what my face might have looked like, the joy in my eyes and the sheer excitement in the craziness that was today!

Let me give you a little background...

Most people know that since we have moved to Pickering, I have been looking for work. I have been applying for jobs in Social Work, and have not really been finding any joy or passion in it anymore (that started quite awhile ago, but it really sunk in while I was applying for a new job). So, I decided to start interviewing for jobs that I WANTED to do, trying to find something that would be exciting, new and is a passion.  Why not right???

Over the last 2 months I have had 2 interviews at local bakeries.  The first one, wanted a male (irritating that they wasted my time) and the second one, did not end up being an interview at all!!!!!!

Long story short, 2 weeks ago, I went to meet with the owner's of a local bakery, for what I thought would be an interview for both part time work, and to cost out how much it would be to rent their commercial kitchen.  I have been doing some at home baking, and while writing a business plan, I needed to at least price out what the cost would be down the road if I couldn't do it at home anymore.  I asked her if she wanted me to bring and resume, and she just told me to bake, and bring in some samples. 

It ended up being, quite a CONFUSING meeting at first!  She ended up asking me if I would be interested in making my cake pops (if you don't know what they are...google cake pops), sell them to her and she would put them under her name.   They needed to be decadent, but simple in decoration, so that they would appeal to the masses.  WHAT?  What masses?  Your customers?  What she further explained to me, was that she is the supplier for 35 TIMOTHY'S coffee shops, and is meeting with them to get it into even more locations.

Needless to say, I felt confused, but intrigued. She knew that we were away last week, so she called Head Office to let them know of a new product and that a sampling would be ready this week.  She asked me to have ready for this week, a sampling of 3 cake pop flavours and they would then be delivered to Timothy's head office. I dropped them off Wednesday night and Head Office said that they would like to have them Friday at 1pm for a tasting with their executive team!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This afternoon, at 1pm, Timothy's Executive team, sat down for a coffee tasting and my cake pop tasting!!!!!!!! It all feels a little crazy, but mostly very exciting! I have the nitty gritty to work on over the weekend, to ensure that I can get them a pricing breakdown for Monday. The bakery is pushing with all of their might to get this product into the coffee shop, and if they say no, she wants me to push it in any local cafe's and bakeries we can!

I was feeling very nervous about it this week, not knowing if Timothy's was going to consider a tasting, but they did! Now that that has happened, I can be VERY excited! Even if nothing comes out of it, it's pretty AMAZING to know that a BIG coffee chain was eating MY BAKED GOODS.

So, until it was confirmed, I couldn't share sooner, but now that a tasting has been done...it's time to...

SIT ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT AND WAIT FOR AN ANSWER, COMMENTS and NEXT STEPS!

Stemming from that, I have been getting orders at home, so either way, it's been a pretty EXCITING WEEK!  I have chosen a name, am in the process of registering/getting a tax number/doing all that accounting stuff I swore to my DAD, I would NEVER, EVER TOUCH, and mastering a new cupcake this week with the fresh strawberries that we picked today, at Whittamore's farm!!!  Hope it's another success...but if not, I can handle failing at a new cupcake flavour this week!

Here it is:  Sweet ReTREAT by Lee-Anne

sweetretreatbyleeanne@gmail.com

WHAT A WEEK IT WAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This has been a HARD secret to keep!  And now that something this fun happened, I feel like doing this....

JUMPING FOR JOY!