Taking baby steps

This has been an interesting week, with all possible gaps in my days being filled with my research into the new business idea. I’m so thankful for the support of my family who’ve all responded very positively, it encourages me!

Tuesday afternoon was a big afternoon! Ryan, Aimee and I headed off on a 2-hour drive that took us to 3 different packaging specialists here in George, and also to Woolworths. Ryan was my co-driver and tried his best to navigate our way around using a map. The first company, Swift, took us ages to find, but we did and when we did he was thrilled that he’d made this trip because the variety of packaging one can find was very interesting to him. I left Swift with a few samples in my hand and felt quite chuffed that I’d found something I could use for meals for children 8 months and older. We visited Margo Swiss (which I think is over-priced!) and I bought 2 more samples there on the incorrect information they provided me. The 3^rd company, Ready-Pac, was better able to answer all my questions. All 3 companies sell exactly the same packaging materials but Swift is definitely the cheapest and I will be going back.

We made a quick dash for Woolies in the 20minutes we had before Ryan’s football practice. We literally ran in, found the fresh baby food they sell and wrote down all the sizes and prices – and dashed out again.

I still have one big item missing in my packaging arsenal. I was hoping to find a rectangular dish in which I could pack 12 ice-cubes of purées. I haven’t been successful in finding that yet.

The other hurdle I have is one I think I’ll be able to jump over more easily: the sizing and pricing of all the varieties of baby food available in South Africa are hard to compare as they vary so greatly. Yucky food (like Purity!) is very cheap! I’ve decided that I’m not competing with Yucky food, so I shouldn’t worry too much!

And so, this is my action plan: I’ve decided that in this next week I am going to cook and pack let’s say a dozen of each of the items on my menu and determine the price per item as accurately as I can. Annabel Karmel’s cookbook gave me some exciting ideas and I will keep most of them in my back pocket for now, but will come up with a simple menu to lauch the business with.

And then, we’ll test it. We’ll see if the ‘fish’ take the ‘bait’. Watch this space!