Just as you’ve seen a huge jump in gas prices: the same thing has happened in the cocoa market. Local conditions are preventing/restricting exports.

Without the cocoa bean there would be no chocolate of any type, it is the only source of cocoa powder, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter. Without the cocoa bean your only option would be the fake chocolaty flavored vegetable oil that other companies try to pass off as chocolate.

The downside to using real  gourmet chocolate is that  it is expensive and has been getting more expensive.

Below is a cropped screen shot taken from the International Cocoa Organization (http://www.icco.org), they keep track of the wholesale prices.

As you can see the cost of the cocoa beans has sky rocketed since 2005, it’s now twice what it was then and while the chart does not show it yet, the prices have continued to climb to record highs, as I write this the price for just the raw cocoa bean is over $3600 a ton.   Prices have changed due to availability, better wages for the growers and speculation by commodities traders. 

It’s really hard to export when people are running around blowing things up and shooting. Chocolate and gas prices have jumped, you’ve seen the effect at the pumps and FedEx and UPS have raised their fuel surcharges to cover their higher costs. That means we pay more for shipping and as a result we have to charge more for shipping.

Packages do not fly around the country without jet fuel, and after they land: the delivery trucks need their fuel as well.  Some chocolate covered strawberry companies have taken to using two day service as the basic delivery method for chocolate covered strawberries, we feel that a product delivered this way ends up with a very short shelf life and is not as fresh, and if anything goes wrong: the product is quickly ruined. You can tell when a company is using these methods by seeing if they charge a rush surcharge for Tuesday delivery or a special surcharge for next day delivery.

Saving a few dollars on shipping costs may look like a bargain, but if the shipment is delayed for any reason (weather, security, the business not opening on time, or a dozen other possible issues) then you are talking about delivering strawberries that were made 4 days before, those berries are going to be pretty rough and most likely ruined. There are no magic gel packs that are going to last 3 days, UPS and FedEx do not offer door to door refrigerated deliveries for any amount that you would be willing to pay for a single box of strawberries, and even if it were available a refrigerated strawberry still has a very limited shelf life.

To deliver chocolate covered strawberries nationwide you have to do some things right, you can’t ship them cross country and have have them show up next week, the best strawberries are delivered after spending a minimal time in transit (next day works best).  So even though you may order today for a delivery next week: we will make them up just before we give them to FedEx/UPS and if everything goes correctly they arrive the next day.  This results in a gift that is fresher than one sent by other methods (such as a planned two day delivery).

We often get asked how to save on shipments throughout the year.

The first way is to place more than one order at a time, as our final checkout screen (the ‘thank you’ screen) has a discount code that even new customers can use to place more than one order at a time.

The second way is less obvious; simply combine your order with others as part of the same shipment this saves you a pile on shipping. To save even more look at our multi dozen chocolate covered strawberry assortments.  There is no special box that holds two dozen strawberries, when someone orders two dozen strawberries (or more) they are delivered in one dozen boxes. It’s pretty simple, order a 4 dozen chocolate covered strawberry assortment and you will get 4 boxes of one dozen strawberries. If you split those four dozen with 4 people at work your strawberries and delivery charges will be a whole lot less than if you each ordered separately.

Our wholesale flowers also are a great way to save money, our 100 ,200 and 400 long stem red rose packages can be split up upon receipt and you have roses for a whole lot of people. That’s a whole lot more than the $90 we’ve seen some local florists charge for a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day.  If you do the math right you could even get the other people to pay for your roses and they would still come out way ahead.

Order early: we place your order with the flower suppliers as soon as they come in, for Valentines we normally see stepped price increases as we get closer to the big day. The sooner you order the lower prices you’ll pay. It’s not that the suppliers are pricing gouging, there are millions of people asking for the exact same thing on the exact same day, this creates shortages of product, transportation, and trained labor. Special flights have to be arranged to bring the flowers into the US (it’s not like a whole lot of flowers are coming from Michigan in the dead of winter. They have to be flown in from South America).  The flower suppliers don’t want to suppress their January sales so they raise the prices in steps, the people that get the orders in soonest get the January prices, if you wait till the week before Valentine’s you’ll pay much more.

The same price increases happen in the strawberry market, plus if there is a freeze in California or Florida the prices for a flat of strawberries can easily jump $20 overnight. Strawberries are even more sensitive and perishable than roses and there are only so many places that they can be grown this time of year. Getting your strawberry order in early avoids the risk of price changes due to weather related problems or being locked out due to product shortages.

But if all you were after was a discount code … use “I-M-EARLY” it’s good on orders over $36 that are placed before 01/30/2011 (you’ll select a delivery date during checkout and can place  orders as far in the future as June). The discount code is only valid online and must be applied just after you press “Add to Cart” it can not be combined or used on previous orders or if  you have canceled an order in the last 30 days.

Here is an example of a right and wrong address.

Wrong:

Grandma Mary
134 Peachtree
Coral Gables, TX 60609
305-999-9999

Right:

Mary Smith
Shady Rest Home
1234 SE Peachtree Rd
Room 512
Coral Gables, FL 33146
305-555-1212

How each wrong entry affects the delivery.

1) Since Grandma Mary lives in a retirement community there are probably more than one “Mary” there.

2) Missing company/school/retirement home names effect the shipments in two differnt ways

a. The drivers may know the business or school so if you transpose a number in the address it could still get to the right location.

b. When you leave off the business name you put the package on the residential delivery schedule, which may mean the driver will attempt to deliver the package after the business closed

3) The street number is very important, a wrong number can put a package miles from the correct destination and the unintended recipient will really enjoy your gift.

a. We have had actual shipments where the address we were given was about 3 miles offshore in Miami. (we caught it so the address got changed before it left the building)

b. We’ve had a shipment where the son sent the package to “12 Thunder Way”, but the mother lived at “21 Thunder Way”, the people at “12 Thunder Way” ate the shipment.

4) The street name needs to have the correct street, avenue, road, lane, or court designation. In a lot of cities there are multiple roads with the same name with only the St., Ave. Rd… to separate them. It lets the drivers know which of many roads with the same name to deliver the package to.

a. In Atlanta there are several roads named Roswell, and dozens named Peachtree, this same problem happens all over the country.

5) Missing Apartment, Suite, room numbers

a. A missing apartment number can ruin a shipment if there is no directory or apartment manager to accept the package, and many apartment managers no longer accept packages for residents.

b. We’ve had customers send packages to 100 story buildings without a company name and no suite number, it didn’t go well.

6) The City, State and Zip code need to match, Coral Gables is not in Texas and “60609” is for Chicago.

a. Most of the time UPS and FedEx will not let a package ship when the zip code is not in the correct state, but if the zip code is in the wrong section of a state it may take several days to correct the problem.

b. We’ve had customers put in their (up-state New York) zip code when the package was going to New York City, the packages are sent to the sorting facilities based on the zip code given, so once a misaddressed package is found the planes are gone and delivery is pushed to the next day.

7) When all else fails UPS & FedEx will call the phone number you give us for the delivery address, a fake phone number guarantees that the driver will not be able to fix any address problems while on his route. It should be the actual phone number of the person or business the package is being shipped to.

Addressing a letter or package correctly is something we all learned in grade school, and while a misaddress Christmas card will eventually get there a perishable package (like chocolate covered strawberries) can be ruined as the result of the delay. The delivery address is always your responsibility and taking the extra time to double check it is always a best practice. (plus then you are not telling others that it was our fault that the package was not delivered)

To understand what is happening you have to look at how they are shipping it and what they are shipping.

For the first example lets look at a purchase of a book. A book it not time sensitive, it can take a week or two to get to where it needs to be and it’s still a book. Places like the larger book stores have warehouses around the country and the book is shipping using the least expensive way possible. In this case the shipping may actually be less that a dollar, no big deal.

Next lets look at a clothing purchase, some jeans, a few t-shirts… again it is not time sensitive, it’s shipped by the least expensive method possible and the shipping was probably less that you would have gotten last year with a discount coupon.

So basically shipping things by slow/ground methods are pretty inexpensive but it’s not for time sensitive items. Perishable items need to be shipped so they arrive before they melt or go bad and that pretty much rules out the really cheap shipping. You could guess what a shipment of ice-cream would look like if it took a week to arrive.

All the ‘free shipping’ offers have created the impression that all shipping should be free, but when you are comparing ground (slow) and express(overnight) the shipping is not in the same class. When you ship a package using an overnight service it is sent by air and jet fuel is not cheap.

In an age when the airlines are charging $50 to check luggage, the undiscounted rate for sending a package cross country is about the same. If you ship a lot of packages (like we do) you get a discount from the base rates, but past a certain point there are no more discounts from the carriers.

Everybody has heard the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, and in the case of overnight shipping and perishable products it’s true. In the perishables industry the various companies are “simulating” free shipping in one of three ways:

1) Raise the prices, yep when the cost of the product price has been raised to cover the cost of the shipping the shipping is then ‘free’. You actually don’t save any money this way, it may even cost you more because now that the product cost includes the shipping you may end up paying tax on the price including shipping.

2) Cut the cost of the product, packaging and the shipping cost by using a 2 day service rather than an overnight one. Cheaper ingredients and shipping so that it arrives later gives the product a extremely short shelf life and no ‘cushion’  in case of carrier or weather delays.

3) Changing the product mix or limited item free shipping, the ads say ‘free shipping’ but it’s on limited items, those items may only be shipping by the less expensive methods or already have the cost of the shipping built in.

When shipping chocolate covered strawberries you need to protect the product from heat and keep them chilled to keep them fresh. Some companies are leaving out the gel pack and shipping the strawberries using a 2 day service. Leaving out the gel pack reduces the shipping cost in two ways, the weight is less and the box does not have to be as big. Without a gel pack to keep the box chilled the strawberries are going to start to go bad very quickly. Would you want to eat strawberries that have been sitting on the kitchen table for two days? Of course not, but that is what 2 day shipping without gel packs is.

So you  can see that ‘free shipping’ really’ is not free someone always pays the UPS/FedEx bill.

1)      Get the delivery address right: you’d be surprised how many people don’t take the simple step of double checking what they entered.

1. Example 1: A package was addressed to an address in Miami that would have been about 5 miles offshore (we caught this one before it happened and corrected it)
2. Example 2: Another problem shipment was the result of some sending the package to “21 Thunder Way” rather than “12 Thunder Way”.  (result= someone else ate her package)
3. Zip codes, a bad zip code will send the package to the wrong part of the state and may result in a several day delay in delivery (result=ruined package).
4. The delivery address is your responsibility, if you get it wrong there is not a lot we can do about it.

2)      Making sure someone is going to be home

1. We had one customer send a package to his mother in Arizona, she was out of town for three days.

3)      Apartments: FedEx/UPS will not always leave a package unattended,

1.  A package left at the door of an apartment may ‘disappear’.
2.  Shipping to a business address or making sure someone will be home is much better.

4)       Shipping at the last possible moment for Christmas (bad idea).

1. Everybody else has the same idea.. and each year FedEx/UPS get more packages then they can handle in a single day (one year FedEx got 12 million packages in one day when they could only handle 9 million)

 Best practices:

1)      Double check your delivery address,

1. Does it have all the needed bits, suite number, business name, correct name
2. “Grandma” is not the correct way to address a package.
3. An incorrect or incomplete delivery address is the leading cause of delivery problems.

2)      Will someone actually be home or are they off on vacation?

3)      When someone is not going to be home: The delivery address needs to be secure  .

1. FedEx/UPS will not leave a package that has a high chance of being stolen.

4)      Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, It’s best when you don’t wait till the last minute to ship. Each of these Holidays are peak times for FedEx/UPS, and the busier things get the more likely things are to go wrong.

1. Christmas: anytime in the two weeks before Christmas works, just avoid the last few shipping days before Christmas. People are much more likely to be home and you’ve avoided the Christmas overload that the carriers experience every year.
2. Mother’s Day: avoid scheduling a delivery for the Friday before Mother’s Day. Mom will just be glad you remembered.
3. Valentine’s Day: You’ll get more ‘points’ for early delivery, everybody in the US is shooting for delivery on Valentine’s, this leads to an overload at the carriers. Having your package delivered a few days earlier will let them be the center of attention.