2024 was a year that kind of flew by. Nicely settled in our East Cowes depot, and with our youngest child now attending nursery most days, we had more free time for work. We took advantage of this and decided to go hard on the events side of our business, attending more events over the season than ever before! These included all our usual local summer events and markets – The County Show, The Garlic Festival, The Chale Show – plus we tried out several regular local and new markets to see what would work for us. We decided to continue to attend the Hampshire Farmers’ Markets located at various spots around Hampshire throughout the off-season.
Since we were attending more events and markets than ever before, we decided to launch a new product – fudge-dipped Belgian waffles! These went down a storm and would usually sell out. Many an afternoon was spent dipping waffles in our bestselling fudge flavours!
We launched our new Gift Cartons – cut up chunks of fudge in branded cartons – and we supply these to Wightlink Ferries (amongst others) in our most popular flavours.
The wholesale side of our business remained steady, with regular orders coming in from local businesses and through other online platforms like Faire who distribute worldwide. One of our regular stockists is in New York!
Christmas was record-breaking, beginning mid-November and not easing off for a moment until December 21st (last postage date)! We created a “Fudge Hamper” which consisted of 2 Slabs of fudge plus 2 fudge-dipped waffles in a display case and these flew out, along with our Christmas Gift Boxes and Taster Boxes. We were working every day trying to keep up with our backload of orders which were flooding in through the website plus Not on the High Street and Etsy platforms, plus attending Christmas Markets at weekends. We took on an extra staff member to help us through the period – lucky as even with the extra help, we were working most evenings and not managing a day off. But we got all orders delivered in time for Christmas, not a single order lost or late! 🙌
Overall, 2024 has been a year of steady progress, and we have exciting plans for 2025, we can’t wait!
