Rose Avenue Sweets- Starting a business

So what do you do when it's the holidays and you feel like making a product that people will love, for sure for sure, that is impossible to not like because it is so delectable, delicious, scrumptious, and irresistible?  You start a chocolate company of course.  It started out as a quasi-experiment.  A holiday project.We decided to name ours Rose Avenue Sweets after the street we live on.  What else has so much mass appeal, is fun to make and is such and easy sell.  This was my reasoning when I began my little chocolate company about 5 months ago, thinking of what to do for the holidays.  I've been making caramel for 15 years now and although I'd never sold them, they are a favorite among friends.  I wanted to document all the fun, and work that I have put into this project on my site to inspire those of you out there that want to start a little something to not be afraid and just jump in with two feet.  It's an adventure and I learn something every day with this one.  Lots of sweet lessons to be had.

The second thing we had to do after figuring out what we were making was find a place to sell it.  We applied to Unique L.A. thinking that would be enough for our first venture for the holidays.

A sheet of cut and ready to be dipped caramel.

Stephanie and I in the commercial kitchen dipping away.

The final yummy product.  Not knowing how many to make, we made around 1200 of these bad boys.  We came up with a few other off-shoot caramel products, one with coconut that tastes like a Samoa, regular plain caramels, and mint taffy-cremes.

Then the packaging and  came next.  The research for this took, by far, way more time than anything else.  I was going for bright and pretty,  like a rose vine that spelled out "Rose Avenue".

Then, I built a booth to sell the chocolates at.  After working on the Anthropologie display team, I'm convinced of the importance of visual presentation.  I put tons of time and $ into this booth, and it was totally worth it...

because we won the best table spot at Unique L.A. ;)

Then recruited my prettiest friends to help me sell (and package, and model the aprons).

Marisa Lynch wrote a lovely giveaway post about Rose Avenue Sweets. 

I'm excited to see what the future holds for my little holiday project.  I'm about to start hitting the pavement and trying to get it into more stores.  It was in the Golden State and Simon's Fine Cheeses on Rose Avenue.  We'll see what comes next.  Here is a link to the Rose Avenue Sweets website if you want to see more or order a box or two.  In the meantime, I'll keep you posted on my sweets for the sweet.

Update:  I wrote this post over a year ago and FORGOT to publish it….all is well and we've steadily and slowly been growing in a very organic way.  It's still a ton of fun to make and we've gotten into Hazel Lane and Jackson Market most recently.