I WISH I had never opened my big mouth and said the iced coffee was close.
I am an idiot – albeit in a loveable, innocent farm boy kind of way.
But nevertheless, a complete nincompoop.
What I should have said, probably what I meant to say but panicked in the excitement, is we pretty much have the formula for the iced coffee down pat, because the actual production of the new line is firmly shackled to the completion of the new production room in the MEC and the installation and commissioning of the equipment we purchased three months ago.
Which is progressing – just not as fast as I would like.
I was chatting to a larger scale milk processor about releasing new products onto the market and they said seven of the past nine new ones they had launched had failed.
That’s a bit scary, even for a loveable nincompoop!
They have experience, brains and market access – and it still didn’t work.
Yikes.
My designer is working on a new iced coffee label so customers can tell the difference fast, but which is also still clearly on brand.
Typically, we get 50,0000 labels printed at a time, as the price per label diminishes with volume.
And a new barcode is needed.
Plus, I’ll have to get a new box design done and do a minimum of two pallets of boxes made up to start.
Then establish and lock in a supply chain which is reliable for ingredients.
The milk part, however, I can handle.
I have a host of people to whom I have promised a sample iced coffee too, although I recognise, well in advance, because coffee is such an individual thing, 30 per cent of my mates will tell me it’s no good.
The team has been nibbling away in the milk enhancement centre making some small changes.
I’ve had a few comments the printed-on use by dates from our expensive date coding machine are too small and too hard to read and I thoroughly agree.
The plain milk bottles, I think we can fix.
The chocolate milk bottles are tricky to do as they are glass, and they can spin around on the entry conveyor so it’s hard to control where the date gets sprayed.
We are working on it, ideally we want the used by date straight above the label, so it’s really clear when you buy.
The chocolate milk bottles are also not as full as they were.
I used to get lots of complaints about them being overfull, now ironically, I’m getting comments about not enough in them.
The advertised contents are 350ml – plus the bottle weight – and we do weight checks most days.
The variance is very low, between 372mm and 374mm per bottle – so we are still 22-25mm, or 8 per cent, over the amount in every bottle.
The old motto is “you should under promise and over deliver”.
It appears as though I am doing the opposite, but what can you expect from a nincompoop?
