Set Up:
You’re in for a real treat in this episode of SheBoss! Megan sits down with Professional Chocolatiers and sisters, Michelle Novosel and Caitlin Lyon, of Pizzelle’s Confections! Michelle and Caitlin bring their lifelong love of fine chocolate, culinary, and visual art into delectable masterpieces. A visit to Pizzelle’s is an experience like no other filled with fine chocolate and fun! Stick around to the end of the video for an exclusive announcement on what’s next for Pizzelle’s Confections!
Megan: I love the blend of science with food and that are so critical to just the innovations that you guys want. Yeah, I mean, I think that gets overlooked and people don’t recognize how difficult it is to create something that may otherwise be.
Michelle: Chocolate and pastry is all about science and it’s all about that the technique, the technical aspect of it. You can’t with baking and with chocolate, you can’t just dump things in, like you can like a home cook or anything like that, or just like a savory cooked meal like, “I’m going to add a little extra, this little extra that.” Here if you do that, you have to then compensate other things. So it’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. Personally, I love figuring things out, I want to fix things, troubleshoot things. And so you know that everyone has to have a mindset constantly, like, “Why isn’t this working?”
Megan: Holy cow to say that I’m excited about sitting down with these ladies is absolutely an understatement. I’m a bit high from chocolate right now, just the sheer smell of it. But these are the ladies from Pizzelle’s, which is one of North Alabama’s absolute gems as it relates to dessert. So we have a treat for you today. So ladies, thank you so much for joining us.
Michelle: Thank you
Caitlin: We are excited.
Megan: We’ve had a chat, you know, a chance to chat just a little bit about behind the scenes at Pizzelle’s. But you guys are again, one of the staples here in Huntsville in North Alabama and one of my son’s favorites, as I’ve told you, but you know, Pizzelle’s is the most amazing chocolate and dessert shop that is based here at Lowe Mill. And you just do absolutely beautiful work. So thank you very much.
Michelle: Thank you
Megan: Traditional style, we’ve got some chocolates for some of us. I want to open it up and you guys just kind of and they’re sisters, by the way. Share your story a little bit and what got you into where you are right now?
Michelle: Do you want to go ahead and start?
Caitlin: Sure. We moved here in 1986 and we finished high school here. And we both worked in restaurants in different capacities over the years. And like I enjoy, I was back at the house and I enjoyed it. But I didn’t enjoy the people that I worked for. And then I finished college and was a social worker and then was a technical writer.
Megan: And your background is not one that you would envision being where you are.
Caitlin: Oh no and she did various kinds of restaurant jobs.
Michelle: Oh, yeah all sorts. I did a little bit of everything. I was just like jack of all trades for a while. I did Wildlife Rehab, I worked in hospitals or vet clinics, I mean, I just did a little bit of everything.
Caitlin: You know, so and I don’t know that either of us were like, I never sat down as a 10 year old and was like, “I’m going to own a business one day.” That was just never anything.
Michelle: I really I did happen. I didn’t think I was going to well, I didn’t know what owning a business was. But like, since I was like little I wanted a chocolate shop. I mean, I was obsessed with Willy Wonka. I was just obsessed with that whole thing. I sold candy out of my lunchbox when I was younger. I mean, I didn’t know that this was what you could do. I didn’t know that. No one told me, “Well, you love candy and chocolate this much you know you could be a chocolatier one day.” I didn’t know that.
Megan: Yeah, it’s only on the movie.
Michelle: Right and so that’s what I thought, but I was obsessed with it. I would just have dreams, visions of Willy Wonka in my head. I’m surreal still to this day.
Caitlin: What year did you go to culinary school?
Michelle: I graduated 2019.
Caitlin: Two thousand-
Michelle: I’m sorry
Caitlin: Because your son was born in 2011.
Michelle: Oh, my God. I knew it had a nine in it. 2009 yeah, so I graduated from culinary school then. And before that we were talking about doing this for years.
Caitlin: We talked about how we could own a restaurant. Yeah, like I was like, let’s open a room and we weren’t serious, serious. I was like, “Let’s open a restaurant where there’s no menu.” We just cook what we cook and you come in and you’re like, “I’ll have the fish or the vegetable”, like there’s no, you know-
Megan: Just totally different
Caitlin: I mean, that’s not that weird concept other people do restaurants like that. But just to think, like, oh, well, maybe we would do this or I’d love Italian food and apparently that doesn’t exist down here. So we talked about all kinds of concepts and then at some point along the way, we just got really focused on chocolate-
Michelle: And dessert and dessert cafe
Caitlin: Because also having worked in restaurants, we knew we maybe didn’t fully understand what owning a business was like, but we knew what it took. Because to open a restaurant and to run a restaurant, because the restaurant I worked in, I was hired before it opened along with a bunch of other people,
Megan: You were there.
Caitlin: So I saw that whole process, and I was like, “Well, we’re not going half a million dollars in debt.” You know, it’s so expensive to get a brand new restaurant up and running.
Megan: And then not knowing, oh, right, what’s going to form.
Caitlin: We’re also both very headstrong and independent. When we got down to the nitty gritty of it, the idea of having investors and all-
Michelle: Yeah we’ve gone down that road a couple times, just talking to people and we’re like, “No, it’s just us.”
Megan: I don’t envision either one of you having any sort of rain of any sort. You know what I mean because there’s some control there and people don’t realize.
Caitlin: And sometimes we make bad decisions or mistakes, or we look back and we’re like, “Oh, I wish I had done it this way” which is- there are mistakes to make. So yeah, but our grandparents lived in DC. And we were up there visiting. And we were downtown in Adams Morgan. And we just walked by the row houses that are stores now. And there was a sign that said something about chocolate it was in one of those little basements. And it was tiny and we went down there. And in 15 minutes, I spent like $120 on chocolate. And it was the first time we had seen something that small and chocolates similar to what we do. I think it was Christopher Elbow’s stuff. That was the first time that we had tasted like-
Michelle: Not that we had tasted artisan chocolate, but that was like, the first time that we were like, “Wow, this is art, this is different than just your general chocolate.”
Caitlin: He was doing things like curry or something. And one of the chocolates when we were like it blew our minds like wait, “There’s a whole lot more possibilities with chocolate than just put some almonds in it or whatever.” And that really helped us kind of solidify what we wanted to do. And like a year or so after you got out of culinary school, she was making stuff at home and selling it through a friend’s very small gift shop at the time. And then when Kilian her son was a baby, you went to the Ecole Chocolat School. And while she was in a Ecole Chocolat, while she was doing that someone said, oh, you- we had already incorporated as an LLC, and they were a friend said, “You should apply for space at Lowe Mill.” And we’ve been here for all kinds of stuff.
Michelle: Yeah, we kind of like I mean, we were we know all about Lowe Mill or Flying Monkey. We’ve been involved in the art scene here for many, many years.
Caitlin: And we were like, “Well, we thought that was just for artists.” And that friend was like, “Well, they’re looking for some business type stuff, too.” So we applied, we got juried in, then we start talking about plans. And then like that happened in April of 2012. And then by November in 2012, we were like signing a lease. And I remember because we ate it below the radar. And I was like at least a bottle of wine. I was still working at the time as a tech writer. And then we opened in March of 2013. And just on this side, so that wall where the mural is, went all the way to the windows, and we were only on the other side of it, we were just 800 square feet total, kitchen and retail, we could seat like seven people.
Megan: But at the time that worked well.
Caitlin: And that enabled us to start it with no debt and so the first three years, we were in the black, which is not-
Megan: That’s unheard of for restaurants, especially when you’ve got your own real estate and building and all of that.
Caitlin: Our tax lady, that first or second year. She’s like, “Well remember how I told you; you weren’t going to make a living doing this? I was wrong about that”
Megan: That’s awesome
Caitlin: It was going to be a hobby.
Michelle: Oh, yeah, it was going to be my hobby because I had gone to school and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to make chocolate but it was just going to be a hobby. I was going to make some things. She was going to come in after work and you know, it was just going to be like an artist studio, like we had grown to know here, where people just came in, you know to check out your artwork and then maybe buy something, maybe not.
Michelle: These are like little chocolate bombs. They’re little chocolate bombs.
Megan: I thought this was a globe
Michelle: Yeah, but they requested their own colors on there.
Michelle: So we had like a line out the door the first day that we were open and we were like, “Okay, I guess this is for real.”
Caitlin: And I took that week off work and they knew why. We were consistently busy because we were like, “We won’t need employees for like a whole year.” And I was going to keep my job for another five years, at least and we hired Marcy the second week we were open.
Michelle: Yeah so-
Megan: Unexpectedly-
Michelle: Yeah
Caitlin: We opened in March. Facebook reminds me of it every year. In September, I quit my job to be here full time and we had already hired another part-time person by then.
Michelle: We were like; “We can’t do this without you. Now, we realize that this is a bigger, a bigger thing now.”
Caitlin: Which we really didn’t- Like that was not on our radar. We thought, “Oh, we’ll be doing a bunch of wholesale and a few people will come in except Saturday, we’ll probably be busy.” And it just was not what we expected at all. It was complete opposite. We did very little wholesale and mostly retail walk up.
Michelle: It is still true
Megan: Well I mean, being at Lowe Mill, which is just sort of an artist’s paradise here. I mean, this is such a perfect fit. Because how you guys design your chocolates and what you offer is art, it is true art. I mean, and if you haven’t been here to see what Pizzelle’s has to offer, it’s absolutely beautiful.
Michelle: And this is her little cave over here now.
Megan: This is the background that allows you to kind of spray in front of,
Michelle: Yes. So this is a big fan. So she does everything over here. We’ve got compressors, all of these. These are all the cocoa, like colored cocoa butters that we use. So those are all the colors.
Megan: Oh, wow. So it’s like paint?
Michelle: It’s like paint.
Megan: And you can eat it.
Michelle: It’s like paint. It’s got to be tempered, though. So it’s got to be a certain temperature. With temperature and agitation, then it will be the right crystalline structure and then she can paint with it. So there’s some science that goes along with everything that we do. But yeah, cocoa butter-
Megan: Sorry, Can I take a peek at what you’re doing? Okay, so that’s for just the outline of when you pour the chocolate in.
Michelle: Yeah, so this is our Mocha Java, so she’s just putting a little bit so just at the very edges over there, there will be like a little like swirly hue that goes up.
Megan: Oh, neat
Michelle: When we built this space out, we knew that we wanted it to be like an open kitchen, which is kind of unheard of in the chocolate world because of the heat and humidity and we are in Alabama, that’s crazy. But we did want it to be an artist studio; we want for people to come in and see what we’re doing and ask what we’re doing. And like, “Can you talk to me about what, what this is?” what you know, “Like your process?” Before COVID, we would have people come back into the kitchen and we could talk to them further about things.
Michelle: Some of them need a little bit of extra help, but when everything is in perfect temper. The temperature is okay in here.
Megan: I was going to ask about that, how that plays a role.
Michelle: Oh my God, it plays and we couldn’t do hardly anything yesterday because for two days, our heat was out and our air conditioning on this side was out. So we couldn’t like- Yeah, but the humidity is a big factor. With sugar cooking and that kind of stuff, we have to adjust temperatures. We know when we can and can’t work with chocolate or when we can or can’t decorate that kind of stuff. It’s too hot.
Megan: It’s definitely a way that your customers can be engaged so much more so than it just be a countertop and everything happens behind the scenes. They have a vested interest in and it just piques everybody’s interest to see really how the magic happens a little bit.
Michelle: Yeah
Megan: And then it also too gives your team an ability to kind of like share their craft a little bit and what they’re doing, which is really cool.
Michelle: Absolutely. Sometimes I think that, you know, they would like a wall. And I’m like, “No, sorry”
Megan: Just pretend
Michelle: Yeah just pretend
Caitlin: And I think it also, not that we have to justify it, maybe that’s not the right word I’m looking for. But it also helps, you know, our stuff is not cheap. And we do get feedback about that sometimes, not a ton, but also the fact that you can see that we are literally making everything from scratch here right. It helps people understand why it is not the same as the candy you’re getting at the grocery store-
Megan: Right.
Caitlin: And like getting Godiva at Barnes and Noble or something like that.
Megan: Yeah, that’s been sitting in a package for a long time.
Caitlin: Not that there’s wrong with a Snickers bar?
Megan: Yeah, I love me a good Snickers bar.
Michelle: Including me.
Megan: Yeah, but it’s been everything and we’ve taken a peek behind the scenes a little bit and everything is literally handmade-
Michelle: Yeah.
Megan: And touched, and you can tell, I mean the intricate detail and just the flavors is so unique and so unlike anything else that that I have ever personally experienced.
Michelle: So we go through several points, processes, before it goes out the door just to make sure that there’s nothing wrong with it, that everyone’s happy with it. It’s more than we could have ever- I don’t know, I thought that maybe we would just make something and then it would walk out the door, but it’s like, okay, I look at it, “Is it good?” Okay, someone else that’s packaging, you know, “Is there anything wrong with this then the next person? Is there anything wrong with this?” So by the time it hits, they’re like, yeah, it ought to be perfect.
Caitlin: If someone’s like, “I’ll have a Nutty by Nature”, and I grab it. And I’m like, “oh, that doesn’t look right.” I’ll just set it aside.
Michelle: Yeah, so everyone, the attention to detail throughout the entire staff, customer service also is pretty amazing.
Megan: And that attention to detail is what has made Pizzelle’s so successful. And again, I mean, such a gem here, that people know, when they walk in the door, they’re going to get phenomenal service. It’s fantastic food, and that is just like to die for. So from a business perspective, what are some of the things that you guys learned, knowing this was not the original path, necessarily, you have your dream, you have your idea, but actually making it come to fruition? Talk to us a little bit about like, some of the things that you learned, lessons learned, some of the challenges that you’ve had, and maybe looking back, maybe you would have done a little bit differently.
Caitlin: I said at that first Innovate, when I was on a panel at Innovate Huntsville. And they’re like, what would you do differently? We were still just the 800 square feet and I said, “I would put all the electrical outlets in that my husband told me we would need.” That was the first thing and then a month, we’re like, and we don’t have any-
Megan: If you need 10, just double it.
Caitlin: He was like “I think you’re going to want one there.” We’re like, “No, it’s too expensive”. And then yeah, we’re like, “Oh, no, we totally wanted one” Yeah, I think our biggest overall lesson is how flexible you have to remain. And you can’t marry your stuff till death do you part. There are some things that we love to make, and we love to eat, and we discontinued them, because they just they didn’t sell for whatever reason. It doesn’t mean they were bad, it’s just not what worked, in either Lowe Mill or Huntsville or Alabama, you know there’s all kinds of reasons that people may not want to buy something or may not buy enough of it for it to make to make it make sense to sell. So I think-
Michelle: And just like the original idea that we had for over here, which was going to be a sit down dessert cafe, with servers, with plated desserts, and that kind of stuff-
Caitlin: It didn’t work-
Michelle: And that didn’t work. So we had to quickly switch gears. I really was with hardcore about wanting to make that work. But you can’t marry that.
Megan: So let me ask you a question. I mean, Lowe Mill is a very unique location. So you are not, right off in the downtown area where you’re surrounded by big parks, something like that. A lot of people come here, but it’s a very unique location. So do you think that has been a big part of that ass to why maybe-
Michelle: I think so because it’s not like as accessible for say, early morning, coffee crowd or a late night after dinner crowd. It’s a very specific time slot. And so we just had to kind of work within that.
Caitlin: Right because when we first opened this side, she made croissants, but from scratch, which were, “Oh my God”, in a way, I’m almost glad we don’t have them anymore, because I ate one or two a day. So there is a three day process. It’s so time intensive, it’s so labor intensive, and they were delicious but because we’re not open early in the morning, so we were only selling like four of them a week. And we finally were just like, “We have to let this go because it’s not-
Michelle: Some of those things that we were making, they were like that people associated with them, a breakfast food. So after noon, they don’t want to eat that anymore. Yeah there were several items that we just had to take away and be like, “Okay, well, what do people want to eat in the afternoon, you know, like lunchtime?”
Caitlin: And I think, every location has its advantages and disadvantages. And so those are some of the disadvantages of Lowe Mill that it’s not on a main thoroughfare, like it’s a little hard to get to. But then the other advantage is the foot traffic that’s here, especially Friday and Saturday that will benefit from of just people wandering around and then going, “Oh, what’s this?”
Megan: And you may not find those folks, otherwise had you not been here.
Caitlin: Right and I think to from just the non-glamorous part of running the business is that you got to pull your numbers and look at your items and what is selling because you typically, we’re still so small that we know our inventory. We don’t keep track of every single, “We sold 38 Earl Grey truffles this week”, like we don’t care about that because they know in the back how much rotation is happening and whether we need to back off or whether that one’s selling like crazy. But you still have to pull all your sales numbers, and you have to look and go, “Oh, I thought this item was, you know, was doing good, right?” That we were selling a lot of this and then you pull your numbers and you’re like, “Oh, no, that’s not worth doing.”
Michelle: And I will say, okay, the cookies, so we have tried cookies multiple times and they don’t sell, they do not sell here, we have had, big, giant chocolate chip cookies.
Megan: Because they’re in competition with like, the best chocolate.
Michelle: Exactly, you know, all of these other cookies, then we started doing like, these Sabally cookies that are similar to shortbreads, beautifully decorated and that kind of stuff, and they still didn’t sell. There’s a note on there that says, like, “We will never do cookies again -Michelle”. I mean, and I hate that because for a little while, they’d sell and then they just stopped selling and I don’t know, but it ended up being a waste. So, every single time we made some, it was just more going into the garbage than anything, and I cannot stand that. With the products that we have here, we have very little waste that goes into the garbage, instead of into another product. Where we can reuse it, especially our chocolates or something like that. When we first got started, someone told us that, because people come and be like, “How? So much money for chocolates? Or this or that you don’t have this” Not everyone is going to be your customer and that’s okay-
Megan: And that’s okay-
Michelle: And that was a hard lesson for me, because I want everyone to like it. I mean, after this long, I realize that-
Caitlin: This isn’t for everybody.
Michelle: It’s not everybody.
Megan: And you know it though, I think that it is such an important lesson that a lot of small business owners don’t understand because they think they need to please everybody and make a product or service for everybody-
Michelle: Right.
Megan: -and the reality is number one, you can’t market yourself to everybody, because that’s too damn expensive. But number two, you’ve got to be able to really refine who you’re going after, and then perfect that, over and over.
Michelle: Exactly, exactly-
Megan: You know, out of 100 people, if you’ve only got 10 of those customers, but they come over and over-
Michelle: They’re better than like someone comes in-
Megan: And then bitches about the price, right? Like, that’s not the customer you want anyway, because you’re setting that kind of quality service level to be expected, and not everybody’s going to be down for that and that’s okay.
Caitlin: That’s perfectly fine. We are very niche and I think one of the things that I’m glad you know, things like, “Oh, if I had to do over what could I do differently? More outlets but some of the things I think we did right, were we started really small and we said, “What are we going to focus on?” We’re going to focus on chocolate,
Megan: And perfect that
Caitlin: We didn’t try to do anything else and honestly, when this space came available, the manager texted me and said, “The space next door, she’s giving up her, you know, her lease ends, blah, blah, blah, do you want it?” And I said, “Yes” and then I was called, Michelle was like, “Hey, I agreed to something.” I’ll be like, “Well, I’ve got to talk to Michelle.” At that point I was like, we knew we wanted it, because we had that wall put in. Yeah, this was always all one big room and there’s brick on either side.
Michelle: So there’s no way for us to go.
Caitlin: There was no other way to expand.
Megan: And you can’t go up?
Caitlin: No, not on this on this building. And it wasn’t necessarily the best time to be expanding. That was not ideal timing but we just had to say yes. And what we’ve said from the beginning, and we haven’t had to do yet, when we open this space, is if the worst happens, and no one wants any of the pastries we make, we just turn this into more chocolate kitchen, right? Because nothing is like very few things are literally nailed to the floor. We can reconfigure stuff and so always kind of alright, “If this doesn’t work, what’s the next thing?”
Michelle: Yeah, have some sort of backup plan always.
Megan: I think that’s a really great lesson. So I mean, taking risks, being agile, being able to make decisions pretty quickly, but also being very flexible and I think checking your ego at the door a little bit and just recognizing, “Okay, we’re good at this. We’re not good at this. This is working; this isn’t working” and being able to adjust to that really quickly. I mean, that’s a great lesson. I think, for any small business.
Caitlin: One of the nicest things to me about working for yourself. There are a lot of, I mean, working for yourself as a slog. It’s not sad that we’re doing right, but one of the nice things is that, you know, I worked, when I was a tech writer, I worked for a lot of big companies, tech corporations and all that and to get something changed, especially when I was working on army contracts. But we’re the Presidents here, so if something is not working, we can decide like that, we’re going to make this change and we don’t have to go through committees and we don’t have to ask people’s permission. And yes, sometimes we make the wrong decision. But then we can also, of course, correct that pretty quickly and that to me, is a real luxury. Of course, the flip side is that the buck still stops with you. So-
Megan: There’s a lot of pressure that comes along, which is hard. I mean, especially as parents having families, and you know what I mean? There’s a lot of pressure there. It can be really scary. We do some mentoring for some local high school students who want to major in entrepreneurship. At first, it’s a real reality check, because it’s like, “I’m just going to stop you right there at the thought that you get to play ping pong every Friday…”
Michelle: Right
Megan: “…and you’ve got a Slurpee machine in your office, and you get to work whenever you want to work, because that is not right for the small business.
Michelle: Yeah, you mean working 20 hours a day, no matter what.
Megan: I mean no sleep, tons of stress, not making any money when you start, right. It’s really, really hard. And I don’t think a lot of people see that side of things which is which can be tough. So talk about your family involvement, so you’re sisters being in business together?
Michelle: Yes.
Megan: I would love to be in my sisters, but we would probably kill each other.
Caitlin: Well, there’s just the two of us and we’re eight years apart. So as kids, we were not super close, because between eight and 16. That’s a very-
Megan: A big age difference.
Michelle: She was out of the house when I was like growing up.
Caitlin: When she was 10, I moved out. I wouldn’t say that we didn’t get along. We just didn’t have much in common because she’s in high school and I’m finishing college, and you know, just that age gap. But of course, as you age, those eight years gets narrower and narrower. But even in my 30s, if someone had said, “You’re going to work 40 plus hours a week with your sister.” I would have just laughed.
Michelle: And we had worked at two other businesses, two other jobs together. And we started the roller derby here, too.
Caitlin: With some other people
Michelle: Yeah, and that was-
Megan: Are you guys still doing that?
Caitlin: No, it was fun.
Michelle: It was great. I mean, we started it and got it going. I played one bout and then I quit. So I got it. I got it going and then I was like, it was so exhausting.
Caitlin: But we learned a lot honestly, looking back.
Michelle: Like business wise. We learned a lot.
Megan: And you didn’t expect that from-
Michelle: Oh, yeah because I mean, it was LLC, we had meetings we had. I mean, we really like-
Caitlin: Like an executive. We had all that and I had as a Social Worker, started a couple different nonprofits that mostly didn’t survive from the-
Megan: That process in itself is-
Caitlin: So I kind of knew a little bit. I knew how to form an LLC but I think now and I’m like, literally just now thinking about this. You get 30 women together to do something. It’s a lot,
Megan: It’s a lot.
Caitlin: And I think with the tension and some of the head butting and just the different things we worked through during the roller derby. I feel like that maybe taught us something about managing people.
Megan: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Caitlin: And how people are like, “What’s the hardest thing about owning a small business?”
Megan: The people
Caitlin: Customers and employees
Megan: But you also learn a lot about yourself.
Caitlin: Yes
Megan: I mean, I think that’s a big part of it. We talk a lot about this all the time with our team about perspective, right and you may be saying one thing, but she’s hearing something else. Until you can kind of break down whatever barrier you might have there, which I think goes overlooked a lot of times in bigger companies. So that once you’ve gone through that process, not only teaches you how to work with other people and rise their strength, but then also understand like, “Okay, sometimes I can be a little too-”
Michelle: Exactly. I mean, I learned a lot about myself during that process, but I think also we could work together like we you know, the communication style that we had together and the dynamic that we had made it and I’m sure-
Caitlin: And I’m sure the employees were like mom and dad are fighting.
Michelle: I know they did. When we’re hashing out something, we were very loud. And so we were very passionate.
Megan: I was going to say you were very passionate.
Michelle: I mean, we always get to the end, and normally they’re like, you know, you’re fighting, not fighting. You guys are arguing about the exact same thing. You’re agreeing-
Caitlin: You’re agreeing with each other. Years ago, I would say, “Yes, these people are violently agreeing and you don’t even realize.” You’re like, “Oh, wait, I am agreeing. So why are we arguing.” And I don’t really argue about stuff, but mostly, I think it’s talking it through. We do it totally out loud.
Michelle: In front of everybody.
Caitlin: And that’s stressful sometimes. People are the hardest part of any endeavor, learning to, like you said work with people, what makes them tick? What motivates them? And then what are you doing that is helping or hindering? Get out of your own way and get out of your employees’ way.
Megan: Yeah, especially as a leader and being a company, you have to almost be more cognizant about that because of how you are demonstrating creates the culture.
Caitlin: Right we had a front desk person, she’s still with us part time but when she was full time five years ago, I would jump in because I wanted to help. Finally, one day she was like, “Please just let me do my job.” I’m like, “I’m just going to go into another office.” And she was right because I’m like, “Oh I’m helping.” And she’s like, “You’re just in my way.”
Michelle: There are sometimes you’ve got to hear that and a lot of times now because our roles and duties are pretty well separated now. At the beginning it was like, “Well I am running the kitchen. I also need to know how to do payroll.” I’m like, “No, I do not.”
Megan: So she does front of the house, back of the house.
Michelle: Right I mean.
Caitlin: It was hard when we both thought we both had to do everything.
Caitlin: And I think that’s where we got into of-
Michelle: More arguments and since that was the case sometimes she would come up with something, I’m like; “I don’t care. Do whatever you want” or saying the same thing over on this side, I’ll have like this, “Okay I really need to do this.” She’s like, “Alright”. Because our roles are defined even more, before it was like, “I need to know how to do payroll.” She’s like, “I need to know how to make caramel.” So we were like, “No, neither one of us needs to know how to do those things.”
Caitlin: That was hard to learn but as we grew bigger, especially after the expansion, it just became impossible to do everything so I mean, I know how to make caramel, but I don’t do it. She manages both kitchens. I helped manage front of the house, but we have a front end manager now. I do all the admin which I’m happy, like, that’s kind of where my strength is.
Megan: If you don’t have that aspect, the company will crumble because that’s the foundation.
Michelle: Oh God, yes. The company will crumble if I was going to do that, because I don’t like-
Megan: And it will crumble if she does caramel
Michelle: Right
Caitlin: If Michelle is not in the kitchen every day, we would not have a fishing kitchen.
Megan: That’s right, yeah.
Michelle: I would be sitting there just zoning out at a computer because I’m the least technologically savvy person ever. I mean, like, I know how to check my email on Facebook but if I were to do payroll, it would take me all day long to do that one thing. That is not efficient.
Caitlin: I mean, maybe there are businesses where families are working together and they’re all too much alike, I think ultimately having those different strengths benefits.
Megan: Absolutely, it does. Well, and I think for any business owner, recognizing what you’re good at and then, either outsourcing or surrounding yourself with teams that are way better at those other things than you are is what is a really well rounded machine. I mean if you were all great at payroll, but not at other things- there’s got to be that really good balance.
Caitlin: Worked for people who surrounded themselves with teams who told them what they wanted to hear and it’s a very frustrating place to work when it’s like that. So you know, I’m not going to even pretend that I know what Emily does, I know what he does, but even at home, are we going to bake Nestle’s cookies out of a tube? My husband’s going to do that because I will burn them every time.
Megan: So is that why you don’t serve cookies here?
Caitlin: No
Megan: Let’s talk a little bit about the elephant in the room, in every room these days is COVID. And what’s going on with that? So being a small business, how has that been for you guys? And what are some of the things that you’ve been able to overcome? And how have you handled just the unknown, variables have been thrown your way?
Michelle: I still don’t know how great we are handling it. I mean, I feel like the last two years have been a little bit of a blur. And we’re just kind of constantly playing catch up and constantly- because things change on a dime right now. So we used to know what our weeks were going to look like. I mean, as far as what customers were going to come in, what production we were going to do what this kind of stuff and I mean, it’s a wrench in the works.
Caitlin: Our basic yearly pattern of busiest Halloween through Mother’s Day, like that holds. But the sort of weekly and we’re still always busiest on Saturday, but like what people want- everyone is still so stressed out is what I feel like, even people who may be like, this isn’t really a thing, and we shouldn’t be worrying about it. They’re also stressed out because we’ve all been dealing with all this craziness for two years.
Megan: It’s impacted everybody differently.
Caitlin: Even if you personally aren’t worried about COVID, it’s all around you anyway. You can’t get what you want at the store so I feel everybody’s stressed out and our customers buy large and are amazing. We don’t have many issues but I do think that people are so stressed out and frustrated that it’s hard for them to understand when we’re like, “We don’t have this thing.” We don’t have many of this thing because we couldn’t get grandpa for a while there are no eight ounce pot lids. You can’t have them, they’re just not available.
Michelle: Honestly we have our core group of girls but we used to have a full time pastry cook, we used to have a full time confectioner cook, we don’t have any of these things anymore. So we’re all-
Megan: They had to be let go.
Michelle: No, just a staffing shortage. Either they left or they had to be let go. It was just like it was all name the same. It just happened to everyone, same thing with the front, the customer service. You know, the staffing has been really, really hard. I think that we’re just all running kind of like with chickens with our heads cut off right now because we’re all trying to-
Megan: Speed up and the direction changes.
Caitlin: Yeah and you’re like, “Okay, I have a plan.” And then yesterday, right before we left they were like, “Virtual school”. And last year, during the fall, her son and our pastry chef’s daughter, were here having school every day and it was awful.
Michelle: I mean, becuase the kids don’t- whatever I’ll do, whatever it was- but it was ended up being where we are basically working half the time because we had to go back over here and work with them. We were half school half chocolate shop.
Caitlin: We were trying to maintain like we did in the very beginning, we laid off everybody. It we closed the day before our 7th year anniversary, day before. We thought we’re going to be closed for like two weeks and we froze everything you know, we just like got everything ready for a 2 week shutdown. And then it turned into more like an 8 to 10 week shutdown. By the end of March, we had laid everybody off but we kept having zoom conversations and keeping them, you know, I had to talk to them about, “Okay, here’s how your unemployment, this is what I’m doing. This is what you’re supposed to see.”
Michelle: Because we I mean, it made more sense for them to go ahead and get unemployment for us, shut the door and freeze everything off.
Caitlin: And that meant not trying because we didn’t try to operate it actually helped us. Yeah, it was right after Valentine’s Day. That’s a good money time for us. We had money in the bank, and we just sat on it. We paid our rent the whole time and there were a few other bills, loan payments and all that. Some they forgave for like five weeks not forgave, they paused it and everything. That turned out to be the best decision for us and we brought people back in June of 2020. And that was when we applied for our first PPP loan. I’m like, “Why would we apply for this when we were shut down and technically have no employees?” So I felt like during that time, those decisions were really so unknown. It feels a little bit easier now. Because we kind of have a little bit of a past roadmap, but at the same time-
Michelle: We didn’t even know if we were going to come back.
Megan: I mean, that thought is certainly out there, I mean, for sure.
Caitlin: But in some way, 2021 was harder than 2020 because we were operating with a skeleton crew, we hired a few more people, but we were still understaffed for what we typically do. Our hours aren’t quite back to normal, where we’d like them to be, we still have supply issues where things take longer, you just can’t have it and it’s just not there. And on my own, I don’t know what to do. So if that means we have to change a recipe or discontinue a product, and I think it was the things that have been harder in the last year is that a lot of people just expect things to be normal-
Michelle: And they’re just not normal especially for a small business.
Megan: Well, I mean, again, just looking at one aspect of the supply chain, and how that, like you said, with the lids, and even products and those things that are an indirect support of what your main product line is, and that’s all part of it.
Caitlin: Yeah, and spending money on things like masks and COVID tests when you can get them.
Michelle: And spending four times more money on a paper product than you previously did you know, or I mean, parchment paper doesn’t exist right now like all that does kind of thing. I mean, yeah, I think that right now we’re still dealing with the same amount of stress that we were dealing with a year ago.
Caitlin: It hasn’t changed. I feel like the landscape hasn’t changed that much. Some expectations have maybe changed, but I mean, we’re still here. We had a great Christmas last year, where we’re making it, our core staff came back, we communicated with them all through that shut down and was like, “Do you want to come back? Are you okay coming back?” And people started back part time, and then we have the flexibility with bringing kids here when that needs to happen, because what else are you going to do?
Megan: Right
Michelle: So the kids are here a lot.
Megan: I mean, that’s the environment that we’re in right now.
Caitlin: Not that we didn’t take care of our employees, but figuring out what how we can do more to keep quality employees. And I feel like we have a level of dedication and buy in from our employees. They’re not always typical in places like they’re very invested in our vision and our product and what we do here, which is awesome. So how can we invest in that so that they want to stay whether that means some kind of hurt, or time off or raise or it’s not-
Michelle: And they’re truly, I mean, part of our family. I mean, they were definitely before the pandemic, but I think COVID brought us a lot closer actually.
Megan: You bring up a really good point because we have a lot of discussions just in general with a lot of larger corporations, they’re struggling with that. Because they now more so than ever, the focus on culture is so important for retainment, sustainment and recruitment. And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, now we’re having to play catch up.” So being more in the corporate world previously versus being in a small business, what can you see now as this is what was lacking or this is what is so important for small business?
Caitlin: I think giving employees some flexibility, just even around things like I need to leave it to and come back after a long lunch because I got to go to the doctor, like, doctors are not-
Megan: You are not being like, “Well, you’re going to need to submit a change request.”
Caitlin: And I think the other thing that large companies fall into a lot is they just make the rule and someone abused that flexibility so they took that flexibility away. Instead of going to the person who abused it and saying, “Stop that.” And I think that was something I learned from being in all kinds of jobs, nonprofit and corporate is if you have an employee who is doing something wrong, you need to tell them about it and give them an opportunity to correct it rather than just saying, “Okay, we’re changing this policy.” Everyone knows the one person doing the thing wrong, especially in some place this small, so you’re hiding something but it’s hard, confrontation, even civil confrontation is difficult to get it. But I think as managers, that’s just something you have to do, especially when you’re small, deal with that problem, give them an opportunity. If it doesn’t work, then maybe it’s not the right fit. At one of the companies I worked with, we had a guy who read the newspaper for like, four hours a day in his cubicle while we all worked and it took them a year to fire. I’m not saying I want to fire people, or that I’ve enjoyed firing.
Megan: You can’t read a newspaper for that matter.
Caitlin: Just deal with the situation; don’t make this blanket rule that everybody’s mad because they’re-
Michelle: So no newspapers anywhere and you know what I mean?
Caitlin: The money is important: raises or bonuses or whatever you can do. It’s harder in a small business, our play is thin depending on the time of year, but in December, I finished the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program. And we had our final week in New York City, which was like mind blowing. And there was an HR session that we did in New York, and the guy, he was great. And he was like, “You have to remember that your employees are not an expense, they are an investment.” And I was like, “Oh, that changes the whole mindset.” I was always like, “payroll, payroll, payroll”. But if we don’t have our employees, then what do we have? We can’t get all this done by ourselves. I think we are pretty good managers most of the time, and we do have some perks here. But for me to really sort of try to switch my mindset about if I could give someone a raise or whatever, the flexibility or whatever the other things we do or we’ve started doing paid time off, even before COVID, that started which is not typical for small restaurants but to realize that it’s not an expense. I’m not just spending money; we’re investing in the people that we want to keep. It’s not an easy job. I mean, it’s a fun place to work but the word-
Michelle: This itself is very demanding.
Caitlin: You’re on your feet so how can you not compensate for that, but what can you do to make the fact that you’re on your feet all day easier?
Megan: Yeah and realizing where some of those pain points might be. I think too as a small business owner myself, you just lean back on what other people have done to try to influence, “Oh, this is how I should do it.” And that’s not always the right case. Every business is going to be very, very different. And some corporate structure may not be the best fit for you, just based on your team and your industry and everything which was something that was interesting for me to learn. And to your point, it’s like, without our team, we have we have nothing. I mean, I’m nothing without the team that supports what we do.
Michelle: If we lose one person, one of our core people it would detrimental.
Caitlin: I think that’s one of my frustrations with some of the stuff in the Goldman Sachs that not really they were good about being more general even like more specific with different scenarios and what they did because they had so many different kinds of businesses, but a lot of the stuff that, I’m not picking on them, but the chamber or places like that put on for small businesses is that it’s so focused on, “This is how you do it because this is how we do it in corporate.” And that does not work for tiny businesses. Why on earth would we create this crazy byzantine corporate structure? But a lot of the business stuff we go to, that’s what they talk about, because like we said, that’s what they know.
Megan: That’s what they know.
Michelle: This is Marcy Purvis. She has been with us since we very first opened.
Megan: Oh,
Michelle: How long? Almost nine years now. So yeah, and she’s our lead confectioner she is also chocolatier, our both chocolatiers, they both went through the same course. And so she is like, kind of everything sugar but not sugar-
Megan: Everything sugar
Michelle: But not just that, like she does all the ganaches, like choclate technique on every ganache whether it’s a slab of ganache, or whether it’s pipeable or whether it’s Marshmallow or anything like that. She does everything with that. So she’s like the filling queen. You know what I mean?
Megan: What are you working on now? What are these?
Marcy: These are canapés, which is a French style for jelly and so it’s basically just fruit, sugar, pectin and super yummy. I actually have some scraps of the edges if you would-
Megan: Yeah.
Marcy: This is ginger and this one is mango.
Megan: Okay
Marcy: And they’re both amazing. Like the ginger one is a little spicy.
Megan: Yes, love ginger.
Michelle: Yeah, it’s all like powder, ginger, we’ve just pressed-
Megan: Grated, oh wow.
Michelle: Yeah, we hand do that. And Marcy has a science degree. So she’s our resident food scientist too. So she’ll figure out how different sugars work or how each ingredient kind of like works with each other.
Caitlin: When you’ve only got five people on your team, why do you need an org chart? Especially in kitchens, people do a little bit of everything.
Michelle: Everyone here does everything.
Megan: Our team is the same way; everybody wears all the hats and just does whatever needs to be done. And if it’s me taking out the trash and making the coffee, that’s what I am doing that day.
Caitlin: Yeah, we talked about if we had to get other jobs, like if all of this fell apart, and we had to go get another job, what on earth would we put on our resumes? We do literally everything. When we take out the garbage or mop the floors or schedule.
Megan: That makes me think of when you talk about a job description of being a parent, or being like a stay at home mom, what your job description would be, which, you know what I mean? And that, that is fascinating to me, when you really start to look at what that is. Oftentimes it can be very undermined, because it’s just like, “Oh, well, it’s just this thing.”
Michelle: Exactly.
Megan: And it’s like, “Well, let’s really break it down and figure out what all of those are?”
Michelle: Yeah, you’re just like, you know, just watch them and-
Megan: Like no big deal.
Caitlin: I get irritable, with like, you were saying, when you’re doing the mentoring with the sort of glamorization of you’re an entrepreneur, and when there was one year like, “If I hear the word entrepreneur one more time. I’m going to throw something at the wall.” We were like, “We’re not entrepreneurs, we just own a business. I don’t know what that word means anymore.”
Megan: And it’s changed.
Michelle: It’s so common, everyone’s an entrepreneur.
Megan: I think it’s the influence of Silicon Valley and really what that looks like, where it’s the facade of the ‘fancy schmancy’ this, like, that is not- we talked about this earlier, that is not real at all. I mean, the very first time we hired an employee, the sheer thought of me having to put food on it, being responsible for funding her food I mean, that was scariest moment of my entire life. I wanted to vomit every single day that I woke up.
Caitlin: What we talk about a lot is and they talked about this in many ways at Goldman Sachs like how you value what you do, and the first year it was hard to tell people, our chocolates were I think $1.85 when we started. And they were like, “They’re $1.85?” Now they are $3.25 and someone will say, “$3.25?” I’m like, “Yep”.
Michelle: And yeah, and I’m not going to make like an excuse in any case, but that’s just how much they are.
Megan: Yeah absolutely
Caitlin: And part of that is because we have ten employees.
Megan: Right and people don’t understand that.
Michelle: Yeah, they don’t and they rely on us for that.
Caitlin: I mean, like six full time.
Megan: But let me just say $3.25 for one of your chocolates is nothing compared to what they are worth.
Caitlin: Thank you. Raise the price.
Megan: $5, you heard it here first. So that brings me to my next question, which we talked a little bit prior to starting but I guess first things first, like, you guys are amazing, your story is beautiful. And I love the fact that you’re like sitting here and sisters together running this business, which is just awesome to me. But you absolutely have built something so amazing and beautiful that our city should be so proud of.
Caitlin: Thank you
Michelle: Thank you
Megan: So you’re in such a great place. I think that complements your funky personality. All of the things that are in that-
Michelle: Don’t bring the camera.
Megan: It makes me love you because I’m like we share same sense of humor there. But what gets you guys really excited about what’s happening maybe over the next year for Pizzelle’s, because there’s lots of exciting-
Michelle: Discussions
Caitlin: In process, nothing’s in stone yet, but everything is looking great on the handshake. Part of it is we’re looking at a retail only space right off the Downtown Square. And which will this space also is production and retail here. But that is great thing about that space, which we fully plan on opening in 2022, I don’t know when but we are working on that.
Michelle: Remember when we said we were going to open by Valentine’s Day? Yeah, that was funny.
Caitlin: We’ve been working since September on trying to nailing down all the details, but then the holiday ran over so one of the big things there is that we will be able to serve wine.
Michelle: We can’t have alcohol here.
Caitlin: We are in the county, the mills in the county is a little county island.
Megan: Your next thing here is insane.
Caitlin: So because of all the county laws, we can’t serve wine or liquor here. But in the city, that’s a whole different story. So customers have asked, well, you should have- “Oh my god, wine and chocolate, that’s perfect.” So that’s really exciting to think about and the person that we’re in the talks with to get the space is also sort of a Huntsville institution.
Michelle: Really top notch.
Caitlin: So it’s perfect
Megan: So all of that right there, which we won’t mention by name, I could just live off of. I mean you know what I’m talking about?
Caitlin: Yeah are there four food groups? It’s cheese, coffee, chocolate, red wine and
Michelle: What about bread?
Caitlin: Yeah, bread. That’s going to be covered where we are and we’re looking to, like we were talking in the kitchen earlier and how we were talking about, “Oh, croissants didn’t sell and all that.” And I don’t know if we’ll do croissants again because those are a lot.
Michelle: But the thing is, is that someone else Moon bake shop does them so good. You know what I mean? You know, so I don’t you know, we don’t we don’t need to, we don’t need that. We’ll do our own thing.
Megan: Exactly
Caitlin: And probably do some because hopefully what we’re looking at is early morning to late night. Yeah. So coffee, like, some breakfast, lunch still pastry sort of things. But then also the “Oh, we’re done with a symphony, we’re gonna walk over to Pizelle’s.” The Hampton just opened, like, there’s so much stuff.
Megan: There’s so much happening right now.
Michelle: And this is what we originally wanted to get that after dinner crowd and after the show crowd, to come for wine and a pastry or wine and chocolates or coffee.
Megan: What a great environment to kind of do a test prior to that larger invest.
Caitlin: Right and that was perfect because we found out right as I was starting the Goldman Sachs program, so I was like, “Oh, that’s right. That’s what I’m doing.”
Megan: You’re looking at that program very differently.
Caitlin: Yeah and of course, Downtown, even when we started off, it’ll be nine years in March that we’ve been here. You know, we were like, “Oh, downtown would be so perfect.” But it’s expensive and it’s hard to break into because there’s not a ton of real estate down there. And now looking at it, like if we had an opportunity our first year to do Downtown-
Michelle: I don’t know if we would have been able to do it well.
Megan: Yeah you’ve tested things out.
Caitlin: We have all of nine years under our belt.
Michelle: I think we can do it.
Megan: Yeah, and you built the brand that people know what to expect and they’re going to rally behind that so much more so than it being someone who they’ve never heard of. I mean again, everybody here knows who you guys are and they love it honestly. I mean, there will be such a celebration.
Michelle: I’m just so excited and I think that it’s going to be I mean I have a lot of love. I mean I grew up Downtown, Spragins street, the skateboarders and the pugs. And I mean, it was just like, it would be right there. You know, I’m like, Oh my God, it’s just kind of a full circle.
Megan: It’s such a great place.
Caitlin: She worked at Noreen’s
Michelle: I did
Megan: Gordon’s?
Caitlin: Do you know Noreen’s? It’s where The Bottle is. It was an ice cream-
Michelle: And like sandwich.
Megan: Oh my gosh! Wow!
Caitlin: One of the only non-expensive places to eat Downtown.
Michelle: It was so good. I still like crave something there.
Megan: Change of so much stuff.
Michelle: Oh my gosh, it’s so crazy. I mean, I love walking downtown. Now, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how much has changed.
Caitlin: I mean it was nothing when we moved. It was lawyers’ offices.
Megan: Right
Caitlin: Six o’clock it all shut down. Touch bar.
Megan: Yeah, right still there.
Caitlin: And also, having this opportunity has really, you know, you don’t feel burnout even when it’s your own business.
Michelle: You need something to like, re-energize.
Caitlin: The years to which we’re in a pandemic, like everybody’s ground down a little bit right now. So this opportunity has like really re-energized us, even the staff that may not be working there. “What if we could do this? Oh, my gosh, Downtown, that’s gonna be so amazing.” So it’s been really great.
Megan: That’s exciting
Michelle: And we’ll be able to now like, we talked about a little bit earlier right now, like with all of our products and stuff like that, we’re just working on making things better, the best that they can possibly be. And then now we have this whole other mindset of like, new products, new pastry.
Megan: All those ideas that have been brewing.
Michelle: They’ve been brewing for so long, and we’ll be able to really execute those. So I’m really excited.
Megan: We’ll be there 100% to support you guys, that’s just awesome. I can’t thank you enough. And I know we’ve got some great B roll of all of the amazing goodies that you have here, but your chocolates are absolutely art. Speaking with your team, I mean, they truly are. I mean, it’s just like I said, I don’t even want to eat it, it’s just so beautiful. If you can give us maybe two or three secrets behind what you guys do? I mean, again, it is absolutely beautiful. You make such beautiful art out of chocolate.
Caitlin: I see.
Michelle: Oh go ahead.
Caitlin: Can you tell who’s older? Someone probably already told you. Someone told us about how, “Oh, I could see how much you’re so great together and you love each other and you make your candy with love.” I was like, “No.”
Michelle: That’s not the kind of sisterly love that we have.
Caitlin: I think personally, not in terms of the decoration, but in terms of how everything tastes, is that we really like complex flavors that kind of hit you in the face.
Megan: And the flavors that you guys incorporate are insane.
Caitlin: We don’t like- some people are like, “Do you have anything that’s just chocolate.”
Megan: We don’t like boring get out of here you’re not our customer.
Caitlin: We like to have two or three flavors in there that really compliment. You know you have two things and then you add that third flavor and boom, it changes every dog and cat. I think that’s our strength in flavors is we like a bold flavor. We like it complex. We like more than one note.
Michelle: And very, very interesting. You know, flavor, combinations, like this one right here is a depth charge.
Megan: Death charge?
Michelle: Depth charge.
Megan: Yeah, it’s almost like a marshmallow
Michelle: So that’s a stout beer, nutmeg and espresso, so that we use a Straight to Ale and Stout at the Devil stout beer. So that’s just in a nice dark chocolate so that’s just an interesting flavor combination. You can taste everything in there, something’s hit a little bit more than others, but they’re all there. They’re spicy. This is the one that I was talking about earlier with the sambuca. I love sambuca that goes so well with chocolate. This is already sambuca and espresso.
Megan: That’s just not something that’s the normal-
Michelle: Here so I think we just love playing with different things. This is a rosemary caramel. So you know, I think my personal love is like is like herbs and spices and herbs and how to incorporate those herbs into things. So, you know, lavender, like I said rosemary, we have one with tarragon. You know, I love that savory aspect you know a little salt in chocolate is perfect.
Megan: So chocolate and espresso helps bring it out a little bit.
Michelle: So it’s just not sweet on sweet on sweet. More complex flavors
Caitlin: For owning a chocolate shop and dessert, I don’t really like sweet things. Here is the candy and here are the potato chips and I’m like, “Thank you for those potato chips.”
Megan: Oh that’s funny
Caitlin: But I think that kind of makes it different. That helps make our product different because I don’t want things that are super sweet.
Megan: Until you delivered the unexpected which I think is part of who you guys are. I mean you’re delivering a product you can’t get anywhere. It doesn’t look like the typical chocolates that you can get but the flavors are very unique and distinct.
Caitlin: And we didn’t know like is Huntsville going to come for this? The year we introduced the goat cheese, we had the I do declare is dark chocolate, balsamic vinegar reduction –
Michelle: Goat cheese and honey.
Caitlin: – goat cheese and local honey. And we were like, “Are people ready for goat cheese and chocolate?”
Michelle: And they loved it. We bring it back every year now.
Caitlin: We sold it as fast as we could make it. It’s not my favorite to eat but it’s one of my favorites that we do. What sounds weird is that it’s so corny.
Michelle: It’s actually my favorite that we do but we only have it for like two weeks out of the year. It’s just sweet local corn and white chocolate and butter. It’s so good.
Megan: Oh my gosh
Caitlin: And everyone just loves it. It’s really good. It’s not my go to but I also like that we go to name it.
Megan: I love the creative process.
Michelle: But you know working with textures as far as decoration and the insides, this one has the ganache also has the smooth fruit gel in it. So it’s like layers of flavor in there.
Megan: Lots of depth, well it’s fantastic and you guys just make such beautiful work so–
Michelle: Thank you
Megan: Thank you so much for being such staples in our community and spending time with us today and for having mimosas.
All: Cheers