E’s Best Rolls Into 2013!
March 12, 2013
The new year 2013 is well underway and E’s Best continues to grow. We had a great Christmas season and thanks to all of our customers for such a huge response to our Facebook picture posts featuring Smoky and Killer used on a variety of holiday offerings! In some stores, existing product sold out as we were restocking with new inventory. God continues to bless us as we reach out to people through this remarkable venture!
The new year has gotten off to a great start and true barbecue season is still a couple of months away, but E’s Best users have been “getting their sauce on” with excellent recipes for indoor cooking during the winter months! With spring approaching, the call to the grill is getting louder and louder. Ah, I love the smell of charcoal embers in the evening!
Jan and I have continued to be busy virtually every weekend with sample tastings and we even had to enlist my daughter Katy, her husband Justin, and Katy’s Aunt Whitey on one weekend when we were out of town. As we grow our retailer base in Florida, we are planning a trip to the Carolinas and Tennessee to support our retailers there and hopefully bring on some new retail partners as well.
Since January 1, we have added 6 new retailers and we have another 5 that hopefully will firm up within a couple of weeks. We also had our 4th bottling last month (February), so we are stocked up at least for the next couple of months unless something big breaks and we have to reorder. So to date, we now have 32 ongoing retailers in 4 southern states and we continue to have some in-store product remaining from our seasonal promotion with Bealls/Burkes Outlets, which covered 8 states during November and December of last year. We were overwhelmed by the customer response as 1/3 of the total inventory in the stores was sold without any advertising or promotional support other than our Facebook posts! Florida Bealls Outlet stores were extremely successful and some sold completely out. Of course, barbecue season never ends in the Sunshine State!
Entering our 10th month in business, we have some things we are working on for the upcoming season. We are talking with a couple of larger retailers about bringing in E’s Best for a consistent presence on the shelves, and hope to have some news in the coming months, but our primary focus remains on smaller, local retail businesses. We have developed some great personal and business relationships with our retail partners and that is probably the most gratifying thing for us. We are all in the same boat. Local support is vital to the continued survival and success of the small retail business model. We welcome the continued opportunities to promote our sample tastings and bring people into these stores, who may not have come otherwise. Likewise, we benefit from the existing customer base of those businesses that otherwise, may never have had the opportunity to know about and buy our products. Every tasting we do is a success… for us and for our retailers.
For 2013, we are in the testing stages for two rubs to be added to our product line. We are not sure when these will be ready, but there is no rush, God’s timing is the only thing we are interested in and we will not push things before it is time.
For Fathers Day, we will soon be taking orders on our website for special E’s Best gift baskets, which include a bottle of Smoky, a bottle of Killer, a saucepan/basting brush combo, and a red grilling apron, stitched with our E’s Best logo. This will be a limited promotion and we will bring it back again if we get a good response.
A drawing to win one of these gift baskets will take place at the Chop Shop during Memorial Day weekend, celebrating E’s Best 1st Anniversary in business. So, stay tuned as we get closer and check out our “E’s Best Barbecue Sauce” Facebook page for information about the date to start ordering the gift baskets, and be sure to click “like” to like our page.
In closing, we never lose sight of the amazing adventure that God has given us through, of all things, a barbecue sauce! His hand is all over this product! We have been able to give first fruits to fund Christian outreach through our church’s Faith Commitment ministry and that continues to be our point of focus through the sales of the sauce. E’s Best belongs to God and we stand in awe of His blessing and generosity in our lives.
Blessings to all of you who continue to support us, and our products!
E’s Best,
Elmer & Jan