Eddie’s Energy Bars Blog

I enjoyed a great dinner last night with my brother and his girlfriend, as well as my friend who is up from the wonderful state of North Carolina for a couple of days.  We decided to go to an Italian staple in Vermont, and the place with the best Italian I have ever had.  If you are still wondering what it is, and haven’t looked at the title, it’s Bove’s, a small Italian eatery on Pearl Street in Burlington.

If you’re a Vermonter, and haven’t been to Bove’s, it is something equivalent to a sin.  They have got the best sauces, including the national award winning vodka sauce, and wonderful specials.  Last nights special was lasagna, so of course, I jumped at the opportunity, and I was surely not disappointed.

We then got a wonderful treat from who I believe was one of the owners.  He approached our table and was curious if we would like to be guinea pigs for his new dessert, called a sweetza (spelling might be wrong), to be coming into grocery stores in the coming months.  It’s a square flatbread with roasted almonds, cinnamon, marscapone cheese, and apples.  It was amazing!  Such a good blend of flavors, and if it wasn’t for the three people dining with me, I would have eaten the entire thing myself!

When he came back out we gave him our very glowing feedback, and he was thrilled.  We asked him how it would be packaged, and he said that it would be in a brightly colored pizza box in the frozen food section of local grocery stores.

I am not only excited about this, but I was even more thrilled to be a guinea pig and get free dessert from the best Italian restaurant I have ever come across.  I encourage you to go try it out if you haven’t.  You won’t be disappointed.

Have a great day!  Off to go do deliveries.

Michael
Eddie’s Energy Bars

My brain feels like a big ball of mush right now. My friend from NC who is coming up had a couple of flight mishaps this morning, and will be in later this afternoon, but that gave me the chance to explore into how I want to expand Eddie’s Energy Bars, and find some way to get multiple streams of income besides selling my fantastically tasty, Vermont-made energy bars.

Yesterday, I attended the monthly Richmond Area Business Association meeting, and one of the topics was a wedding show Vermont Vows was going to have at the West Monitor Barn in Richmond, VT. I was sitting there, thinking about what I could do to get in on that, and the President of RABA, a great friend, and owner of Keyworth Graphics, leaned over and asked me if I could turn my product into a wedding favor.

What an interesting thought. I rushed home, and designed a label for my test-market wedding favor, threw some ribbon on it, and voila! A wedding favor for the outdoorsy people who want to give something unique to their guests.

This led to other endeavors, like custom-labeled energy bars, where a company could get them labeled with their logo, and give them out.

What do you all think? I invite you to leave a comment below.

Have a great day!

Michael Adams
Eddie’s Energy Bars

I can’t express more how important it is to be nice to your store accounts, of which you sell your product.  Being nice to them, especially when selling homemade energy bars, is so crucial to success in stores. I try my best to be nice to all of my stores that I sell in, and I think it translates into more sales.

Store owners and employees will talk up your product and push it off the shelves into customers hands.  This helps more than your company, but the store itself.  If customers want an Eddie’s Energy Bar, they will go to their favorite store, which gets them to look at more products the store sells, and hopefully purchase.

I heard a story today, of horrible customer service.  Someone badgered the store owner to sell their product, and thought it was unfair that they were selling the competition’s product.  That’s only slightly annoying to me, but the store owner ended up refusing to sell the company’s product because of the way they were treated.

This not only happens with your customer accounts, but it is also true in life.  The people you surround yourself with are generally people who treat you nicely, not badly.  You will help these nice people out because they have decided to help you out.  These are the people to know.

So, to sum this all up, be nice or go home.  Being mean will not really get you anywhere.

Michael
Eddie’s Energy Bars

As my older brother, Ryan, graduated from Colby College, millions of grills were being fired up and burgers and dogs being burnt to a crisp.  I was able to have my share of grilled goodness on Saturday, with an enormous steak courtesy of Mr. Cross, a Zoo owner.  He had brought over fourty pounds of meat for this past weekends festivities.  Now, owning a Zoo, we were a little skeptical about what we were eating.  Was it zebra? elephant?  Who knows?  It ended up being regular beef, that tasted incredible.

My twin sister and I drove back Sunday afternoon, to get excited for memorial day! Woohoo!  I couldn’t be more ready.  Actually, I did have this vision of heading on into stores to see if they would like to sell my homemade energy bars, but alas, half of this fine state is shutdown on memorial day.  Instead, I think some baking will have to be in order, because I have some energy bars that need to be shipped to some wonderful customers of mine.

Get in on this incredible phenomenon, and order some Eddie’s Energy Bars today!

Michael, Owner
Eddie’s Energy Bars

I had a nice time at the 2007 Career Planning Conference at Vermont Technical  College today.  I did a presentation on student entrepreneurship and highlighted the importance of having  a business education, no matter what you end up doing in life.  Although the presentation was not as well attended as we thought it would be, I still ended up with great contacts at UVM and some wonderful ideas for where my product could be sold.  I offered up plenty of free samples of my homemade energy bars, and attendees ate them up in droves.  The drive there and back was nice.  I got to have a conversation with my business teacher from high school, who really helped get me started with Eddie’s Energy Bars.

From one wonderful thing to the next: I had dinner tonight with two lovely people, Ann Zuccardy of Vermont Shortbread Company, and Dinneen Diette, who works for Tourism Quebec, but has started a nutrition and wellness coaching business.  She is up from Mass, visiting for the Business Expo.  Both woman were very well traveled, and shared incredible stories of their trips to Zimbabwe and India.  They were very interested in hearing more of the story behind EEB, a very unique one to say the least.  They mentioned that I should start writing a book about my story and experiences that I have had with starting a business in my teens.  We ended up talking for over two hours about each-others lives.  It was really nice to sit on the porch of a Toscano, a great restaurant in downtown Richmond, and watch small-town night life happen before our eyes.

So now, I am relaxing, and packing for my nice little trek over to Colby College for my brother’s graduation.  I cannot believe that he is graduating college already.  It feels like we just moved him in for freshman year!  Then again, I can’t even believe that I am a college sophomore.  I am looking forward to this weekend getaway, as a great time to relax and live hopefully what will be a simple life.  But we all know, vacations end up being this ball of mass chaos.

I’m going to go throw some clothes in a bag, and I’m off to bed.  I hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend. Until Monday!

Michael
Eddie’s Energy Bars