Muesli: it’s hard enough to eat; how hard is it to make? Here’s a quick small business owner’s guide.
The story is true. And the muesli is delicious.
Wait until midsummer.
Scour the city for tiny batches of insanely expensive, uber-high-quality ingredients. Make extra trips because your car is small.
Ask a friend to lend you his commercial kitchen.
Spend your entire weekend ripping and chopping dried mangos, pineapples, apples, apricots, peaches and pears until your fingers seize and you collapse from exhaustion.
Repeat.
On weekdays, have potential distributors ignore your superior quality and hammer you on price.
At the same time, project manage your home renovation and worry about finding the cash for next week’s ingredients.
When your first batch is ready, wait for the wrong-sized bags to arrive late, despite your fax and phone reminders.
When the right bags turn up, pack the muesli and ask your copywriter friend to give your labels a quick once over.
When your copywriter friend suggests that Fruitopia, Nut Nirvana and Karmic Combo may have been locked up by existing food companies, do a quick internet search to confirm this is true.
Weep.
Create every possible permutation of the words fruit, nut, seed, muesli, breakfast and nutrition, along with all (in)conceivable conjugations.
You should get about 350.
Search the ‘net again to find that all these names are owned by firms three million times bigger than you.
Send a howling email to your inner circle, saying you can’t take any more and that you’re going to abandon the whole project as a stupid joke.
Cry yourself to sleep.
Wake to messages of love and support, then be inspired with the following, ridiculously obvious muesli names:
The one with just fruit.
The one with just nuts and seeds.
The one with fruit and nuts.
Tap your final (hitherto unknown) reserve of strength, stick the labels on the bags, convince three tiny outlets to give you a go, make all deliveries by hand and sell to friends to make ends meet.
Go online.
Today’s lessons
Never give up.
Do your research.
If you hit an immovable object, go round.
If you’re freaking out, ask friends for advice and support.
The closer you stand to the lighthouse, the darker it gets (Japanese proverb).
Yay!
[First published around 2006.]