SO 2 days into my fruchia journey 2 disaster days - I have basically thrown away all my work and am really starting to doubt myself - the product is not turning out how i envisaged - Yesterday i was at a real low point starting to doubt everything i have worked for , staring down at a debt I will have no way of paying.

On a more positive note the snack really does surpress your appetite as i had a few bites yesterday and i didn't eat for the rest of the day.  Its either that or i was worrying too much that i didn't have an appetite anymore.

Anyway today started with a more positive note , my product seems to have done what it is meant to do so we may have our first completed product this afternoon !

They say you learn from your mistakes - i really hope i learn from mine .
On a day that should have been fun has turned into a disaster - note to self DO NOT CHANGE YOUR RECIPE.  AS we speak i have the first batch of pear fruchia on the go - I decided to use a different kind of pectin to what i have been using before - and guess what it is not working so it looks like ill be eating cracked fruit leather for a while - i will not be using that stuff again off to waitrose tomorrow to buy the stuff that has been tried and tested

So the stamp idea went completly out the window - they were trying to rip me off and seemed like a lot of effort to get 3 stamps made when i can just as easily get something printed on a computer.  So now I am getting stickers made and printing them off.

After a consultation with a man from the sticker supplier he tells me what size sticker to get ...

surprise surprise they are too big so i am going to have to cut them down - not the end of the world i have a guilotine and i used these a lot when i was in year 2 - we will see if my skills have got worse when i get round to actually cutting the stickers down.

Any way I ordered the puree with specific insturcutions to the supplier that they hold the purees on their end when they receive them (they are coming from germany) as i am doing this out of a 1 bed flat i dont really have much refridgeration space.  I ordered everything else i needed and when i had it all ready i would give the company the all clear for them to send.

Guess what happens next 

Hi Marcus

Just to let you know that you should be expecting the apple and pear puree and the pear flavouring to arrive with you today.

This was dispatched yesterday via Fedex

Please see COAs attached

Kind regards

Hannah.

 Great I have 40 kg of puree arriving with no means of storing them - i need a fridge - but dont really want to buy a fridge .  I had a lightbulb moment 

The company i have my current day job in has just cleared out a flat and are keeping it in a room upstairs from the offfice which is not alarmed at night.

Operation sneak into room "borrow" fridge use my getaway driver (the black cab) and return to my factory/ 1 bed flat.

I now have the puree refrigerated, chia ordered ,ovens raring to go  all i need to do is wait for the pectin to arrive and the journey can begin.

I am sure next week will be just as eventful

Here is what the thing will look like but with two of them ...

We have the new flavours pear ,cherry and mango all I need now is some packaging.  I have decided that its better to keep the packagaing minimal rather than spending a bit of money making something look a bit shit.  If the product does turn out o have a demand then I can invest in something a bit more fancy and have a proper go at branding.

This means keeping things basic - after a few ideas of how to package the good rangind from having it as a bar (too hard to put in package) to having it like chewing gum (too much effort) I settled on the idea to have 2 roll ups in a small cellophane package.  I will then put a  blank sticker on the packet (to have them printed is too expensive and I only have £500 left) and then get some stamps made with the logo on.  Ill then get another stamp made with the flavour -  All this should cost around £60 bargain.

Now to get the stamp made ....

I received the bottle of pectin and the guar gum on the same day - unfortunately it happened that i got tonsillitis that day as well which meant that i was on penicillin and bed ridden for a week after 5 days in bed and the bank holiday weekend - I resumed work in my normal day job.
With my course of penicillin i have to take 8 pills a day for 10 days - which means every few hours i have to take 2 pills, so i kept them on my desk.

Whilst sitting on my desk bored i decided to have  a look penicllin actually is so started reading the leaflet that comes in the packet.  Whilst reading this is saw one of the lines read

"advise doctor about taking penicllin if using Guar gum"

hmmm so i thought its best to forget the guar gum idea and head forward with the pectin extract.

I basically got round to doing this today and to my amazement it looks like it is working and i have a product which is gelling and tasting good.

Now to experiment with some of the other flavours.

Fruchia

I am starting this blog as I start my business , i want to the readers of this blog to go through the journey with me from which I go from having an idea to a finshed product that will hopefully be on shop shelves within the next year.

Let me go on to explain what exactly by business is and how it came about.

I had a job in an industrial diamond company - it was not what i wanted to do but it was paying my bills and allowing me to basically survive.  Whilst in the office I was sat next to a lovely russian girl who live me loved her food but was always looking after herself adding superfoods to her meals and eating low calorie snacks.
Anyway she would often share her 4 o clock snack with me and one time when her mother was over from russia she brought this amazing fruit snack called "pastilla" that we would tear and eat.

Around the same time I was adding chia seeds into my meals and smoothies , which is when the idea dawned upon me my combining the pastilla and the seeds we could make a super healthy snack.

 All i need to do is learn how to make the pastilla mix in the chia seed then take it to the supermarket and be a millionaire easy right ....

This was my first attempt - looks awful but actually tasted alright- any way i decided i will be able to do this so decided to get serious and try and make this work.

I wrote a business plan and took my idea to the Brightside charity who work alongside the start up loans business and after a while i managed to secure my loan of £2500.

I went on to buy a dehydration oven and found some suppliers - I wanted to make my flavours amazing on the palette so I thought i needed to get some pros in this is where i spent a lot of my money on a New product development service .  THis basically meant i had someone working for me who would put winning combinations together .

This man Chris sent me two flavours which were puree concentrate i opened the bottles and dehydrated the puree and eventually ended up with 2 flavours which tasted incredible - I was really onto a winner what could go wrong....
We got down to pricing which all seemed ok then a sticking point the mimumum order quantity was 2 tonnes of each flavour OH DEAR.

Back to the drawing board i go which is kind of where i am now .. We are now using puree over puree concentrate however we are not getting the right consisitancy once dried I will be adding a natural thickener to the product to see how it goes.

Lets see what happens next...