What are your thoughts?

[Kelleybean]

Hello Everybody,

First of all I want to start out by saying that this is a wonderful forum and I am so happy that I found it. I look forward to learning as much as posable from all of you pros out there.

My name is Kelley and I am from the great state of Wisconsin Two years ago I starte my website with a wide variety of specialty food items and gift set for all occasions I am planning to expand my selection of items for the year of 2006 to include gourmet chocolate gift sets. My question to all of you is: Where do you get your molds from? What type of chocolate do you prefer to use when making candies. Do you think that this is a good idea for me? Any advice and or helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.

[panini]

Kb,
Welcome.
There will be a plethora of ideas here. I'm curious though. It appears that you ship everything. Chocolates are hard to ship, almost seasonal. I think I would research the shipping aspect first, if you haven't already.
Panini

[momoreg]

There are a lot of artisan chocolatiers out there, so if you're planning to do high-end, make sure you are on par with the competition. That said, you need to do some research, and learn about chocolate, experiment in small batches to get a feel for it, and decide how much you can feasibly make and sell. There are so many great chocolates out there. How much do you want to spend, and for what quality? What size molds are you looking for?

Ditto what Panini said.

[Kelleybean]

Panini & Momoreg,

Thank you both so much for responding to my post. I never though about the shipping question. I figure that I will start off pretty small and just do things locally and see what the response is. Before I do that though I am going to start by using some of my family and friends as my test subjects to see what tastes and looks good and what does not. I just purchased an small chocolate melting machine that holds only a cup at a time so I figure that I can do some testing with different chocolates in small quantities. As far as what price range I want to stay in, I had never even contemplated that.

Thank you both again for your responses and advice.

Kelley