How We Are On Track To Reach $1M/Year Selling Gourmet Pies

Marcia Wiggins

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Published: October 23rd, 2022

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Marcia Wiggins

Founder, Cape Whoopies, Maine's Gourmet Whoopie Pie LLC

$80K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Cape Whoopies, Ma...

capewhoopies.com

from South Portland, Maine, USA

started January 2013

$80,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Marcia recommends to grow your business!

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (... Jim Collins

Want more updates on Cape Whoopies, Maine's Gourmet Whoopie Pie LLC? Check out these stories:

1. How We Organically Grew 75% Through Social Media And SEO [$300K/Year] (2022) ➜

2. Building A $200K/Year Pie Business From Our Home Kitchen (2018) ➜

This is a follow up story for Cape Whoopies, Maine's Gourmet Whoopie Pie LLC. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 6 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hi, I’m Marcia again, here at Cape Whoopies, Maine’s Gourmet Whoopie Pie. We are still working our way through all the problems and fun of starting your own business. You know the drill!

We are now almost 10 years in. We started on January 28, 2013, and have moved twice in that time. We started in our home kitchen, moved to a food incubator, and finally about 5 years ago moved into our own space.

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We have gone from $14,000 in sales for the first year and this year we may pass $1M for the year. There is so much to learn, work through and change along the way. My SCORE MENTOR told me in year one that you need three things to have a successful business: 1) a good product, 2) a loud voice to get your message out, and 3) the ability to borrow money.

Then he said…”YOU ONLY NEED ANY TWO OF THE THREE!” It was a real eye-opener to learn that you didn’t need to have the best product in your category and you can still have a successful business. You just need two of the three things to make a success! Amazing! He later said that I was lucky because I had all three in spades!

Here’s our true beginning story.

We have been working hard to expand our reach and we are now in all the Wegman’s stores in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. We look forward to being in all the Wegman stores. In the last year, we have struggled, as I’m sure everyone has, with finding and keeping employees, keeping up with cost increases, and working to increase our pricing to keep up with a margin that will keep us in the successful category.

The world is a tough place since the pandemic! We have to stay on our toes with an eye to what we are paying for goods and employee salaries and make sure your price point is on target to keep everything in line. It is a constantly changing balance in these tough times. We hope to continue to pick up wholesale customers and advance our position into more Wegman’s stores by year-end.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

During the pandemic everyone was staying home, sheltering in place, avoiding crowds and schools, and shipping treats to themselves and friends. They might not be able to come to Maine but we were ready to ship a little bit of Maine to them. We grew during the Pandemic and have continued even today. The key to our success was to always be looking for the vehicle that was working.

At first, wholesale wasn’t our first line of success, it was shipping from our website… now it’s back to wholesale orders to stores that are selling our product and the sales on our website have picked up as well. I was always looking for what was working and trying to pivot to best focus on that success. Retail was not working as well so we pivoted to e-commerce shipping… We were always keeping a close eye on everything and ready to pivot to what was working.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

The biggest challenges of the last several years have been the rate at which the cost of goods and services has increased. We have had to raise our prices twice in the last year because of increased costs on our end. Our vendors have slowed because of the cost of our product going up so it's a never-ending battle trying to create a balance between costs and pricing.

We have had to learn all about the trucking industry, as well, because we shipped pallets of pies to Wegman’s. Their industry has instituted fuel surcharges that have added to our difficulty. You are charging one rate and then the cost of shipping just increased because of the surcharge so you are back to having a margin that’s not working again.

Our other problem has been to try and keep employees. Everyone is always hiring, now, so employees keep moving around to try and find the best deal for themselves. So, you finally get someone trained perfectly for their job and they find out they can make $20 per hour flipping burgers at McDonald’s and you lose them. It feels like we are always just squeaking by and having to reassess everything weekly. Fortunately for me, we have a wonderful Manager who is willing to work through every decision with me which helps.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

The biggest lesson I learned this year is that everything is merely one step at a time. It helps to remember that if you pivot and make a change, you can always pivot back. Every change can be changed again. There is nothing that is set in stone, except the brand you are building. Daily I am looking at making things easier, and less costly, opening another avenue for sales, or just trying to take the time to talk directly to my customers and make sure I am meeting their expectations.

Just remember, today, you only need to take one step, solve one problem, and do that over and over and over again. Before you know it you will be way down the road and on your way to your goals.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

The long-term goal is to start thinking about a company that would want to buy the brand. Our short-term plans are to start automating our process. I’d like to pay off some of our loans and consolidate the rest. All the while keeping our eye on the ball making sure that our costs stay in line and our pricing is right.

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I’m in the middle of reading BUILT TO LAST successful habits of visionary companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. It's a compilation of a research project at Stanford University Graduation School of Business. It is filled with specific information as well as general statements to keep you on track. I am inspired by what has made great long-lasting companies successful.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

My biggest tip is that you must be driven every single day. You must have more energy than you ever expected and be ready to work work work! The other big tip I have is that everything is merely one step at a time, don’t worry about trying to make your way down the road because you will get discouraged by the time it will take to make it that far.

Just remember, today, you only need to take one step, solve one problem, and do that over and over and over again. Before you know it you will be way down the road and on your way to your goals.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We are looking to hire someone with the baking experience. You must be able to lift 50-pound bags of flour and sugar and be able to follow a recipe. We have at least 30 different flavors and being able to focus on the recipe you making is key.

We want a team player who can work alone or jump into production with all the other whoopettes who are baking cakes, filling pies, bagging them, and finally sealing them into their bags. This all happens within an hour of being baked and then they are held in the freezer until they are shipped.