A Cornucopia Of Thoughts...

Last Friday, a representative from the company that manufactures the Cornucopia KN550 visited PJP Buttonwood.  And lest I need to remind you, the Cornucopia KN550 is a machine that could POTENTIALLY be able to press pie dough into our four-ounce jelly jars and speed up production of our Jelly Jar pies by 843%. You might recall that we stumbled upon this magical machine right as we were in the trenches of the order for 2,760 jars a few weeks ago.  And regardless of price, size, or questionable functionality for our needed purposes, we quickly became smitten kittens for a massive piece of machinery with the greatest name EVER.  So we couldn't stop ourselves from emailing the company and asking a few questions.  And then a salesman offered to drive several hours just to meet us.  And we said ok, because how could you pass up an in-store opportunity to discuss the Cornucopia KN550?  And since last week's blog about the approaching scheduled visit, I've received a lot of emails asking about how it all went down.  So here is how it played out...

I guess let's start with the Scottish Egg.  Have you heard of this?  It is hardboiled egg wrapped in meat, coated in bread crumbs and then baked or fried.  The whole key is that the hardboiled egg be in perfect condition inside the meat.  And this is the crown jewel of the Cornucopia KN550.  The machine is all about the encasing of something inside of something else...just very, very, very carefully.  And so while I envisioned the machine to press the dough into the jar, the reality is that it may be more that the machine encases the filling inside the dough and pushes the whole thing in the jar.  And don't quote me on this, as my entire production line knowledge is based on when Laverne and Shirley were bottle cappers at Shotz Brewery.

And beyond the Scottish Egg, the Cornucopia KN550 is the go-to machine for foods around the world that are all about putting something inside of something else very carefully.  Dare I say that it makes a cornucopia of different foods?  COULD. NOT. HELP.  MYSELF.

But can it put dough into a glass jar?  Good question.  Apparently, no one has ever tried it before on the Cornucopia KN550 and the only way to find out is to test it out.  That would involve Jeanne and I flying to California to the company testing facilities to see what happens.  We would make 50 pounds of dough and 50 pounds of filling on-site at Cornucopia headquarters, throw it all into the hoppers and then push the start button and hope for the best.  Interestingly enough, because of different altitude, climate, and a number of other highly scientific things I ignored, we would need to ship our ingredients out to Cornucopia headquarters so that the dough and filling are as identical as possible to the production environment at PJP Buttonwood.  I've never tried to ship 100 pounds of flour, but I bet that would be expensive, yet really interesting to package up and drop off at the local UPS store around the corner.

Which leaves us in an interesting position.  Obviously flying to California for a few days and shipping a lot of supplies would be expensive.  Finding a few days in the next few months to leave PJP Buttonwood for Southern California is probably even more onerous.  And we have no clue if it will actually work or not.

And, I should mention, that if it does work, we don't have $85,000 to plop down.  But we can't consent to larger orders on contract until we are able to produce more jars in a shorter time frame.  And larger orders are a big part of expanding and growing and building the foundation to be all "yo, $85,000 is TOTALLY FINE"  (I'm guessing I would start that sentence with a "yo"...I've never said it, so who really knows.)

It makes me think of which came first...the massive orders for jars or the $85,000 machine to make them?  The chicken or the (Scottish) egg?