CJ's Stix - Chocolate Dipped Pretzels Hand Rolled In English Toffee

Just this past weekend, we participated at the 1st Annual Fabulous Food Festival. It was the first time that we had our own booth at a tradeshow versus a shared booth space - some new challenges, but we were looking forward to testing the waters.
 
There were three of us at the show; Bruce, Steve and myself. We got to the Exposition Hall early on Saturday morning to bring everything in and start to set up in our 10x10 space! By 10am, we were ready to go and receive the thousands of people that were ready to sample a variety of foods.

One of the most rewarding parts of doing demos or tradeshows is to watch the reaction of people when you tell them what they are going to sample and then to watch them as they eat it! Bruce is our main demo guy and has become somewhat iconic around the Bay Area! He’ll stand at the front of the table and say: “It’s a chocolate dipped pretzel hand rolled in English toffee”. We had one woman this year, from Lafayette, take the sample and say with a smile on her face, “you had me at chocolate!” These are the fun types of comments that we hear from people. We feel that we are able to connect with the attendees of these types of events, letting them know who we are, that we have a family business and a really great product!

Here are some other fun comments that we received over the weekend:

“It’s like a party is going on inside my mouth” – Michelle, Mill Valley
 
“Almond Roca on steroids” – Rich, San Luis Obispo

“It’s Out-of-the-World good!” – Hana, San Francisco

Thanks to all those that stopped by to taste and to buy – we always have a fun time at these events and we appreciate the support from our customers!

Congratulations to Danielle Brady from Mill Valley, she was the winner of the Gift Basket of CJ’s Stix and CJ’s Bitz we were giving away.

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Greetings and welcome to my blog! My name is Cheryl Jagoda (also  known as CJ) and I am the Owner/Partner/Marketing Person for Marin Chef LLC, the makers of CJ's Stix and CJ's Bitz. Our business is a family business and we are coming up to our 5th year anniversary. Our business is like a great metaphor for life - each year it gets better and each year we change our look and expand our "family". We started this business with our flagship product CJ's Stix and then came CJ's Bitz - the bite sized version of our gourmet chocolate treat! Now our CJ's Bitz brand has expanded to 6 varieties and in a brand new (very grown up) looking package. We are very proud of what we have accomplished and look forward to next steps in this crazy world of owning your own small business.

I hope that this blog will help me connect with our fans/customers of the product, sharing stories of where we are showcasing our product, getting feedback on what they like the most and ideas for our future. I'd also like to share my insight on what it has been like to start a small business selling gourmet products - there is a great support community out there for those of you that have great ideas.

When people ask me in interviews on how I got started, I reference the Oprah Winfrey article that I read years ago in her `What I Know For Sure' section of her magazine. She talked about discovering the reason for your existence on this earth by knowing what your passion is. I found my passion and now I hope to share more of it through this web site and blog!

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