Happy Holidays from Doce B Shop

This Holiday we just want to thank all the amazing customers for giving us the pleasure to bring smiles into their lives and also to their relatives’.

You made us feel special by giving us the business and the trust. We hope you enjoy eating the Brigadeiros as much as we enjoyed making.

We hope you, your family and friends will enjoy the deliciousness of the Brigadeiro and we are looking forward to be part of your life in 2014 as well. Providing you, your family and friends more smiles. J

With Love,
Danielle and Marina

Dinovember

We had a feeling they were going to attack our kitchen too. And that is what happened last night!

T-Rex said they were just trying to help. Let’s see…

At least we know they washed their “hands” before touching the food.

It looks like they know what they are doing…

Yes, they knew what they were doing… Maybe we should consider hiring them! The question is: How did they learn?

Not sure if trying to help, or just trying to make s’mores out of it!

Are they partying with the Turkey? No sense…

No way, they made that!!!!!!! They are ready for Thanksgiving.

Well we guess in the end it was all about the s'mores. Just glad T-Rex didn't burn his hands!

At least they washed the dishes! J


For more Dinovember click here. 

Doce Brigadeiro: A Special Gift for the Holiday!

If you have alot of people in your family that you are looking for a thoughtful holiday gift and you want to give something special and affordable for the Holidays, why not a Doce B Shop gift box? The uniqueness and touch of love we put in every single candy will make it more than a special gift for your loved ones.

It’s a special time of the year where you get together with your relatives, and it is always a pleasure when everybody is happy and smiling! Our Brigadeiros are guaranteed to make you and everybody else in your party smile. It’s the perfect way to treat them this year!

 

The sprinkles are just illustrative; you can have any flavor from our selection, you’d like!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hope our candies and your family have a wonderful Holiday together!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walshpreneur Fair

Getting ready for the Walsh Entrepreneur fair hasn't been an easy task, since me and Marina are both super busy. Me with work and school, and Marina with work and her wedding plans. But at the same time it’s giving us a push to get some things done prior to our launch in April/2014.

We had to have our flavors set, at least a good considerable amount, to sample at the fair. Prices had to be set also, so we can collect feedback from those who will sample, to gain a better understanding of a fair price to charge our customers. Packaging was another thing that had to be somehow decided and collect feedback as well.

Things are looking good so far - expect for the fact that THE FAIR IS TOMORROW! O.M.G!

Thanks to the Blackstone Launchpad team for all the support and for believing in our product. We hope to not let you guys down. It’s hard to believe that this is happening and our product/company will get exposed to over 200 people that we don’t know. HOW COOL IS THAT? J

In case you want to attend tomorrow, I am sure you still can register in this link http://bit.ly/1ekxUbS

I wouldn't miss out on an opportunity to network, sample our candies and see me giving out our Elevator Speech in public. Actually I do need some support, since I hate public speaking. So please, GO! and cheer for me!!!! J

Flavors we will be sampling at the fair are:

- Tombo

- Ubatuba

- Gunga

- Taipu

- Copacabana

- Vermelha

- Bonete

- Pipa

- Maragogi

- Walnuts

- Pecans

And more.

You can sample them all, but you will have to attend the fair for that ;)

Packaging Ideas

Name: check. Flavors: check, although we are still  - and will be constantly working on bringing new flavors to our menu. Time to work on the packaging; How do we want our product presented? After doing some research on-line to find suppliers of gift boxes we finally came up with some suggestions. We are going to collect feedback from customers in order to decide which ones we will try out.

We are considering having two selections: 1. Weddings and Events, 2. Gifts

1.       Wedding and Events

 

 

 

 

2.       Gifts

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last one is a second option for the gift category, which we will decide after getting some feedback,  either this one or the one with the lace.

Thoughts?

Flavor Ideas

After the name was chosen, Doce Brigadeiro, we decided to work on the Brigadeiro flavors we would like to offer. Even though it is a Brazilian candy our target market are the North Americans. We have to make sure we will fulfill their needs and won’t be doing anything too different from what they love, but still  include some of the traditional Brazilian favorites as well.

Me and Marina spent a few weeks talking about it, between meetings and in cooking/baking sessions we came up with all these flavors to start up our menu. In the long-run we will probably be taking some out and adding others in depending on sales.   It will be all about the customer preference!

Here are the flavors we came up with:

From the top left to the bottom right: The Traditional Brazilian with chocolate sprinkles, peanuts, peppermint, pistachio, almonds, dark chocolate, strawberry flavor with sprinkles, strawberry flavor with sugar, roast coconut, coconut, mix coconut, dried cranberry with Cajun,  white chocolate with rainbow sprinkles, s'mores, and chocolate mint.

After deciding the flavors we then decided to name them - but not a random name. It had to be a name that would have a meaning behind it. Therefore we decided to give them names that were related to the most beautiful beaches in Brazil!  However, they are hard names to pronounce - but they have a meaning and we hope our customers like it, if not, we will change it! Do you have an opinion about that? Check it out the name on our facebook page.  Guess which flavor is my favorite?!

The name and logo choice!

The business idea was done, so now we needed a name. That sounds like the easy part! I already had a name picked out: “Sweet B”, but on our first meeting with Blackstone Launchpad they suggested we do some research on names to see what was out there first. Turned out that the name “Sweet B” was already taken, so we had to come up with another name – how disappointing!

Broken hearted, we did some brainstorming with the team but nothing was as satisfying to us as the name “Sweet B”.  I had to get over that name and accept the fact that I had to have another name for the business. “Yummy B”, “Yum B”, “Bite B”, “Sweet Bite”, and some other names came in mind but not catchy enough.   We finally came up with the name “Doce Brigadeiro” !! In order to use "Doce B" to facilitate the pronunciation for the English speaking customers, and then since the business plan includes having a shop in the long-run with coffee and some other Brazilian goodies, we added "Shop"to it.

The name was finally picked out, now we had to have a logo.  Something that would somehow represent Brazil with the colors green and yellow and also give the customers the impression that it was food related.

I am the type of person that doesn’t sleep very well when I have too much going on or am too excited about something. So guess what happened? A couple sleepless nights, waking up in the middle of the night with ideas. So I left a paper and pen on my nightstand so I could write it down and/or draw whatever I had in mind.

And that’s what I came up with! I know – don’t judge! I was never good at drawing but it helped me sleep better!!

Marina took on the responsibility of doing the logos.  She has a MacBook and the perfect program for this project.   She came up with really good and cute ideas.

 

That was the first logo idea she sent me.

 I liked it - but she still wanted to work on it more. Obviously there were still room for improvement. So she kept working on it, and came up with the ones we will be using today. J

Tcharam!!! Here are they!!! 

 

I particularly LOVE them!  What about you?

The Business Idea Part II

Hi everyone! This is Marina Lauand writing, I am Danny’s partner . Born and raised in Brazil, 28 years old, with a dream that is about to come true!

Since we have already started to tell you our story, I am also going to talk about my journey in the United States and how our friendship and later on, our partnership started.

As many other Brazilians I came to the US in 2010 for the Au Pair Program.  I lived in Connecticut for one year and within that year I met a special man that would later become my husband. After my au pair year was over, we decided to continue with a hard overseas long distance relationship, until I finally moved in to the United States permanently.

                                       That is me and my future husband Michael

During one return visit to the lovely State of Michigan, I met Danny through a North American friend, who is one of my husband’s best friend.  Believe it or not, she was the first Brazilian I met, and that was a big  deal for me  since I was pretty lonely and missing my friends from home. As good traditional Brazilians we knew without asking each other that we had something in common: we both love and know how to make the delicious “little chocolate balls” known as Brigadeiro.

Girls night out

Even though we lived 45 minutes away, our friendship grew closer as time went by. The idea of opening a Brigadeiro business crossed my mind many times before I met Danny, but I've never had enough encouragement to do something like that.

One day, in one of our conversations, Danny said she dreamed about starting to make Brigadeiros to sell here and opening a business. Those lines sounded like a great idea to me! We figured out that every person that has tried out the traditional Brigadeiros love them and want more and more.

Since the candy is a ‘must have’ in the birthday parties in Brazil, we asked ourselves; why not make it a ‘must have’ in events here as well?

That’s when the idea became serious and we decided to put our efforts in making it happen.  So that is where we are in our journey right now.   We are feeling very positive and excited about and see it as another bright spot in our future!

The business Idea

The first blog post will be about the birth of Doce B Shop; Where the business idea came from? Why? When? How?

Before that, let me introduce myself. My name is Danielle Cecconi, I am 26 years old, born and raised in Brazil. The country of the deliciousness called Brigadeiro. I came to Michigan to get my Master degree in Management in Marketing at Walsh College and started working with BlackstoneLaunchpad in June, 2013 in order to open my business: Doce B Brigadeiro LLC.

Brigadeiro it’s been part of my life, and it was a “must have” in all of my birthday parties.

 

Here is a picture of my 7^th Bday with my brother’s 9^th, he is the silly one holding the balls. That’s the cake table, where we would get together to sing happy bday and that’s where usually the Brigadeiros were set.

The exciting thing about it is that as I started to get older I would help my mom make them, and it would be the highlight of my day because I always got to eat a few prior to the party. J

Long story short, I became a professional Brigadeiro maker! My favorite desert then, now and forever!

So when I first came to Michigan and noticed that Brigadeiro wasn’t known here, I had to make it and share with people. The more I started to meet Americans and other international people, the more Brigadeiro I had to make.

I got really involved with school and the International Student Organization there, so I decided to offer to bring my “Brazilian candy” to the events. And guess what? Everybody LOVED it!

 

Me and my candies at the Focus Hope Walk 2012, I made little Brazilian flags as a “business card”, and that’s when the business idea was born. Due to everybody’s feedback I noticed that I would have a chance and customers If I opened the business.

 

Here is when I made the candies for the International Day at Walsh College this year. At that point I was focusing on getting feedback from people, the more I had, the better. And I got 100% approval!

So as a 26 years old woman that is getting her master degree and has an entrepreneur mind, I saw a business opportunity coming together. I then had the opportunity to meet my Brazilian friend and partner Marina Lauanda. We got signed up at Blackstone Launchpad and the rest is story for the next posts.