Gift Baskets and Food in Orange County with Cherri Boone of Grand Gourmet

Cherri Boone: Everybody here more or less has ordered a basket from me. And so I have never heard anything negative, but this past week I had a chance to do some really huge baskets. They gave the schools a Keurig coffee maker with all the stuff that I could possibly fit in. These things weighed so much I had to go with Barry to open doors to get them in. And I had a lot of really great comments.

One of them was, “Oh my God, that’s for us, it’s beautiful, look at that”. I went, I did that. I didn’t really hear a lot of comments except for what you guys say. So what makes these baskets so special.

I listen to what you’re saying; “This is for my grandmother. She’s not allowed to have sweets. She likes to have this, she doesn’t want to have that”. And so I create something like that. I have some food on stock, but I also go out and get something to make it special. At Christmas time…

Business Growth Innovators Member: Can I help you?

Cherri Boone: I have this little bag of tricks here. We do special things, now Termite Terry might recognize this. We did, I don’t know, 50 of these for you at Christmas time. Oh, come on, he’s a termite guy, and he tends houses, how appropriate can this be.

And so we put his mug with Termite Terry on it. And some cookies and stuff, but he gets to carry these in every week at Christmas time and say, “Thank you for your business, we really appreciate it”. And Terry, did that work? I’ll wait until you chew before I ask you some more.

Mark Winger [SP ]does a lot of baskets for me at Christmas time. Now Mark, I know if he listens and is a good boy, he gets to have dark sea salt caramels. We’re just going to set those there so he pays attention, okay.

Business Growth Innovators Member: Dangerous.

Cherri Boone: Well I do Karate, so, but you have to understand that I try and know my customers too, so just as everybody else who’s in business. I try and find things that appeal to them, and to whoever they’re giving things to. Graduations coming up, isn’t that cute. You guys don’t think this is cute, but the girls think this is cute. I could a diamond ring in here. More than likely it will be Jelly Bellies, but that’s, there’s something. You can put money in there too.

Business Growth Innovators Member: Stick some cash in there.

Cherri Boone: So you order a graduation basket, there’s no cash in there now, trust me. You can put a graduation basket together and something special and something like that. We do weddings, we’ve done candy buffets for weddings, which a lot of work in there and they’re enormous, and just so much fun at the wedding because they just go over really well. This is a wedding favor box. It’s really pretty. Girls will really like things like this, so I keep my eyes open for fun stuff like this. It can go in a basket, or can it can be used separately.

Business Growth Innovators Member: This is cute.

Cherri Boone: There’s a couple of brochures running around to sort of give the new people an idea of what I do. Now, besides all the different kinds of baskets that we could have, I have a lot of different kinds of food that you probably wouldn’t think of, Crepe mix. Now why would you do that? Because you might have a friend who really likes to cook. And I have all sorts of sauces and things. We could put a crepe pan in, you could do all sorts of things, and my family likes crepes so, these are rotated a lot.

Business Growth Innovators Member: Crepe, crepe.

Cherri Boone: That would be the French way, or my version of the French way. Pretzel mix, who doesn’t like pretzels. I’m still looking for pretzels that I grew up with. I haven’t been able to make them yet. But this is something that can go in a family basket. Old fashioned, family, lets make something together night.

We could put in games for kids to play with, family games, UNO, something bigger. This, little bit of Jelly Bellies, stuff like that. This makes a great family basket. And then comes the gourmet part. These cookies are to die for, you can practically see through them, and they have a really intense flavor. They come in all sorts of flavors. A lot of different sizes, cool packaging. They’re out in the east coast, they’re in Georgia.

Now, I go to the Fancy Food show all most every year in San Francisco, and I go and find these places. The Fancy Food show probably has approximately 1000 vendors, and California probably has 200. So the rest are either international, or from the US. But these people I’ve used for several years, they’re awesome, and I’ll let Eric open them and pass them around.

Okay, besides cookies and things, we have everything from jams to sauces to, salsas, whatever it needs to go in a basket, I can usually get a hold of. I’ve started carrying high end quality products that I’m keeping on stock. This is one of them. Robert Rothschild Farms. If you go into Gelsons, or Bristle Farms, you’ll find them on the shelves. Another one that we’re doing is Stonewall Kitchen. And Stonewall Kitchen has actually given me referrals for people that are looking for products and for baskets.

So these are two of the really good long term companies that are in existence that are considered gourmet. Pass them on down. And they do make a dark sea salt caramel, but this is only dark chocolate, Mark. So anyway, this is a cute little size that goes in a basket. They come in bigger sizes for a families or people who really like chocolate. And then we come to candy, well, I don’t look like this for nothing. I have a library of catalogs of things.

My chocolate catalog is five notebooks, two inch notebooks, alphabetized of chocolatiers. So if you say “I want a dog paw in dark chocolate”, I know where it’s at and I’ll order you a dozen dog paws in chocolate. If you are Christmas time, and you say, “I want something really special, but I just want to give a little something”. Now how cute is this truffle?

Business Growth Innovators Member: Cute.

Cherri Boone: It’s expensive, it cost you five bucks, that’s good chocolate. But nobody else is going to have one. And you just say, I want you to have this, you’re my favorite. Don’t eat it, pass it around. It’s the last one, don’t eat it. There are a number of different things we do to make you happy and to make great baskets. There are a lot of basket people out there.

They have not been in business as long as I have. I’ve made all of the mistakes, and I keep on making them, and somehow I’m still in business. I have a little guardian angel over me. But I like to think it’s because I have a quality product and that I make my customers happy. So, are there any questions?

Business Growth Innovators Member: Well, just a comment. I do like that the fact that you if you have something special you want to include in the basket you’ve done, we can like, bring them to you and incorporate it into it.

Cherri Boone: That’s right.

Business Growth Innovators Member: Gift cards…

Cherri Boone: Yeah, it depends on the schedule. I’m on my way to a meeting, and I have this thing. Can you put in a basket for me? I’ll give you 15 minutes, we’ve done that. No, I’ve done it in 15 minutes. Okay, I’m done. Are there any questions? Okay, well thank you, and I hope you keep buying baskets.

(714) 968-3681
Fax: 714-963-9405
20122 Imperial Cove
Huntington Beach,CA 92646
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