Saw a post on Facebook from a bee-keeper, that has a surplus of 40 jars of honey, and wanted advice on how to sell them.
The obvious advice is don't!
Put them in the back of the wardrobe for next year and don't take the honey next year. Leave it for the bees, it will save a fortune on winter feed.
You probably promised the wife a week in Lanzarote on the proceeds, so wont listen to that advice. Anyway you have kept the bees for two years its about time they kept you!
These rules were set by the Minister for food and rural affairs with advice from the big food producers. These producers wined and dined the Minister, in Mustique on an all expenses paid holiday. So borrowing the wife's wellies to camp in a muddy corner of the field may not sway the Ministerial overlord to look favourably at a budding entrepreneur.
is you honey safe?
We all know the healing properties of honey and how it can destroy bacteria, but you have to prove your honey is the same, thus it needs to be tested. Three to five kilos per sample should be sufficient. While they are at it, they may as well, test for content on the honey so you can display it on the label. With prudent shopping around you could get a quote for under £500, if you discard the travel cost to Milton Keynes and back.
The test results will prove it is free of bacteria but full of sugar, a bad thing. The jar will now have to display a red warning, as it is harmful to health. The local press will latch onto the fact that you alone is stimulating the world obesity crisis. You can expect some irate phone calls .
You don't have to employ a full PR department at this stage. If you know some one that works for an Energy company, internet provider, or insurance, you may be able to find out where they purchase their answering machine.
These machines are worth their weight in gold, not only do they tell the caller, their call is important to them, but they also keep them on hold, playing raucous, discordant music to enrage and cause the caller to cease the call. If the caller is stubborn, it will give 9 choices of fictitious departments the caller can access by pressing a button. The act of pressing the button will automatically drop the line and disconnect.
Labels
Your honey must have a label. The label must convey to the customer exactly what is in the jar, who made it where you live, and how to contact you. It must be easy to read. Don't be fooled by the labels of big companies. They can do what they like, you have to stick to the local rules. The local environment health officers can close you down. Just because the commercial jar of honey says heather honey in letters you need a microscope to read. Your label must be able to be read from the shop doorway. A font size the same as the emergency fire exit is desirable, but may not be that practical. Basic rule, big jars, big writing, with Braille if possible and a QR code liked back to your website. Filming happy bees flying in and out of the hive entrance is ideal. There also needs to be the back story about your happy bees, and your life with them. Your history would be useful. You need not mention all the divorces.
Just call it Honey. If your local trading standards test your honey and finds Alice 1847321/9. stopped of at the apple tree to top up with nectar and not fly direct to the oil seed rape field, and you called your honey Oil Seed Rape honey, you could be in trouble.
Scales
You must sell the honey by weight. The weight must be accurate. Trading standards will check. The recommended scales will cost a fortune. They will be the only scales acceptable This Year. Next year you may have to repurchase, because you scales are no longer recommended.
The managing director of the scales company was the best man at the wedding of the head of weights and measures, but that means nothing, and is just coincidental. You must do and buy as you are told.
Risk assessment
You will have to complete a risk assessment in compliant to a risk assessment the environmental health department uses. It will be based on best practice of the biggest company (according to them) and must follow Hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP). At this stage you should make yourself aware of Food standard acronyms. Inspectors talk in them all the time, saves using English. Inspectors will never explain in plain English what they mean, but will blurt out acronyms jargon and clichés infinitum. After five or so years of visits and rewriting the risk assessment, you will be beaten into some form of compliance.
The honey processing plant.
Not your home or kitchen, a purposely built unit with electricity, water , toilets and rest room.
It goes without saying you have a degree in food hygiene or similar, or employ some one that has.
You will have to test the honey at each critical control point. You must be able to record room temperature, humidity, relative vapour pressure, ph, moisture content, and air quality. Your local environmental department will have friends that produce such measuring devices. You do not need to measure radiation, as the company hasn't built a machine for that yet.
At each stage the honey must be tested and a record made. The process should be repeated every 5 minutes and recorded.
That is a person, testing the uncapping, filtering, jar filling. ( Not glass jars they could break) and sealing.
Once they realise it is only you doing it and you are not going to employ staff, HR department, wages, stores, PR, and a CEO. You are wasting their time and they will find a way to close you down.
Once you have completed an acceptable risk assessment, they will phone you and ask what steps you will take to deal with a new virus discovered near Timbuktu that killed a toddler. The toddler was thought to have tasted honey in its short life.
The recommendation to treat this disease is, boil the honey until you have the taste and consistency of bitumen. Not a problem as you will not be aiming for returning customers.
While you are setting up the company you have taken too much honey from the bees, and killed them off. This is not a problem because on Allibaba you see they are selling honey in 50 ton loads delivered to your door, half the price you can buy it in the shops. Just fill the jars and sell on.
Welcome to corporate Britain
