How to Sell a Million Lobster Cakes Overnight: Start Early, Stay Late. Be Prepared to Stand and Deliver

Margie and Ron Kauffman, founders of Chesapeake Bay Gourmet, QVC’s leading pitchmen for crab cakes for the last nine years took a big gamble this year. They offered lobster cakes instead.

(PRWEB) January 14, 2005

In order to hit their goal of selling a million lobster cakes in one day (and night), they had to plan ahead. Each order of 20 2-ounce cakes offered in their December QVC “Today’s Special Value” (tsv), required the meat of three lobsters. They began buying in September, hand formed and flash-froze the cakes in their state-of-the-art plant in Baltimore awaiting their special day.

Which turned out to be a banner day. Their “TSV” day began midnight, December2, and they were on QVC live in 8 minute bursts repeatedly for the ensuing 24 hour period and actually sold a total of 1,100,000 lobster cakes. That’s a lot of lobster. $3,800,000. worth to be exact.

Not that the work stopped there. Once the sales day – and night – was over, they jumped into their car and raced back to the plant to get those orders out in time for Christmas delivery. Which is no small item. It required 275,000 pounds of dry ice, 55,000 styrofoam shipping boxes, and 19 tractor trailers to load out the orders. All hands had to be on deck. Not only did the Kauffmans hire on extra help, they pitched right in themselves to pack out those 55,000 orders.

Once the last tractor-trailer had pulled out of the lot could Ron Kauffman, playing Santa himself, say with some satisfaction, “and to all a good night.”

The Kauffmans, along with Santa, have retired to the warm Florida shore for a long awaited rest for the remainder of the month of January.

Chesapeake Bay Gourmet has firmly established itself as a household specialty line of handmade, hand-picked jumbo lump crab cakes and other all-natural ingredient gourmet seafood products, including lobster cakes, Crab Balls, Shrimp and Lobster Cakes, Crab Imperial, Imperial Shrimp, Crab Dip, Quiche and more.

CBG is the number one food product line on QVC, the world’s largest electronic retailer. Ron Kauffman, founder, says “our best customer is our repeat customer. We find that once people order from us, they come back and back for more. Now, we’re beginning to get our second generation customer who orders not only for himself but for all the folks on his list.”

The company plans to open a flagship retail outlet later this year in addition to the small factory outlet store in a designated area of the plant. In 2003 they were awarded a "Best Crab Cakes You Can Get By Mail" by Baltimore Magazine. Dean & Deluca, and Harry and David feature their products in their catalogs.

CBG is service oriented and gladly works with each customer to customize orders to suit. They ship second day Federal Express and include a message card. They also have handsome gift certificates. A full listing of products can be found at cbgourmet.com.

Let us send you a sample to taste. Call me and lets talk. Thanks. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Best regards,

Linda West Eckhardt . 973 313 9705

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