How to Get Your Gourmet Foods & Gift Basket Supplies When You Need Them! (Part 2)

In The Gourmet Food & Gift Basket Business, Timing is Everything!

It is important to realize that both early and late deliveries can seriously impact your best-laid merchandise plans.  Typically, gourmet foods and gift basket items should begin arriving approximately 30 days before the start of a new season.  As the season proceeds, the inflow of its gourmet food merchandise begins to taper off and the gourmet gifts and basket supplies for the next season begins to arrive.  We have found that our gift basket and gourmet gift retailers who consistently follow this ordering and receiving pattern regularly enjoy the highest level of sales success and minimum amount of markdowns.


In The Gourmet Food & Gift Basket Business, Follow-up is Key!

Once you have completed and faxed or emailed your Purchase Order to your gourmet food / gift basket supplier, it's extremely important that you contact them by telephone to confirm that they have received and processed it.  (On more than one occasion, we have received frantic calls from one of our gift basket packers or gift shop owners wondering where their order is.  When we check our files and discover that we have no record of their order being received, an inevitable "mad scramble" results to try to complete and ship it as soon as possible.  This needless and fully avoidable stressful situation for both our gourmet shop or gift basket packer customer and for us is not at all fun!)  Now, however, as most of our gourmet food store and gift basket packer customers place their orders online with us, they get a Confirmation email acknowledging that our system has recieved their order.  Further, whne thir order is shipped, they get another email that includes the courier tracking number for their gourmet food / gift basket shipment.

It's also advisable to file one copy of each Purchase Order in a "tickle file" and to confirm with your wholesale gift basket or gourmet food supplier that your order will be shipped as requested. To confirm any Purchase Order with epicureanfoods, you can call us at 1-800-267-0805, extension 22 or email us at wholesale@epicureanfoods.com.

Phyllis and Greg Sprout began their company, epicureanfoods.com, in July 1993.  They specialize in supplying hard-to-find gourmet foods and gift basket supplies to gourmet shops, gift shops and gift basket companies across North America. 

They have helped the founders of literally thousands of gift, gourmet food and gift basket companies start and grow their businesses.  Many of these companies remain excellent customers of epicureanfoods.com today.  They can be reached at phyllisandgreg@epicureanfoods.com.