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WE are way ahead of you.

Found this on a candy website...

How to handle high humidity for candy-making

Increase cooking temperature by a few degrees or increase time under heat.

For example, when making hard candy, the hard crack stage is around 300°F (149°C). Depending on how high the humidity is, you’ll have to increase cooking temperatures to compensate.

A general rule of thumb (not perfect but a good place to start) is to increase by 2°F for each 10 RH above 35. A humidity of 55% RH will need a cooking temperature of 304°F.

If you are worried about burning the sugar, you could also cook longer than usual or reduce the amount of water used.

Use a dehumidifier in the cooking area beforehand.

This temporary solution is not perfect, but it definitely helps. Make sure any doors or windows open to the outside environment are closed.

Running a range hood while cooking candy can slightly help as well.

Also turning on the AC to make the room cooler will help the candy set sooner.

Increase cooking temperature by a few degrees or increase time under heat.

For example, when making hard candy, the hard crack stage is around 300°F (149°C). Depending on how high the humidity is, you’ll have to increase cooking temperatures to compensate.

A general rule of thumb (not perfect but a good place to start) is to increase by 2°F for each 10 RH above 35. A humidity of 55% RH will need a cooking temperature of 304°F.

If you are worried about burning the sugar, you could also cook longer than usual or reduce the amount of water used.

Use a dehumidifier in the cooking area beforehand.

This temporary solution is not perfect, but it definitely helps. Make sure any doors or windows open to the outside environment are closed.

Running a range hood while cooking candy can slightly help as well.

Also turning on the AC to make the room cooler will help the candy set sooner.

I've always heard NO was the same. Friend used to deal there and she told me how crazy it was.

Sent from my moto g play - 2023 using Tapatalk

I don't think any CET rooms in Vegas have that.

He's always spent way too much on that stuff. 2 or 3 Starbucks, and a $14 burger per day. I figured he only did it to feature Strip places for the youtubes, but apparently it was just stupidity.

Arson is illegal.

agree

His big dumb head in all the thumbnails. He could easily do anything else and have more views. He even has a cheap and easy way right next to him to at least double his current views of 2.5k?

Maybe a bikini scene with ladytrooper with a sparkli pop at the pool.

My thoughts were why not use a kitchen Commissary? That's how a lot of food businesses operate in the Seattle area.

took like 5 seconds to google this shiz

and this one

Granted, these places may not have candy-specific equipment, but I'm sure they would at least learned something and would be able to leverage the kitchen's equipment as is, and their owners for information. And that didn't stop them in the first place.

What are the chances Trooper talked to others in that downtown kitchen about any challenges they might have had?

What are the chances Trooper visited local candy businesses and asked for advice and about any challenges they might have ran into?

Yep, Trooper wants to go at it alone. Good luck.

My thoughts were, continue what you were doing, which was making everything at home.
Then only if it was completely absolutely necessary, was go the shared kitchen route.
A lot of people go the shared kitchen route, to 'fool' the authorities, and still make the majority of their stuff 'at home'.

A big gut, toad face and cellulite thighs....mmmmh

Exactly. What's wrong with making product 10+ hours a day and mostly selling out every farmer's market? Overhead is small. Quality control is high. Profit margin is solid although I think they could raise their prices a little bit more.

Speaking of profit margin, I wonder if they have done a cost analysis of the exact amount it costs to make product. Or are they just going we spent $500 at Costco and turned that into more so we're good?

Without that, you can't see where you can either cut costs on ingredients or making sure each product is marked up appropriately. Like are they just winging their prices?

I mean Costco has great prices but if you can buy raw ingredients direct, that will drop your costs more.

You guys seem to be forgetting the cottage food gross sales cap is 35k per year, so if they had 50% profit margin after all expenses, that is only $17,500 to be split between two people.

They needed the commercial license to be able to sell online and not have a cap. A commercial kitchen is required in that deal. They just didn't put enough thought into it apparently.

I tend to doubt that is strictly enforced.
And two people could get that up to 70K with two licenses.
I do understand they needed a commercial license to ship/sell online, and yes, they did not put enough correct thought into it.

Hence why he left.

I think they WERE making candy as many hours as they could. The issue is they could only produce only so much candy per hour. The hand made candy they're making is incredibly labor intensive, I'm pretty sure they were only able to make like $40-50 worth of candy an hour gross and not even considering the time spent shopping for ingredients and at the farmers markets.

This was never a scalable business and should have been kept as a side hustle, I think the trooper just assumed he could get a commercial kitchen and start pumping out 4-5* his regular volume and make the numbers work. I doubt there was any deep analysis other than "I'm a gambler I bet on my self" and some napkin math.

This kitchen lease they signed is going to sink them, they are not going to be able to fix the humidity issues. They either have to pivot to a completely different type of candy less sensitive to humidity or pivot to a different product altogether which hopefully overlaps with the equipment they bought.

I wouldn't be surprised if they spent close to 50k setting this kitchen up. Plus every month they're losing money from the kitchen lease while not being able to produce any more candy than they did in their home kitchen.

It's a pretty big mess up on trooper's part to not have checked the hvac system before taking out the lease and setting the kitchen up but tbh feels like a mistake that alot of people could make. It's an unfortunate oversight that looks like it's going to sink this venture.

Who knows, they might find a tweak in the way they make the candy where it works but to me it seems like any effort to combat the humidity will add so much more labor to the process that there's no way they can justify the kitchen lease costs.

Could be the reason left twix and right twix separated into two companies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62xLWZgx4Ko

YouTube

Twix TV advert - Left Twix or right Twix?

How much are the Troopers paying in rent per month for the kitchen? They should at least be able to rent it out at night to various Nomads.

High effort and time intensive. Sales are capped.

Selling online is much more efficient. FedEx/UPS will pick up from a business. Trooper doesn't have to make the ridiculous trips to the post office.

So I looked up Main Street Kitchens to see how much rent is a month. For the smaller space which I would guess the Trooper got, it's $2500/month. Ouch. So for the next year, $30k in net profits goes poof.

But then right under that was this...

"What about kitchen equipment?

Maker Kitchens works with a number of equipment suppliers who can source good new and used equipment."

So the landlord themselves could have helped Trooper source used equipment. Nope, Trooper doesn't need help. Help is for the weak.

Hopefully the Troopers set up a LLC, and aren't on the hook personally for the rent.

They have an LLC but it would be typical Trooper if he signed the lease under his own name.

ELD in the latest video brings back the famous Pocket Bread!

Scene: ELD sets up a lecture in front of the Burger King for a cooking scene. ELD takes the Pocket Bread and adds bruschetta sauce.

Later he diagrams the space between poker tables.

Re: Trooper's business.

The environmental issues can be overcome, just a set back that could have been avoided.

The new equipment might be worthwhile if it leads to ramped up production via online sales, etc. At the very least, it can be sold as slightly used and some of the investment recouped.

But the real jaw dropper for me was the buying of raw materials at Costco. The idea of not setting up relationships directly with the manufacturer and instead buying retail is beyond me. My head exploded when I saw them loading up their shopping cart at the store.