Cheesecakes, Truffles, Berries, and Business

Opened 3 weeks after I graduated from Florida State, Dipped was built and maintained solely on the $3,000 in savings I put into the business. Open 7 days a week from 5pm - 3am, I had no employees but myself for the first year+ in business. This lack of overhead allowed me to save enough money to expand into a storefront, open a catering branch of the business and start delivering chocolate boxes all around Tallahassee to college kids in need.

Chocolate is a truly visual medium, and with no money laying around for an advertising budget, I had to get creative. Using social media as a conduit, I hired two good friends to photograph our products whenever they could to generate buzz online. The payment method? Chocolate for their girlfriends, of course! With drool-worthy photos and the deployment of some off-the-wall marketing tactics, Dipped used social media as the backbone of our advertising strategies.

Holiday Cheer!

Dipped was not in the chocolate business. We were in the gift/event business and because of this distinction in strategy we went all in for Holidays. Special bundles released exclusively for Valentines, Halloween, Christmas, Mother’s Day and beyond. A big portion of what we tried to accomplish was creating memories. From shipping a box of strawberries to California (we had no idea how hard shipping berries would be) for a soldier coming home to surprise his wife to being the lead sponsor for FSU’s fundraising events Relay for Life and Dance Marathon, Dipped gave me a platform to give back.