March 20th, 2020
Hi everyone. Rhea here, the VP of Marketing for ChocZero. 👋
I want to come at you with (very) transparent facts about COVID-19, what it means for businesses in Orange County like ChocZero, and how we're doing our best to combat the virus.
The Situation: Orange County Shutdown
As you may have seen, Orange County is in a state of non-essential shutdown. Under the current mandate, food & beverage factories such as ours are allowed to stay open and we plan to as long as we can, providing it is safe for our workers. If it no longer becomes safe or the mandate changes, we will temporarily close our factory--and yes, we will keep our workers on the payroll even if we close down for a quarantine.
Our Keto Easter Bunny Is Still Coming
Since we have invested a lot of money and time into producing Easter bunnies, we are doing our best to make sure these end up launching on time. Our packaging company is in Orange County as well and they have assured us they will be done with boxes by the 27th. We have already made over 10,000 handcrafted bunnies and they are wrapped in protective plastic. They just need their homes to be able to hop to you!
If everything goes well and factories do not close, we will launch our bunny sale on March 27th in the evening (5PM PST, 8PM EST). We will be sending a newsletter out when they launch as well as updating our social media channels, so it should be easy to stay informed.
Please cross your fingers--we're so excited for these bunnies. 🐰
Inventory Outages
Sales have gone up due to panic and we anticipate supply chain issues. This means our inventory will definitely have unavoidable shortages. We are going to restock our inventory on March 27th at 5PM PST (8PM EST), so anything out of stock will likely come back in stock. We are going to do our best to keep our inventory in stock while building up a supply of inventory in the event we stop manufacturing. It's a hard position to be in.
Please be patient with us if your favorite flavor is out of stock. Nothing is permanently taken off our menu; some things just have priority for production due to their volume of sales and our retail partners also needing them in their stores. For example, this week we will not be making our Dark Chocolate Peppermint Keto Bark because it takes longer to make than our Dark Chocolate Almond; in addition, our Dark Chocolate Almond is also carried in local Albertson's, Pavillions, and Von's, as well as Whole Foods in the Southwest. This means we need more Dark Chocolate Almond to meet demand than Peppermint, plus we can make more quicker, so it's definitely optimal for us to produce.
We hope this transparency makes sense to you folks, and you appreciate it.
Shipping Times
USPS and UPS have longer-than-usual shipping times. Please feel free to email us. We're happy to chat with you about ANYTHING (no really, especially if you send us dog or cat pics!), but please understand that once your items leave the facility, they may be difficult to track. We recently had a lot of orders say "confirmed" that magically switched to "delivered" four days later due to the post office's tracking being down. The United States' mail system is flooded--Amazon and other e-commerce chains are getting record deliveries across the board. Even though it may take a few extra days, try to be thankful when your postman arrives. It's a hard job and someone has to do it in trying times like these.
Of course, if an order takes more than 10 business days to arrive, we'll give you a refund--and let you keep the order for free, if it arrives. That's just how we roll.
Be Kind and Social Distance
Last but not least: take care of yourself. Practice social distance. Practice flattening the curve. Practice being good to other humans.
Thank your grocery clerks. Tip your delivery drivers extra. Phone disabled, at risk, and elderly folks to offer them help during this time of crisis. Look, we're a chocolate company, we know we're "just" a brand, but our customers are family to us. We love you folks and we love our state, our country, and our planet. We even love our solar system (with the exception of Pluto, never trusted that lil guy). So be safe, be kind, and be calm. We will get through this together.
XOXO,
Rhea & The ChocZero Team