01-24-06 - Organic ingredients?

Now we've kind of focused our search on organic tapioca syrup as our sweet liquid part of the recipe because it won't intrude on the flavors, but the cost is a fortune. Will we be able to sell this product for a reasonable price? What is a reasonable price. Can't think about that now. Must get flavors and colors. Ingredients are organic cane sugar, organic syrup of some kind, citric acid, organic and natural flavors and colors. Speaking of colors and flavors...NOBODY in the colors/flavors world wants to talk to us. Apparently our anticipated sales volume is going to be so low that it doesn't pay to develop flavors and colors. And to add insult to injury, not more than a handful of flavor companies know anything about being "organic compliant". Being organic compliant means 95% of the recipe must be certified organic by USDA standards and the other 5% has to come from a very short list of approved ingredients. Given that there is almost no organic candy market, it comes as no surprise that most flavor companies seem to want to stick to artificial color chemicals and Red Dye #4 or whatever that stuff is. But we really need flavors!