The recipe to my successful brand

The history of by brand and where I am today began at a Pampered Chef party.

During the summer of 2002, I was invited by a close family friend to a "Pampered Chef" party that she was hosting in her home. She knew that I enjoyed cooking and kitchen gadgets. I loved her party so much that became a Pampered Chef Consultant myself in the Fall of 2002. 

At my home cooking shows, I demonstrated various catalog products while preparing recipes. Then, I would collect the guests' orders while they enjoyed the food I just prepared. As a Pampered Chef consultant, I earned a 20% commission from the Pampered Chef on the products I sold. For the next seven years, I would sell products and serve snacks at these cooking show parties hosted in someone's home.

The training I received from Heather Dwyer, my Pampered Chef Director, was excellent. She taught me about the various products and suggested recipies for my cooking shows. Hether also introduced me to and shared her tips about using social media to market and promote The Pampered Chef online.  You can still order Pampered Chef products or contact her using Heather's link below.

In May 2005, I joined the BNI El Dorado Hills chapter to grow my Pampered Chef business. I received referrals from members to people wanting to host a Pampered Chef party in their homes and invite their friends to order products. 

During the 2009 financial crisis, people stopped purchasing the high-quality high-priced kitchen products that I sold. Therefore, for many months, I had no PC home parties and no sales. I needed advice on what to do to earn income.

What is great about BNI is that you have a group of business professionals in your chapter that you can turn to for business advice. So, I had a meeting with each member for their advice. These meetings were extremely helpful and insightful. What I learned from them was that the members loved the food I prepared and served at my cooking shows. However, they were no longer interested in purchasing the high-priced  Pampered Chef products as more affordable identical products were available at a recently launched online retailer called "Amazon". Even though they said that my cooking shows were entertaining, they also said that they preferred to shop online instead of hosting a Pampered Chef party and inviting guests to their homes to order the products. The problem was that I only earned income from selling PC products.

My BNI chapter loved the snacks I prepared and wanted to order these snacks from me. Therefore from the advice I received, I stopped selling Pampered Chef's kitchen products on September 30, 2009, and started something new.

On November 1, 2009, I became an entrepreneur and launched my new business, "The Sac Chef", to sell my snacks. I switched my BNI membership to "catering" and joined the BNI Riverside Executives chapter to represent"The Sac Chef" as a new small event catering company in Sacramento, California. Thus, the original  "Sac Chef" brand was born in November 2009.

The "Sac Chef" Logo

Originally, the "Sacchef" logo was created as two separate words, "Sac Chef", to brand me in the Sacramento area (Sac) as a caterer (Chef) and the owner of my small event catering company (Sac Chef). 

I selected a cursive font for the words "The Sac Chef" as the logo to express the fluidity needed as a chef and business owner. The Pampered Chef logo used a serif Garamond font and I needed to be different with the font for my logo.

I included a chef's hat when creating the "Sac Chef" logo to honor my culinary history with "The Pampered Chef" because I created "Sac Chef" to directly sell the food that I used to make at my Pampered Chef cooking shows. While the Pampered Chef logo attached the chef's hat to the "T" in the word "the", I attached a similar hat to the "C" in the word, "chef".

The "Sac Chef" Brand

The "Sac Chef" brand included the framing of the "Sac Chef" logo. This frame was designed in a two-tone monochromatic purple color to feature with various fonts the various culinary words used by chefs worldwide.

The official colors of the "Sac Chef" brand are eggplant (purple) and sage (green). Both of these color names are also food names.  I used sage as a spice in many of my recipes. The word sage is defined as "someone who is venerated for his wisdom, judgment, and experience". Sage green is, thus, a color that can express wisdom. As a green, it also communicates pea, luxurious and growth and speaks of ecology and nature.  The Color Sage Green works well with bright, vivid colors like purple. It is rare when a recipe includes eggplant as an ingredient, when I do it is a creative recipe.  The word "eggplant" in French is "AUBERGINE" This is defined as "highly creative and intuitive, with a curious secretive side". The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition.   

Therefore, the "Sac Chef" brand says that I am a Sacramento Caterer with the wisdom to create recipes that will be creative, intuitive, and luxurious.

All good recipes evolve over time and so did the "Sac Chef" brand when it was redesigned in 2010 for selling chocolates as the "Sac Chef Chocolates" brand.

 Chocolate Truffles 

One year after launching my "Sac Chef" catering company, I decide to make, package, and sell handmade chocolate truffles for the 2010 holiday season. I took orders online, sold them directly in local BNI chapters, and had them featured by Debbie Ruiz, a BNI member, at her gift shop in Lodi. The chocolate truffles were popular and sold well during the 2010 holiday season.

 Chocolate Dipped Strawberries 

I decided to follow the success of the 2010 holiday chocolate truffles by making and selling hand-dipped chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine's Day in 2011. As strawberries can only stay firm for three days after being dipped, I could only sell them for a couple of days. I took pre-orders online from BNI members. A local florist (BNI member) ordered numerous small 2pc.packages of the dipped strawberries and gave them away with every rose bouquet sold. Plus, Debbie Ruiz invited me down to her Lodi gift store on Valentine's Day to dip strawberries in person and sell them to her customers.

 The BNI Chocolate Bar 

 Three years later, the "Sac Chef Chocolates" brand was introduced to a new market when I created the "BNI Bar" for a BNI Foundation's "Chocolates and Cha Cha" fundraising event being hosted by Beth Misner in Texas.  The "BNI Bar" was a small chocolate bar molded with the BNI logo in various types of chocolate, wrapped in foil, and with a customed label of their regional  BNI logo and my "Sac Chef Cholotes" brand. The following year, these events also occurred in other states in the USA and Canada. Therefore, the "Sac Chef" brand became an international brand supporting the BNI Foundation in 2015.

"Sac Chef Chocolates" Brand

This modification of the original "Sac Chef" brand into a "Sac Chef Chocolates" brand included the "Sac Chef" logo. However, the word "the" was removed to be similar to Hersey's, M&Ms, etc. The framing of the logo was also removed and replaced with a curving header.

The official "Sac Chef" brand colors of "eggplant and sage" were replaced with "mocha and ice cream" as these were names of colors that were also food names related to chocolate. Research showed "Chocolate Mocha" and "Chocolate Ice Cream" were more appealing than "Chocolate Eggplant" and "Chocolate Sage".

The color mocha, named for the beverage, makes you feel warm and cozy all over.  The most popular ice cream flavor is chocolate and the color of chocolate ice cream says stability, reliability, and dependability. Therefore, the colors of the "Sac Chef Chocolates" brand say that I am reliable,  dependable, and cozy. 

In 2005, I began to volunteer for the BNI foundation.  

On March 25, 2009, I received a phone call directly from Dr. Ivan Minser.  he was closing his offices in nd Californiwas looking for someone to support him with his social media as he will be working from his Texas home and BNI headquarters were moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He said that Beth recommended me to him because of my social media work over the years promoting the BNI Foundation online. Ivan did mention that he noticed that my BNI business category was "catering". He was not looking for a caterer to represent him online. Ivan recommended if I would appreciate being mentored by him about marketing service and change my business.

 Therefore from the advice, I received directly from Ivan, I stopped being a caterer and started something new as the Social media coordinator for Dr. Ivan Misner. Thus, the "Sac Chef" brand changed to the "Sacchef Social Media" brand overnight.

For the next seven years, I was the online Communications and Social Media Coordinator for Dr. Ivan Misner.  I managed all of his social media pages. I designed his graphics created his posts and published them on his pages. I also wrote his blogs for the past six years. Due to his mentoring and training, I am now an online marketing expert. 

Let me use these skills to market your business now.

The "Sacchef Social Media" Logo

To create the new "Sacchef Social Media" logo, the original "Sacchef" logo was reduced in size and moved to the upper left corner of the logo making room in the center of the logo to feature the words, "Social media" of course.

The "Sacchef Social Media" Brand

The "Sacchef Social Media" brand included the framing from the "Sac Chef" brand. However, the culinary words were replaced by the names of various social media platforms.

As the "Sac Chef" brand was about catering, I needed to evolve the brand to now be about marketing.  The tagline, "Cooking up your business online and of your back burner" was added below the logo.  I combined two  "chef's" sayings about cooking that were related to business growth into one sentence about the marketing services I provide.

The official colors of the "Sacchef Social Media" brand remained as eggplant and sage for two reasons. I wanted to maintain my original branding from 2009. Plus,  green and purple coordinate well with blue, another cool color. Blue is used for social media logos more than any other color because blue is the color of intelligence, communication, and trust. Therefore, the colors of my "Sacchef Social Media" brand say that I have the wisdom to create social media posts that will be creative, my marketing will be intuitive, and your branding will be luxurious.