Maple Liqueur is coming to Israel

Actually, Maple Liqueur is already here but it needs to sit a while longer before we sample it. We’ll let you know how it goes on May 8th   🙂

Bad News and Good News in One Post

We have bad news and we have good news. True to form, we’ll charge straight into the bad news first…

The bad news is that we have to increase the price of syrup by 10 NIS. A bottle will cost you 110 NIS effective April 29th, 2015. We wish it weren’t so, but we are almost finished our first shipment, and now we can see (with painful clarity) how much it actually costs us to do this- and we have not being as successful as we would have liked. With volume comes savings but we have not had the volume yet.

We will still offer the bottles, with shipping included, for 120 NIS, but the “tremping refund” will only be 10 NIS now.

The good news is that we are going to start a special VIP program for customers that order larger quantities of syrup and/or that purchase on a more regular basis. The larger volume makes it more cost effective for us and we want to reward our VIP clients in a meaningful way.

We are working out the details of what this means but at the very least we will be able to offer discounts and special promotions to our VIPs and, as we roll out new products, we will be able to offer them to our VIP members first and at a discount.

We are looking at making maple sugar, maple candy and we have already done a small test of maple liquor which went over very well.

VIP membership will be offered to customers that order 3 bottles of maple syrup or more, and will be offered retroactively to those that have already passed the 3 bottle threshold. The VIP club will start up on May 3rd. More details will follow soon.

Placing a new order of Maple Syrup for Israel

We are running low on Maple Syrup over here… so we have placed our next order of Maple Syrup. For those that want to really appreciate the syrup they have, here is a summary of what needs to be done to get that shipment here. Please remember that we have already jumped through several months of hoops to get the permits and licences to import it- this is the shorter, easier “streamlined” process 🙂

Place an order with the supplier. Get the weight, dimensions and origins info to get the quote from the shipping line. Get a quote and send the commercial invoice and a certificate of origin (Form A- it is purchased from the Israeli consulate in Chicago, shipped to Wisconsin, filled in and notarized by the local chamber of commerce) then forward everything to the shipping people. That covers the US side of things.

On the Israeli side, we need to buy insurance (show forms, give measurements, get quote etc..), then get the commercial invoice, packing list and bill of lading scanned to us over here (and then courier the hard copy to Israel) so we can start the Israeli process. We get to pay a fee to the ministry of health so that they can put a stamp on a form that allows us to pay taxes on the shipment when it arrives as well as allowing us to unload it in the first place. We then do a form to pay the V.A.T. on the syrup (this is why you, the customer, don’t pay it on the sale- it is already paid for on our end and worked into the cost). We then need to pay for the customs clearance process (and sign and stamp some more forms) and THEN we get to deal with with the port authority- they have a port tax to pay as well as dealing with the ministry of health again to arrange warehousing for the day or two it takes us to get to them and take the shipment away. There MAY be a customs inspection too- which we won’t know until they decide to do it. Or not. I think they flip a coin. Of course, if they do an inspection, we will have to pay them for their trouble and do some more forms, stamps and signatures.

You should have seen what we had to do to get the first shipment here 😉

Our site has been updated!

We have finished updating the site and all it’s various bits and pieces. If you see something that doesn’t work, please contact us and let us know! We THINK we did a good job- but maybe we didn’t. As usual, a great big THANKS in advance to our viewers for all their help and support. Chag Same’ach!