On March 22nd, fellow Marylander and fashion queen Maggie Weber (RefashionedHippie) posted a video review of a few chocolate bars we sent her via snail mail. As of now, the video has almost 200K views on Facebook, 245K views on Youtube, and probably just as many views on Instagram. So that’s approximately over 600K views total.
Since then, we’ve had over 500 orders placed on our online store, openbookchocolates.com/shop, as well as a significant number of wholesale orders for new and returning independent bookstores and gift shops. This is over twice the size of an average Open Book Chocolates Kickstarter campaign, and we continue to get more orders every day.
While we are very excited and grateful for all these orders, they’ve come at an extremely busy time for us! Phil and I just got married two weeks ago. Furthermore, we are preparing for BookCon at the Javits Center in New York City this weekend. We will be out of town from Friday, April 17th through Monday, April 20th. Then, we have in-person events every weekend for the next three weekends after BookCon.
We are doing our very best to fulfill all these orders as soon as possible. We are just two people (Geri and Irene) fulfilling all these orders. Additionally, my brand-new husband, Phil, and my mother-in-law, Gwen, as well as my close friend (and maid of honor), Kerri, and her fiancé, Jason, have all been chipping in to help. So far, we’ve sent out over 80 orders, and have prepared about 300 orders that will be sent out soon.
Our friends at River-Sea Chocolates have informed us they have made the rest of our entire 2026 order. This is approximately 8,000 to 9,000 chocolate bars. In other words, post-BookCon, we’ll be able to fulfill even more orders. Currently, I’ve set our online store to “Preorder” for all our current (non-seasonal) flavors, and will keep it that way until we’re able to take a detailed inventory. Most likely, we will need to make even more chocolate bars than we originally anticipated for 2026.
We fulfill orders in chronological order (oldest to newest), but try to give priority to any gift orders (birthdays, Mother’s Day, etc.). Since the weather is warming up, we are putting complimentary ice packs and insulated bubble wrap in every order.
Thank you so much for all your support, and for your understanding and patience!
