Later she set up a table and an electric stove in the corner of a hall in a large office building occupied mostly by men, where she served lunches taken from her fireless cooker, and these the men took to their offices on trays provided by themselves. On these she realized a profit of 40 per cent, besides having enough food left to supply her own family.
PLAN No. 303. BREAD AND CAKE BAKING SOLD TO WOMAN EXCHANGE
A married woman in New York, who had formerly been a stenographer but could not return to that work on account of her household duties, which included the care of two children, yet who was anxious to help in enlarging the family income, decided to bake cakes and sell them through various woman’s exchanges.
Her sales were very good, but often there would be cakes left over, and, to avoid this, she changed her selling method so as to supply a certain number of families with bread and cakes. Her entire capital was but $5, and she started with seven customers, having discontinued her deliveries to the exchanges.
She wrote to a number of people who were able to pay her prices, and soon secured a good list of regular patrons. In six months she had forty-five steady customers, was baking all kinds of cakes besides raisin, whole wheat and brown breads, and rapidly increasing the number of her patrons, so that in six months more she had a total of seventy-eight. Some of these, when starting on their summer vacations, arranged to have her supply them regularly by parcel post while away, and when they returned in the fall they continued to buy her baked products.
She employed a boy at $2 a week to make deliveries two afternoons each week and all day Saturdays, and before very long her net profits had reached $150 a month.
PLAN No. 304. MAKING USE OF SURPLUS APPLES
In some sections of the country thousands of bushels of fine apples are allowed to go to waste every year, simply because there is no one to gather them and make practical use of them.
A man in eastern Ohio, where the supply of apples is largely in excess of the demand, made profitable use of this apple surplus by a new method of concentrating cider, through freezing and centrifugal motion. This method consists of first freezing the raw cider until it is solid, by placing it in shallow trays and exposing it to a freezing outdoor temperature. Then it is crushed up fine and put into a receptacle like a barrel churn, and whirled very rapidly. This throws off the juice in the form of a syrup and leaves the water in the machine as ice.
One gallon of this concentrated cider, or syrup, is as strong as five gallons of ordinary apple cider, and when put in a cool place will keep from six months to a year without fermenting. It also reduces the bulk about four-fifths, so that it can be shipped at a low transportation cost, thus increasing the profits by a large percentage.