Lebaran cookie business booms
Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung
Since the first day of Ramadhan, Rukayah has been spending most of her evenings out trying to earn additional money to add to her meager earnings from doing her neighbors' laundry.
After putting her two children to bed in her home in Bojongkoneng, Bandung, the 23-year-old goes to the house of Ina Wiyandini, a kilometer away.
There, dozens of other housewives are busy assisting Ina in making cookies for the Idul Fitri celebrations.
"By doing this work I can earn more money to buy my children new clothes," said Rukayah, who works from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily and earns at least Rp 20,000 a day (US$2).
Increasing orders for cookies has forced Ina to find 100 extra workers from around the neighborhood.
This year, she received almost twice as many orders as last year. She started her business in 1992 with 50 people working for her.
"Last year we received orders for 5,000 dozen of cookies but now we have orders for about 9,000 dozen. We've completed 7,000 dozen so far," Ina said in her home-cum-factory in Bojongkoneng.
The increasing number of orders forced Ina to reject a number of big orders two months ago, deciding instead to concentrating on orders from her regular customers.
Another cookie producer, Dedy Hidayat, is also enjoying good business and has had to turn down some big orders in order to be able to continue supplying his stores in Bandung and Jakarta.
"This year, our orders increased, but not so much. Last year, we received orders for 8,000 dozen and this year we have received orders for 9,000 dozen," said Dedy, who has been in the business since 1996 and employs around 200 workers.
Ina said she was relieved that the cookie business had not slowed down despite the rising cost of basic necessities following the government's decision to raise fuel prices by an average of 126.6 percent on Oct. 1.
However, the fuel price increases have pushed her production costs up by 35 percent, forcing her to raise the price of a 500- gram box of regular cookies from Rp 30,000 to Rp 33,000.
The prices of her cookies vary between Rp 33,000 and Rp 75,000 per 500-gram box.
"The quality of the cookies depends on the composition of the dough. The regular ones, for instance, use a half kilogram of cheese while the special ones might use two kilograms," said Ina, who sells 60 varieties of cookies, from the usual nastar (pineapple-filled cookies) to choco-crunch cookies.
Like Ina, Dedy has also been forced to increase the price of his cookies to between Rp 33,000 and Rp 43,000 per box.
He said the prices had not increased too much as he had already purchased the main ingredients, like flour and eggs, two months before the government increased fuel prices.
"I don't know the latest prices of those ingredients now. The most important thing is that I can meet all of my orders for Idul Fitri," Dedy said.
However, both Ina and Dedy declined to say how much profit they would make this year.
Anticipating slower business with lower purchasing power after Idul Fitri, both of them said they had been trying to expand the market, including marketing their products abroad.
Dedy, who is assisted by his wife Diah, has prepared varieties of cookies that they hope will satisfy consumers' tastes overseas, while in September this year Ina had shipped 100 dozen cookies to a Singapore businessman to test the market's acceptance of her products.