The counterintuitive part

Shipping a perishable confection in summer is not about going as fast as possible from the moment you order. It's about minimising the hours the box spends in transit at all.

Carrier networks don't run uniformly across the week. A parcel dispatched on the wrong day can sit in a regional facility over a weekend; the same parcel dispatched a day later can move continuously and arrive sooner. In hot months we may deliberately hold an order a day to catch the shorter route.

Made to order, not warehoused

We don't hold finished caramel apples in stock. Every order is hand-dipped and packed the morning it ships, which means the clock starts at dispatch rather than at manufacture.

That matters more in July than in November. A product that has already sat for a week before it enters the mail has no margin left for a warm truck.

How they're packed

Orders go out in durable containers with insulation and several layers of bubble wrap, shipped by expedited service. The packaging is doing two jobs at once: protecting a coated apple from impact, and slowing the rate at which the interior of the box reaches ambient temperature.

If something goes wrong

Heat events happen — a truck sits, a delivery gets missed, a box spends an afternoon on a doorstep in direct sun.

If your order arrives damaged or melted, contact us within 24 hours. Photographs help. We would rather hear about it immediately than have you accept something that didn't arrive the way it left our kitchen.

What you can do on your end

The single most useful thing is to have someone available on the delivery date, or to ship somewhere that's true — an office rather than an empty house. A refrigerated apple that sat outside for six hours is no longer a refrigerated apple.

Once it arrives, refrigerate it promptly and eat within about seven days.