Cocoa & Cane makes excellent chocolate and almost nobody knows it exists. Sales today come from two farmers' markets and word of mouth; the Instagram account posts when someone remembers. This plan turns social media into the venture's primary sales channel over twelve months, on a fixed envelope of J$172,000 a month all-in.

What social is being asked to produce:

• 120 online orders a month by month 12 (from roughly 15 today), at an average order value of J$4,500 — about J$540,000 a month in attributed revenue.
• 4,000 email subscribers captured through social, so the venture owns an audience no platform can take away.
• Market-day footfall up one third, measured by a simple 'how did you hear of us' tally at the stall.
• 5,000 Instagram followers and 3,000 TikTok followers as the reach engine behind the numbers above — a means, not the goal.

The approach in one paragraph: Instagram is the shop window and the sales floor; TikTok and YouTube Shorts are the discovery engine; WhatsApp Business is where enquiries become orders; Facebook stays alive for the over-45 gift buyer and event announcements. Five content pillars, a fixed weekly rhythm of five posts, one shoot morning a week, and a named campaign each quarter. Every objective above has a baseline, a target and a date, and the metrics section states what gets stopped if a channel misses target twice.

Two distinct people matter, and they are not the same person.

The buyer — 'the thoughtful gifter' (60% of revenue). Jamaican professionals 28–50, Kingston and Montego Bay, plus the diaspora in the US, UK and Canada buying gifts for home. They are on Instagram after 8pm and at lunch, they follow local food pages, hotels and lifestyle creators, and they buy when there is an occasion: Christmas, Mother's Day, weddings, corporate gifts. They respond to provenance — which farm, which valley — and to anything that makes a gift look considered.

The sharer — 'the food-curious amplifier' (reach engine). 18–34, follows food and 'things to do in Jamaica' content, may never spend J$2,000 on a chocolate bar but will send a satisfying tempering video to three friends. They are on TikTok and Reels between 7–10pm. They are how the buyer discovers us.

The trade buyer. Café and gift-shop owners who watch the account quietly for months before sending a DM. They need to see consistency, packaging and proof of demand.

Where they actually are: Instagram first (both buyer and sharer), TikTok for discovery, WhatsApp for the actual transaction, Facebook for the over-45 gift buyer and market announcements. Email is where the buyer is most valuable long-term. X and LinkedIn are out of scope — the buyer is not there for chocolate, and the capacity is not there to feed them.

The promise in one line: real Jamaican chocolate, from named farms, made in Kingston — the gift that says you actually thought about it.

Voice rules. Warm, plain-spoken, a little playful. We write like the founder talks at the market stall. Patois is welcome when it is natural ('Likkle but tallawah' on a mini-bar post), never forced. Short sentences. No jargon — say 'stone-ground for three days', not 'refined particle size'.

On-voice: 'This bar started as pods on Miss Daphne's farm in St Mary. We roasted Tuesday. It snappped clean this morning.' Off-voice: 'Our premium artisanal product line leverages single-origin cacao.'

Visual rules. Warm natural light, browns and golds, hands in frame wherever possible. No heavy filters, no stock photography, logo bottom-right on video only. One consistent typeface for text overlays.

Hashtags: #CocoaAndCane #JamaicanChocolate #MadeInJamaica plus one occasion tag. Never more than five.

Never posted: health or medical claims; politics; price-war discounting ('SALE!!!' in caps); customers' photos or children without written consent; anything mocking a competitor; unverified claims about other brands' sourcing.

Instagram carries the commercial weight: every post either shows the product beautifully, tells the farm story, or asks for the order. Link-in-bio goes to the shop, not a linktree of ten options.

TikTok is where strangers find us — process content (roasting, winnowing, tempering, the snap test) posted raw and quick. TikToks that work get repurposed to Reels and Shorts a week later.

WhatsApp Business replaces the founder's personal number: a proper catalogue, opening-hours auto-reply, saved answers for prices and delivery, and a broadcast list for restocks.

Dropped: X and LinkedIn (buyer is not there for this), Pinterest (lovely, but no capacity), a blog (the email list does that job).

Five pillars, each with a fixed share of output so the account never becomes all-selling or all-entertainment.

1. From the farm (25%). The sourcing story: named farms, harvest, fermentation, the people. Post ideas: 'Meet Miss Daphne's cacao trees'; a reel of pods being cracked open; 'Why we pay farmers above the commodity price.'

2. The making (25%). Process as entertainment — the strongest reach content we have. Post ideas: the tempering snap test; 60 seconds of stone-grinding; 'Watch 40kg of nibs become bars.'

3. The product, beautifully (20%). The shop-window content that sells. Post ideas: this week's bar line-up; truffle close-ups; pairing suggestions (Blue Mountain coffee, overproof rum).

4. Occasions & gifting (20%). Timed to the calendar. Post ideas: corporate gift boxes; 'what to bring to a Jamaican Christmas dinner'; wedding favour options.

5. The people & the stall (10%). Founder, assistant, market days, customer moments (with consent). Post ideas: 'Saturday at the market in 20 seconds'; packing a big corporate order.

Formats and effort: reels and short vertical video (high effort, shot in the weekly batch morning), carousels (medium, built from shoot stills), stories (low, same-day phone), lives (monthly, market mornings). Nothing is shot bespoke for a single post — everything comes from the weekly shoot library.

A typical week:

Dated moments across the horizon: October — launch of the plan and the 'Meet the Farms' series; November — corporate gifting push begins; December — Christmas campaign (the biggest revenue month); February — Valentine's truffle box; April–May — Mother's Day; June — diaspora 'send a taste of home' push timed to summer travel; August — Emancipation/Independence limited bar; September — harvest-season farm visit content and the anniversary of the venture. Each moment gets two weeks of build-up content, a hero post, and a clear offer.

Campaign 1 — 'Meet the Farms' (October). Objective: establish provenance and convert existing followers into first-time buyers. Hero content: a three-part farm series. Supporting: farm carousels, a founder story reel. Destination: the shop's 'Our Farms' bundle. Budget: J$20,000 boosting. Success: 300 bundle orders over the month, 500 new email subscribers.

Campaign 2 — 'The Considered Gift' (mid-November to 23 December). Objective: own Christmas gifting. Hero: the corporate and family gift-box range, a gift-guide carousel, daily stories in the final week. Destination: gift-box landing page with a 15 December order deadline. Budget: J$60,000 across the six weeks. Success: 400 gift boxes sold, December revenue of J$900,000 attributed to social.

Campaign 3 — 'A Taste of Home' (June). Objective: the diaspora. Hero: 'what real Jamaican chocolate tastes like' video, shipping explained plainly. Destination: international shipping page. Budget: J$25,000. Success: 150 international orders, shipping-page conversion above 4%.

Always-on between campaigns: the weekly rhythm never stops; WhatsApp broadcast every Saturday; one email a month to the list; the two best-performing organic posts each month get J$5,000 of boosting rather than guessing at new creative.

The weekly routine (12 person-hours total):

• Tuesday 9am–12pm — shoot morning (assistant). One batch shoot in the workshop: process video, product stills, stories material. Everything shot against the same linen-and-wood setup for a consistent look.
• Wednesday afternoon — edit and schedule (assistant, 3h). Cut two reels/TikToks, build one carousel, caption everything, schedule in the planner tool.
• Thursday 30 minutes — founder review. The founder approves or amends captions; nothing posts unreviewed.
• Daily 20 minutes — founder on WhatsApp and comments.

Equipment: the phone we already own, a J$15,000 ring light, a J$8,000 clip-on microphone, a tripod. No camera purchase this year.

Asset library: every shoot is filed by pillar and date in cloud storage, so a quiet week never means a silent account — there should always be two weeks of content banked.

Tools: a scheduling/planning tool (J$6,000/month), a link-in-bio and email capture tool (J$4,000/month), cloud storage (J$2,000/month).

When the owner is too busy: the assistant posts from the banked library using pre-approved captions; the founder's only non-delegable job is the Thursday review and WhatsApp sales conversations. If both are out, the account goes quiet rather than posting unreviewed — silence is cheaper than a mistake.

Response standards: comments and DMs answered within 4 business hours; WhatsApp enquiries within 2 hours during opening hours; every comment on a launch post gets a reply, even just an emoji and a thank-you.

Who answers what: the assistant handles comments and general DMs; anything involving money, delivery problems or wholesale goes to the founder on WhatsApp.

Saved replies cover the ten questions everyone asks: prices, where to buy, delivery areas, shipping abroad, ingredients/allergens, wholesale, market locations, opening hours, gift boxes, and 'do you do events'.

How an enquiry becomes a sale: DM or comment → a friendly answer plus the catalogue link → if they hesitate, one follow-up after 24 hours, never more. No pressure; the chocolate does the talking.

Complaints: acknowledged publicly and quickly ('We're sorry — please check your DMs'), resolved privately, and the resolution posted back if the customer agrees. Never delete a complaint unless it is abusive or spam.

Crisis rule: if something goes properly wrong — a product issue, a viral complaint — posting pauses, the founder drafts one honest statement, and only the founder speaks for the venture until it is resolved.

Creators. Four Jamaican food and lifestyle micro-creators (10k–80k followers) per quarter, chosen for audience fit over size. Each gets a curated box and a simple brief: show the chocolate honestly, one reel or TikTok, tag us, disclose the gift with #gifted. Budget J$30,000/month covers product, delivery and two paid placements at J$8,000–J$12,000 each. We track a unique discount code per creator so we know who actually moves product.

Partners. The cafés that stock us get a monthly shout-out and co-branded content; the three farms are featured by name (with their blessing) and tagged where they have accounts. A Christmas collaboration with a Blue Mountain coffee roaster is pencilled in for the gift campaign.

Customer advocates. Buyers who post unboxing photos (with consent) are reshared to stories and get a thank-you discount on their next order.

Paid promotion. Boosting is limited to proven organic posts (J$5,000 on each month's two best) plus campaign budgets. Audiences: Kingston/Montego Bay 25–55 interest-targeted for local sales; US/UK/Canada Jamaican-diaspora interest stacks for gifting. Creative is always a real post, never a glossy ad. Test one variable at a time — audience or creative, never both — and kill anything above J$450 per order after J$10,000 of spend.

Rules: every paid or gifted relationship disclosed; we buy rights to reuse creator content in our own feed for 90 days, in writing.

Reporting rhythm: a one-page scorecard on the first Monday of each month, 30 minutes, founder and assistant. Quarterly, the whole envelope is reviewed against attributed revenue.

Kill criteria: any platform that misses its target two consecutive quarters loses its budget to the best performer; any paid audience above J$450 per order is stopped; any pillar under 2% engagement for a quarter is reworked or dropped. Reach is never a reason to keep spending — orders are.

The envelope is fixed at J$172,000 a month all-in, funded from operating cash flow and reviewed quarterly. Attributed revenue ramps as the audience builds; the plan breaks even on a cash basis around month 6 and returns roughly J$2.20 per dollar over the year.

Platform rules. All gifted or paid creator content is disclosed (#gifted / #ad). Giveaways follow platform promotion rules and Jamaican betting-and-lottery guidance — no purchase-required prize draws. Music in videos uses platform-licensed libraries only, never ripped tracks.

Consent and images. Written consent before any customer's photo is reposted; no children identifiable in content without a parent's written permission; farm workers featured by name have agreed in writing.

Data and privacy. The email list is opt-in only, with unsubscribe in every send; customer phone numbers from WhatsApp orders are never added to the broadcast list without asking; data is held in the shop platform, not in spreadsheets on personal phones.

Account security. Two-factor authentication on every account; passwords in a shared manager, not a notebook; the assistant has editor access, not ownership; recovery emails point at the business address. Quarterly check that ex-devices and old sessions are signed out.

Dependency risk. Instagram could halve our reach tomorrow — that is why the email list and the WhatsApp broadcast list are objectives in their own right, and why TikTok and Shorts are kept warm rather than abandoned. If an account is lost or restricted: appeal immediately, tell followers on the other channels, and lean on email and WhatsApp while it is resolved.

Food claims. No health, medical or 'guilt-free' claims about chocolate, ever — pleasure and provenance are the story.