transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] I started going farmer's market after farmer's market, and over the course of a summer, I sold $60,000 for the product, working part-time under 20 hours a week.

Speaker 2:
[00:09] Your first three months, you did $20,000 a month working 20 hours a week? Give or take?

Speaker 1:
[00:14] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[00:15] Holy crap.

Speaker 1:
[00:16] In the beginning, we didn't really know how good this was going to do, so we just started it out of our basement.

Speaker 2:
[00:22] You don't need a team there. You're making a couple of hundred bucks an hour of profit for the time spent in the market. That's an amazing living, but you can only scale farmers' markets so much, so you start going online. What does your first three months of online sales look like?

Speaker 1:
[00:37] When we went online in the beginning, we did in less than 30 days what we did in four months. Our best month so far, we did over $160,000.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] Holy cow.

Speaker 1:
[00:48] Basically, over the past couple of years, just online sales alone, a little north of $3 or $4 million. We've just scratched the surface of the marketplace.

Speaker 2:
[00:58] What other farmer's market items, products, services did you see around you that seemed to be extra popular, extra profitable? I met this guy who sold pizza dough mix at his local farmer's market. He made $60,000 in a summer, mostly profit, working 20 hours a week out of his basement. No restaurant, no food truck, started the business with next to nothing. Basically, every market he walked home empty. His best day pulled in $3,000 in four hours. We're going to interview this guy, but before I get there, I'm going to start this episode today by breaking down how you can start your own farmer's market. Because guess what? I just did this with my wife. We're doing this right now and it's actually really profitable. I'm going to cover that first, then I'm going to interview Michael about his pizza kit business. At the end of that interview, we're going to talk about other farmer's market side hustles that are printing money, homemade pasta, all kinds of stuff. Then he's going to give us more farmer's market hacks that you can apply to any business. My favorite hack is a branded bag trick that sold his product before customers ever reached his table. Enjoy. Okay, so let's talk farmer's markets. Now, I haven't spoken about this publicly yet, but it's a pretty cool story. So my wife and a friend launched their second kids farmer's market here in the Dallas, Fort Worth area about a month ago. They did their first last year and it was a big success. Their first one last year had 50 booths and it took them a couple months to sell all the booths. This one took them about a week to sell twice as many booths, 100, and it was a huge success. And it just got me thinking more and more about farmers markets, not just from the perspective of a vendor at a market, but from the perspective of the person who owns the market. So I know a farmers market is like the least sexy business out there, but the unsexy businesses are the best. They're the most profitable ones. They're the ones that people are sleeping on. So hear me out for a few minutes and then I'll get into my interview with Michael. Let me try to convince you to start a farmers market. I'll tell you exactly how ours broke down. So let me be very clear. My wife and her friend business partner did like 95 percent of the work here. I vibe coded an app for the judges so that they could score the booths on three different age categories and several different factors. That's what I did and then I showed up and filmed content. They did all the work, but I had a cool inside look into how it works and how much money it could make if the one that we didn't just do were a non-profit. We're doing this to help kids become entrepreneurs and not to be rich, but plenty of people could do this to get rich and it costs almost nothing to start. The magic is in the overhead or the lack thereof. We had almost zero overhead. Now, typically, your biggest overhead is going to be your lease or your rent or your land or where are you going to put this market? All these people to set up 10 by 10 tents, six-foot plastic folding tables and chairs. Where are you going to do this? Well, you could do it near City Hall like I do here in my small town. But what my wife and her friend did is they went to a popular outdoor walkable shopping area here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It's been here for about 15 years. It's got all the typicals, Cheesecake Factory, Grimaldi's Pizzeria, Burger Place, Frozen Yogurt, Grocery Store, you name it. It's nice. It's cool. But these guys are in the business of occupancy. They want as close to 100% occupancy as possible. And they also have apartments. It's a mixed-use complex. So they need things to be bustling. They need things to appear busy. And so it's in their best interest to host a farmers market. And so I think it was my wife called the marketing manager or emailed them or whatever, and they were thrilled to be a part of this. They said, yeah, let's set a date a few months in the future. Let's rope off some parking spaces for you, and we'll help you advertise it. We'll put it up on our electronic billboard that, like, 100,000 people drive by every day. That's not an exaggeration. It's right on the freeway. We'll send an email out to our list, like, we will advertise this market for you, and we won't charge you for it. And we're going to give you gift cards to our shopping center, to all the businesses here, to give to the judges, just to say thanks for helping participate. So we did it last year. It was a huge success. And then we did it this year. And it was a mega success. And I basically played zero role in marketing it, either to the vendors or to the people that showed up. I posted about it on Instagram the morning of. I have no idea if it drove any traffic, but it was way too short notice to make a difference. So I don't want anyone to think that you have to have an audience to do this. It was packed. And it's perfect because people are already coming to that shopping center. Most of the people at the market probably had no idea there was even a market there that day. They just went there to buy some Lululemon leggings or whatever, and then saw a bunch of kids selling cool stuff. And so they started shopping. But a lot of people did know there was a market. So they came there and then they might have bought some Lululemon leggings as well, which the shopping center would be thrilled about. And then you have all the friends and family. You have these seven to 17 year old kids with a booth and their parents are posting about it on Facebook and Instagram and everywhere to friends and family and extended family and they're showing up and driving business to the shopping center and to the other kids as well. So it's this beautiful win-win all the way around. Now, here's what we did wrong. We provided tables and chairs never again, ever, ever, ever again. What you need to provide is just a space on the ground. Hey, here's a map. You take a laminated piece of paper with a number on it. You take a sandbag. You throw a piece of paper on the ground. You throw the sandbag on it so it doesn't blow away. And then you tell people the day before, the week before, you are booth number six, seven. OK, and then around 8 a.m., all the vendors show up an hour before it starts. They set up, they set up their tent. We set out the tables and chairs beforehand, which is a big pain. I won't get into it, but we're not going to do that again. And that was basically our only overhead. That was our only cost. And then they have an hour to set up or two hours or whatever they want or need. And then people start showing up at nine and it lasts until 12, one, two o'clock in the afternoon. That's how it works. A lot of these kids made hundreds of dollars in profit. I think a few made over a thousand. And then some kids made less than a hundred. It just didn't go well. And the kids that typically didn't do well were the ones that sold really, really cheap knickknacks, you know, 3D printed objects or crafts or stuff that people buy to be nice, but they don't really need. And it's also the stuff that takes forever for these kids to make. So I know I don't recommend you sell that stuff. The kids that did well sold higher ticket stuff. And in this case, higher ticket is like twenty to fifty dollars. My daughter sold thirty five dollar custom hats. She had an 80 percent margin and she made hundreds of dollars of profit in a few hours. Her overhead was a seventy dollar hat pressing machine and some like four dollar hats she bought on Amazon and some patches and stuff like that. Great business. So I think there's even more opportunity to do this for adults. And you could charge a lot more on booth fees as well. And this concept of doing it at an outdoor shopping market, that's not really a thing. Now, I know Tractor Supply, they have markets on Saturdays. And it's genius because it brings people to the Tractor Supply. And Tractor Supplies usually aren't like in as good of a location as a Walmart. They're usually kind of off the beaten path in more rural areas. So it's a great way for Tractor Supply to market to the community, to let people know that they're there, and then also to have a high sales day on that Saturday because people are showing up, buy hot chocolate, then they go in and buy a bunch of chickens or whatever. So Tractor Supply is kind of pioneering this, along with my wife and her business partner. But at the end of this, the shopping center went up to my wife. Remember, this is the second time they did it and said, this was amazing. How soon can we do this again? And they don't even have results yet. It's not like they signed a bunch of 10 year leases on the spot, you know, commercial real estate doesn't work that way. But they just want bustling activity and that's what they got. So here's how the unit economics breakdown. First of all, this shopping center is not massive. I would say it's mid-size for DFW, certainly on the lower end of mid-size, but it could fit at least 200 booths. And these booths are on sidewalks and in parking spaces. And they also have a parking garage. So they have plenty of parking. That's not an issue. So a booth fee realistically at an average market is 50 to 100 bucks. And remember, you don't need to provide anything. They bring their tent, their tables, and their chairs, and their supplies, and their equipment. And if they need electricity, they just plug up to an outlet. And, you know, the shopping center covers that. So 200 stall market, $100 a piece. That's $20,000 for five or six hours of work on a Saturday. Plus, of course, like some prep work beforehand, some marketing. But in the case of my wife, like they have a Facebook page with like 300 followers, Instagram page with something tiny, like they didn't have a big audience. They're just piggybacking on an existing audience of this shopping center. That's why it works. So you do one of these every weekend, put 10 grand profit in your pocket, 40 grand a month. I think that's possible. Or just be a vendor at these things or show up to one of these and see which booths are consistently busy and then copy that concept at the same market or at a different market. I really, really love the branded bag idea that you're about to hear in this interview. Ever heard of Justin's Nut Butter? Multi-hundred million dollar brand sold in thousands of grocery stores. That started at a farmers market. Tate's Bake Shop. I think that's a billion dollar business. Farmers market. Burt's Bees, Green Goo, Sprouts markets. That started as a farmers market. I am actually going to finally launch my powder drink mix business that I've been talking about for years called Busy Juice at my local farmers market. That's two minutes down the road from me on May 9th. And I'm going to document that whole process. Buying the bags, sealing the bags, buying ingredients, mixing it in my kitchen, the regulatory stuff. I'm going to have a live stream set up at the tent all day. I'm going to bring samples of drinks. People are going to taste it. I'm going to sell it for 30 bucks a bag. It's got like 70% profit margins. I'm going to eat my own dog food or drink my own powder drink mix in this case. So be looking for that video in late May or June. These markets are just an amazing place to get immediate real-time feedback from strangers on your product. It doesn't have to be food. It could be cutting boards. It could be anything, beef jerky. Well, I guess that's food, but go find what works. In the case of this guy I'm about to interview, he had no precedent for a pizza mix making $1,000 or $2,000 in four hours at a farmer's market. That wasn't a thing. He didn't go copy anyone else. He just blazed his own trail, and now he's got a multi-million dollar business on his hand a couple of years later. Go start a farmer's market or go be a vendor at a farmer's market or go support your local farmer's market as a consumer and check out this interview and please share with a friend. If you're here for the first time, please hit follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever. It would really go a long way. Thank you. Well, why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do.

Speaker 1:
[10:58] So my name is Michael McCoy and I'm co-founder of Prepa Pizza, where we sell a pizza dough making kit to people who want to make better pizza at home.

Speaker 2:
[11:09] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[11:09] That's basically what I did for more than a decade. It's kind of nerded out. But every bit of equipment, tried all kinds of brands. Like in the very beginning, I created a fake pizzeria so I could contact every vendor and get like flowery. You wouldn't buy anywhere else on Amazon or interesting in any specialty stores or even the restaurant stores. So I could find what I was looking for. Realistically, I always try with food at home. It's like, how can I emulate a restaurant that I love? So I would start with, okay, well, what brands of flour are they using? What techniques are they doing? What types of other ingredients are incorporated with this? And how can I almost exactly mimic it? To the point where now we've created this.

Speaker 2:
[11:57] Gotcha. What background did you have that led you to start this business?

Speaker 1:
[12:01] So I, for lack of a better word, I've reinvented myself in business about five different times. I had been doing a lot of business in the past that I wasn't really passionate about. None of the things that I did were really anything that I loved. For a while there, I was kind of in a rut, wasn't really happy, failure wasn't really happy with what I was doing anyways in business. And so we kind of sat down one night and it was just like, okay, well, what's something that I could do that I really love and I'm passionate about and that I could really sink into? And the first thing that came to mind was like we should start a pizzeria because I'd been making pizza at home for more than a decade. I've been nerding out on it just like you did. And realistically, it was my passion. It was my love for a really long time. And everybody else loved it too. Like we'd always have pizza parties and things like that. Everybody would say, well, you should really open a pizzeria. You should really open a pizzeria. So one day I turned to my wife and said, would you like me to open a pizzeria? And she said no, because we both worked in the restaurant industry before. She's like, you'll be there night and day. Like, I don't want you to open up a pizzeria. So I sat my thought and I was like, I'll kind of come from a direct response marketing background and basically have all kinds of background with restaurant training as well as online training and things like that. So I thought, well, how can I marry all of that together? And that's where kind of our pizza dough making kit kind of was born, where basically I provide you with the best quality ingredients and also training and support so that way you can execute, because that's the biggest problem with most people. Most people have a challenge in getting to the finish line, and so then they go back, they revert backwards and go to the grocery store and buy what's pre-made, kind of easiest. But once you get past the point, just like you did, once you get back past the point of making something really good, you're like, wow, this can be amazing at home. And that's kind of the biggest hurdle that I think most home cooks have with making pizza.

Speaker 2:
[14:10] It's funny because you had that, you said the comment where you're so good at making pizza, you should open a pizzeria. Like, I swear every failed restaurant that ever failed was because someone had that same experience over and over and over. They were good at making X, Y or Z food, and all their friends and family said, you should open a restaurant. What those people don't realize is that opening a restaurant is nothing like being a good cook. Like, being a good cook is like 20% of it. You still have to run a dang business, you know? And so then they open this restaurant, and they're there till midnight every night, and then it fails because a business is much different than just cooking in your kitchen. So, what did that first month look like? How did you start your business?

Speaker 1:
[14:46] So, basically, in the beginning, we didn't really know how good this was going to do. So, we realistically kind of just started it out of our basement, for lack of a better word. I would measure, me and my wife would spend evenings in the basement, like measuring out ingredients and building these kits, and we pre-ordered all of these different bags and stuff like that, that we could then load everything with, with like normal gram scales in our basement on tables and stuff like that. And then we had a sealing machine and we would build these, and we built, you know, typically like a hundred at a time. And then I would go out to farmers markets, because I knew that that was kind of like the fastest way that you could go and present some type of food related product, and see if there was a market for it, without realistically low-end investment. We weren't really spending any money online or anything like that. And I started going to farmers markets, and then I started to go to three or four farmers markets a week. And every single time I'd go, you know, I'd show up, I'd have a little pizza oven, my table set up, and, you know, 30 to 40 of these, and every single time I'd walk home without them, and people would buy them. And I wasn't the cheapest product at the farmers market. You know, we charged $30 for our kit, $29.97 online. And realistically, to a consumer for pizza dough, I mean, that's probably the biggest comment we get online. Oh, that's really expensive. But it's not just about, you know, the ingredients inside of the bag, it's about the training, the support that you get, the actual level of commitment to making sure you pass the finish line and enjoy your experience. That's what really sells. At any rate, I started going farmers market after farmers market, and basically over the course of a summer, I sold roughly $60,000 for the product.

Speaker 2:
[16:38] Your first summer?

Speaker 1:
[16:39] Working part-time. Typically, the farmers market is a couple of hours, I was maybe three to four weeks. I mean, under 20 hours a week that I was working on this project, selling $60,000 worth of stuff, so it wasn't that at all.

Speaker 2:
[16:55] Your first three months, you did $20,000 a month working 20 hours a week, give or take?

Speaker 1:
[17:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:01] Holy crap. What was your profit on that $60,000?

Speaker 1:
[17:04] So in the beginning, it was pretty much all for the most part profit because the margins on the actual product. So I would say if you factored in our time, we spent a lot of time making everything. So it wasn't like realistically the showing up to the market and everything like that in the end result of selling. That part was kind of a limited amount of time. The back end time, which was us being our own in-house manufacturing facility, that was probably the majority, I would say, of the works. But as far as ingredients, they're not inexpensive, but they're not expensive. But then we also were buying in bulk so I could lower my costs and things like that. But then we were manufacturing in-house. So technically, we...

Speaker 2:
[17:49] Literally in-house, manufacturing in-basement.

Speaker 1:
[17:52] Yeah, manufacturing at home. And then we just kind of grew from there. And so then when I took it online, basically we kind of knew we had something, didn't really know how well it would do online. And I was a little bit new to like Facebook advertising, and I kind of hired agencies out, took everything over on my own, and now we've been pretty much exploded.

Speaker 2:
[18:19] Okay. So I want you to grade my pizza recipe and then I'm going to guess your margins. My pizza, double zero flour, one kilogram, thousand grams, that's going to set me back, and I don't buy a bulk. That's going to set me back like eight bucks or something. Right. Six bucks, something like that, six to eight bucks. Then I'm going to put in 700 grams of water, and then I'm going to put in like six grams of yeast and 25 grams of salt. That sounds about right. So if I were selling that, it looks like you're 30 bucks for six pizzas worth. And so that's like, I'm guessing, I don't know, is that like a pound and a half? Is that right?

Speaker 1:
[18:53] So the package itself weighs out to two pounds.

Speaker 2:
[18:55] Okay, two pounds. Okay. So I'm guessing you've got like 80% margin on that product.

Speaker 1:
[19:01] As far as the actual ingredients and things like that, I'd say that's probably pretty close.

Speaker 2:
[19:07] Gross margin, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[19:09] Yeah. I mean, I will say that our good friend Zuckerberg gets the majority of our money.

Speaker 2:
[19:13] Sure. Yeah. We'll go into the e-comm side, but now I'm thinking for like, I'm still thinking on the farmer's market side. First summer, are you doing one farmer's market every Saturday, or are they more often than that?

Speaker 1:
[19:27] There are ones that you can do throughout the week. I did a Wednesday, Thursday, and two Saturday markets. That was the four that I did it in a week. I had my wife go to one and I went to another one on Saturday. But realistically, in a lot of towns, there are ones that you can do, you know, essentially Wednesday through Saturday, typically, there's a market in some place or some town close to you. It just depends on what town it is. So, but realistically, someone could easily get three in by themselves.

Speaker 2:
[20:04] So you guys were doing like, call it like 12 to 16 markets a month that first summer.

Speaker 1:
[20:10] Right.

Speaker 2:
[20:10] That accurate? Okay. So call it 48 markets. You're doing like 1200 to 1500 in sales per market on average. And I'm sure some are like 400 and some are 2000. Is that accurate?

Speaker 1:
[20:21] Yeah, it just depends on the day.

Speaker 2:
[20:22] Yeah. And then markets are what, four to six hours?

Speaker 1:
[20:27] So typically, the ones around here are about two to three hours of the total time of the actual market itself. So like, I'd say you're probably there for maybe four and a half hours total. If that.

Speaker 2:
[20:40] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[20:41] Like, it really wasn't that long.

Speaker 2:
[20:43] Guys, tkowners.com. That's my community where people are building businesses. I do AMAs, Q&As every week live. You can ask me anything you want. You can have accountability partners. It's about a thousand people in their building, starting growing businesses. Check out TKO, as in The Koerner Office, tkowners.com. So you're only making pizzas for samples. You're not selling pizzas, just the kids.

Speaker 1:
[21:04] Right, right. So the goal in the beginning was not to become a pizzeria, but to sell, showcase the product, sell people on, you can do this too, and this is how good it can be. And so I would make it exactly the same. So there'd be no difference in the dough, and I would do minimal stuff like minimal cheese, minimal toppings, things like that. But minimal sauce, minimal cheese, so they could really taste what good dough could be versus, well, you're just putting a ton of sauce, you're just putting a little bit of sauce.

Speaker 2:
[21:39] Now, are you putting anything else in the mix other than flour, salt, yeast?

Speaker 1:
[21:43] So we add a couple of helpers. We provide honey as a helper.

Speaker 2:
[21:48] Like powdered honey?

Speaker 1:
[21:49] We're going to change that in time for vegan people, but basically a healthier sugar, which helps the yeast activate. We also provide diastatic malt powder, which basically we do a two-part recipe. We teach poolish, which is a bread making step of making a pre-ferment before you actually finish your dough. When you've mixed more ingredients in makes it even, basically in the pizza industry, it helps to move things along faster. That's why we chose this recipe because we're trying to, like if I said, hey man, all right, cool, mix all that stuff together. All right, now let it sit in the fridge for three days.

Speaker 2:
[22:28] Yeah, that's what I do. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[22:32] And some people are definitely more into like the faster time. So we were trying to figure out how could we give people the right recipe, but also the fastest recipe for them and that's where we landed with this.

Speaker 2:
[22:44] I mean, you've got to build it for the lowest common denominator for the everyday at home. You got to make it easy, simple, frictionless. You said the word poolish and I heard Vito, that YouTuber, I'm sure you know him.

Speaker 1:
[22:54] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:55] He's so entertaining.

Speaker 1:
[22:57] I know him very well. I see him every year at the Pizza Expo.

Speaker 2:
[23:01] Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:
[23:02] And we talk a good bit. So he's a good friend.

Speaker 2:
[23:05] It's funny because I'm thinking back to the conversation you have to your family. Like, what is your passion? Like, well, it's pizza. If I were to have that conversation with my family, oh man, it's pizza, it's barbecue, it's mowing the lawn, it's trimming trees, it's planting trees, it's fruit, it's horticulture. I have so many passions. But I will say like in the passion versus profit argument, like passion is just the way to go, man. Like you might not be able to afford starting a business that's your passion early on, but as soon as you can, like do a business that you are passionate about and you will have the most rewarding, fulfilling life ever.

Speaker 1:
[23:39] Yeah. They always say if you do what you love, you never work a day.

Speaker 2:
[23:43] You never work a day. And it's true. It's a cliche, but it's so true. Okay. So by my count, you're making it, you know, exclude the time it takes you to prep the stuff. If you just look at the time spent at the market, it's only you because you're offering something that's very simple, you know, pay here, here's the QR code to Venmo or whatever. You don't need a team there. You're making a couple hundred bucks an hour of profit for the time spent at the market. Of course, it doesn't account for your time before then. That's an amazing living, but you know, you can only scale farmers markets so much. So you start going online. What does your first three months of online sales look like?

Speaker 1:
[24:17] So actually in the very beginning, and another thing too, just like a sidebar is that we didn't just do farmers markets. We did different food shows. We did lots of golf tournaments. We did neighborhood events. Basically anywhere that would let me show up, make a little bit of pizza and had a crowd, like is kind of where, you know, golf tournaments was a really big one. Like it was a super, you know, lo-fi thing to spend, you know, a golf round, you know, sitting around making pizza, chatting with people and, you know, easily I was selling 40 or 50 of them at a golf tournament. It was definitely a good place for it. But when we went online in the beginning was kind of, I was a little bit new to Facebook marketing. I hired an agency on it first. We did okay, but realistically we didn't really do great. And it wasn't until I took things over myself and really started investing in to the marketing and understanding everything that we went, like probably our first four months of marketing, basically our sales online were dismal. Although we did get a call from the show that everybody knows that you go on their show and they'll maybe invest in your business.

Speaker 2:
[25:25] Did you go on it?

Speaker 1:
[25:27] We haven't yet. But basically they invited us to try out for the show and I laughed because when they called us, I said, well, we've sold five of these online, so I'm not really sure we're ready for you guys yet, but I guess we'll sign up. So maybe at some point we'll get on that show too, but it's kind of funny at any rate. So after that, basically we did in less than 30 days what we did in four months in sales, just by me taking over everything and really understanding the marketing and how Facebook marketing works and kind of applying the right principles and we've been just scaling from there. We're our best month so far, we did over $160,000 in sales. Holy cow. Basically, over the past couple of years, just online sales alone, a little north of $3 or $4 million in sales. We've kind of just scratched the surface of the marketplace. We're just understanding how to build this business, as I'm sure you're aware of the e-com world, it's not just like press play and you're an instant millionaire, you've got to actually do a lot of things to get it going right and efficient, and cost-efficient based on your advertising, and that's the most expensive thing. But the good thing about what we're doing is that we had margins in place that allowed us to really explode our marketing, or other companies out there might only have a 10, or a 15, or a 20 percent margin.

Speaker 2:
[27:00] Yeah. It looks like you have 60 active ads right now, which is awesome. Most people don't realize that about Facebook ads, you have to have way more creatives than you think, and you have to rotate them much more often than you think. Listen, I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email molly at cofounders.com. That's one word, cofounders.com. Molly at cofounders.com. Tell her your story and we'll give you a hundred bucks if we end up interviewing them. We're like, we're friends of the farmers market. My wife put on a farmers market for kids. She was in charge of it with a friend and we're vendors at a farmers market here in town regularly. We sell all kinds of stuff. We're an entrepreneurial family. So I'm going to one next month and I'm going to sell a powdered drink mix in a gusset bag like what you sell yours in. It's a powder drink mix with three ingredients that I personally drink and invented and love. And so I'm going to do it A to make money B to make some content about it. What tips would you have for me for selling a product that has a form factor just like yours, but is a powder drink mix instead. It's going to be a similar price point as well.

Speaker 1:
[28:05] Yeah, I'd say literally set up some cameras behind you and have people try it.

Speaker 2:
[28:12] Do people have issues with the cameras or the mics at all, ever?

Speaker 1:
[28:15] No, never had one issue with it or anyone thinking something was wrong. But to me, it just felt like if I was too abrasive about it, then people would care. If I was just like, okay, hey, can you hold this mic real quick? Because I'm trying to make content for my blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2:
[28:35] Just pretend like it's not there unless they say something.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:40] Hypothetically, so you did 60 grand the first summer just at farmers markets. What might you have done in sales that same summer if you had no samples? You were just selling them on the dream and you just had the product there.

Speaker 1:
[28:52] I mean, honestly, I will say that it was 50-50 because I also tried selling without samples and more so, I would say, without samples, someone that had bought some equipment and failed. Realistically, it's like a lot of people that went to farmers markets also were the outdoor cooking crowd of people, and so it was a very easy pull for our product. I would say that definitely samples help. And in the beginning, samples, I would suggest for any product. Doesn't matter what it is, like sample, because except obviously, like eggs, you can't crack an egg and then say, hey, you just get to say, my chickens lay the best eggs.

Speaker 2:
[29:39] Right. Now, in Texas, we have the Texas Cottage Food Law where if I were to make pizzas at this market, I need a food handler's permit and it's totally different than if I sell cookies because those don't require refrigeration. I don't need any licensing if I sell cookies, right? In your case, did you need a special license to give out samples or no?

Speaker 1:
[29:56] So, that's kind of interesting and we actually talked with someone in Texas about reselling our product there as well. The laws are only applied if you sell the pizza. So, if I'm just giving you a sample of a pizza that I've made to test out, it doesn't apply because the exact same laws in Georgia. Where, for example, if I show up to a farmer's market and I'm selling pizza to people, I am now a food truck.

Speaker 2:
[30:26] You're basically a restaurant. Yeah. Your cat is like one.

Speaker 1:
[30:30] Because of that, the law is almost like identical between the two states. In most states, I found out that Pennsylvania is the only one that's like really weird about it. But other than that, the majority of states, it's been something where anyone could do.

Speaker 2:
[30:45] Okay. What was your best market ever with regards to sales and what was your worst?

Speaker 1:
[30:49] So, I think my best market ever, we did close to three grand, but it was a really big, it was a big event that was all tied up together with the farmers market as part of it. So, there were basically, it was almost like triple the amount of people that would normally come to the farmers market. I would say that every farmers market is not a great place. So, you have to be a little bit picky and choosy.

Speaker 2:
[31:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[31:23] I would say ones that cities hold on, that are actually inside of the city limits, I've found tend to be better than ones that are outside of the city limits.

Speaker 2:
[31:34] That's the one I'm doing.

Speaker 1:
[31:35] Yeah. And the reason why is because I've been to ones that basically are a farmers market, like in the traditional sense of on the side of the road that no one showed up to because it was poorly marketed, where the cities are trying to, especially smaller cities, they're trying to get people to come into their town and also do business with the other businesses in town. And farmers markets is a great way to kind of get people around the area to actually come in and invest in the town itself.

Speaker 2:
[32:03] Yeah. Okay. What about these classes? Who's doing classes and how big is that business?

Speaker 1:
[32:09] So every person who buys our pizza dough making kit gets our free masterclass. So basically we provide them with a course, it walks them step by step on how to make pizza dough the proper way. You know, it has tons of different troubleshooting information. It's actually something we're reshooting because we also found other things that people had problems with. So it's something that's ever evolving for us. But then we also back that by providing customer support. So for example, if you had a question and you were making dough and you needed a little bit of help, you can hop on the chat on our website and lo and behold, I'm the person answering it right now. So I help people out every single day. You can even call our 800 number and get real answers to kind of, realistically, our goal is to have people enjoy what they're making, be successful in their making and making it, and then having a really good pizza at home, better than any pizza around them, which makes them want to make it more.

Speaker 2:
[33:04] Okay, so you've got a masterclass, but that's free to anyone that purchases it just so they can learn how to better use your product. That's not like a revenue generating side of the business, but it supports your revenue.

Speaker 1:
[33:13] Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:14] Okay. If someone's watching this right now and they love pizza or they love cooking and they want to monetize that somehow, what suggestions would you have for them? Would it be selling pizza at a farmer's market? In the pizza space, what's an approachable business idea or more than one that people could implement?

Speaker 1:
[33:32] Yeah. I mean, I would say that reselling pizza-related products versus selling pizza, because, for example, selling pizza, there's an initial investment, just like having a restaurant, in the equipment to make the pizza, as well as the licensing that you would need to sell it. Not that it's super expensive, but sometimes not everybody has, let's just call it under $25,000 stowed away to start a pizza venture with. Realistically, selling products like this, I think, or other, even equipment would be something where you can showcase equipment and how it works in certain ways. I wouldn't say like stones and steels are really hard to showcase at a venue like that, but that would be something that easily someone could go and sell. You know, they would just require the inventory.

Speaker 2:
[34:30] When you were spending time at these markets, what other like farmers market items, products, services, did you see around you that seemed to be extra popular, extra profitable?

Speaker 1:
[34:41] So I would say the majority of people that seemed to make the most money were someone who made baked goods. They seemed to sell out of their products pretty frequently. And especially if they were good at making the baked goods, they didn't have a lot left over. So definitely, I know home baking is a really big niche. And so people making breads and things like that at home and being able to go and sell that at farmers markets, those seemed to do really well. And then kind of like, I would say interesting things as well. Like we had, there was a lady that sold pickles. Like she made her own pickles and everything like that. There was a lady who basically kind of had multiple different farmers markets and she sold pasta. So basically fresh make pasta, she made it out of her basement and everything like that. And then, you know, had kind of like this army of girls going around to different farmers markets, selling pasta.

Speaker 2:
[35:36] She did well?

Speaker 1:
[35:38] I think she does pretty well at it, considering she has, you know.

Speaker 2:
[35:41] I mean, if you have an army of people that you're paying.

Speaker 1:
[35:43] There's an army of girls going out there selling hot.

Speaker 2:
[35:45] You're not going to scale something that doesn't work.

Speaker 1:
[35:47] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[35:48] That's very interesting. What was the form factor? I imagine it wasn't dried out. Did she like make the pasta fresh and then bag it and refrigerate?

Speaker 1:
[35:55] Basically, it was refrigerated pasta. They'd show up in coolers and basically, she had a following at the market. Because that's typically what happens is you start to build a following of people that buy your product and then buy it over and over again. And almost like weirdly only want to buy it from the farmer's market, where I had to convince several people. They kept asking me, when are you going to be back at the market? And I'm like, you know, I got to take it. But you can buy it online. I literally will ship it to you tomorrow. And they're like, yeah, well, I don't trust the Internet. And I'm like, just come on. Let's let's talk.

Speaker 2:
[36:32] Michael, this is an incredible business. Thank you for sharing your time with us. I love your story. Where can we find you if we want to learn more or buy your pizza kits?

Speaker 1:
[36:39] Yeah. So if you go to prepapizza.com, you can buy our pizza kit and you'll see a boatload of ads for me if you're on Facebook or Instagram or Google.

Speaker 2:
[36:50] Okay. Thank you, Michael.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] No problem. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[36:53] Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out, you're still mowing the lawn, you're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business, it would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.