How I Built This with Guy Raz - Live From The HIBT Summit: Tariq Farid Of Edible Arrangements

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

Our fourth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Tariq Farid, founder of Edible Arrangements. In a live conversation with Guy, Tariq talks about flowers, fruit, and family—and how he wouldn't be where he is without the sacrifices and support of the people he loves the most. We'll be releasing more episodes from the Summit in the new year, so keep checking your podcast feed!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca.ca. slash host. Hey, just a quick note before we start the show, we have one week left in our annual public radio fundraiser, and we're asking you to show your support for your local public radio station. You've heard me say it all months, so please just take a moment to give your gift by December 31st. Just go to donate.npr.org slash built. And thank. Hey everyone. So today we're releasing another live interview from How I Built This Summit. It's my conversation with Tariq Farid, the founder of edible arrangements. And you might remember from the original episode he was on that he started his first business in high school. It was a little flower shop near his home in West Haven, Connecticut. And after a few years, Tarek pivoted from flowers to fruit and eventually built a $600 million company. And Tarek's story is also about family, the immigrant. parents that raised him and helped support him in the early days of the flower shop, and the sacrifices that all families make when somebody they love becomes a full-time entrepreneur. But before we got into that part of the story, I asked Tarek about the idea behind edible

arrangements, the idea of cutting up melon and pineapples and strawberries and arranging them into edible bouquets. I have a lot of questions for you, but I wanted to start on this idea about bad ideas. How did you know that that cantaloupe cut into the shape of flowers was going to work? Well, you know, the way we always knew was the customers, right? So you put it together and you start selling it in the floors. But before I ever started selling it, there were all these ideas of sharing it with friends and sharing it with people in the industry.

We had a family friend. He was a doctor. He taught kids on starting ideas and everything. I shared the idea and he said, you know, stay in your flower business. This is crazy. Who would buy fruit on sales? sticks in a basket, especially for the price you're selling it. But every time we sent it to a customer, the customers would call back and said, can I order one? You know, and so it, you know,

almost became more popular than flowers. So you kind of knew. It was, it was the customer. And it was, as I shared with you, it was my mom who was really the inspiration. As soon as she saw it, she used to work at the flower shop. She said, she goes, honey, this is going to be really big. Yeah. You know, and it was. You know, it's, on that point, earlier I was talking to Tim Brown of Allbirds and and to Laura American of Larabar. And, you know, the thing about their products is they were kind of weird at the time, like marino wool shoes or, you know, dates and nuts mashed into a bar. But that weirdness was almost the thing that made it something people want to talk about.

Like the weirdness of fruits in the shape of flowers was, in some ways, your competitive advantage. Well, we called it unique. We didn't call it weird, you know. I see, okay. We made sure. But it is that. It's different, right? So, you know, the biggest complaints on flowers.

where, especially when you keep the price range the same, that they die. And people like sharing, you know, the experiences where somebody would get it. And we had a mom in the beginning, she called the story. She goes, what I love about your product is that I love seeing people enjoy it. My kids dig in and everybody digs in. And I don't see that with other products that I buy. Somebody always has some kind of a reason, oh, I don't eat chocolate, I don't eat this, but everybody digs into fruit.

And I wish I knew a long time ago to make my kids eat more fruit. I had to put it on sticks. So great job. So I think with that, it is just listening to the customer and the investors or people I was asking for money and everything saw as weird. The customers saw that as unique and they wanted to send it because, you know, they wanted someone to have a great experience. Tark, for those of you who haven't heard his episodes, well worth listening to, just really a remarkable story. I think you were 11 years old. You were the oldest of six kids.

Yes. Family emigrated from Pakistan. Your dad worked as a machinist. He worked at Burger King to keep food on the table, eventually got a loan to open a little flower shop or borrowed money from one of his bosses. I've actually had a lot of conversations with attendees here, immigrant families or first generation Americans. You know, similar stories. Don't have access to capital. Don't have access to networks.

Don't have generational wealth. I mean, your family literally ran that flower shop, right? Like everyone had to work there. My father made $8.25 an hour at that time. And so the real inspiration of why we accomplished what we accomplished would be my father's boss. My father goes to him and says, my son has found a flower shop for $6,000 for sale. And we need a loan. And Bill and Denise Holberg didn't even think about it and gave me $6,000 and said, hey, good luck, kid.

Yeah, here you go. And never asked for the money. And then my mom, when I talked to her, say, I have to go to school. She's like, well, I'll watch the shop. How hard could it be? And she didn't drive, but drop her off at about 7 a.m. This happened for about two years. I'd go to high school, get out at about 1 o'clock,

get back to the store, and all she did was just kind of kept an eye on it. And as customers came in, would sell them the flowers. And then for those two years, I don't remember my mom once saying that I don't feel good today. And we did $70 a day for the first, I think, remember three or four weeks where, you know, the sales were $70, $80. day we were up in seven days a week. I used to deliver papers. I thought it was the most phenomenal thing I ever did like $70 a day. Oh my God. I just got to get to $100. But for us, our rent at that time was $300. So when you're making $100 a day, $700 a week, you're like, wow,

you know, because you're not thinking of paying. Your mom definitely doesn't get paid, you know. So, so and she never asked for it. And it was phenomenal. You know, so I think it's an interesting phenomenon that you see now. I have a lot of people that will pitch to me. We had to take a little money and make a lot, and now people want a lot of money so they can lose a lot. It's sort of like, yeah, our burn rate is $3 million. Like, whoa, okay. You know, I couldn't borrow $120,000 because I went and wrote a business plan, wanted to borrow $120,000. I put it together, waited about six weeks, and I got a rejection letter saying that we just don't believe in the concept.

We don't think it'll work. This is for... Just for edible, just $120,000. For edible arrangements. This is after you guys had a couple of successful flour shops. The first one was doing about $190,000 the first year. We needed to scale it. I wanted to open one, a second one.

And I still bank with that bank, I mean, 40 years later. But they rejected it. The only thing that I was upset was that they took seven weeks to reject it. I wish they had just rejected it right there. But we put the second store together the same way we took kind of a couple of Christmas sales and Valentine's Day sales and put a store together. But when you were trying to build edible arrangements, $120,000, that was not money that you could easily get.

No. So how did you, I mean, did you basically have to just start with what you had? You built within what you had. So a lot of the equipment that you're thinking of getting you're not going to get. We used to cut every piece of fruit. We wanted to get cutters. We couldn't, so every piece of fruit would be cut by hand, using cookie cutters and everything. Great story. We didn't know we needed gloves. So as soon as we started the business, we went to a health department and we wanted to get a license. And they said, well, no one does this. I don't think you need a license. Go for it. So we went, and this was the health department, so we went and we started, and we wondered, like, what should we do? And we weren't wearing

gloves. And we didn't know that when you cut pineapple all day, that pineapple starts to your, so the next day no one could bend their fingers or anything. So everybody walks and says, I can't bend my hands. So I'm like, I think we should wear gloves. And so we had a supermarket across the street, so somebody walked over and got dishwashing gloves. Because that's all they could fine because those other gloves weren't that. So as you walked into the back of our stores, everybody had yellow gloves on and they would walk around. So when sometimes a customer, you would walk into the front of the store, the person would go, hi, may I help you? And it was scary, you know, so, but it works. So you learn a lot. You know, I think that money, what it would have

done was helped us to kind of hire the right people, get some equipment and everything. But she didn't have it. But it's the best thing that ever happened to me that that bank refused. Huh. Because we just figured out how to do it really inexpensively and focused, get the store. up and running, then go and, you know, so stay within your means and everything. And I still believe in that, that you should be very careful, especially if you're going to bring on partners who are going to take equity away. They're going to take ownership away. So with that, I didn't want to do that. It's amazing how resourceful you can be when you try, and especially when you have no choice. Tark, I'm curious about this idea of building something that you know or is related to who you are

or where you come from. David Neelman, if you heard his episode, when he started his first travel company, he was living in Utah, and many people in Utah had family in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. There's a huge Mormon community in Phoenix and they would drive and and so he thought, well, why aren't we making a cheap flight from Salt Lake City to LA? Salt Lake City to Las Vegas and he, you know, he basically called it like the Mormon triangle, you know, Phoenix, L.A., Las Vegas because he knew that there was a population of people. You similarly talked about how, you know, when in the United States or in other countries, people go to other people's homes, they give people a bottle of wine. Yeah. But for observant Muslims who don't drink wine, they bring fruit or sweets or treats. That is actually part of your thinking, right, with edible arrangements.

Like, maybe this is something you could bring to somebody. So we grew up, like in Pakistan, you know, I came here when I was 13. Either mostly you gave sweets or you gave fruit. So the, but staying true to something. So within my grandfather came to visit in 86 and he loved the flower shop and flowers being sold in Pakistan would be like on the street corner

so he came here, he thought we had like these little stalls that people sell. You're walking around chasing taxis. You know, flowers, flowers. So he came and he saw the flower shop and I remember, I even remember the spot that we were going over and I admired my grandfather who was a brilliant man. So, and very religious man.

So as I'm going and he looks like, says, I really love what you do. And I said, why? He goes, because you make people smile. Wow. You know, and it makes people happy. And I see a lot of other friends of mine whose kids are here, so you went around the country visiting other people whose kids were here.

And he said, you know, some of them, their grandfathers won't be happy with them because they sell alcohol. They sell things they don't even eat or they can't eat. They shouldn't do that. They should be authentic. And he said, I love what you do. It promised me that you'll always keep your business halal and I'll pray for you and God will give you a bigger success than you can ever imagine.

Okay. There you go. And I've never forgotten that. And anytime somebody introduces something that I think I would compromise my promise with him, I always, you know, stop back saying, no, wait a minute, this has worked really well. I've stayed true to this. So that family value, that things you grew up with, you can ignore it, but it's going to come back to haunt you. So it's better stay with it.

One of the things I really appreciate about our conversation on the podcast was you really open about the sacrifices, the personal sacrifices that you made and that were the result of throwing yourself into this business. Your first marriage fell apart. For a while, you were open about your relationship with your kids was tricky because you were working all the time. And you had to spend a long time rebuilding your relationship with your kids. I know your daughter, Somia now works for you. She's a vice president and edible. I actually work for her. You work for her.

I'm just kind of holding on the company until she takes, you know. But that took time. You had to spend time rebuilding that after you had achieved success. In hindsight, could you have been as committed and as passionate and driven and also preserve those things as well? You know, hindsight, I guess, right? You know, for hindsight, but I don't know how, you know, because of the environment you're in. We did not have the luxury of the pedigree or the luxury of having. uncles or cousins that you can turn to for advice or get money. So you had to do it the hard way.

I was on the road a lot as we built stores. Thank God for technology at that time. We leverage technology a lot. The stats that people gave you was for every 10 stores, you have to have an employee that's managing those 10 stores. We could only afford one for 100. So you, we're on the road. So I would get a phone call from a franchisee having this issue and I would say, well, I'll be there tomorrow. And it's just, that's just how I was. And at times, I wish I had said, no, you know what, I'll see you next week, because the reality of it is we still foot fruit in baskets. So the family comes first here a little bit. And, you know, the most important people that you do things for usually pay the highest price. They're very forgiving, you know, and, you know, they went through a lot.

And it's probably something I think about the most. But at the same time, these are the same people that make you successful because when you slow down, they're like, what are you doing? Go. Because they get used to you being a certain way. And especially when they see that you enjoy and you're successful, they do pay a price. But at the same time, you couldn't do it without them. I mean, I have had a couple of conversations with on some entrepreneurs in this audience who have said, look, you know, I'm a parent. I've got kids. I want to spend time with my kids. That's a priority for me. And I wonder, I mean, is it possible? I mean, you invest in companies, you mentor people, you advise other founders who are starting out both younger and older.

Is it possible to really build something meaningful and purposeful that requires a lot of time and energy, but still maintain your focus on your personal life, your family, your partner? I think it's possible if you could disconnect. I think you have to have tunnel vision, and that's probably why the family and people around us suffer a little bit because you see the destination, you see where you want to go and you're just at it.

You know, my kids were reminding me, I have a 10-year-old boy and a 9-year-old boy, and they were both reminding me that, hey, we went to this ice cream shop, and you were on the phone, and we don't want to go to the ice cream because you're on the phone for an hour, and we had to sit around waiting for ice cream. You know, I had to kind of learn to balance this where I just don't know how to disconnect.

I'll be sending messages at 2 a.m. I woke up, and I got this idea about how to dip Apple a different way, and somebody will reply back at 4.8. am, I'm like, oh, you didn't need to do that. They said, well, you sent it at 2 a.m. You know, and so I think with that, you have to realize that how you're wired. And I think the family has to realize, and you have to be realistic with the family to say, this is going to be a very hard time. You know, I'm going to be very, very busy. But, you know, just I always tell people, don't waste your life for time on dumb ideas.

Just, you know, you have no business of being in a bad business. Don't do that because there, you won't forgive yourself and your family won't forgive you. So that's the only, you know, the only balance that you have to be careful. I see some people doing some stuff. They're very passionate about it. And that's where you need a mentor or someone to kind of help you. Awesome. Tark Farid, founder of Edible Arrangements. Thank you very much, thank you. That's Tarek Farid, the founder of edible arrangements. Tarek joined me live on stage at the 2019 How I Built This Summit, which happened this past October at Yereba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

We're going to be releasing more episodes from the summit next month with guests like serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore and Stuart Butterfield of Slack. Thanks to Candice Lim, who produced this episode, and Rumpeteen Arablewey, who wrote the music. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.