The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - The Most Profitable Industry You've Never Looked at Twice... Ep. #87

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

I sat down with Shannon Houchin, the founder of Roadside Republic. In this episode, we discuss the incredible business model of roadside produce stands, which Shannon scaled to over 100 locations in her first summer, generating impressive revenue with minimal overhead. We highlight why this business works so well, including its low startup costs (around $200), high margins (up to 70%), and lack of lease requirements or heavy regulation. Shannon shares the tactics she used, from finding the perfect locations to negotiating with wholesalers over the phone, making this a step-by-step guide for anyone looking to enter this profitable venture. Learn more about Shannon's business here:https://roadsiderepublic.com/https://www.tiktok.com/@roadside_republichttps://www.facebook.com/RoadsideRepublicTimestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: http://tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 The Roadside Stand Revolution02:52 From Reporter to Peach Entrepreneur05:47 Scaling the Peach Business09:09 The Art of Location and Visibility12:05 Understanding Peach Quality and Sourcing14:59 Transitioning to Online Sales and Delivery17:46 Consumer Behavior and Pricing Strategies24:58 Transforming Pricing Models in Produce Sales29:12 Innovative Locations for Roadside Stands32:32 Expanding Business Segments and Mobile Markets34:59 Profitability and Sales Strategies for Roadside Stands39:12 The Power of Storytelling in Sales46:47 Comparing Business Models: Roadside Republic vs. Peach Truck

We would just negotiate just a real minimum basic rental rate with the convenience store, put up a peach stand in that convenience store, then go three miles away and put up another one. And they would not cannibalize or compete against each other. You can charge whatever you want. And I was like, holy cow, this is a little ATM machine that I can replicate over and over and over and over again. I opened 100 roadside stands, 100 peach stands. The very first summer, a good roadside stand should profit. it at minimum.

Welcome to the Kerner office, so I am very excited about this episode, and I have no idea how it'll do. We're going to talk about roadside produce stands today, because, oh, what an incredible business this is. Costs about $200 to start. You don't need a lease, almost no regulation, 70% margins, you can buy the fruit directly from the wholesaler with a phone call, and Shannon opened 100 Roadside Peach Stans in her first summer.

We got super nitty-gritty-gritty and tactical. these stands are much, much more profitable than you think. Please share with a friend. Enjoy. We'll see you next time. Okay. So let's back up and tell me what you do. Tell me about your business.

Okay. So 11 years ago, I am a reporter and a in-depth researcher by trade. So I worked for the Fort Worth Star Telegram for a number of years. I love the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Yeah, I was writing. And I got in on the tail end of when it was still super cool and like the old guard was there. And so, you know, got to hang out in the newsroom, got to work with the in-depth investigative team doing research for those long-term stories. My husband at the time, so I had a baby and anyway was staying home and trying to figure out, like, how to juggle 60, 70-hour weeks with a newborn.

So I took time off and then she started doing a lot of freelancing and then went to work for the family software company. We had a very large software company. We did casino gaming. So that's really where I learned the ins and out of marketing and the ins and out of consumer economics, consumer behavior. What compels people to purchase things. In 2013, yeah, 2013, my dad got very sick. So my dad is the one who founded this big software company.

You know, it was quite big for our local area. And anyway, he got brain cancer and he passed away. And at that time, I just decided, I really want to do something that's more tangible. and then like face to face so I can actually see, look somebody in the eyes and understand that I am doing something of value. So a friend of mine for years who had worked with us at the software company had said, you got to come out to South Carolina and see what it's like to sell peaches. Like it's a roadside stand business. It's all cash base.

Everybody's happy. There's no stress, right? It's not a hard sell. It's the softest sell in the world. So I heard this for a number of years and it didn't really click with me. but when my dad got sick and passed away. And then I went through a divorce and like all this upheaval and transition. I said, okay, all right.

I'm going to come to South Carolina. So I got my son, Finn, Finnegan at the time was 11. And I said, let's go. We're going to South Carolina. So just he and I went and we apprenticed for the entire summer at roadside stands. And then they were just straight up peach stands. And there's multiple stands you were bouncing between? Yes, yes.

So that very first summer, I'm a little bit insane because I like to go hard and go big in order to consume as many lessons as I can in a short amount of time. So that very first summer that we were there and I was boots on the ground learning, I opened 100 roadside stands, 100 peach stands. The first summer when you were supposed to just be apprenticing? Yes, yes. I decided I decided I had enough. skill and aptitude and experience that piece of cake, piece of cake, I can do this. What I saw in this unsophisticated business model was something that was elastic and scalable.

And I was like, holy cow, this is a little ATM machine that I can replicate over and over and over and over again. And so that's what I set out to understand that summer. And with him, my mentor, this older gentleman named Rob, he's the OG peach guy. with his help. And then at the time, I had warehouses. I had a lot of warehouses around different parts of the southern United States. I had, you know, a fleet of trucks.

I had crews. And so it's very easy for me to kind of roll into that logistically and that kind of launch. And I absolutely did everything wrong that year. But I learned how to recover quickly, how to pivot and how to make it right. And so that year, I think we did. That very first year, was that 2013? I can't remember, honestly, if it was 2013 or 2014. I think it was 2013.

We did gross sales in excess of $2 million selling just peaches. That's it. Cash. It was insane. Insane. Okay. First of all, why did you have all these trucks and warehouses? Like, where did those come from?

The casino business. Okay. The casino business. So at that time, I was phasing out of that. business, my dad was in hospice and passing away and I was ready to transition into something else. And I knew once he passed away and, you know, my husband and I were separating. So this was a big, a large family business. And so I knew I needed to do something else.

Yeah, something tangible. Right. I was not going to do software sales, a casino gaming without my dad there. So that's why I pivoted into this other business. Not knowing really truthfully, I thought it would just be short term. that's what I thought. But after that first year, I realized that this is, this is something that can create a legacy. And so my son was 11 at the time.

And now we're business partners today. He just turned 22. This is all he's ever done. Okay. So what month did you go out there? And you were just going to go out there and learn, kind of get a, you knew business, clearly, but you were going to learn from this mentor. What month was that?

So, peach season in the southern United States starts roughly Memorial Day. And so it was probably early May, mid-May that, no, no, no, I take that back my bad. It was April because we were touring. He already had lots of contacts among all the independently owned orchards in South Carolina. And so we went around physically to meet face-to-face all the families that owned these orchards so that we could. we could reserve, you know, parts of their harvest because that's kind of how it's done. I knew at that time I was not going to be a small player. We were going to be like, you know, tractor, trailer load sort of player.

And so when you're that big, you need to go in reserve. The harvest, you know, before it ever starts, is already reserved by other resellers or suppliers or brokers, essentially. Yeah. How big was the business when you got there in April? What had he been doing it? And how long had he been doing it? had been doing it for probably five or six years. He had only ever grown it to about, I think at the height, he had done maybe five stands. And he was doing it with his children also. He had two kids, or he still has two kids. And that's the business that they grew up in and learned entrepreneurial

skills and management and, you know, all of that kind of financial responsibility, accountability. So he grew it to five stands. And I think he said the most, he was profiting. He was profiting. So this is probably like 2005 to 2012, roughly. So he was profiting probably about 100 grand, 150 grand. From five stands in four months? Three months. Three months. When the season starts into May, it will go all the way roughly to Memorial Day, or sorry, Labor Day, Memorial Day to Labor Day.

That's how the season runs. How long is a work day? A workday at the stand is 10 hours. We do 10 hours to five-hour shifts. So it goes from 10 to 7 or 9 to 6, you know, however. Okay. And these are mostly like state highways just right along the road? Yes.

So our favorite location, and still is today, is to co-locate inside a very busy convenient store gas station, not inside, but sorry, on the premise. So in their parking lot. because what we found in the casino business, and I ended up working with a lot, that's a whole other story, but I learned how convenient stores work. And convenience stores are beautiful because when they're independent and local, their radius is only three to five miles. So a convenience store is only pulling from a, you know, from a radius of three to five miles. And so that was perfect for us because we could put up the peach sand in that convenience store, then go three miles away. way and put up another one. And they would not cannibalize or compete against each other. So we, we would look for really, really high traffic. Convenient stores. And, you know, over the years, I got more sophisticated and started using DOT Department of Transportation, you know, car counts in order to proactively select locations, which is what I do today. But back then, we were just kind of eyeballing it.

And so that's, and so we would just negotiate just a real minimum basic rental rate with the convenience store. And all we did was throw up a 10 by 10 tent. You know, a couple of lifetime table, six foot table. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of folding tables, some chairs. I mean, it was not fancy. Yeah. And still to say, then we did only cash only.

Today, especially since COVID, we've had to really migrate. to accepting cashless payment apps and credit card, debit card. Okay. So now we do both. This gas station unlock was huge because you didn't care if a gas station was four or five miles apart. You're not going to cannibalize yourself because that's just not how consumer behavior works. Correct. You are exactly correct.

Yeah. Somebody who lives in the neighborhood with convenience store A is not going to patronize convenience store B, which is four miles away. Only if it's on their drive, but rarely. So we found that that helped us access the immediate neighborhood. And so then we could just pop up, you know, all over town. And that's how we grew to have 100 stands. I mean, it was real logistically, it's a little challenging servicing that many. And, you know, some of them are dogs.

Some of them are winners. And some of them are just like, okay. And so we were constantly, there was an attrition. So we were constantly taking stands down. and putting stands up over that entire summer. I learned that there were certain thresholds and criteria that would make a stand really profitable. And if I didn't see the results within three weeks, I knew I'll just pull it down and go reset

somewhere. So I have so many questions. All right. So you go in there. You spend like four seconds learning and then you're like, let's scale this. Yeah. Which is what I would have done. Yeah.

Like that's for sure what I would have done. And is he is your mentor? Is he cool with that? Is he trusting of you to do this? He was. We were and are actually still just really good friends. And so he was, and he is such a generous person. He plays Santa Claus every year.

He physically looks like Santa Claus. And he's just a real generous person. And he was getting of an age where it's really intensive labor, you know, unless you have a lot of health. And so he was getting to an age where the, the amount of. of labor, physical labor required, was not of interest to him anymore. And so he was willing to just kind of hand over the legacy, the reins, because his kids were out. You know, one of them is a pastor now.

The other one is a stay-at-home mom. And so his kids were not interested in that legacy. But me, I was like, hell yeah. This thing is an ATM machine all day, every day. How did you find him again? he worked for our company, the casino gaming company. He came in as a salesman. And I learned so many sales techniques from him.

Yeah. It was awesome. Do the sales techniques make a big difference on how well a stand does? Or is it more about location? They do. Location is critical because just like, you know, prior to social media, visibility is key. So, you know, in the old days and I don't know,

20s, 50s, 70s, motorists would visibly have to see the stand with their eyeballs. And that's it. That's the only way you knew a stand was there. And so there is this, unlocked is a very good description. I unlocked this collective memory inside the American psyche, which people, whether or not they've ever been to a roadside stand,

there's a collective memory that that means happiness, that means track, that means local, that means excellent quality. There's just this collective memory and people are primed. This is what's so beautiful about this business and there are so few businesses I find in the U.S. that have this same attractive quality, which is the consumer is primed for the transaction before they ever even get into the tent and experience what's there. They just visibly see the image of an apple, the image of a peach or a watermelon. And they see a tent and they know, whoa, all right, I'm stopping.

And so visibility was the number one criteria for all of the stands that we did. And it's still the number one criteria today. It has to have visibility. It has to have real simple, symbolic signage. Signage is key also. So they have to be able, I mean, all you have to do is truly. have an image of a peach or a watermelon, you know, out on the, happen on the roadway. And that will cause people to turn around.

That's how we started. Today, the business model is, for me and my son, is really transitioning. So we still do all of the roadside stands. Now we're taking this whole concept online. So we are starting to do a lot more online sales. We started shipping things. We have started doing, we brought our, we're doing vertical integration is what we, was what we're doing. So the only thing we're not going to do ever is farm, because I just don't have the appetite for that.

But we started doing our own delivery services. So we, we have subscribers who subscribe to us and we, we go, we have a fleet of kids that goes out and delivers, you know, farm boxes and produce to our customers. So the online element now has really unlocked a whole. new level of following for us. And it's, we've created this almost insatiable raving fan base online. And it just grows and grows and grows and grows every day. And people track us down all over the Metroplex, wherever we are. And they'll just be like, are you the roadside stand? Are you the road tight stand? You know, because they've seen us on social media. Yeah. They're excited. They're excited for the experience. Okay. I want to get back to that, but I still have so many

question. So first of all, like, I'm a peach aficionado. I'm a fruit freak. Like, I love fruit. I talk about on this podcast all the time. Like, I used to save up money as a nine-year-old selling used golf so I could go buy peaches, right? Like, I love peaches. It's my number one fruit. What's, like, and I've had roadside peaches. They're delicious. I like my peaches hard. Like, I like them crunchy and big. And like there's a certain point in the season when they're just outrageous. And like all literally buy tens of dollars worth of peaches every other day just to keep my supply full because there's just a unique flavor about them. And then it goes. It's gone.

Where's like I shop at Walmart and Whole Foods sometimes, usually Walmart. Like where what's different about these peaches? What's the, aren't they all coming from the same farms? Yes and no. So what happens in agriculture like with these farms, particularly orchards. So there are some orchards in the U.S. who exclusively grow peaches for commercial destinations like grocery stores, right? There's something that's called in the business a number one. So a number one when it's talking about a fruit or a vegetable means that's the highest quality.

And it's the prettiest. It's the most visually appealing. And so those number ones like peaches that are just beautiful and round, no, no marvellous. on the skin, right? No splotchy coloring. Those go to the grocery store. And so when an orchard, knowing the commercial destination, picks them early, and then they immediately go into cold storage. So they're in deep cold storage and, you know, big cold lockers. They're on cold, refer trucks, trains, whatever, getting to the destination. And then once they get there, then they're in cold storage, however longer. What we do, we sell the ugly stuff.

stuff. We sell the number two's. So this is fruit that is not destined ever for a grocery store. So it doesn't get refrigerated. It's cheaper. It's cheaper. It's ugly. The orchard just wants to offload it. And so they don't go through the expense to refrigerate it. So it's more delicious because it's not in cold storage. That's correct. That is exactly why. Which is like apples. Apple's the same thing, right? Yes. Yes. And with stone fruit like a peach, it will continue to ripen after it's picked. And so when you put it in cold storage for a long time, it aborts that whole process. That's why there's no flavor at a grocery store. And what happens a lot of times to consumers is when you get a peach and you think, I'll put it on the counter and it'll get ripe.

Well, if it's been in cold storage a month, two months, it's never going to get ripe. It's just going to rot. It's mealy. Starts getting leathery. Yes, yes. You'll see the leathery skin, which means it's dehydrated. The meat of the peach is real mealy, and the texture is real different. Not good. And it'll start turning brown from the inside out. So towards the pit, it'll turn brown to the outside.

And so that's an end. All of those are indicators, been in cold storage way too long. So for us, we get produce that's not refrigerated. Now, it may come from the orchard, you know, depending on the broker. So that's the middleman between the orchard. in me. I mean, a lot of times I will just broker and negotiate directly with the orchard, but not all orchards will sell to me as a reseller. So sometimes I have to go through a broker to get peaches. Anyway, sometimes the broker will put the peaches on a cold storage truck,

a reefer to get them to Dallas. And then once they come off, they're never in cold storage again. So they get sweeter. So that's what happens. That's the main reason why peaches are so much better. at like one of my stands or just a country stand. No refrigeration. That's just that that's it. It's just not in cold storage for a month or two. That's the difference. Same farm.

Yes. Different. Yes. Interesting. Yes. And I would imagine yours are smaller too, right? Is there a correlation there? It feels like roadside stand peaches are smaller.

Well, and it depends on the time of season. So again, a little lesson in orchard agriculture here. orchard, the reason our growing season is so long in the U.S., like from Memorial Day to Labor Day, is because an orchard will plant 25 different varietals in a single orchard. And so on May 15th, they're harvesting red flame peaches. And then two weeks later, they're harvesting June princes. And then two weeks later, they're harvesting red globes. And so it goes and so it goes and so it goes.

And as the season, right, wears on, the peaches are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Okay. Because it's later in the season, they get more sun, you know, they're just on the tree perhaps a little bit longer. And so they get bigger. And with orchards will prune the blooms, the blossoms off of the trees so that the peaches will grow bigger. Yeah. Yes. And so they get more sunlight, right?

And when the peaches are real small, they're probably competing for sun. Yeah, essentially. To answer your question, it just depends on the time of the year. Yes, on the front end, peaches are usually smaller. And then at the end of the season, you're getting the big softball-sized ones that you probably like. I eat like, I will literally four a day of the softball-sized ones. I don't even think twice. Yeah.

All right. What do the margins look like on these? both directly from a farm and from a broker. A huge line, dividing line in profitability is like the Mississippi. And so anyone east of the Mississippi has a much higher margin than me, because I got to get them across the Mississippi over, you know, over this way. So their, my profit margin is smaller. It depends on how good the harvest is.

So geographically, that determines how profitable we are, whether the harvest was good that year. You know, last year was horrible. Georgia lost like 90% of its crop because of late season freeze. And so the cost of peaches was astronomical last year. For peaches come in what they call bushels, right? Most agriculture is in a bushel. That's how they measure it. And so peaches will come in a half bushel case, which is a 25-pound case.

So for me, you know, normally I'm paying about, I could say anywhere from $28 to $32 for a case, a 25-pound case of peaches. That's pretty normal for us west of the Mississippi. East of the Mississippi, they're paying like $12 to $15. Holy cow. Yeah, for the same case. 50 cents a pound? No. Crazy.

Their profit margins. Because when I, that's where I started was in South Carolina. So we were getting, we were getting the same cases of peaches for like 12 bucks. And the profits were much higher. And now for us here in Texas, me, right, I'm like, if I get a case for $32 or $28, I'm like, oh, that's good. Last year I was paying $48 a case because the harvest was so bad. Jeez. But this tells you there's so much profitability in it because we were still making money.

$48 a case. Did you raise prices? I did last year. Yep. Okay. All right. So now let's talk prices. So what do you charge and how do you charge?

I made a conscious decision based off of what my mentor taught me, Rob, that he would actually sell peaches by the pound. But he displayed him in what's called a peck basket. Yeah, like the, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, like the woven kind of. Yes, yeah, I'm sitting in front of a bunch of peck baskets. I have a ton of produce right here in front of me. So he would sell him in the peck baskets.

And I was like, okay. So what I began to understand about the consumer mindset is if I didn't sell them by the pound, I would break that pattern in their mind. And so then I could charge in a different way. And so consumers started coming to the stands and they understand, oh, this isn't a pricing model by the pound because I don't want to, I don't want to be compared to Walmart. or any of the other Beach E.B or anybody else,

I want how we price and how we deliver to be unique and exclusive to us. So then I just started charging by the basket. And that totally broke the mold. It interrupted their pattern and people stopped asking me, how much is this per pound? And now they just ask, how much is this per basket? So on a case of peaches, these 25 pound cases, you know, I calculate we can get like eight baskets.

And we charge $15 a basket. basket. Oh, I might pay, I might pay $28 to $32. I'm like sweating over here. For a case of peaches. And I'm, I am grossing about $120 out of that case. That is beautiful. You know, when the harvest is good, when I can get the wholesale price I'm looking for. And the consumer doesn't even blink. Yeah. No, they're there for the experience and the nostalgia and the taste and what was the

effective price per pound before? Like, you know what I'm saying? How much did your revenue go up when you switch the model? Oh, my gosh. Or what is, I guess what's your effect of price for pounds now? Like how many pounds is a peck? I guess I could just divide, like three pounds? So the small pecks that we use, it's an eighth of a peck.

And so we usually put about four pounds in there. So we're charging $15 for a four pound. Sure. Peck, essentially. And then you dump the peck out in a bag, right? Yeah. You keep it. Because I went to a stand.

And I'm like, whoa, I don't get the peck? What are we doing here? Yeah. Give a brother a peck. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I did use to sell them. So you being in Texas, you know where Jacksonville is? Uh-huh.

So I go out there a whole lot to buy produce. My favorite basket company in the USA was there. They were called the Texas Basket Company. And after 105 years, they closed their doors this March. What? Yes. Who's going to get that customer list? South Carolina Baskets company consumed their list.

And so now if I want baskets, fortunately, because I've done so many stands, I have hundreds of baskets. But I don't have the option then to go shop at the store because they would do unique things anyway. So that was a real loss. How much do the baskets cost? So the baskets, when I got them from the Texas Basket Company, they would sell them in a sleeve. So we would get 20, 25, I can't remember, in this big sleeve. And we would pay, I mean, they were like $2, $2 per basket. And I think now for me, if I want to get them from South Carolina,

they're probably closer to $4, $4 per basket. Do people ever ask to buy them at the stand? All the time, all the time. Which is why I had, which is another reason why I had so many because I would sell them. People want them as a gift or I want the basket. I'd be like, of course. It's an extra, whatever, two, three dollars and they could buy it. So $4 a pound, that's not outrageous.

Like, I pay three at the grocery store, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And they're not as good. It's not outrageous. But your margins are better than the grocery store is the thing. A lot better. And they're good.

They're good. All the produce here is good. And people have learned with us, it's not a fight to be heard or understood. So, you know, when you get stuff from the grocery store and you want to ask questions about it, what farm did this come from? How do I store it? How do I know when it's right? How do I cook it? We get to answer all of those questions, but then I think more importantly, when something flat out isn't good or doesn't taste good, it's not a fight with us. We don't care. All you have to say is, hey, I didn't like this. Great. What else can I get you? Because just the nature of produce, you know, it's not always going to be good. It's not. always going to be right. And so it's been a little bit over the years of training process to tell our customers, it's okay. Just say that this sucked. You're not in thinking it at all. And we'll just replace it because we don't have x-ray vision. I don't know that that watermelon's not any good. Yeah. You know. Now, when you took over in South Carolina, was he putting stands

in gas stations or was he just kind of roadside? He was setting up in the parking lots of convenient stores. So he was doing that already. Yeah. Now, what's your typical location? Like, I'm thinking DFW, right? Like, we both live here. Like, are you on a state highway kind of out in the excerpts? Or are you like in like Allen or Plano in a gas station? Which I'm sure you're all over, but what's your typical location? So we've done all of the above. When I, when we first came back to Dallas, Fort Worth, I would open much larger stands. So we, we have these commercial size tents that we get from a wonderful tent company in Fukuay Verena, North Carolina, called King Canopy.

And these are hardcore industrial tents. And they go up at the beginning of the season and they stay put. We do not take them down until Labor Day. And so we would go out into the country, you know, in a real busy thoroughfare, high visibility, and set up these really big stands. We might do a 10 by 20 tent. we might do 20 by 40. So just depending on the traffic that we had,

you know, because we were putting big gay lords, the big watermelon bins, cantaloupe bins. We just have tons of stuff there. So we've done those. We do, we have moved into the city limits. Now I have a really good relationship with the city of Fort Worth. And they're very accepting of like pop up produce people.

I've gotten to know them very well. And so now it is acceptable for me to set up inside the city limits just on University Drive by TCU. For years, we've had to stand really close to TCU and the parking lot of Old South pancake cows, which is a really high traffic pancake house. I went to TCU. I know that intersection. So you, yeah, we've been sitting there for years. There's like a hipster sandwich place right there, I think. Oh, eat teasers across the street, which all the TCU kids love.

So we've been set up there for years. And this last year was our last year there because the city had University Drive completely torn up. And so they put all these medians in. I mean, it was a nightmare. And customers could not get in and out. So now we're still on University Drive, but we're closer down to the stockyards. Now we're in an actual building. We have become part of La Poulaga, which is this old Mexican flea market.

And so we're consuming some of their real estate here to actually build out a shoppable 24-7 farmers market. We do a ton of farmers markets and artisan markets, you know, shop, sip and shop type stuff. That works really well for us. During the summer, I have an entire fleet of kids. That's when we're busiest. And we'll have our permanent locations. And then during the weekends, we're running maybe six. to eight different pop-ups at simultaneously. Because all the kids, and these are high school kids and

college kids, they'll come get, you know, a tent, a kit, and they'll go to the location and pop-up for the day. And then they tear down and bring everything back. So we'll have lots of kids doing that. Every year I do some sort of new business segment. So every year we build a new line of business onto the core, which is the roadside stand. Two years ago, I started working with homeowners associations because I wanted to have what's so attractive about pop-ups is you condense the number of hours that you're open, but you have the highest traffic.

So this happened during COVID, when the HOAs were bringing all of the food trucks into the subdivisions to cater to the residents. And so then I started working with really highly populated residential communities. We could have a dedicated audience for a short amount of time. And oh my gosh, that was how. So in essence, we're doing mobile farmers markets now. We go into a neighborhood.

We're there for two hours. Wham, bam, bam. We do like anywhere a thousand dollars to like $2,500 worth of sales in two hours. And then we're packed up and we're out. And we try to roll those during our. our slower days of the week, which might be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So we're doing those types of mobile farmers markets. And now with our subscription service model, I'm getting into the really high-end condo environments here in Fort Worth so that not only can we introduce

ourselves and you can shop spontaneously with us, you know, one day a month. Also, we'll take your subscription business so that we can go one day a week to the traditional. which is our newest one. It's a independent living facility in Clearfork, and we can just drop off all of the farm boxes on a single day to all of the residents there. So we try to add, I try to add some business segment every single year onto that core. Yeah.

What's like an outrageously successful location? What does that look like on a daily sales basis or seasonal? I have a peach calculator. So I've, I created this. Yeah, I call my framework the Roadside Riches Framework. So if you want to learn how to do this, you know, I do have a framework. I have a business blueprint. Of course I do.

So now I have a peach calculator because what was happening prior to COVID is I was teaching people just face-to-face one-on-one, mostly students, how to do this so that they could just work the summer months. and I'm still doing this, but so that they could work the three months out of the year, earn enough money to pay for tuition and or pay for all their living expenses. They don't have to work during the academic year. So the peach calculator is designed with all of the averages. A good roadside stand should profit at minimum $1,000 a week.

I would say the average, and this is profit, not gross sales, profit should be 1,500 a week that you're putting in your pocket. Now, a really good one, a really good roadside stand is doing 2,500 to 3,500 in profit a week. So that's one stand. Now, is that profit, is that owner operated? So there's no employees? We always have employees, especially when we're doing, right, multiple stands. And so I do our payroll per stand will run about 700 a week.

Let's see. I guarantee everybody, I guarantee the kids $20 an hour. Wow. I guarantee them that. They make it, you know, there's a tip reserve in there. So they get paid $15 an hour. Then they get tips. So really, I guarantee that they're getting 20,

but they always make more like 25 to 35 an hour, but the kids end up really making with their tips. And so, yeah, my payroll person, is about 700. Okay, so the profit is, that's like net profit. You're paying someone to be there. Correct. Correct.

Yeah, payroll is just one of those overhead expense item. Yeah. Now, I didn't know if you had like an independent contractor model where you were selling the peaches to them at a markup. I'd like to hear about that. So I do that as well. I can be a broker, right, for somebody. So I can teach them how to do it for themselves.

And then I can just broker the produce to them. They pay me a flat fee in order to teach them everything that they want to know how to get started. And then I can help them broker all of the produce. Since I've been doing it so long now, I mean, I know all the orchards in the U.S. And then within Texas, I certainly know all of the independent farms with which we can negotiate produce, like can alope, you know, and watermelon and all that stuff. What is the most outrageously profitable stand you ever were a part of, whether South Carolina or here.

I would say, so a good day, a good day is when you're doing over 2,000 in sales. So on the weekend, some of, just on the weekend, some of our stands, you know, will do, I mean, they can do in excess of 5,000 in gross sales, one stand. In two days or three days? Two days, yeah. And then what make, like, is it just the location or like, if you were to split it up, up. Location and sales acumen. What's the percentage on each? So there is some sales technique that's really relevant. And I think what makes us so successful,

and I get, I get absolutely hammered and bitched out by other farm stand people because they feel like, I don't know, I'm doing some, some magical thing. Why am I so successful? And they're still struggling, you know, to make $7 on some tomatoes. I think a lot of people who are in traditional produce people don't understand is you have to create that experience. And then on top of that, you have to be able to tell a story, right? I mean, as a business person, if you cannot create value inside the customer's mind, then they're not going to pay the $15 that you're asking. However, if you do create the value that they have no problem paying it. And so, and I'm completely transparent with everyone on the planet.

I do not grow a thing. I am a reseller. Now that I've disclosed that to you, Jane and Joe Smith, consumer, let me tell you about Eifords. So Eiffords is one of my favorite orchards in East Texas. It's in Pittsburgh, Texas. Awesome peaches. And so I will go into the whole story about this orchard.

And the consumer gets the story about the orchards. So they feel like, now I know a little bit more about this. Not only do we talk about and I teach every kid who works for us this, that we call it storytelling, selling. Well, you need to be. I tweeted about this yesterday. Literally, I said, not tell your story. I said, sell your story.

It is the best sales pitch you have. There's just yesterday. Yes. Storytelling selling. That's what we call it. And then so then on top of knowing where the peach is from, we know when it was picked. We know what the flavor.

profile is like. We know what the varietal name is. We know whether it's a cling peach or a free stem peach. I mean, we, that's how you know this. That's how you become the authority and the expert. And so people will pay you for that expertise. So when you present yourself through storytelling is the expert in the authority, and then you can create that value, you can charge whatever you want. Yeah. And you're creating more of a relationship with them because you're, You're talking. You're building rapport and trust and expertise like it's all in one. Yes. Yes. It reminds me of that Portlandia skit. Have you seen that about the chicken that was locally?

Yes. And they go out to the farm and they watch it. Oh, gosh. Yeah. My son, Finn loves that show. Yeah. So are you able to get the peaches from Eiffords at a better price since it's more local? So Eifords, Gary, who right, he's the, he's now the owner. he's one of the orchard owners who sells to a broker. And so I cannot buy directly from him. And I've talked to him and I've met him several times. He's negotiated at some point in the past to sell to a wholesaler in Dallas.

Oh, gosh, you should take a field trip over there because I'm in Dallas constantly. I will. It's several wholesalers who are really like. But Eifford sells to one of them. And so I have to go to that guy, Israel, to get Eifford's feet. What about hams? Hambs, I can get direct from hams. Because we go there, we take our kids there on tours and super cool.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can get peaches direct from hams here, west of here. And you may not, are you familiar with Weatherford, Parker Camp? Okay. So I work directly with the Hutton's who own that peach farm out there. And so I negotiate directly with Jimmy who owns that farm. So a lot of the orchards, I just go, that's my preference. because having the relationship with the owner is far better.

Yeah. It's better prices. I can call them if I'm in a pinch. They'll help me out. The fulfillment is easier. It's just a lot better all around. There is a gas station less than a mile from me that gets like I'm a nerd. I know traffic counts.

Like I know traffic counts. And it gets like 40,000 cars a day, 50,000 maybe. And it's like, it's only two lanes. Like it's always backed up. there's no stand there, that would be a perfect location for you. Exactly. Where we just located to now at LaPolga, this old Mexican flea market. So, oh, you can't really see our table here.

Let's see. Oh, here we are. Yeah. So this is one of our buildings that we are putting together for the farmer's market and we're in the process of building out. But what I was going to say is the intersection up here, there's a huge shell at this quarter. The traffic count, I think, is 50,000. a day. Wow. Yeah, the thing about this intersection is there's literally only one gas station. There's no other businesses, like it all goes through this one. I want to sell peaches there. Speaking of that, what do, like, what do your terms look like with a gas station? Can you bounce in a month if it's no good? Is it just a flat fee? Yes. So typically what we do is we negotiate a flat rate with, and it's all open just to negotiation. There's no, we, we know, we know, we know, we know, we know, we know, we know, we know, have any formal agreements. It's just handshake deals. Yeah, at stations, we do like $25 a day per

like parking space. So we found this other interesting model, Chris, totally up topic. An app called too good to let go, too good to let go. Too good to go. Too good to go, whatever it is. And so when you have leftover stuff, you put it on the app and that way people within proximity can find you and they can come get their surprise goody bag. And so if we ever have leftover produce, I put it on the app and then people just show up. And there's nobody else doing fruits and vegetables. And so the list to get on our leftover produce is huge. I mean, it's just really long.

So we constantly have people trying to get leftovers from us. Some places have been far more expensive. You know, when we were at the pancake house, the owner there, lovely guy, he wanted a lot more. And I did not have a problem paying him because it. it was such a good spot close to TCU, and that's in a very affluent corridor, you know? But then when the traffic, the construction got two nuts, I'm like, this isn't worth it.

So that's why we looked for another place. And now where we are, I mean, it's nominal. The fee to be here is so low. It's not much at all. What do you have under your umbrella today? Like, how many stands do you have your hands in? So now we're really in the off season. It is since peach season is over.

We, we collapse down all of our stands. And it just, normally I am not open this late. What we are doing though now is, is expanding our business segments in this offseason period so that we can continue to build the whole, you know, holistic business model so that we can take what is truly seasonal business, you know, May through September and build it. 12 months or at least 10 months out of the year. There's not much going during January and February because, you know, it's the winter times. There's not much to sell.

So right now what we do is we do a lot of mobile farmers markets. So during the weekdays, we're going out to HOAs. We're going to condo associations. We're doing those committed pop-ups. And then we have our, then we have our store here that we keep open. And then on the weekend, we do firmers markets. Plus, we're having our store open. Okay.

So you're kind of more focused right now on teaching others how to do this and kind of being a broker for them. And then like, is it accurate to say kind of shrinking your footprint and trying to be more condensed in DFW as opposed to having a zillion stands everywhere? I am. I am. After 11 years now, it is a lot of physical labor. I mean, and during the peak, the peak of the,

the peach season, you know, it's, gosh, I mean, it's easily 80-hour weeks when you're doing that many locations, you know, just the logistics of the thing. What about the peach truck that company? Do you know much about them? Yeah, the peach truck. They're based out in Nashville. And so what they have done, they say that they have 60 locations around Nashville. And what they do is they are popping up inside, physically inside another business. And I think what they do is kind of consignment. Without knowing exactly that business model, I think they do a consignment. So they may have peaches in a cake shop or something, right?

And then that business is selling the product, taking the sales, and then splitting it with the peach truck. So they may only have one or two dedicated pop-up tents around Nashville and the rest is consignment. Is what I think they are doing. Now, what they have really moved to and that, They got an influx of capital, maybe a year or two, is they're truly dedicated to truck sales. So they work with Titan Farms, which is the largest peach orchard in the U.S. And they're in South Carolina. And they have like 7,000 acres of peach trees.

And so the peach truck is just consuming that harvest. And then, you know, they do free sales. you have to RSVP and do a pre-sale with the peach truck in advance of the harvest, and then they will roll out. And now they actually have, logistically, they have warehouses here, here in DFW, because they'll have little 10-foot box trucks rolling out to do deliveries for them. So now they're doing satellite warehouses in these really populous areas. Okay.

Interesting. Man, well, this was amazing. I really appreciate your time, Shannon. Anything else you'd like to leave us with? Or like, where can everyone find you when this goes live? Yeah, yeah. So we're called Roadside Republic. We're at RoadsideRepublic.com.

We're on TikTok, and so we're doing a lot of content. You can find us at RoadsideRepublic.com on TikTok, on Facebook. And we do, we work with, you know, 25 to 200 kids during a summer season. And so they come to the stands during college tuition. and we actually teach them how to go out and do this for themselves in order to pay for school. And so we, during COVID, we put together, we actually, I actually filmed. I created a course, filmed it with my son Finn. And that's available too online now for people who want to have that sort of experience

for themselves and not, you know, come train with us one on one. That's amazing. Yeah. If you'll have me, next season, I'd love to go film a video with you, like a dirty jobs type video just behind the scenes. You can unload trucks with us and get real hot and real sweaty. I'd love it. I'm going to eat half your inventory, though. You might need to take out a loan to pay for it. We do too. We eat everything that we sell constantly. That's awesome. All right, do you love peaches as much as I do? Do you love this business as much as I do? I hope you do.

Thanks for joining on the corner office. Please share with a friend, subscribe. Give me five-star review. Love you very much. See you next time.