The Most Profitable Industry You've Never Looked at Twice... Ep. #87

We would just negotiate just a real minimum basic rental rate with the convenience store. Put up the 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 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 stands in her first Sal Summer. We got super nitty 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, for 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 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 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? 20, 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 based. 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 I just. 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 and at roadside stands and, And. 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, like, 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. What I saw. 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 was very easy for me to kind of roll into that. That logistically and that kind of launch and. 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.

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 bit 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. 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 I. 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 own these orchards so that 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, as 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?

He 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. So this is probably like 2005 to 2012, roughly. So he was profiting probably about 100 grand, 150 grandstands in four. Three 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 workday?

A workday at the stand is 10 hours. We do 10 hours to five hour shifts. So it goes from 10 to seven or nine to six, 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 convenience store gas station. Not inside, but sorry on. 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 nother story. But I learned how con convenience 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, from a neighbor, you know, from a radius of three to five miles. And so that was perfect for us because we could 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. So we, we would look for really, really high traffic convenience 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 ten by ten ten, 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.

Okay.

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 a hundred stands. I mean, it was really, 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, meh. 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 4 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 trust. Trusting of you to do this?

He, he was, we. We were in. Are actually still doing just really good friends. And so he was. And he is the. 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, and he was getting of an age where it's, 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. The amount 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, 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, in prior to social media, visibility is key. So even know in the old days, in The, I don't know, 20s, 50s, 70s, motorists would vis. You know, visibly have to see the stand with their Eyeballs. And that's. 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 fresh, 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's so few businesses, I find, in the US that, that have the 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, 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. 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 hap. Truly have an image of a peach or watermelon, you know, out on the. Out on the roadway, and that will cause people to turn around. That's how we started today. The. 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. I just don't have the. 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 every day. And people track us down all over the Metroplex, wherever we are, and they'll just be like, are you at the roadside stand? Are you the roadside 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 questions. 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 balls 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 em crunchy and big and like there's a certain point in the season when they're just outrageous. And like I'll literally buy tens of dollars worth of peaches every other day just to keep my supply full. Cuz there's just a unique flavor about em 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. 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, there are some orchards in the US 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, 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 marring 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, so they're in deep cold storage, in you know, big cold lockers, they're on cold reefer, 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, we sell the number twos. 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, 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. 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. The. The meat of the peach is real mealy.

And you can.

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. 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 and me. I mean, a lot of times I will just broker and negotiate directly with the orchard. But not all. 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 or 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. That's what happens. That's. That's the main reason why peaches are so much better at, like, one of my stands or just a country stand. No, no, refrigeration.

That's just that. That's it. It's just not in cold storage for a month or two. That's the. That's the difference. Same farm.

Yes.

Different process.

Yes.

Interesting.

Yes.

And I. I would imagine yours are smaller, too, right? Is. Is there a correlation there? 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 US like from Memorial Day to Labor Day, is because an orchard will plant 25 different varietals in a single orchard. And so on, you know, 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. 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.

Yeah.

Yes. And so they get more sunlight. Right. And, and when the peaches are real small, they're probably competing for, 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 size ones that you probably like.

I eat like I will literally four a day of the softball size ones and I won't even get them 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 gotta get em across the Mississippi over, you know, over this way. So they're, they're, they're. My profit margin is smaller. It depends on how good the harvest is. So geographically that, 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 and what they call bushels. Right. Most, 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 would 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 dollars.

Holy cow.

Yeah. For the same thing.

50 cents a pound.

Crazy profit margins. Because when I, that's where I started was in North 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. But this tells You. There's so much profitability in it because we were still making money at $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, how do you charge for.

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 them in, 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 them 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 stand 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 GB 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. 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, I calculate we can get like eight baskets and we charge $15 a basket. I might pay, I might pay 28 to $32 over here for a case of peaches. And I'm, I am grossing about 120 bucks out of that case. When 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, when you switched the model?

Oh, my gosh.

Or what is. I guess, what's your effect on pounds now? Like, how many pounds is a peck? I, I guess I could just divide like three pounds.

So the small pecs 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 pec out in a bag, right? Yeah, you keep it. Cause I went to a stand recently, and I'm like, whoa, whoa. I don't get the peck. What are we doing here? Yeah, give a brother a peck.

Yeah, the. And I'll tell you, I did used to sell them. So you being in Texas, you know where Jacksonville is.

Uhhuh.

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? Yeah.

Who's gonna get that customer list?

South Carolina Basket 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. 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. That was a real loss.

How much do the baskets cost?

So the baskets, when I got them for the test, 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. Wow. $2 per basket. And I think. 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. And what. Which is why I had. Which is another reason why I had so many. Because I would sell them. People want it as a gift, or I want the basket. I'd be like, of course it's an extra. Whatever. Two, $3. And they could buy.

Yeah. So $4 a pound. That's not outrageous. Like, I pay three at the grocery store, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

They're not as good.

It's.

But your margins are better than the grocery store, is the thing. A lot better.

And they're good. 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 a training process to tell our customers, it's okay, just say that this sucked. What you're not inventing maybe 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, in the parking lots of convenience stores.

So he was doing that already.

Yes.

Now what's your typical location? Like our. I'm thinking dfw, right. Like we both live here. Like, are you, are you on a state highway kind of out in the exurbs, or are you like in like Allen or Plano? In a, 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 I, when we first came back to Dallas Fort Worth, I would open much larger stands. So we, we have these commercial sized tents that we get from a wonderful tent company in Fuqua, Varina, 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 2010, we might do 20 by 40. So just depending on the traffic that we had, you know, because we were putting big gaylords, the big watermelon bins, cantaloupe bins, we just have tons of stuff there. So we've done those. We do. We are, 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 a stand really close to TCU in the parking lot of old South Pancake House, which is a really high traffic. Pancake house open.

I went to tcu. I know that intersection there's so you.

Yeah, we've been sitting there for years.

There's like a hipster sandwich place right there, I think.

Oh, E.T. is 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 out. 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 Pulga, which is this old Mexican flea market. And so we're consuming some of their real estate here to actually build out a shoppable 247 farmers market. We do a. 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're, you know, we all 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. 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 I. And this happened during COVID when the hoas were bringing all of the food trucks into the subdivision 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 highly. So in essence, we're doing mobile farmers markets. Now. We go into a neighborhood, we're there for two hours, wham, bam, we do 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 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 tradition, which is our newest one. It's a independent living facility in Clear Fork. And we can just drop off all of the farm boxes on a single day to all of the residents there. So that's, that's. 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've. I created this. Yeah. I. 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, A good roadside stand should profit at minimum $1,000 a week. I would say the average. This is profit, not gross sales. Profit should be 1500 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 is what the kids end up really making with their tips. And so, yeah, my payroll per stand 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 items.

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 US and then within Texas, I certainly know all of the, the independent farms with which we can negotiate produce like cantaloupe, 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, we'll do. I mean, they can do in excess of 5,000 in gross sales, one stand.

In two days or three days? Two days, Louise. And then what make. Like, is it just the location or like, if you were to split it up? Location and sales acumen, what's the percentage on each?

So there is some sales technique that's really relevant. And I, 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, 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 efforts. So EFRDS 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 orchard, so they feel like, ah, 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. 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. It was just yesterday.

Yes. Storytelling selling. That's what. 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 freestone 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 as the expert and 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 sourced.

And they go out to the farm and they watch. Oh, gosh. Yeah. My son Finn loves that show.

Yeah. So are you able to get the. The peaches from erds at a better price since it's more local?

So Effords, um, Gary, who run. 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.

Yeah.

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. It's several wholesalers who I really like, but Efird sells to one of them, and so I have to go to that guy Israel to get Efrid's peaches.

What about hams?

Hams I can get direct from hams.

We go there, we take our kids there on tours and.

Yeah, super cool. Yeah. I can get peaches direct from hams here, west of here. And you. You may not. Are you familiar with Weatherford Parker Camp? Okay. So I work directly with the Huttons, 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. 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. 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, and there's no stand there. That would be a perfect location for you.

Exactly where. Where we just located to now at La Pulga, 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 farmers 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 corner. 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 once. 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. We negotiate a flat rate with. And it's all open just to negotiation. There's no we. We never have any formal agreements. It's just handshake deals. Gas 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 Go. Too good to let go. Too good to let 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 goodie 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. 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 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 too nuts, I'm like, this, 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, 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 are, 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 segment in this off season 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 to 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, it's the wintertime, so 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 farmer's markets. Plus we, we're having our store open.

Okay. So you're, 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, I, I am, I am after 11 years now, it, it, it is a lot of physical labor. I mean, and during the, the pe, the peak of 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, what do you know much about them?

Yeah, the Peach truck, they are based out of 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, it's 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, 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 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 US and they are in South Carolina and they have like 7,000 acres of peach trees. And so they are. The peach truck is just consuming that harvest. And then you know, they do pre sales. You have to RSVP and do a pre sale with the peach trust in advance of the harvest and then they will roll out. And now they, 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, 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, we're called Roadside Republic. We're@roadsiderepublic.com we're on TikTok and so we're doing a lot of content. You can find us@roadsiderepublic.com on TikTok. We're 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 to earn 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, if you'll have me next season, I'd love to go film a video with you. Like a, 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. 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 Kerner office. Please share with a friend. Subscribe. Give me five star review. Love you very much. See you next time.