Connections! in SW Florida - Featuring Dre White (The Skinny Chef) with I Want That Yummy

Good morning, Southwest Florida, and those near and far joining us on the live broadcast or the replay later on today. My name is Renee Hahn, and I am bringing you Connections in Southwest Florida today on this Friday. The weeks just keep going Faster and faster, Dray. I don't know. I don't know how to slow them down anymore and get a few more out.

Need to go on metric time.

Exactly. Well, I am honored today to have, as you can see on his screen here, the Skinny Chef, otherwise known as Dray White. And Dray is here to talk to us about his business, I Want That. And you can learn more on his Facebook, I Want That Yummy. But first, Dre, what I would like to do is share with the audience a little bit about yourself, your background, anything that you think might be interesting for them to know about you before we jump into the business.

Certainly. Uh, first of all, Renee, let me, uh, thank you so much for the opportunity to introduce myself and more importantly, our products to your audience. My name is Dre. I am the Skinny Chef and Little bit about me, the short, short, short version. I was born in San Diego, California, 1968. I'll let your viewers do the math on that one. I've been eating all my life. I've been cooking for most of it. Like most kids, I think, that can remember back to a time when there was Saturday morning cartoons, I used to get up early in the morning and pop in some cinnamon toast when everybody was asleep and try to be real, real quiet. And watch cartoons and then just enjoy the rest of the day. So my grandfather was in the military, and when I was younger, he used to take me around to the different commissary bases. He was a representative, and I remember being 9 or 10 years old, and we would go into the freezer to count the inventory so we knew what to order. So we would have this enormous parka So 9, 10-year-old me on summer vacation is going in with a parka that probably weighs about half as much as I do. And we're counting Green Giant and Sara Lee and Gino's and Minute Maid and all these products. So, you know, I had an appreciation of food instilled to me from pretty early on. So I lived in San Diego until about 2000. I've been in Florida now for about 20 years. Before starting my business, we— I did mostly office work, uh, typing. I was a secretary for a long time. And, um, I met my wife Beth about 6 years ago, and we started the business about 2 years ago. Um, and it's really been— it's really been a rewarding venture for us on so many levels. We really are happy to be able to bring some of the things that we love to people in Southwest Florida. So that's the short, short version. You can always email me and I can tell you more, but that's probably everything you need to know.

I love, and I love your creativity. When I've been doing these connections in Southwest Florida, obviously people have approached me and in my first introduction, when they reach out is obviously their business name. And so when I saw yours, both the Skinny Chef and the I Want That Yummy, it intrigued me. And so I commend your creativity because in business you want people to want to know more. So you talked about—

I appreciate that. I have to give my wife credit for that one. The name for the business actually came up at a stoplight. We were coming back from the grocery store and we were stopped at a gas station and there was one of those roving billboards where the ads change every 30 seconds or something. And we've been talking about names for the business and all of a sudden here comes this billboard ad and I think it was for ribs or something like that. And she looked up at the billboard and she's like, "Oh, I want that." I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, that could work." I've been inspired. I love it.

With that, Dre, tell us a little bit about the vision and what motivated you to start your business, and then we'll move into the products.

Absolutely. Well, the business owes itself a lot to the fact that neither my wife nor myself really eat very much. So, some nights she would do the cooking. She's Italian, so a lot of pastas and things like that. Most of the time I would make some kind of a dessert. And we always had tons of leftovers. I mean, neither one of us eats a lot, so we had all these leftovers. And so I would be out and about giving them away to friends or people in the community or whatever. And people would come up to me the next day or the next week and they're like, you know, hey, that lasagna your wife made is like really good. I'm like, yeah, I know. I mean, I have to walk like 3 miles a day to look like this. And so we started giving out desserts along with the leftovers, which is kind of my thing. And people were like, you might want to try and do something with this. I mean, this is really delicious. And I thought when someone said doing something with it, I had all these visions of a storefront and a lease and a landlord and rent and bills. And that just— it just seemed overwhelming. So anyway, we were at a farmer's market, just kind of perusing cruising around and there was a young woman selling, I think it was bread, and she had a label and her label said that it was prepared in cottage food operation or a cottage food location. And I remember asking her, what is cottage food? And as she started explaining it to me, this light bulb went on in my head and it was like, ah, because as a cottage food operation, she explained that there were things that she couldn't do and there were things she couldn't sell. But at the same time, she could run it out of her home, she could prepare it out of her home, and as long as she adhered to obviously the labeling requirements and the things that she did or that she could do the correct way, that, uh, she was able to run her business. And so we started looking into that, and it really was a good fit because it allowed for you know, not just for us to bring our vision of our business to the community, but it allowed us to be together as man and wife and actually spend time together creating something as opposed to, you know, having to deal with all these external things that would be associated with a storefront business. So that's the thumbnail version of the cottage food laws, and they've been very good to us. I think we had discussed a moment ago, there are certain things that we cannot do as As part of that, for example, we cannot ship our goods anywhere. We have to be live at point of sale. So if you wanted to send something to a friend of yours in South Carolina, we can sell it to you and you can send it wherever you like, but we can't send it physically ourselves. We have to be on site when the product is sold.

Well, I think that was enlightening to me because I wasn't familiar with the cottage food. Of course, it's not necessarily an industry I've worked in, but it gives whole new meaning into home-cooked food.

I love it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it really is nice to be in your own environment and get to use your own stuff. And you don't have to get dressed and go out to work every day. You just kind of sit in your kitchen and say, OK, well, we got an order for this. We got an order for that. And there's a comfort level and a level of experimentation that you feel in your own home that you might not feel in a commercial kitchen.

Yeah, no, that's great. And Dre, you've been— doing this about 2 years, did you say?

Yeah, we opened last January, and the business that we opened with in January is very, very different from the business that we have now because we were so green in terms of how to market the product, how to talk about the product, and what products we were offering. You know, we did a lot of shows initially and were right up until the, the current situation And when we first started, what we had at the shows was very— it was very bulky. It was delicious, but it was very bulky. It had to be, you know, taken home or unwrapped, you know, fudge, brownies, muffins, that kind of thing. We didn't really have anything that people could just grab and enjoy on the site. And that was one of the things that came out as we started doing the business. We kind of refined our ideals and our products. To match the market.

That's great. So let— that's a great segue, Dre, for the products. So what type of products do you offer? And then we'll hit how people might be able to go and see, taste, and obtain those products.

Okay, well, we are Southwest Florida's official home of a full line of Nearly Famous treats, and we offer everything from coffee cake and muffins for breakfast to truffles and peanut butter bars for dessert, and of course, you know, fudge for the person that really wants to go all in. I've got, just by chance, a few of our products here. This is our bestseller right now and has been for a while. This is one of our truffles. It's our Nearly Famous Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Truffle, and we also have the same item that's caramel filled. And this really is one of the embodiments of our products that we do, Renee. It's simple, it's elegant, it's homemade. Everything that we do is fresh. We don't do anything out of a box. If you're doing, or if you're having a brownie, or if you're having fudge, it's all homemade with fresh ingredients. We make our own peanut butter, we make our own brown sugar, we make our own butter. We don't always use our own butter in the recipes, but if it's unsalted, a lot of times we will. So there's a wonderful freshness to our products that comes from being homemade. The homemade peanut butter we use in— these are our Nearly Famous peanut butter bars. I'll get that over there so everybody can see it. That's a graham cracker dusting on the top. And the peanut butter, because it's homemade, is very robust. You really get a good peanut flavor from it because it doesn't have all the oils and preservatives that you would find in a store-bought. Peanut butter. And then—

That one may turn out to be my favorite.

They're good. And the best way to find your favorite, we tell people, is to try them all. So, and then this is one of the things that we do with our homemade brown sugar. This is our brown sugar cinnamon coffee cake, and it's very moist. And you can see that the brown sugar topping is, uh, we, we go big on our toppings. You know, my, my wife and I talk a lot about You know, there are peanut butter bars and there are bars with peanut butter. And we sell bar— we sell peanut butter bars. If the name is in the title, you're going to taste it. So when you order a peanut butter bar, you're going to taste peanut butter. When you order dark chocolate truffles, you are going to taste dark chocolate. We go big on all the flavors that we put in. And one of our taglines is, Renee, that our products are our sinfully simple goodness. We don't do anything elaborate. We don't do the 5 or 6-tiered cakes or anything like that. Everything that we do is very basic, and it's done with a lot of care, and we really think people are going to enjoy it. And we want people to try the products. We give away a lot of samples. We're happy to have people, you know, try the things that we do and decide what their favorites are. I'll show you one more little goody that we do. This is our Very Vanilla Fudge, and yes, you are seeing it correctly, it is in the shape of a heart. And we have a couple of different flavors that we do with this. We do an Oreo fudge, we do a dark chocolate fudge with sea salt, and we do a milk chocolate fudge with gold sprinkles. And all of our products are available on our Facebook page. You can see photographs of most of them. And we always have menus that we can send out. If you want to email me at Iwantthatyummi@gmail.com, I can send you our list of current offerings and you can pick out your favorite from there.

Great. I have a couple of follow-up questions. Ed was just texting over here in our chat. Ray, I have a couple follow-up questions. Now that you've made my tummy growl, I'm having to rethink what my breakfast is going to be when we wrap up. Excellent. And I want to talk a little bit about how people get them, but in terms of some of the things that you've shared, Dre, whether it was the truffle or the peanut butter or the coffee cake, do— are they bought in single servings or sold in single servings? Are truffles— do truffles come in groups of 6? How do you package them for purposes of ordering?

Well, when we were doing live shows up until about March of this year, we were selling them pretty much to taste. I mean, if you wanted to get 1 or 2, that was fine. If you wanted to get 6 or 7, that was fine. If you wanted to get 2 dozen, that was even better. Because we're not doing live shows anymore at this point, and we have to actually put together orders, basically for a truffle order or a peanut butter bar order, we started about a half dozen. So it's not overwhelming, but it's enough because obviously when we make the orders, we have to make full batches. So we need to move them at least a half dozen at a time so that way we don't end up with a lot of excess product. So, uh, half dozen, dozen, obviously you can go a lot higher. We just got an order from a young lady doing a baby shower and she's getting a lot, like cases. So that's fine too. So obviously, uh, the more you want to get, the better a deal that we can make you. But, um, Half dozen is typically where you're going to start, and we encourage mix and match for everybody. You don't have to get 6 dark chocolate or 6 cookie dough or 6 Oreo. You can get 2 of each or 4 of one and 6 of the other. And, you know, like we were saying, how do you know your favorite if you don't try them all?

Very good point. So I understand when you're talking about live shows, you, you go to venues that are set up with vendors and you're on-site, on-premise. And people can order from your inventory there. And then it sounds like there's another option of if somebody has an event or wants them even for their personal, you can do a made-to-order option as well.

Absolutely. We, we started off when we first started doing a lot of arts and crafts shows because that seemed to be the best fit for what we were doing. And, um, you know, it may not be very artistic, but anybody that's seen me paint these little peanut butter bars with chocolate, there's definitely an art to it to get the chocolate just right and stuff like that. So, uh, that's about as artistic as I ever get, but, uh, we had some success at those types of shows. So, um, but in terms of, uh, in terms of, of now, um, people can go to our Facebook page. We've always got specials and things of that sort going from there. And, um, another thing that we are doing as a result of this situation that we've wanted to do from the beginning anyway is, um, we're working with a lot of local businesses. You can set up a business account if you're a brokerage house, for example, and then all of your realtors can get closing gifts or customer appreciation baskets, things like that, at a discounted price. So business accounts are a big part of who we are. We can come in for grand openings. Retirements, rebrandings, expansions, and things of that sort. But the best way to order from us is via the email at iwantthatyummy@gmail.com. Typically we can turn your order around in no more than 48 hours, sometimes a lot quicker if we have stock on hand, although most of our orders are made fresh to order. But The live events, we don't know when those are coming back and we've really looked at it as an opportunity to kind of shift our business model to, you know, looking at other areas of the community where we might be able to introduce our product. We've always wanted to work very closely with businesses anyway and this has given us a great opportunity to do that.

That's fantastic. And then, Ray, when people order from you, particularly now where they may not be coming to a live event, do they pick it up, do they get delivered?

We can go either way. Both ways we're observing social distancing guidelines, so if you're picking it up, we'll have the package out front and you can pick the package up there. We're doing orders by credit card, or we got a terrific idea from a young lady in the community. She didn't want to pay with a credit card, so when she came over to pick up her items, she had put her money in a plastic bag. And just left it on our bench. So that was fine too. But we're doing pickup at our home if you'd like with the social distancing. We're also doing free delivery throughout most of Southwest Florida. And either way is fine. The biggest thing is that, you know, we'll get the product to you or you can get the product observing the social distancing guidelines and making sure that everybody stays healthy and happy.

Now that's fantastic. And you talked about COVID really having an impact on your business because one of your venues were these live shows, these live events. How, you know, how has that affected you guys as a business? Because obviously one of the motivating factors for doing these Connections in Southwest Florida is recognizing that businesses like yours were impacted by COVID and the, you know, the restrictions that got put in place. Tell us a little bit about that impact and how you guys are managing through that.

Well, initially the impact was pretty devastating, honestly. I mean, we had been doing these events for the better part of a year and we had really developed a good rhythm and a good network of sites and things that worked for us and that were able to expose us to our public. And when COVID hit, I remember the last event that we did was in the middle of March. And when they canceled the basketball tournament, the college basketball, I'm not a big fan, but I said to my wife, I said, "Oh boy, this is for real," because they just took a billion-dollar TV deal and threw it in the trash. And I said, This is bad. So, um, most of our business at that point, on the order of about 90%, came from these events, you know, live sales, being in front of people. People could taste the product, try the product, see the product, and, um, that really was driving us forward. And when this situation took hold, like I said, we had to rethink our paradigm, and we've started looking at ways to reach out to our customers, reaching out to some of our previous customers by email reaching out to some of the businesses that we've been introduced to or have seen. And we've been able to, we've been able to get some connections that way. The support that we've had here in the community has been terrific. So that's been a big help. But the good news is that with, with the Phase 2 rollout It's giving us another good opportunity to do something that we're really looking forward to, and that is starting today, any business that would be interested in a complimentary sample of our products just needs to message me or email me, and let's talk. We'd love to come out and introduce ourselves and have you try some of our stuff and tell us what you like and tell us what we can do to redecorate your office in a delicious way. We're really excited about the opportunities that are out there even in this situation, um, because the situation is, is ever-changing. But, uh, you know, there, there are good people out there, and we've had so many good people on the way forward helping us, you know, whether it's the, the Cape Coral Quarter Auction Queens that helped us to establish our venue, uh, preferences, or the people at Goodwill who, uh, got us into all these programs to help us move forward. Microenterprise, I got my SafeServe certification through them, which has been a huge benefit during these times because through SafeServe we were trained in sanitation, packaging, hygiene, storage, cross-contamination, which has become the new buzzword. So we're able to really easily observe these new guidelines because they were hammered into me last year as part of this course that we took. So We're all going to get through this just fine, and everybody's business and everybody's lives have been impacted. But, you know, like we say here in the house between my wife and I, you know, together we are unstoppable. And we are a resilient country, we're resilient people, and there are wonderful things on the other side. It's just going to be a matter of time getting to the other side. But if we, if we support each other and stand together, we're going to get there, all of us.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more with you, Gray. You think about, well, first of all, we all know that eating is not going to go away. It's necessary for life. It's not one of those disposable things. So there will constantly be a need there for, you know, for food, quite simply. But beyond that, even though this has been a bump in the road in terms of visibility, because businesses like yours need visibility. People need to know about your products. You've got to be able to have the reach out there. And I think one of the things that makes America great, and one of the things that makes Southwest Florida awesome, is because there are so many businesses like yours that are entrepreneurs who are sharing their gifts and their offerings with others. And, uh, you know, the best way to help businesses like I Want That yummy, is to be able to share the word. And I think it's fantastic that you're offering samples because someone just needs to fall in love with it and share with 5 other people that they fell in love with, whether it's your truffles or your peanut butter bars or any of the offerings that you've got or the fudge. You know, so I would encourage people that are listening to take advantage of Dre's offer. To be able to taste it until we can start to see Dre and his business in venues and in person. You know, don't be shy to reach out to him and take him up on his offer because, you know, they say the quickest way into your heart is through your mouth, right?

You know it.

I love it. Well, let me ask this. Jere, with so many businesses across Southwest Florida and desserts being a very popular item, I wanted to give you a chance to tell us what do you think makes your business special or your products unique?

I think the fact that we really are committed to the idea of the simplicity of our product, the elegance of our product, how our product looks as well as how it tastes. You know, we eat with our eyes like a friend of mine used to say. And the fact that everything is homemade, it's fresh to order, you know, like I said, nothing from a box. That really is our signature, sinfully simple homemade treats that you're really going to enjoy. It's simple goodies and they're well made, and we really are excited to have people try them and enjoy them. And that really is our specialty, our signature. And we have, we have a lot of different ways that we're trying to get the word out into the community. And the best way for people to find us really is on our Facebook page at I Want That Yummy because, you know, we've got different things going on there all week long. Monday, we'll announce our special for the week, something that you can get at a discount if you've had your eye on something. Tuesday we do a feature called the Test Kitchen, which is we go through a stack of recipes or things we've been wanting to try and pull one out and give it a ride around the block and see how it is. And we'll let you know how it came out. Of course, you can come by and get samples. In fact, toward that end, let me dress for success here and I can show you our offering from this week. This was our Test Kitchen item this last Tuesday, and they are now to be known as our Nearly Famous Lemon Cookies. I don't know if you can smell that through the screen, but they're very citrus, they're very soft, they're very moist, they are very delightful, and they are very available. We have samples available until next Tuesday when we do another Test Kitchen item. Wednesdays all summer long, we're doing a giveaway. A young lady named Marsha just won a dozen of our Nearly Famous dark chocolate truffles. We'll be doing another giveaway next Wednesday. If you're interested in the giveaway, just send me a message at Iwantthatyummi@gmail.com, subject line giveaway, and you'll be entered to win— in it to win it. And we just invite everybody to embrace the temptation that we're offering and give our goodies a try. You're really going to enjoy them and we're really going to enjoy making them for you. So we're looking forward to, we're looking forward to hearing from you. We're looking forward to meeting you and we're wishing everybody well. Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll get through this together.

Absolutely. And Dre, one of the things I wanted to mention, especially because your storefront right now really is your Facebook page. I'd encourage anybody watching this live or later, go out to I Want That Yummy, like it, share it, and, and feel free to comment and let the Skinny Chef know that you are out there and supporting his business. I, again, I commend you. I think it's fantastic to be able to take something that really kind of started as a personal interest or a passion and grew into a viable business. And I'm thrilled that you, Dre, and your wife are able to do this and embark on it together. I wish you nothing but continued success. I agree that this COVID situation, I like to think of it as devastating as it is, is temporary. And sometimes speed bumps will get in our way, but you just, you know, maneuver around them, speed up, slow down, whatever your your tactic is to get past those speed bumps and you come out hopefully even better on the other side. So Skinny Chef, I appreciate you being here with us today. Again, you've made my stomach growl. I'm gonna check out your menu. I also, one thing I wanted to mention, because when we talk fresh, that obviously has a really big appeal, but I wanna remind people that if you are like Dre and his wife and you don't eat a lot at once, there's nothing wrong with getting a dozen of these and freezing half of them for later because I'm guessing they would be just as yummy later on once you're ready for round 2. Or you just get them into fresh 6, you know, half dozen batches. But there's lots of options. So please support our local businesses like I Want That. I, um, again, I wish you nothing but success in 2020 and beyond, and I sure appreciate your time today, Dre.

Well, thank you for that, and thank you for the freezer plug. I have to, I have to say, we did find out quite by accident that yes, most of our things will freeze very well and come out clean and beautiful on the other side. So I really appreciate the forum, Renee. We're always happy to introduce ourselves and our products to an audience. And remember, folks, whatever happens, when in doubt, there's always chocolate.

I love it. I, my husband probably even loves it more. He is my chocolate fiend, him and my middle daughter. So thank you so much, Dre. I hope everyone has a safe and fantastic weekend, and thank you for joining us on Connections in Southwest Florida. Have a good day, everyone.