A student rented tables, grills, and beer pong equipment at football tailgates for $500 per spot, then partnered with universities for exclusive rights and scaled it into a multi-million-dollar business. The playbook: find a campus need, lock in exclusivity with the school, replicate across other universities.
Tailgate Guys. Have you ever heard of this business?
No.
So this came up at FarmCon. So I go to this dinner with this guy, he listens to the pod and he was telling me, I was like, I was trying to make small talk at this dinner where I was like, okay, I hate normal small talk. I'm not just going to, oh yeah, how's the conference going? Good. Yeah, good. How about you? Good. Good. And I also don't know anything about farming, so like it's not relevant to me. So, you know, okay, I can ask them a bunch of questions.
Oh, you like corn too?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I don't have much to add there.
So what's your favorite type of corn?
So as a bit of an icebreaker, I was like, um, I was like, first job, like, what was your first, first job? First, first, first. I don't know. I asked, did you have a side hustle in college? And, uh, I went around the table. I was like, did you have a side? 'Cause everybody was doing something different now and they're all established now, but did you, when you were in college, have a side hustle? And everybody had an interesting one. So this, I put that in my question bank of like, ah, interesting. You know, fun little convo when you're in a kind of entrepreneurial group. So one guy tells a story, he goes, yeah dude, I think he went to like Ole Miss or like one of the Alabama, or like one of these like southern football colleges. And he's like, I created a like tailgate in a box. I was like, what? He's basically like, yeah, like tailgating is huge before the football game. People go to the parking lot and they want to grill and drink and play beer pong. Beer pong and do all this stuff. And he's like, you know, for, he's like, my family used to like to do it. So he's like, first my family, it was so competitive. So you had to go wait like kind of overnight to get your spot. He's like, so they would send me, I'd have to go down to the, I forgot what it's called, the Grove or something like that. And I'd have to wait in the parking lot and hold my family spot. And then I started to be like, okay, cool, you got the spot. Well, like, well, you gotta set up the tailgate for us. Like, come on, we need tables for beer pong and we need this and that. So he's like, okay, I'll get the stuff every week and I'll go do it. And he would create a good setup. And then the space next to him was like, "Hey dude, can we next week, can we just, will you set ours up?" And he's like, "All right, like gimme like $200, I'll get you guys some stuff." And they're like, "Yeah, sure." And then the price goes up and he's like, "Oh man, I can basically charge each little tailgating square, like each little group of friends, $500 to just set up a cool tailgate spot for them, turnkey tailgating." And so he did this at his college and he's like, "Dude, I was making thousands and thousands of dollars every semester." running this. And I was like, is it?
I Googled Tailgate Guys. Did it get acquired?
So that was their competitor. So there was a nationwide version of this. He was doing this at small scale. That was his college side hustle just to make a little bit of money. He's like, yeah, Tailgate Guys tried to come in, but they couldn't break into our market. Like, we owned our market. And I was like, who's Tailgate Guys? He's like, oh, these guys basically took this idea and they started doing it nationwide. And I was like, that's really smart. He goes, yeah.
But how does it work? Do you have like, you just hire college kids and you say, we'll give you $50 an hour for 3 hours on Saturday. We get 50, you get 50.
Exactly. And then do they—
do the kids go to like Walmart and buy the stuff?
I think either you give them the supplies in bulk or, um, or they have to go grab it and you tell them, hey, you need to get this table and these balls and this beer and this whatever.
And you use like a company credit card or something that has—
Exactly. And, and so Tailgate Guy, and what they do, the, the key is they would partner with the school. They would say, hey, we'd like to be the exclusive, uh, tailgate provider for the school. And the school would give them the license. And so they had a monopoly. And I was like, what? Wow. And it's like, yeah, actually this is pretty common that schools will basically pick one vendor or provider. They'll sell the license rights. Basically, they'll let you become the official, you know, North Carolina, you know, you know, the Tar Heels, and they link to you and stuff. You call it Tar Heel Tailgate, and it's like their thing, and you pay them a fee or a revenue share of what's going on. But in exchange, you get a monopoly. You get to be the only provider of this shit. And it's like super viral, right? Because you're just like Everybody sees, wow, that setup looks not bootleg. What is that? Oh, they use Tailgate Guys or whatever? Okay, cool. We, we should use them next time. And, uh, so Tailgate Guys apparently, like, I think they got bought out by private equity or something, but they, um, they were doing like, I don't know, $30 to $50 million a year doing this.
What?
And, um, and I thought, what a great example of a college hustle that you then scale up. You say, all right, if this works at my college, it's gonna work at every college and every college that has a football program that has tailgating. And then we have this repeatable sales model of going of the university and we tell 'em, hey, these other 8 universities partner with us. We'd like to partner with you. You get extra income and we will provide a safe, you know, convenient way for your fans to do this. I thought— That's pretty wild. This is a really cool little niche business. And then I started thinking, well, what are the other ones? What are the other businesses that use the same sales tactic of basically partnering with the school and becoming the exclusive provider? So we had a little mini brain, mini, 'cause the guy listens to the podcast. So we had like a mini brainstorm session at dinner. Where he's like, dude, this is happening also with scooters. Uh, when like Bird and Lime came out in cities, companies decided, oh shoot, we should become the exclusive scooter provider on campus. Like, we'll go drop these scooters all everywhere. It'll be branded by the, with the school. The school will get a rev share for every scooter ride that happens, and we get a captive market that nobody can compete with us in. And so this started happening with scooters, and I was like, oh damn, what else could be done? Because scooters is cool cuz it's a new category, right? Tailgating worked cuz it was a new category. So you just have to think about like, what's something today that they don't even really have a, um, like an option for? Like they're not really, there isn't really like a market for it.
