Small Food Business

Nutrition labels and nutritional analysis.  Do you need them for your products?  And if so, what do you need to know about getting them done correctly.  That’s what we’re focused on in today’s podcast.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

Questions about nutrition labels are one of those things that come up time and time again for food entrepreneurs, which is why I asked Lev Berlin to join us today. Lev Berlin is the founder and owner of ReciPal, which is a web-based software program for nutrition labels, costing and inventory management.

 

As many of you can appreciate, Lev is a small business owner himself and thus is in charge of product management, web, email, traditional marketing, customer service, and everything in between. He has expertise in food labeling, starting and growing a business, SEO, and conversion optimization.

 

Prior to starting ReciPal, Lev co-founded several tech and food startups, including SlantShack Jerky, where focus on web marketing, retail sales, and labeling were some of his many responsibilities. Lev is a graduate of Princeton University and worked as a management consultant before striking off on his own. Lev, thank you for joining us today!

 

Lev:

Glad to be here! Thanks for having me.

 

Jennifer:

So as I mentioned right in the very beginning, nutrition labels, as you obviously understand having worked with many food entrepreneurs yourself and being a food business owner, nutrition labels are a huge area of concern for food entrepreneurs. Before we start talking about some of the nuts and bolts of nutrition labels though, I’d love if you could tell us a little bit about your background of how … Obviously I know you prior to this podcast, so I know your story, but can you share with our listeners your story of your struggle as a food startup, how that somehow led to this nutrition labeling tech business that you now have?

 

Lev:

Yeah, so it’s kind of a long story, so feel free to interrupt and stop me if I ramble. I was a management consultant and figured out pretty quickly that that wasn’t my long-term career and I always had a lot of side projects, and some of our friends in New York started bringing this jerky to parties and always had a variety of jerky flavors and meat types at hand. My mom never … She would try to keep me from eating too much jerky as a kid because of the sodium and didn’t think it was a good snack for a kid, but whenever I had the chance I would jump at it.

 

So when these post-college, young, professional working parties would just have copious amounts of jerky, it immediately caught my eye. So I started making friends with these guys and seeing how I could get involved. At the time it wasn’t really a business. Our friend Josh had just … His mom made jerky for Christmas one year and I was like, “You can make jerky at home? This is a thing?” I thought you would just buy it at the store.

 

So he started making it in their apartment oven with the door open a little bit on the lowest heat setting and experimenting with flavors and just making it for fun. A whole group of friends, they basically … I would never recommend this for anyone else, but this wasn’t a business at the time, but basically 10 different people got involved on a part-time basis and it’s still not a business. Just helping out making it and learning and having fun together.

 

One of our friends recommended we try to go to one of the food vendor ...

In this podcast, cottage food baker Kisha Johnson, of Yankee Girl Bakes, shares insights on how she manages production out of her home, balances her food business with full-time job and family-life, and how she’s grown her business with some very smart, and very inexpensive, marketing techniques.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

Today we’re talking with Kisha Johnson. She is the founder of Yankee Girl Bakes and her story is one that will resonate with a lot of people because she is operating under the cottage food laws in the state of Colorado where she lives. I wanted to talk to her today about her experiences as a cottage food baker.

 

Keisha, thank you so much for joining us.

 

Kisha:

Thank you for inviting me.

 

Jennifer:

Oh. Absolutely. My first question, we’re going to take it way back, but when did you first start baking? Then, second to that, what was that moment where you decided, “Okay. I really love this and I’m going to turn it into a business”?

 

Kisha:

Honestly, I started baking and cooking when I was about seven years old. My mother was not a cook, not a baker. She didn’t enjoy it at all. I remember getting my first cookbook from a reading fair at school and bringing it home. She said, “Okay. Pick out what you’re going to make.” and it started from there. I’ve been baking pretty much ever since.

 

Jennifer:

Oh. Wow.

 

Kisha:

Yeah.

 

Jennifer:

You became the household baker at seven?

 

Kisha:

Yeah. Pretty much and I still have that cookbook too, which is pretty funny.

 

Jennifer:

Oh. Wow.

 

Kisha:

It has a recipe in it for cinnamon toast. It’s butter and cinnamon and sugar.

 

Jennifer:

Yep.

 

Kisha:

No. It was something that I really enjoyed. I think for me, my extended family was a large Italian family, so for as long as I can remember, good food was always available and it always brought with it, really good family memories. Going forward, throughout just my adult life, it just was something that I enjoyed doing very much, is hospitality is just a part of who I am and my makeup.

 

When we moved to Colorado from back east, I’m originally from the New York area and when we moved to Colorado and especially being in the small town that I’m in, it was hard to find good food. Where I’m from, there’s an Italian bakery, a German bakery, a Polish bakery pretty much in every single neighborhood. You have your favorites and you go to the different [inaudible 00:02:18].

 

When I was a kid and delivered newspapers, I’d go to Russ’s Bakery and get cannoli, every week, but there’s nothing like that where I live, nothing. I just was beside myself, so I said, “Well, if I can’t get it, I might as well make it.” I started making it, bringing it to different events and people started saying, “We want this. We can’t get this. I’m from back east-”

 

Jennifer:

I was going to ask that. Did you have a lot of east coast transplants who we’re tasting your goods and missing them?

 

Kisha:

So many. So many.

In this podcast we take a look at the the inner workings of the food industry – from how food products market themselves to getting approval from the USDA and other food certifying organizations – and how the deck may be stacked against small food entrepreneurs in ways we didn’t even know (that being said, it doesn’t mean we can’t and won’t overcome those challenges!  We may be small but we’re scrappy!).

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Today we have Jeff Scot Philips with us on the podcast and he’s going to provide us with a lot of insight into the food industry, so I’m really excited that he’s here.

Quickly a little bit about his background. Jeff is a nutritionist, a professional speaker, an author and an entrepreneur himself. He founded Break the Cycle Incorporated, a seminar hosting organization, before creating Fit Food, a healthy meal delivery company.

He then started Fit Chefs, which is a manufacturing business that created food products for popular health brands. He now spends most of his time speaking about business and entrepreneurship, as well as the corruption in the food weight loss industries, and teaching consumers about what they can do to avoid falling victim to it.

Jeff, thank you so much for joining us.

Jeff: Oh. Thank you for having me.

Jennifer: We have a lot to talk about today because I not only want to talk about your experiences in the food industry as an entrepreneur yourself, but also about your new book, which is titled ‘Big Fat Food Fraud,’ which, first of all, is a fantastic title in terms of catching everybody’s attention. For food entrepreneurs, this is a big topic.

Your book alleges that the food industry manipulates information in a way that doesn’t provide consumers with the full picture about what they’re eating or what they’re consuming. Obviously, that is a huge topic that’s of interest, I think both to food entrepreneurs from the entrepreneurial side but also from, all of us eat food, so from as a consumer as well.

I want to start at the beginning and would love if you could just tell us a little bit about how you got into the food and nutrition industry yourself.

Jeff: Sure. It happened organically. I was a personal trainer and a nutritionist. Then, as I think most trainers and nutritionists, dietitians go through, which is the majority of my clients weren’t taking my recommendations or for whatever reason, just weren’t making the food and eating the way that I was wanting them to.

One day I was like, “To heck with it.” I make all of my food for the week on Sundays anyway, for the entire week, so I said, “You know, I’m just going to make their food for them, Just not give them a choice but to have it available and take their excuses away,” so I did that.

It was funny, because they weren’t used to eating that way and most of the meals I made them were just protein and vegetables. There was nothing more than 20 grams of carbs, so I unknowingly put all of my customers that did it into ketosis and they all lost seven pounds the first week. At first I was a little worried but they were thrilled about it. Then, a kind of grew from there.

Of course, they wanted to keep doing it but they had to tell their friends and it just kept growing. Then, I started hiring help. At first it wasn’t a business but after it kept growing, I was like, “You know, this is a real thing. A better hire some help and incorporate and do this.”

Jennifer: You said it wasn’t necessarily started as a business.

In honor of Veteran’s Day, in today’s podcast we’re talking with the Chief Marketing Officer of a veteran-owned and run small food business.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

I don’t typically share straight business stories on this Podcast series, but Rumi Spice’s story really caught my attention, for reasons that you’ll see in a minute. I knew this was a story you had to hear.

 

 

By way of background, Rumi Spice is a food focused social enterprise, founded by a team of US Military combat veterans. They import saffron directly from rural Afghan farmers in an economic partnership. By connecting Afghan farmers directly to the international market they seek to catalyze market driven economic development one farmer at a time.

 

 

The Rumi Spice processing facility in Herat, Afghanistan employees 75 Afghan woman who are paid direct wages. In addition, saffron is more and more becoming a viable alternative to growing opium, which is both a security and economic problem plaguing not just Afghanistan but the international economy. By cultivating for-profit business, Rumi Spice is helping to lay a foundation for long term peace in Afghanistan.

 

 

Emily Miller, who we’re speaking with today, is co-founder and CMO of Rumi Spice. Emily thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate it.

 

Emily:

Thank you for having me.

 

Jennifer:

To begin with, I particularly wanted to feature today’s interview around Veteran’s Day because of both your and your co-founder, Kimberly Jung’s, military background.

 

 

Would you mind sharing with our listeners a bit about your military background?

 

Emily:

Yeah, absolutely. Kimberly and I first met at West Point, we were both classmates, class of 2008. We graduated and were engineer officers in the army as 2nd lieutenants. Both of us had very different experiences in Afghanistan. I was serving on a Special Operations Team; I was one of the first women to go out on night raids with Special Operations and work with women and children. Whereas Kim spent her deployment as a Route Clearance platoon leader, so she was actually looking for improvised explosive devices on the side of the road.

 

 

Very, very different experiences in Afghanistan, but we both took away a very common thing which was kind of a love for the Afghan people and for the country itself.

 

Jennifer:

Was there a moment when you or Kimberly, when you guys were in Afghanistan, when you started to develop an idea of that would later become Rumi Spice? Or was is it you took away with you kind of a love for the Afghan people and sort of kept that in the back of your mind, but didn’t necessarily think that you might wanna start up a business that would somehow integrate with Afghanistan?

 

Emily:

When we were in Afghanistan we didn’t have the idea specifically for Rumi Spice or saffron particularly. We did have this frustration with … We just didn’t feel like we were making an impact, a long term impact in the Army. Kim always talks about how she would go out with her platoon, she would clear a roadside bomb and then within a few hours another one would be in it’s place kind of thing. That’s a little bit how it felt in the Army. We would go out on these night raids, get bad guys, but the very next day more bad guys would pop up.

 

 

Kim and I kind of always had in the back of our mind that we really wa...

Today’s podcast was inspired by a question from one of this site’s readers but is a question that I think applies to a lot of growing small businesses.  Check out today’s short and sweet podcast.  I’d also be interested in knowing whether you like this format and would like to see more of it incorporated in with the other interview-style podcasts.

TRANSCRIPT:

An entrepreneur emailed me the other day with a question that I think a lot of growing small food businesses face so I wanted to share my thoughts with you. This is what she wrote:

After months of hard work, we got into – here she named the big retailer but for privacy sake we’ll just call it Big Retailer- and demo on a regular basis to grow our metrics. We’re getting ready to enter more of their stores and I’m curious to know how to continue demo’ing in other cities.

If you were me, how would you hire, coordinate and execute a ‘demo program’ for the brand growing in the region?

First and foremost, if you don’t already know, for packaged food products that are looking to sell wholesale into stores, doing demos can be one of the best ways to grow your sales within those stores. It gives customers a chance to try your product and a chance to meet and talk with people involved with the company. But demo-ing is also time-consuming and this entrepreneur, who up until this time has been doing all the demos herself in addition to running the other aspects of the business, faces an issue that many growing food companies do at one point or another.

When faced with this question, the first thing I think of is how often are demos being performed and how far-reaching of a region are you thinking of trying to grow into. The reason I ask that is that my recommendation when you’re at this stage is to hire a demo team – two people who are looking for part-time work, this could be responsible college students as an example, who would drive around to do the demos. Of course, that’s only possible if you’re not planning on doing multiple demos in different areas on the same day and if the region you’re thinking is actually drivable.

The reason I’d personally think of hiring a demo team is that I’d want one or two people who I felt comfortable could consistently represent the product and the brand the way I want them to and are educated enough (and care enough) to answer consumers’ questions and be the face of the brand when I’m not there. Ideally, you could figure out some way to help incentive this demo team so that they feel invested in the business and care about your brand.

I will also add that when you first hire these folks, I would plan to have them go out with you for multiple demos before going out on their own so that they can learn not only from watching you. Simply handing them a bunch of company literature is not enough because these people will very literally be the face of your brand to new customers so you need to make sure you put in the effort to both hire the right people and take the time to train them appropriately.

I want to add that, as evidenced through today’s micro-pod, I welcome questions and the opportunity to talk with entrepreneurs. So please, send me your questions, thoughts, or just a note to say hi to either [email protected] or through the Small Food Business facebook page.

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Continuing our earlier podcast discussion with Dawn Meader McCausland, in today’s podcast we go more in-depth about the logistics of obtaining grants.  Please note, in this podcast we refer back to material mentioned in Part 1 of this podcast series.  You can listen to/read the transcript that podcast interview by clicking here.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

We are going to continue talking about grants today and going to a little bit more detail. As a reminder, Dawn is a community development consultant with a special interest in food entrepreneurship and culinary business incubation as a strategy for community economic development. In addition to grant writing, Dawn provides strategic planning, management consulting, evaluation and community analysis services for public, nonprofit and mission driven private sector clients working to expand housing and economic opportunities in their communities.

 

 

In her own community Dawn is actively involved in the food entrepreneur network and various nonprofit projects. Dawn holds a master’s of city planning from the university of California Berkeley and a bachelor’s in ethnic studies from Mills College. She earned a certificate in business incubation management from the national business incubation association and has studied best practices in food system funding and food business planning for a variety of trade association programs. Fueled by chocolate, Dawn is also the chief chocolatier of her new food venture Firebox Chocolate LLC. Continuing on our discussion from earlier, could you give us a little bit more insight into who is eligible for grants?

 

Dawn:

Yes. Grants are given out to a couple of different categories. Predominantly, most grants are given to nonprofits. You’ll see them mentioned by the 501c3 as a requirement. That’s the federal designation for a nonprofit entity. That means it has to be fully incorporated as a non profit. Not just that you don’t intend to make a profit. If you were to incorporate it as an LLC you wouldn’t be eligible. It’s really important to do some homework about how to form a nonprofit if you were thinking about doing a lot of grant based work because it’ll be really important. One way to get around that is to get a sponsor. That would be to collaborate or affiliate with another nonprofit. Then that nonprofit applies for the grant on behalf of the project that you are doing together. They’ll sometimes take a cut of that money as a management fee but then the rest of the program support money can go to what you are doing.

 

 

For example, if what you really wanted to do was to teach healthy eating classes to children or to certain groups of people that had health risks, then you might collaborate with other health oriented groups in your community. Maybe there is a community hospital that has a foundation that has a shared mission. May be there is a community center that is also trying to do healthy living activities. You might approach them and say, “This is my mission, this is what I want to do. Can we come up with a project together, and could you apply for the grant on my behalf, and then fund me to do it?” There is also a subset of grants that support entrepreneurial programs. What I mean by that those are support organizations such as incubators or small business development centers, training programs, that support other entrepreneurs.

 

 

If what you want to do is create more opportunities for other entrepreneurs,

Are grants really a way for small businesses to get free money that doesn’t need to be paid back?  This is just one of the myths about grants that we cover in today’s podcast along with information about how to find whether or not grants may be applicable to your business.  Join us for this first in a two-part discussion with Dawn Meader McCausland.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

Hi, Jennifer Lewis here from Small Food Business. Today I’m with Dawn Meader McCausland. She is a community development consultant with a special interest in food entrepreneurship and culinary business incubation as a strategy for community economic development. In addition to grant writing, Dawn provides strategic planning, management consulting, evaluation and community analysis services for public, nonprofit and machine driven private sector clients, working to expand housing and economic opportunities in their communities. In her own community, Dawn is actively involved in a food entrepreneur network and various nonprofit projects.

 

Dawn holds a masters of city planning from the University of California Berkeley and a bachelor’s in ethnic studies from Mills College. She earned a certificate in business incubation management from the National Business Incubation Association and has studied best practices in food system funding and food business planning through a variety of trade association programs. Fueled by chocolate, Dawn is also the chief chocolatier of her new food venture, Fireworks Chocolate LLC. She’s with us today to talk about grants and if they are a possibility for food entrepreneurs as they look for additional capital to start and run their businesses. Thank you so much for joining us, we really appreciate it.

 

Dawn:

I’m happy to be here.

 

Jennifer:

Tell us first, for those of us who might not be familiar, what exactly is a grant?

 

Dawn:

A grant is money that’s given either by a private foundation or a company or a public entity for the purpose of achieving some larger goal or mission that they have. The key point about a grant that everybody is attracted to is that it generally doesn’t have to be repaid as opposed to a loan. It’s money that you can keep and use for that goal that you have.

 

Jennifer:

That’s pretty enticing for food entrepreneurs. What are some of the myths about grants that some people may have especially those who are looking to start a business and might be interested in getting a grant to help them do that?

 

Dawn:

I think one of the main things is that people think that there are a lot of grants out there and that it’s just a matter of finding them. When it comes to starting a business and being an entrepreneur there aren’t a lot of grants. It’s a limited pool. Most of the grants are for a particular social purpose or some larger purpose that they don’t really fund individuals or businesses themselves. They generally fund nonprofits or some other social enterprise. The other thing is that, people think of it as free money.

 

The reality is that finding a grant, applying for it, all of that takes a lot of work. It’ll take a big investment on your part. The grants are also, people tend to think of them being great for startups because they can be used for general capital expenses or general sort of expenses. That’s not true either. Most grants are not designed for general operating cost. They are designed for what are called program costs which means they are specific direct costs to achieve a particular mission....

Samuel Adams, in partnership with Entrepreneur Media, is hosting a ‘Pitch Room Wild Card‘ component to their Brewing The American Dream Competition.  If you aren’t aware, this is a business competition that is only open to food and beverage product companies and the winner gets a $10,000 grant and a year of mentorship from Samuel Adams.  The Wild Card Pitch Room is the virtual part of this contest where entrepreneurs from around the US can send in videos to be considered for the competition.  Sound interesting?  Listen to this podcast with Jennifer Glanville of Samuel Adams today because the deadline for this contest is fast approaching.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer L:

We’re talking today with Jennifer Glanville, Director of Brewery Programs for Samuel Adams about the Brewing the American Dream competition. As you’ll hear in this podcast, the Brewing the American Dream competition is a really interesting and unique opportunity for food and beverage entrepreneurs. So I’m really excited to be able to share more about it with you. First of all, thank you, Jennifer, for joining us today.

 

Jennifer G:

Thanks for having me.

 

Jennifer L:

Really appreciate it. We should mention to the listeners, as you and I were talking right before we started recording that you are actually in a real live brewery, there might be some background noise but that is just Samuel Adams at work.

 

Jennifer G:

It is. I’m actually at the Samuel Adams brewery in Boston. We’re actively brewing today, we have some tours going on so you’re going to hear probably a lot of tours and noises going on in the background.

 

Jennifer L:

Sounds like a great work environment, I love it.

 

Jennifer G:

It is good.

 

Jennifer L:

Obviously what we’re here to talk about today is the Brewing the American Dream competition as a whole and also this Wild Card Pitch Room competition. First of all, could you just tell our listeners about the Brewing the American Dream competition in case they haven’t heard about it. How did it come about? What’s the history behind it?

 

Jennifer G:

Sure, the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program began in 2008 and it is a micro lending and coaching and mentoring program. At the end of the day, it’s not just about writing a check, the coaching and mentoring portion of our program really is equally important as getting a loan. Over 30 years ago, Jim Koch, our founder and brewer wanted to start Samuel Adams. He brewed our first beer in his kitchen. He wanted to start a brewery and he had trouble getting access to capital. As it is today, even 30 years later it’s very tough for small businesses to get access to capital no matter how small the loan might be. Also he was really looking for some nuts and bolts business advice. Often people overlook that. It’s kind of like you don’t know what you don’t know so he really wanted to get some advice from people and was struggling trying to find that.

 

 

So in 2008, we founded the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program to again, we partnered with Accion USA, that’s our micro lender and then we do the coaching and mentoring programs. It’s sort of like speed dating, but it’s speed coaching. They’re 20 minute sessions and we have them around different locations in the count...

Starting a new business is always a little bit excitement mixed with a little bit of fear.  Thembi Johnson, the founder of Tasty Tin, talks about her experience transitioning from a full-time job to becoming a full-time food entrepreneurs and some of the emotional challenges that she’s overcome along the way.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

Hi. Welcome to the SmallFoodBiz.com podcast. I’m Jennifer Lewis and in this podcast series we’re focusing on the issues that entrepreneurs face and the questions you have as you work to accelerate your business’s growth. Today we’re talking to Thembi Johnson, she’s the founder and chief recipe tester for Tasty Tin, a monthly subscription mail order box, geared towards people learning to cook and those wanting to expand their knowledge in the kitchen and have fun in an informative way. Each themed box contains gadgets that many home and professional cooks use to make cooking easier, especially chosen recipes that highlight the gadgets used, the dry ingredients and seasoning packages and the specialty food item that follows the theme. Before starting Tasty Tin, Thembi worked as a fish monger in a sea food market owner and caterer. She currently spends most of her time researching, testing, and developing recipes.

 

For local clients, she’s also a private chef. In what little spare time she has left, she’s a volunteer who teaches teens how to cook to help transition them out of foster care. Thembi thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate your willingness to share your experiences and background with our listeners, so thank you.

 

Thembi:

Of course I’m happy to share my story whenever I can.

 

Jennifer:

Before we start talking about your current entrepreneurial journey, I’d love it if you could share a little bit with our audience about your background and how you ended up where you are today. I know that’s a loaded question but it’s usually where most people want to start.

 

Thembi:

Yeah. By trade my background is actually in Computer Science that’s what I went to school for, and I spent the last 17 or 18 years in the IT field, and as of April I was a director by T4A PR firm in Atlanta. It’s my nine to five personally, but I have been interested in food probably my whole life. I’ve been cooking since I was about five or six, and food had always been kind of a central force in my life. At first I didn’t do anything official with it, it wasn’t until right after I got married that my mum had made a comment that there were no fish markets around her and I thought, “Oh, I could do that,” so I quit my job and six months later I opened a fish market. I did that for a few years, I sold retail and I sold wholesale and started to cater on the side because people were like, “Oh, can you make me a platter or can you cater this party with the food from your fish market?”

 

That sort of thing, so I kind of got into catering from that perspective. I also sold to people online because a lot of my customers were not local and liked things like my crab cakes and my [inaudible 02:55], things that I could ship pretty easily. I also did that, I did that for a few years and then my husband’s job moved us about 1000 miles away so I had to close my business and I fell back on to my security blanket of IT and did that for a while. That was during the time I lived in Connecticut and then we moved to Texas. That was about six years span where each location I kept trying to get back into the food industry,

Brett Lindenberg, founder of FoodTruckEmpire.com, shares his insight into what it takes to get a food truck rolling these days and tips on how to keep the business successfully running.

Notes: Links to resources mentioned within the podcast are included below the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

Today, we’re talking to Brett Lindenberg who’s a founder of FoodTruckEmpire.com which was started in 2013 with the goal of becoming the ultimate resource for aspiring mobile food owners. Today, FoodTruckEmpire.com received over 60,000 visitors each month and has been cited in publications like Entrepreneur Magazine and Restaurant Hospitality.

 

In July of 2016, FoodTruckEmpire.com will be kicking off season two of their podcast series where they’re going to be following along a hot dog cart vendor on his journey to build successful mobile food business.

 

For more information about the podcast series or any of the resources available on the Food Truck Empire site, visit www.foodtruckempire.com and we will as always include a link to this in the transcript page for today’s podcast on the small food business site as well. Brett, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

 

Brett:

Thanks for having me too Jennifer. I’m a big fan of yours so appreciate being on the podcast.

 

Jennifer:

This is awesome because you’re bringing a whole bunch of a food truck knowledge. You go so deep into this industry. I wanted to start with you started foodtruckempire.com in 2013 and now we’re recording this podcast in 2016, what changes have you seen in the food truck industry between then and now?

 

Brett:

Yeah, when I started the blog back in 2016 I was actually starting it basically because I was looking into a food truck business for myself and I couldn’t really find any information about it online but I was a big fan of this what me and you are doing right now, I listened to a lot of podcast.

 

I was like, “Well, maybe if I started a podcast I could basically just have an excuse to talk to a bunch of food truck owners and not have them be like fearful in sharing information with me and then just go from there and see what happens.” That’s what I did. I would say one of the biggest things between then and now when I got started is I think there’s just … In general, I’d say the industry I think is getting … There’s a little bit more information that’s getting published about it.

 

I think it’s maybe the industry as a whole as getting structured a little bit better and there’s a little bit less just the myth of the joys of operating a food truck from TV shows like the Great Food Truck Race where you’re just going to buy a truck and go about there and park somewhere and make a whole bunch of money.

 

I think just the expectations and the understanding of all the actual work it takes to actually run a food truck successfully and the hours that go into it. I think that is a really big thing between, or difference between then and now. You’ve got more people that want to get into it for I would say the right reasons because they’re really serious about it and they’ve done their research.

 

I think that’s a really great change and then I’d say also too another big change that say between th...