« Side Hustle School

#241 - Blogger Turns Leftover Cherries Into $5,000/Month Income

2017-08-29

After being diagnosed with diabetes, a food blogger creates a sugar-free line of ketchup alternatives. 

Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle! Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Many side also school, friends and listeners- welcome to another episode. This is critical about yesterday's ever we looked at someone who had seen a lot of success distributing food item more specifically T through Amazon, today we have another different story, but same kind of concept. Today's product and today story is about ketchup, a condiment or at least something close to catch up. As you'll hear the time Writer turns left over cherries into five thousand dollars a month income. Also, the story has a twist when our featured side us their uses a medical diagnosis to further develop and grow. Her project also tell you about a crowd funding resources specifically for people, doing something with food or beverages. All of that coming up in today's episode support for this on come from sea, w and Cisco modern modernization today has the products you need to modernize your workplace like wifi, booster crystals, but there
physical powers enhance connectivity and spiritually awaken your internet, things at city w we get. Crystals. What modernize your net unique system Countless access points that are why, by six compatible, I can help you improve reliability, increase capacity and reduce latency Cisco, and I d orchestration by seed people who get find out more is needed dot com. Slashes go
in June twenty thirteen Erika care cash. A writer for a nonprofit took her kids to a picket yourselves cheery orchard at so many cherries. They couldn't eat them all fresh and it turns out that our kids don't like jam pie, but they do eat a lot of borders. So she turned some of the leftovers into a sort of cherry catch up and everyone loved it s not all summer. She experimented with lots of different fruit, catch ups in our own kitchen, she'd, be them to her family, friends, food bloggers and even the male carrier, to get honest, be back on our formulations. Based on all that feed. Back by August, she decided to turn her recipes into aside hustle. Her first step was reaching out to a food chemist who helped her figure out how to take a homeless
and turn it into a formula that a co packer could use in their facility and just a quick side know we talked about Co Packers a couple of times. They are essentially businesses that can replicate your recipe on a wholesale basis. So if you created a food product, they can then created in bulk for reselling anyway. This involves several rounds of testing to make sure the taste and consistency with perfect. As well as figuring out how to source all the fruit in Granny needed when she had that dialogue and Erika decided on a name not catch up like that's the actual name, not catch up then worked with a graphic designer to create labels. With all that in place by the end of the year. Erika was able to have sixty cases of three different flavors of not ketchup produced because Erika had been running food like for a while. She knew a lot of people in that industry and gave play about? A third of our first production run to local bloggers. They in turn created some original recipes using her sauces and posted them on their website and social media. She also use some of that first run to go to the fancy food trade show in San Francisco and Jen.
Twenty fourteen there she met a reporter at the L a times who wrote an article about not catch up, erika savvy to real the rapporteur is proposing to ask where people could buy her products, so she loved the upcoming article at a few different stores and was able to get stuck there. This really success meant that for many months afterwards, Erika distributed not catch up herself. Signing up with the distributor would involve a lot of additional costs that she couldn't justify, at least at that point she continued to get in more and more stores throughout two thousand and fourteen, including SAM's club and whole foods, and by early two thousand and fifteen, and not catch up available on Amazon are going well, but then, in August of this year Life through her occur Paul Erika was diagnosed with type two diabetes. She realized needed to make some lifestyle changes, including cutting out all added sugar from her diet. Within
three months of snapping into action. She had reverse your diabetes, no small feat, Congratulations Erica, and during that time she also realized if she was trying to cut out sugar. Other people probably were too so in late, two thousand and fifteen. She made a huge pivot by shifting away from traditionally made fruit sauces, which means they're full of sugar to condiment sweet and only by the fruit itself. Erica said it was almost a complete, relaunch and took a tremendous effort, but I knew it was the right direction. To take her first, no added sugar, flavour, tangerine hats. Chile was released on Amazon at the end of twenty fifteen and instantly, but or number one seller in jail the next year she released and no added sugar version of Cherry AAA and sales for that flavour doubled overnight. With these successes under her bout Erika decided to switch off. For products to be made without any out of sugar and help of this transition to use a crowd, funding site called partial to successfully race, fifteen thousand dollars of human
Later she was able to put her new fibres up on Amazon this time she specifically focused on paleo, whole thirty, low carb and diabetic customers and through Oliver efforts December twenty. Sixteen was our biggest month of sales, far in this, your sales have continued going up month after month in it Well, she released and actual catch up with no added sugar. This addition bunker income five thousand dollars a month, in fact, since its release, it's completely sold out twice and early as on choice a word for a month at the beginning of the summer. She plans to continue to grow this, not catch a brand which now includes an actual catch up, but she
the plans to keep it aside. I saw no matter how big it gets, so I want to follow up quickly on this crowd funding resource the Erika used great story by the way. Congratulations to her this crop hunting site called pie. Shall this was new to me. I want to check it out, may describe it as a place to find ideas for food and drink and everything in between so its basically a crowd funding site for food and beverage entrepreneurs. Foresight, hustlers, like Erika, bigger, small restaurant or truck fresher packaged apple website sparkling are still this is their description. You'll find people who share your passions and can help get your project out on the front burner so thought. It was interesting that there is this crowd binding resource, which seemed like it's been up and running for a long time. I just having heard of it
south focus specifically on people making food or beverage products. For example, I took a look and there's this product on a homepage called kelp Jerky the perfect plant based snack, the people who are making this say that for the past year we ve been working to develop a line of delicious and nutritious products made from sustainably harvested seaweed seaweed. Yet there right seaweed has more vitamin c than orange juice or calcium, the milk and more protein and soybeans. Our first product is kelp Jerky, a delicious nutrient dense high protein snack, top Turkey has begun Non GMO and free of dairy egg soy peanuts, Anglican. So basically anyone can eat it. It sounds like an help. Turkey comes in three flavors high tide, barbecue and see salt, so I thought that was cool. Maybe one day we can feature that help. Turkey guys looks like they ve raised about five thousand dollars so far most of the time I'm recording this and, if you're out there and you're thinking about developing a food product or a beverage product. Maybe you heard yesterday
story about China making the tea for this story of not catch up or one of the several other stories that we ve looked at. Maybe this crowd phoning platform is something you should take. A look at I hope you enjoy this episode today, show notes, are at sight of school dot. Com slashed too, for one will include links to pie, shall not catch up. Anything else I mentioned, as always, inspiration is good but inspiration with action. It's so much better. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you're doing well. I'm critical about four cider school.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.