From Managing a Billionaire's Assets to Smoking Ribs: Andrew Buehler's Journey to Happiness
Jan 23, 2024Season 1Episode 213
Firing The Man
Ever dreamed of swapping your suit and tie for a chef's apron and the smoky aroma of barbecue? That's exactly what our guest Andrew Beeler did, and he's here to fan the flames of your entrepreneurial spirit. Andrew, a former finance professional, shares his mouthwatering journey into the world of BBQ entrepreneurship, highlighting how an online barbecue business can thrive in the e-commerce landscape. His transition from the meticulous world of finance to the craft of slow-cooked meats is not just inspiring but also a masterclass in leveraging personal passion into a successful business model.
As we navigate the smoke-infused trails of Andrew's story, we uncover the liberating power of e-commerce, which allowed him to conduct business from any smoke-filled corner of the world. The financial acumen he honed in wealth management became the bedrock for his new venture, proving that a love for food and a head for numbers can be a match made in heaven. The conversation digs into the emotional challenges of trading security for the thrill of the unknown, and the fortitude required to embrace the digital marketing beast that is indispensable to e-commerce success.
Wrapping up our session, we chew the fat on how Andrew's urban smokehouse concept is revolutionizing the way city slickers experience the joy of BBQ. He gives us the skinny on catering to the convenience craved by the urbanite palate while being mindful of dietary trends and diverse preferences. Before we sign off, Andrew extends a warm invitation to continue the dialogue through the smoky signals of social media, promising that this is just the appetizer to a much bigger feast of his BBQ saga. So, prepare your tastebuds and fire up your ambition, because this episode is a rare treat that's perfectly seasoned with insights and inspiration.
Ever dreamed of swapping your suit and tie for a chef's apron and the smoky aroma of barbecue? That's exactly what our guest Andrew Beeler did, and he's here to fan the flames of your entrepreneurial spirit. Andrew, a former finance professional, shares his mouthwatering journey into the world of BBQ entrepreneurship, highlighting how an online barbecue business can thrive in the e-commerce landscape. His transition from the meticulous world of finance to the craft of slow-cooked meats is not just inspiring but also a masterclass in leveraging personal passion into a successful business model.
As we navigate the smoke-infused trails of Andrew's story, we uncover the liberating power of e-commerce, which allowed him to conduct business from any smoke-filled corner of the world. The financial acumen he honed in wealth management became the bedrock for his new venture, proving that a love for food and a head for numbers can be a match made in heaven. The conversation digs into the emotional challenges of trading security for the thrill of the unknown, and the fortitude required to embrace the digital marketing beast that is indispensable to e-commerce success.
Wrapping up our session, we chew the fat on how Andrew's urban smokehouse concept is revolutionizing the way city slickers experience the joy of BBQ. He gives us the skinny on catering to the convenience craved by the urbanite palate while being mindful of dietary trends and diverse preferences. Before we sign off, Andrew extends a warm invitation to continue the dialogue through the smoky signals of social media, promising that this is just the appetizer to a much bigger feast of his BBQ saga. So, prepare your tastebuds and fire up your ambition, because this episode is a rare treat that's perfectly seasoned with insights and inspiration.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have the honor to interview Andrew Beeler. Andrew is a finance professional turned food enthusiast and entrepreneur. Andrew spent 10 years in finance and wealth management and has recently pivoted into entrepreneurship and food, Two of our favorite topics to talk about on this podcast.
Speaker 3:
Welcome to the show, andrew. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:
David and Ken Happy to be here, absolutely. So, to start things off, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and path from finance to pit master and e-commerce business founder.
Speaker 3:
I'm originally from the Chicagoland area, definitely grew up kind of around a lot of food and when I was in school either was involved in leadership positions or even started the clubs myself were dedicated to doing big cookouts on campus College I hosted an annual pig roast the entire school, kind of always just loved food Definitely a passion and a hobby on the side, but originally pursued a career in financial services and ultimately COVID happened. We all spent a lot more time at home alone thinking about what we want to do with our lives and if we're happy with kind of where we currently are positioned and living in New York City. I also couldn't help but notice that every single day there appeared to be more and more Amazon boxes in the lobby, which started as a mailroom that was kind of a closet with some packages in it, within a matter of months it basically became the entire lobby. I thought it was almost like walking in Christmas morning or distribution center or something, or there's so many boxes. It got me thinking. I think this e-commerce trend has happened for a while but is likely going to continue to happen, and there's definitely categories and products that have been more challenging to deliver direct to consumer in the past but are becoming easier and easier, and refrigerated or products that require climate control. I felt we're one of those categories and, as people during COVID kind of hesitated to grow to the grocery store themselves and began to potentially consider grocery delivery online, I thought that might be one of the front tiers that had a bit of momentum in it, for something that was going to have some natural drivers to grow it and begin tinkering with some ideas. Ultimately, I settled on a barbecue business, not only because of my passion and kind of experience with it, but also the thought that smoke in a rack or ribs for three to five hours or a brisket for eight to 12 plus hours is pretty inconvenient for most. If we do that, vacuums, seal it and ship it to people. I think there's a lot of people that enjoy barbecue but are intimidated by the cook times. Maybe they don't own a smoker, maybe they live in a city, they don't have a backyard. There's definitely a couple ways to kind of pitch a value out of having a pre-cooked solution, and that's how I ultimately landed on barbecue and E-com, surely after COVID took the leap of faith, and I've loved it ever since.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. I want to focus in on from making that observation in the mailroom to sending out that first rack of ribs. What did that process look like? When did you decide to fire the man? Can you take us through that a little bit?
Speaker 3:
It's a little bit cliche but I actually love it. I woke up New Year's Day and I was like what are my New Year's resolutions? And I was like I'm done, I'm done working for the man. And I just sat down on New Year's Day and I was at my computer for probably I don't know eight to 12 hours and just ripped a 15 page business plan. Obviously that plan pivoted and had met. Originally I thought it was going to be a niche food distribution business and then ultimately I settled on barbecue and D to C. But I was tinkering with like how do I get into food? And I saw some of these trends in E-com and I saw some trends and kind of other areas of the market and after a couple months kind of settled on the business plan or what I ultimately wanted to pursue. Then the next question was all right, well, how do we execute this? It was kind of easy to envision what I'll call the five year plan, which is I want to have a diverse menu, not just one product. When I originally started I had just one product. Now I have two. We're going to have three for the matter of weeks here. It was easy to think of you want a full menu, a couple different protein options, complementary sides, the product to be available nationwide. But how do you kind of really water that down into something that is enough of like a proof of concept to just run at it with like very limited resources? And so the idea was let's just do one product, which we chose pork, baby back ribs. And the reason we chose that is because we kind of said, hey, the two most iconic and like labor-intensive dishes are ribs or brisket. So we're going to launch with one or the other. And we ended up doing ribs. And now we have two products, and the second one was naturally brisket. How do we not invest in a bunch of like heavy equipment, machinery, people, labor, how do we de-risk this from a financial perspective to really see if this makes sense before we go all in financially? That's what attracted me to crowdfunding. I did a Kickstarter campaign because, for those who aren't familiar with crowdfunding, it essentially allows you to get IOUs. You say, hey, if you give me 20 bucks, I'll give you a t-shirt, if you give me 100 bucks, I'll send you some racks of ribs, and you can have different incentives at different thresholds, but ultimately you can collect a mass sum of money in exchange for pre-orders. By doing the Kickstarter, I was able to raise $30,000 without ever making a product, without ever hiring someone and saying, okay, awesome, there actually are a couple hundred people that want to give this product a shot. Now I can work with a contract manufacturer, now I can go to a distribution center, now I can approach some of these parties that I need in order to make this thing successful. But I have some money in my pocket. I no longer appear like a guy with just an idea. I mean, I've got a couple hundred customers, I've got a couple hundred orders. This whole process is de-risk, and so that allowed me to essentially approach these third parties and appear like someone they should entertain, someone they should actually have a real conversation with, and so we did a Kickstarter in July of 2022 and ultimately launched a website and started shipping product in September of 2022. As I mentioned, in 2022, it was kind of New Year's Day when we started tinkering with how do we well, what do we want to do? That's when we made the business plan, and from New Year's Day till call it March, was the business plan adjustments or figuring out what we actually wanted to do, and then I would say March to July was the planning of how do we execute a successful Kickstarter. Who are the parties that need to be in the room in order to make something happen if we are successful at the Kickstarter? And yeah, the whole process took about nine months to get off the ground, from idea to successfully mailing products to people.
Speaker 4:
It's an incredible story, by the way, and I think a couple hundred people raising their hands saying, hey, I'll take some ribs or I'll take some brisket, that's more than friends and family. And so you know you have an idea whenever a bunch of people sign up for it, and so, on Kickstarter, you raise all the money and then do you have to deliver the products by a certain timeline, or what kind of roadmap were you working with once that, once that finalized?
Speaker 3:
Kickstarter is pretty generous because there's a variety of projects that are on there. Some of them are, you know, people are developing software tools or games. Other people are delivering physical products. So I was in the physical product category space. Some people don't deliver the product for many months or even a year. I was actually I'm like the relatively quick or fast end of most Kickstarter's, since I delivered a product, I think about six weeks after the campaign ended, and that was largely because from that period of March to the Kickstarter launching, I'd already met with like a handful of distribution partners. I'd already done product testing in terms of, like how the ribs are going to be cooked and how they were going to taste and you know what seasoning and sauce is going to be on them and stuff. So that was all outlined and so my Kickstarter was. I think that was part of the reason I had success on it, because most Kickstarter campaigns fail. But I think one of the ways to like de-risk it and really inspire people is like clearer and more exact you could be with the product you're going to ultimately deliver and the timeframe you're going to deliver it in, the more confident or more willing people are going to be to invest in you or to give the product a try. If you're giving a very loose plan or a loose description, people are going to be less less interested in investing in that campaign. So you can be successful and deliver the product a year later. But I think the more exact you are with your timing and product description, the more likely you are to be successful at crowdfunding campaign.
Speaker 4:
Two more follow-up questions and then I'll kick it back to David. First one is back to I think you mentioned it was New Year's Day and so you're kind of like you're fed up, you're like I'm done. Was there like a life event that happened, or were you just bored with what you were doing? And what kind of like motivated you to say I'm pivoting?
Speaker 3:
You know, I really was, as I describe it, COVID, and it was just spending more time home alone, not being able to socialize as much, and reflecting. And I was 31 at the time, so I had roughly call it 10 years of experience out of school and I said do I want to do this for the rest of my life? I feel like I'm at a point where I've got a couple bucks in the bank. I have some experience. I'm not the most tenured man in the world, but I'm no longer a complete idiot. No, hunger 22. What do we actually want to do? And it was that big kind of life question I was asking myself a lot during COVID. I was like am I happy with my current job? Do I want to do this for the rest of my career? One of the things that really attracted me to e-commerce what I'll call a digital business is I really wanted to not be tied to a specific geographic location. I didn't want to be due at a specific desk, a big building in Manhattan or a big building in a city. I wanted to be able to work from a computer and a cell phone from anywhere in the world. And that's the beauty of honestly just digital based businesses and e-com in particular. When you're getting things off or you're sourcing products or trying to create your product, you might have to spend a lot of time in a specific location, but ultimately, once you get the flywheel moving, something you can manage from a computer anywhere. And that was really the main goal. It was building a digital business, and then I saw those trends that made e-commerce and barbecue and some of the other categories I fit into attractive and it felt like they had natural tailwinds, so I wanted to pursue it.
Speaker 4:
Last follow up one is so I like how you've kind of taken a little bit of personal passion with kind of cooking and pit master and then you also married that with your finance background. Not many people I know, normal people, can sit down and crank out a 15 page business plan and a little bit of time. And so how much has your experience with your finance and pit med like? How much has that helped you on a scale of one to 10? Let's say you got a buddy that is not in finance and they're not a pit master. How much a leg up does that have for you?
Speaker 3:
One of the challenges with entrepreneurship is, in the beginning, you have to wear every single hat. You are sales, you are legal, you are marketing, you are product innovation, whatever you can think of. In the big company, there's 20 departments. You're all of them. So I would say that the background in financial services really helps me with creating the structure and the plan in terms of like, how much margin do I need in order to cover all these expenses? And kind of so the forecasting and planning in terms of like, what will this business look like if it is successful. And it also helped me a little bit with, like, the contract negotiation and kind of like SLA's, like service level agreements and things like that. When I was talking to like distribution and warehousing, and I was talking to manufacturing, when I was talking to other third parties that I'd hired at given times to help get this project off the ground, something I did not realize and anyone that's going to go into e-com, I must say you need to learn a lot about digital marketing. Digital marketing is your sales. That's how you acquire customers. And you're going to learn a whole new language CAC, customer acquisition costs, roas, return on ad spend. You're going to learn a million new acronyms that really are kind of the lifeblood of the business. Are we getting customers and are we getting them at a price that justifies selling the product? And so finance and like the food passion definitely helped me with like how should this business be structured and, ultimately, what's the product I want to serve? But the day to day of the business is a lot of digital marketing, and I had to learn that on the fly and I didn't realize how much digital marketing it was going to be, and so I'm going to raise my hand now. If you're thinking about e-com, make sure you learn about digital marketing. It's going to be a big chunk of your day.
Speaker 2:
From the time you make the decision this is what I want to do to firing the man. What's that time period look like?
Speaker 3:
So I ultimately left the job in June. I was like the second week of June and the Kickstarter went live in July. So I started planning, you know, new Year's Day, so it was about six months to ultimately firing the man and about seven months to the wheels are moving. We have a kick, a live Kickstarter campaign, things are happening. But I would say during that, like March to June time period was when things got really serious in terms of this no longer was like an idea or word document saved on my desktop, it was. You know, we're flying to Wisconsin to meet with a cold storage and distribution center to see if, you know, they should be the partner we want to choose with for, ultimately, pick and pack. We're doing product testing. We're starting to invest, you know, real time and some dollars into making this thing a success. So I was pretty pregnant coming to March to June time frame and you know we pulled the trigger and Gio'd and then launched in July.
Speaker 2:
And then going in on that day when you are going to your superiors and saying I have a 10-year, 10 years of experience in finance and I'm going into pork belly. What's going through your mind? Do you have some doubt? Are there some things that you're nervous about? Walk us through that day.
Speaker 3:
I'm going to be honest, they were I don't want to say oddly very supportive, but they kind of got it because the way I pitched it was the way I kind of describe it to you guys. In the beginning I said, hey, we've all had a lot of time to ourselves these past two years. I've been doing some reflecting as I'm sure you all have to, and I've decided I want to give something else a try. That framework I think everyone just kind of respected or got. I mean, they said good luck and they and some of them supported the Kickstarter campaign financially or just by, you know, sent it, emailing the Kickstarter to other people, and I've checked in with my previous employer probably once every six months and they're proud of the progress I made. I'll be honest, I was confident, actually, in the beginning. One of the challenges when you fire the man, everyone around you is like, what are you going to do about insurance? And like, what about the 401k? Like are you sure you're going to be able to pay your bills? Like that's the feedback you're getting from like your family or like your close friends and your loved ones. And my whole thing was, if not now, when? Like it only gets harder. It only gets harder to fire the man every single day. Every single day you do something else. You're getting more invested in that existing career path. You're getting more invested or you're also starting to. You know you get older. You have a mortgage, you get older, maybe you have dependence now you have kids or something, and it only becomes. It only becomes more pressure to like stay on your current path as each day passes. So, honestly, if you're considering something like this, you should go as quickly as possible. You should start ASAP, because it's only going to get harder to quit as each minute passes.
Speaker 2:
You've talked a lot about risk and that's my next question. I'll kick it over to Ken but I think a lot of people, when they're thinking of risk, what they're thinking of is what if this doesn't work? But they never dive deeper. As you're talking about your business plan and kind of going from New Year's Day through executing this plan, you talk about de-risking some things, and so can you talk about how you think of each category of risk and then how you de-risk?
Speaker 3:
them, and that's definitely the finance background in me where I was talking about de-risking a lot, because essentially I've noticed so many and even when I was meeting with, like the distribution center, they were kind of surprised with my relatively disciplined approach. I'll call it because I was asking them hey, you know how many SKUs do most of your most? It's also important, whenever you pursue a business and you're talking to people, to like basically ask them for feedback on like people they've worked with before that have been successful. So I went to the distribution center I said hey, what is your typical customer? Look like hey, the guys that fail in six months. What did they do wrong? How many SKUs do they have? How many SKUs do the winners have? And that's how you do a little bit of market research. I mean you can, you know, read online and watch YouTube videos or talk to other entrepreneurs, but I mean the best people to talk to are ultimately the people you're going to be working with, that have worked with and seen hundreds of you and they've been in the business for 20 or 30 years and so they know the difference between the winners and the losers. You know something that I remember the distribution center guy said is so many people come in here and think they want to launch like 80 products at the beginning and then you know one or two work in 78, don't, and then there's a bunch of stuff they have to throw out or heavily discount. You know the second. I heard that I already knew we're doing just one product and he was surprised. I wanted to do just one, not 10, but another line that I, one of my old mentors, used to say, which I love, is let's always try to take the sniper rifle approach versus the shotgun. And what he meant by that is let's do one thing really, really, really well and let's keep working on that one thing until we become the best at it before we consider adding a second or third spinning plate. There's a lot of people that do the shotgun approach, where you try eight things. Maybe you're doing eight things mediocre, or you know six out of 10 at best. I rather do one thing at a nine out of 10 or a 10 out of 10., and people will always come to me for that one thing and I will learn how to do other things as time passes. And so another big de-risking was okay. What's the thing that we're going to do the best. We're going to have the best ribs that you can order direct to your door. All right, I don't need to become an expert. The distribution and cold storage component and the amount of ice you put in the box, if it's going to Texas in July versus Seattle in December, or if it's in transit for four days instead of two days, because it's a perishable product there's a lot of math that goes into this. It's you know what size is the cooler, how much ice goes in it, blah, blah, blah. I shouldn't even worry about that stuff. Let's go find someone that's great at that. Pay them to do that. I'm going to make the best ribs, I'm going to focus on the best ribs and I'm going to find someone that has already mastered these other things. So the de-risking for me was picking that one thing I want to do and then finding people that I could work with on a contract basis that could basically do everything else and allow me to be a best in class business in these other categories. And as we get bigger, we'll potentially bring in those other functions in-house. We'll say, hey, we've mastered ribs, it's going well, it's somewhat on autopilot. Now we can improve our margins if we learn how to do this other function. Or we can improve our basket size if we decide to become great at brisket now too, or we can improve our XYZ if we learn something else. And so the de-risking for me was really just picking that one thing I wanted to be great at and then finding a bunch of partners or people to work with to help me be great in other categories. And now that I'm comfortable in ribs, that's why I was able to add another product, another product potentially we're going to start bringing more functions in-house. That's how I describe the de-risking in the most 5,000 foot view way possible.
Speaker 4:
I really like the methodical approach you've taken to kind of launching this. De-risking is kind of funny. David has got a background in finance and so he's also always on the opposite eye. I'm a risk taker and so he's always like de-risking everything, and so I can kind of see that comes from finance background is de-risking everything, which I think is great. I mean, your chances of success just incrementally go up as you break it down and de-risk each step, and so I really like that. I also want to re-emphasize how you recommended talking to your partners, your distributors, asking them that have 20, 30 years experience hey, what are the guys that are successful doing? What are the guys that are failing doing? Like learning from them, like just it's a free resource, right? You can ask them questions and they're going to share it with you and you can kind of modify your plan as you go. I think that's brilliant.
Speaker 3:
And yet, to remember, they want you to be successful too. The last thing you want to do is work with you for six months and have you go away. The more successful you are, the more money they make as well. So they're artificially invested in you or indirectly invested in you, because they want your business to grow, so they get more business too.
Speaker 4:
My next question. Let's get into food. And so why should somebody buy pre-cooked food versus trying to learn how to cook it on their own from scratch?
Speaker 3:
There's a couple of different value props that we bring, and that's part of the reason we chose the barbecue category. As I mentioned, a lot of this food is very labor intensive and I think most people, when they think about making lunch or dinner, they think about making lunch or dinner in 15 to 30 minutes max, maybe for a holiday or a special occasion. You know, thanksgiving, yeah, you're in the kitchen all day, but your average Saturday I don't really want to commit my entire day to prepping dinner. And so the people that make like ribs and brisket and stuff like this it's a culture, it's a lifestyle, like it's their hobby. They love the process of making it. Most people, at least who I've met, enjoy eating food. They don't necessarily enjoy making it, and so I viewed it as like this is the one of the food categories we have the biggest polarization in terms of like a lot of people like to eat it. Nobody wants to make it because it's so labor intensive, and so we really just lean into the whole time incentive or the time advantage. The other piece is, you know it requires special equipment. Not everyone has a smoker. Most people have, you know, a gas grill or a Weber or something in their backyard. That's also part of the reason that we marketed ourselves as urban smokehouse, because if you live in the city, most apartments or condos don't really allow that stuff out here. If you have like a balcony or a deck, they might have like a shared deck or a shared roof space or outdoor space. There's like a communal grill or two. I've yet to find the building that has the communal smoker. There's like a big chunk of like America that when they travel to a place like St Louis, they travel to a place like Texas or the Carolinas. It's like part of their trip. They're like oh, we're going to Texas, like we should try brisket. Oh, we're going to the Carolinas, we should get some ribs. We're going to St Louis, we should get some ribs. That's great. I bet those people would like to eat that item more than like once a year. This is a great workaround. For that it's hey, you don't have the time, don't have the equipment, you don't have the know how Our products idiot proof. It ships to your door in two or three days. Throw it in your oven, it's ready quick. It tastes amazing. That's the pit, and at the other day food it just really comes down to like does it taste good? And then after that it's. All of these other things are number two, three, four, five. So first things, you got to like it. So that's why I focus on just amazing tasting ribs. But then the convenience pitch quickly sells itself for you, I agree, I think the time alone, like.
Speaker 4:
So I've been smoking meat for like probably 10 or 12 years and I'm just, I would say I'm average at it. I'm not really good but I enjoy it. But if I go to a nice restaurant that has a pit master that's been doing it for a long, like it's not even comparable, it's way better and so. But it also takes me. I got to, I have to go buy it, I have to prep it, I have to, you know, clean up to slow, I have to do all that stuff and it takes a lot of time. And so I think just the convenience alone as well as if it's really really good, is it's kind of a no-brainer.
Speaker 3:
I agree, and you know it's crazy because originally I thought my demographic was going to be most like people in cities that are, you know, living kind of this lifestyle described, but actually a good chunk of the customers are also actually like barbecue guys who then are like, yeah, I mean, I love doing that once in a while, but I don't want to do that every week. The convenience actually speaks to the people that are about that life too, unless they're, unless they own a barbecue restaurant themselves and are doing this quite literally five days a week or seven days a week. It's a labor of love, but it is a labor. No, not everyone wants to do it every day. It's snowing, I don't want to go outside, it's raining, you know, come on, take them out of the freezer, let's go.
Speaker 4:
Absolutely. Let's go through the process. So if someone puts an order in, can you kind of step it through from when the order gets to hits the website, the process to when someone eats it?
Speaker 3:
So it depends on where you ultimately live in the country and it also depends on the day that you place the order. So the distribution center that we at the end of the day it's a product that needs to be climate controlled, so we don't ship things a Friday through Sunday, we only send packages out Monday through Thursday. It also depends how far away you live from the distribution center. So if it naturally gets, we ship everything FedEx ground shipping. But if the estimated shipping duration is greater than three days, then we automatically upgrade your order to two day air. So all orders come within two to three days and they typically are filled the day after you place them. If it's Monday through Thursday, if it's the weekend, you wait till Monday for the order to fill. If you live in a one state radius of Wisconsin, you typically get the order in one day. If you live in the Florida or California or Maine or the coasts far from Wisconsin as possible, you're likely waiting three days.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, fair enough, and so that also answers my next question. It was like so I've got some family members that are in food and there's always talking about food ways, cooking too much, you know. It's like it's tough to get that right. Well, from what you're describing, it's like the orders ship the next day and so everything is so orders come in, you know what you need, get it, cook it, ship it out the next day, and so it's kind of like an assembly line.
Speaker 3:
Yes and no. So production facility is different than the distribution facility. So the production facility, so basically what we do, this is also part of the de-risking. This is why we wanted to do the Kickstarter and we wanted to have a little bit of like critical mass when you launch a food business, because ribs, again, they take a long time. So if you go to a real barbecue restaurant, there's a guy that wakes up at 5am and says I'm cooking 100 racks of ribs today and when they sell out, they sell out. So if you arrive at three or four in the afternoon, they might say, oh, we're out of ribs, but we still have the sausage and we still have the brisket. Or oh, we're out of these items, we still have these. So there is a little bit of like forecasting. And those restaurants, if you've been to them, you know they close when they sell out. So sometimes they close at noon and sometimes they close at 10pm and have to throw out a bunch of food. So we had to get a little bit of critical mass in the beginning so that we knew we weren't making one rack of ribs. You know we were making a couple hundred. So you know the minimum order for starters, is four half slabs and we had a couple hundred customers pre-order. So in the beginning I was like awesome, like we need to now go make 800 racks of ribs. This is like a sizable, you know, order. This is going to take a lot of time. You know, no longer use just the smoker in my backyard. We actually have to, you know, cook it, scale and employ people that are going to be doing things like that. So we essentially created critical mass in demand and what we do is we'll forecast how much we need for, you know, a couple weeks, and then we'll make, you know, thousands of ribs in Chicago and put them on a cold truck going up to Wisconsin and give it to our distribution partner, and so he then does the ultimate pick and pack. So it's a cold storage facility, it's a giant refrigerator, and he says he looks at the orders that come and go. Okay, put two half racks to Dave, put, you know, five to Ken, six to Joe, and he goes through that, and so we're making in batches and then the goal is to go through that batch as quickly as possible. But there is a forecasting game here because ultimately, you know, it is a perishable good. So you want to go through it as quickly as possible, but you also can't have the production facility making orders that are like less than 100,. You know they need to be making as many ribs as possible. Hopefully that answers your questions.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so how do you see the food and beverage industry changing over the next 20 years?
Speaker 3:
A lot of different ways. So one of the interesting things about food and beverage is there's a lifestyle slash, like fashion, almost component to it. You know, 100 years ago we fed lobsters to prisoners. Now it's the most expensive item on the menu. You know there are diets and trends. You know people, you know right now, you know paleo and keto and certain diets become popular in fat. Or you know vegetarian, vegan, whatever it is, and so there's an underlying element that you can ride the waves. So I mean, given we sell meat you know I try to dive into the paleo and keto communities being like, load up on the meat boys. We got a lot of meat and you know you avoid certain communities that don't appreciate that as much. You have to remember there's also, you know, religious beliefs or lifestyles that you know don't eat pork or don't eat beef or don't eat chicken, and so there's underlying, you know, global population trends of like the groups that you know don't eat pork or growing, or the groups that are like X, y, z or growing, and so it's really interesting because there's an element of lifestyle, religion, dietary restrictions. There's a couple of different variables that are kind of like macro trends on what people want to eat. And then I think, generally speaking, people have also just become a lot more health conscious over the past 15 years and people are trying to avoid things that are highly processed, which I think plays well to us, because, at the end of the day, what that really means is eat more meat, fruit and vegetables. You know, avoid the Oreos, avoid the Cheez-Its, avoid the things in the middle of the grocery store. You know, try to stay on the outside of the grocery store. So we try to hype up those trends because we think we play into a lot of them. But, you know, from a long-term perspective, that's part of the reason it's also really important that we have more than one product, because you got to take what I call the no vote off the table. So if you're a family and your daughter is a vegetarian and you know the son's doing the keto diet and the wife's doing this, you know I need to have an item that everyone can eat. It's hard if you say, hey, let's get her to her in a smokehouse for dinner and someone raises their hand Well, I don't eat anything on their menu. Next thing, you know, we're already dead in the water. So it's important to have as we think of building out our menu. We start with a pork product, then we added a beef product, next we're going to add a chicken product, after that we're probably going to add some sides that are, you know, vegetable oriented, and then we'll think about, like flavor iteration. So it will go back to the ribs and say maybe there should be a spicy version, Maybe there should be a white Alabama sauce, maybe there should be a Thai chili sauce and do some cool fusion stuff. But I think in the beginning in food it's important that you have something that everyone can eat and you also recognize the underlying trends of what people want to eat in general, which is healthier and less processed.
Speaker 4:
I like that how you're kind of focusing on getting those main products in the catalog and then slowly building it out based on that, and so I want to talk about your job prior to being a professional pit master, and so I personally find Family Office and that space fascinating. So can you share with the audience what is Family Office wealth management and then kind of maybe some tips on top two or three strategies that you use while you were in that space?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. So I was really fortunate to land in the Family Office world. It's a pretty niche but emerging kind of category within financial services, but essentially what a Family Office is is ultra successful, essentially hires a handful of people full time to manage their assets, rather than being a customer of a traditional wealth management firm or a big bank. They're essentially doing everything in house themselves. Part of the reason that is is because they don't want to invest in products. They really want to do what they want to do, and so I worked for three different families. The first family I worked for was the Myers. Ed Meier was the CEO of Gray Advertising for 36 years, which was the fourth largest ad agency in the world. He sold that for a couple of billion dollars to WPP in 2004 and essentially hired 10 people saying you guys focus on real estate, you guys focus on the stocks and you guys focus on buying private businesses, and so that was where I focused. I was predominantly focused on buying businesses that we wanted to own, and I ultimately did that for two other families as well. That gave me a really great lens for one and what do all these businesses look like and which ones are working and which ones aren't, because I would review you know many different businesses every single day. We'd only invest in maybe one or two a year. So it was hey, what are the attributes or profiles of these businesses that are attractive, that we think have a long runway for growth, have consistent cash flow regardless of economic conditions? What industries are they in? Things like that? So it also helped to also learn from these people that arguably are some of the most successful people in America. They were all entrepreneurs themselves or they all ran businesses themselves, and so it's interesting to see the values they cared about and how they manage people and how they and I think it gave me a great framework for how I wanted to design and ultimately build and manage my business, and I say that's why I was the first, the planning stage. It wasn't easy, but I kind of knew what I was doing because I knew what I wanted to look for and what I wanted to ultimately build when I got under the hood. That's all I think. Whenever you're building a business, it never goes exactly. It never goes how you think it's going to go, and I've said it before, I was shocked how much this was digital marketing, because you think, oh, you're making ribs and you make a website and customers find you. Yeah, you just got to focus on making ribs and putting them in a cooler with ice. No, no, no. You have to learn digital marketing. I give one lesson to anyone you have to learn digital marketing if you don't do anything in e-commerce.
Speaker 4:
No, that's cool. I find that base fascinating, and so it's kind of thanks for sharing behind the curtain what goes on there. So that's really cool, David. Any follow up questions before we get into the?
Speaker 2:
fire round. Talked a lot about Urban Smokehouse, but I just is there anything else we want to cover here? I think it's a super cool company. If I eating meat that has been procured over fire and smoke has been in style for 75,000 years, and so you're really tapping into something that I think is really cool. And when people think physical products, they often don't think of food and beverage, and so you actually first guess that we've had on Poccas, I believe that's been in this space, and so for listeners that are interested in becoming potential customers, is there anything else that they should know about the company?
Speaker 3:
We started with ribs. Ribs are a flagship product. They taste amazing. If you like ribs, definitely give them a try. We added brisket this past September. I'm really proud of the brisket as well and our next product is going to be hand pulled chicken. It's going to be launching around probably January 1st. You're probably going to do a campaign around New Years, but the product's been made. I was going back and forth with final label designs and things of that nature, so it'll be coming off here soon. But if you guys like barbecue and want to save some time, give us a try. I guarantee you're going to like it Sounds great.
Speaker 2:
All right, let's get into the fire round.
Speaker 4:
I've got some brisket in my shopping cart. I had to stop shopping to tape the podcast, but I'm going to go back and get that, and so the website, urbansmokehouseco.
Speaker 3:
Yeahco, notcom, we'reco, and that's also our handle on all social media. If you want to follow along with the story on Instagram, tiktok, facebook, you name it. The URL for the website is our name on all social media as well. Try to keep it simple.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, and if you're on the fence about it, I saw there were some Christmas deals on there, so go snap some up. Awesome Andrew, you ready for the fire round? Let's do it. It is a series of rapid fire questions. What is your favorite book? 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green.
Speaker 3:
Excellent. What are your hobbies? I was a swimmer in college. I like all water sports. I like swimming, diving. Put me at a swimming pool or a beach.
Speaker 4:
I'm happy, awesome. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man? Having someone over my shoulder 24-7. Agreed, all right. Last one what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:
I think what defines success in really any space is discipline and consistency. You don't have to be the best, you don't have to be the most talented, you don't have to have connections or money. If you just stick with it and you stay consistent, you'll make progress in anything in life, whether it's this business, your health or whatever you're trying to pursue. Just be consistent and it'll work. Staying power Just stay in the game. You'll get better each day. Excellent advice.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, Andrew. If people are interested in getting in touch with you or learning more about urbansmokehouseco, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3:
Message us on any of the social media platforms. I also check the support email, so support urbansmokehouseco If you want to email me, but I'm very accessible and my contact information is out there, so add me on LinkedIn, instagram, whatever you like, and I'll get back to you.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. We'll post links to all that in the show notes. Andrew, I want to thank you for reading a guest on the Firing the man podcast and we're looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, guys. This was really fun.