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What It's About
An online, food-based side hustle serving those with dietary restrictions.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Stacey learned a lot of things on her side hustle journey, and she shared a few tips for anyone looking to set up a relationship with a retailer. 1) There’s a lot of turnover among buyers. If you don’t get the answer you want, try again two months later and there might be a different person, and 2) Always show up with food.
As she tested new products, she also learned a key consumer lesson: people want healthy food, but not food that tastes healthy. Nothing baked will ever sell unless it tastes great.
Fun Fact
How did Stacey decide to price her first product? By understanding her market as a consumer first, and then making a commitment as an entrepreneur. As a mom already baking gluten-free, additive-free foods for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, she knew how expensive the ingredients were. As an entrepreneur, she committed to buying an initial six-month supply of ingredients, which let her buy in enough bulk to get her costs down enough to make her products attractive to home bakers who were already doing this at home.
Notes from Chris
Episode 177
Stacey Schlaman had a full and busy life, spending at least four hours a day on baking for a child on a specialized diet. She also worked as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. With all of those commitments, she didn’t have a great desire to add anything to it. But the world was making it impossible for her to do it as well as she thought it needed to be done. The major problem controlling diet, for Stacey, wasn’t the availability of different foods. It was the ability to control the ingredients that go into making food. She remembers sitting on her kitchen floor, exhausted and in tears, thinking how much she would appreciate it if there were somewhere she could go to buy the things she didn’t have the time or energy to make herself, but that her family needed. Well, the only way to control each aspect of those processes was—of course—to do it herself. Stacy hired her first employee, a family friend, and then another. Two years later, they now keep fourteen bakers very busy, and they ship $35,000 of great food every month to customers on Amazon. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:- Liberated Specialty Foods: Learn more about the allergen-free food products that Stacey sells on her website!
- Liberated Specialty Foods | Amazon: See more of Stacey's products on Amazon.com
- How to Start an Online Food Business | Shopify: If you're interested in breaking into the online food biz, check out this guide from Shopify
- U.S. Co-Paker Directory: Although Stacey made the choice to work from her own commercial kitchen, co-packing is a fantastic option for those who are looking for something simpler. Here's a directory containing co-packing companies in each state!
- Corn Syrup Allergy Leads to Booming Baked Goods Biz: After a doctor diagnoses her husband with a corn syrup allergy, a healthcare analyst mixes up a line of healthy, sweet baked goods that turns into a stable second income
