High School Students Earn $10k in Profits Selling Bread at Farmers Markets

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Side hustle school listeners, guess what? Well, first of all, welcome back. I'm Chris Guillebeau. And second, I've got a great story for you today. It's about high school students who earned $10,000 selling at farmer's markets, but also this is episode number 200, which not coincidentally happens to be the 200th day of the year.

Now we have come a long way since we started back on January 1, and several episodes this week feature listener shout outs to people who've helped them along the way. But today I want to give a shout out to you, especially if you've been listening for a while, if you've made this part of your routine, or if you've helped in any way. If you've told your friends about side hustle school, if you've ever posted a little rating or review, whatever it is, I'm so glad I started this project. Thank you for being a huge part of it. I'm really excited about all this to come, especially everything in the fall with the side hustle book launch and tour.

You are awesome. And now without further ado, I've got that story of high school students making more than $10,000 coming right up after this brief message. [Music]

Amanda and Josh Dossi are a brother sister duo that first created a side hustle about five years ago. Their full-time job is being high school students, but they actually started in middle school when Amanda was 12 and Josh was 10. They knew they wanted to sell food of some kind in an effort to learn about economics, also known as increasing their pocket money, but they weren't quite sure exactly what to sell.

So they started where most students began with some research. They did a search for all the farmers markets in their area and learned more about what was required to start a food business. They then contacted three of those markets to ask about renting a stall, what they would need for permits, fees, and any other requirements. As it turns out, no special permits were required because cottage laws allow for selling of home baked goods at a farmer's market. So the list of requirements that were needed to get started were actually quite short.

The business license, the $15 rental fee for their farmer's market space, the pop-up tent, table, ingredients, and packaging. Armed with all this information, Amanda and Josh borrowed $100 from their parents to cover the cost of their first market and set to work making food to sell. That's right, it's a true $100 startup. They began with banana bread, priced at $5 a loaf, and ended up making $40 in profit at their first market. They were pretty excited.

With those earnings, they got ready for the next market and then the next. For the first few months, they tried different food products, jams, jellies, brownies, cookies, cakes, but quickly realized that their breads were their best sellers. In that first season, they made about $1,500 in profit. At some point, they realized they needed to have a Facebook page and a website to help get the word out and connect with their customers between markets. Since the cottage laws only allow homemade foods to be sold at farmer's markets, for now their online presence is just informational in marketing, not for sales.

Amanda and Josh outsourced and hired a friend of theirs that was also a middle school student to run the Facebook page. That friend gets to earn a little extra money while learning about marketing and social media. And with their tech and online upgrade, they also signed up for Square so that they could accept credit cards in addition to cash and checks. As the seasons advanced and Amanda and Josh got more practice, they learned to go from making four loaves an hour to 10 loaves an hour. That means that in 16 combined hours, instead of being able to make and sell about 50 loaves per week, they were eventually able to make and sell 150 to 200 loaves per week.

It also meant that it made more sense to start buying in bulk, which decreased their per loaf costs. Together with their increased efficiency and decreased costs, they worked on perfecting their selling and marketing. They discovered that they sold more bread when they had free samples for people to try. Crazy idea. They also started learning customers' names and greeting those customers with friendly smiles.

During their marketing evolution, they also learned how to tell their origin story as preteen entrepreneurs, which went over well with the farmer's market crowd. And between all those things, their sales steadily grew. Over the years, as they went from middle school to high school, Amanda and Josh also went from selling only banana bread, that very first market, to now offering 13 different options. They said they were never afraid to try new breads. Some of them sold well and some didn't, but they always learned from the experience, neither expanded their offerings or tried again.

They've got some fun flavors, including the Elvis, which is a banana bread with peanut butter, and they also offer traditional options like zucchini, apple, and Amish white bread. Amanda and Josh now sell at two weekly farmer's markets and one monthly market, plus seasonal holiday markets. While revenues change seasonally, these days they average $400 in profit each week and up to $500 some weeks, all on that combined 16 hours a week of prep time. In 2016, they had their highest earnings yet, more than $10,000 in profit. And even though they're using some of the money to save for college, they have also each been able to use their earnings to buy their first car.

The next challenge for their side hustle is figuring out how to keep the business going once Amanda goes off to college next fall. Who knows, maybe they'll find more students to outsource to. [Music]

Well, a high school brother and sister duo earning up to $2,000 a month selling bread, what's not to like? What a great story. Also, did I mention it was episode 200?

It's episode 200. We are going strong together and it was appropriate that this was a story about baking and selling bread because it reminds me to encourage you. If you've been listening for a while and just kind of absorbing the ideas, that's fine. But at a certain point, you need to stop loping around. In fact, you need a slice of the action because we have just glazed the surface.

In fact, I'm gonna go against the grain and say that I have your back. I believe in you and you are not alone. More on all of that later, so much more to come. But in your quest to create your additional income without quitting your job, you should leave no scone unturned. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.

Today's show notes, guess where they are? sidehustleschool.com/200. I'm Chris Guillebeau, bringing down the pastryarchy every day. Sidusleschool, we'll be back tomorrow to the revolution. [Music]