What It's About
Fresh produce delivered right to your door!
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
For Weekly Fig, Anju presold membership and veggie boxes and that helped fund everything else. They then worked out of a garage until things picked up. Her advice? Start small, don't spend money on extravagant things till you build up a base.
Fun Fact
Some of Weekly Fig's suppliers come from Amish farms well outside the city. Since these communities don’t have electricity or modern communication tools they can’t take orders over the phone or internet. To combat this problem the orders are sent to the farms via homing pigeon on small sheets of paper attached to the bird's leg.
Notes from Chris
Episode 709
Shortly after getting married, Anju Wilson moved from Canada to Tennessee. The state of cowboy boots and country music was a world away from what she knew, but that wasn’t the only difference. In Canada, Anju worked in Human Resources, but in America, she became a stay-at-home mom… at least for a while. Anju loved her children, but she simply didn’t want to be a full-time homemaker. Hopeful of finding a new hobby to keep her busy, she brainstormed a few ideas and sowed a few seeds. But it wasn’t until 2015 that something started to germinate. After thinking about her interests, one thing stood out above anything else. She was incredibly passionate about good nutrition. She loved going to local farmers markets to buy in-season produce and support growers. Her hunch was that many other moms would feel the same. And to validate that hunch, Anju didn’t have to look far at all. She created a Facebook group for fresh food loving moms in her area. Her goal for the group was to meet moms so they could pool their resources and buy artisan and fresh foods in bulk. She figured, if even a handful of other people were willing to contribute, they could save quite a bit on their weekly food bills. It didn’t take long for the seed of her idea to sprout its first leaves. Within a couple of weeks, she had 30 members and was already organizing bulk orders. Once an order was made, they would arrange a play date to drop off the produce and socialize. She continued to nurture the group and, over the next year, the member count grew to 600! Her small seedling was now growing into a plant and the more moms she met, the more Anju realized that there was a lot more potential with this concept. She felt she could use the existing audience to launch a food-based side hustle. They decided to call their new venture, Weekly Fig—an online farmers market. The day before ‘delivery day’ all suppliers ship their stock to the Weekly Fig home hub. Anju and the team pack up the individual boxes. The fleet of drivers then picks them up for delivery the next day. The delivery area is divided into seven zones, one for each driver. The zones are designed in such a way that deliveries can be done while the driver is returning home. This technique has enabled them to scale to the point of delivering to over 200 houses every week and servicing a total of 400 customers (some customers are bi-weekly and monthly). All deliveries are completed in just 4 hours. With that many deliveries, the financial state of this side hustle is looking very healthy. In fact, in the three and a half years Weekly Fig has been running they’ve built a nice little business. In 2017 the total revenue generated was $37,000 and they are expecting much more in 2018. Anju and her co-founder have recently rebranded their website and increased the number of products they offer. Their goal for the next year is to focus more on education and use that as an acquisition tool. They believe that teaching people the benefits of supporting local farmers and eating healthy and in season will bring in plenty of new customers. When that is up and running, they hope to duplicate the model in other cities. She’s planted herself in fertile soil.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Weekly Fig: There are no two figs about it—this is one delectable side hustle. Learn more about it over on Anju's website!
- Crossfit Trainer Starts Meal Prep Service for Hungry Customers: A Crossfit trainer and her videographer partner create a healthy meal prep and delivery service, launching it with zero startup costs and growing to nearly $1m in 3 years
- Farmer Makes “Tater Tats” for All Your Produce Tattoo Needs: When a running joke doesn’t end up running its course, a side hustle seed takes root and begins to grow
- Quick Research Leads to Meal Planning Subscription Service: Healthy meal planning can be rough. One man is on a mission to help people be more health-conscious with his subscription-based website selling meal prep recipes
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Resources
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