BBQ Catering Hustle Smokes Out Competitors

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

The couple in today's story loved smoked barbecue, and one day they realized that doing it for a living was the dream. So they jumped in full force to this idea, heading straight for potential disaster. That's not how it's supposed to go. Yeah, that's actually how it often works. So what would happen? Would they survive? Well, yes, that's why I'm telling you

their story, but how? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The ability to overcome initial hurdles on the path of Side Hustle dream to reality is one of the most consistent predictors of success. Most likely you will make mistakes, and it's not just mistakes. You'll also encounter new information

that will lead you to make adjustments. It's important to welcome and process that information instead of just charging ahead full steam. Then, of course, there is a time to charge ahead full steam. So speaking of steam, this episode is smoking. Stay tuned. Barbecue Catering Hustle smokes out competitors.

It's coming right up. Jeff Flores, a credit analyst by day, was known among his friends as an all-star barbecue smoker by night. He had several years of experience and had dedicated himself to getting the perfect smoked meat. One day he was telling his wife Nancy about how much he loved the craft and science behind it, and he wished that one day he could do it professionally. That's when a light bulb went off in her head.

Why couldn't he start catering his smoked meats now? It seemed like a much better idea to Nancy than going into professional gambling, which is something that Jeff had also considered. The barbecue craze had made its way from Texas to California, where they lived, but the market wasn't saturated with caterers the way it was in Texas. Many other friends had casually made comments about them starting a business in the past. Maybe this was the dream Jeff could follow.

They talked about the idea for a few weeks in August of 2018. They had two kids and a mortgage. Was it really financially responsible? But Nancy was in, and she encouraged Jeff to get moving. The market was ready, they had some money saved, and it just felt right.

Work started right away by looking at large catering smokers. They started off by researching Texas builders, where most custom trailer-sized smokers are from, but the prices were high. They ended up finding a few locally with more competitive prices and then placed an order. It felt risky going in so quickly without a ton of research, but they were determined to make it work, and now they had to. By mid-December, Nancy and Jeff had received a business license, food service licenses, insurance, and all the other fun regulatory stuff needed to sell food. And then the smoker arrived. Their new

business, the Rustic Queue, was almost ready. With the holidays just weeks away, this gave them the final time they needed to work on their recipes, design a menu, and sign up for the January event that nearly destroyed the whole business. That's right, we're not talking about an overnight success here, and part of the problem was something that happened overnight. The evening before their big debut at the Yorba Linda Farmers Market, Jeff was up all night smoking his meats. Or at least he was supposed to be.

At one point he dozed off, exhausted from the stress, and his coals went out. Rule number one in smoking meat is never let the coals go cold. When Jeff woke up a short while later, he was mortified. This had never happened to him before in all his experiments. He rushed to check the meat. Thankfully it was still

safe to eat, but he had no idea what was going to happen to its flavor. He just knew it had to be ruined, and this meant their first event, after all that hard work, wasn't even worth going to. He nearly called the farmers market coordinator to cancel, but Nancy stopped him. They had done too much prep to let their first event go up in smoke. So they tasted the meat once it was fully cooked, and it was okay.

Not as stellar as he was used to, but definitely better than he expected. After a few deep breaths, Jeff realized this wasn't the bitter end of his dream. They could salvage the situation and still try to do their best at the market. A couple gathered their things and headed to the spot where they made their first sale not long after opening up. A big brisket for 36 dollars. It was

invigorating. Customers seemed hungry for more. Yet the challenge has continued, and overall the day ended up being a huge financial flop. Jeff had smoked way too much food. Their order process wasn't optimized for a large crowd, and after 35 hours without sleep, except for that nap he took, Jeff and Nancy were starting to get on each other's nerves.

They ended up taking a loss, but they learned some valuable lessons. The first was how much food to cook. Jeff quickly discovered how to estimate sales volume as well as how to make guesses about which dishes would sell more than others. A second was to not worry so much about what other barbecue caterers were doing. At first they tried to serve everything you could want, everything you could think of, rather than focusing on a few key items. That led to a lot of food waste

and also killed their profit margins. They realized they didn't need to think about everyone else. They just needed to do what was best for them. The next weekend Jeff and Nancy were at it again. This time it was a completely different experience. They were much more confident, found a

good group with their slimmed down menu, and made just enough food to sell out. Since January they've worked two to three events per month. Sometimes they participate in farmers markets, other times they reach out to breweries that are hosting events but don't have food vendors lined up. Knocking on doors like that has worked out well, especially for events that most caterers don't think about like CrossFit competitions. They've nearly made back their initial investment and are looking into a brick and mortar deal that could allow Jeff to go full time.

Already their earnings have allowed them to take a vacation in Cabo that wouldn't otherwise be possible. And if he did two to three more events each month, Jeff would replicate the income from his day job. Last but not least they've made lots of friends and are demonstrating to their kids how rewarding it can be to stick with something you believe in. Well congratulations to Jeff and to Nancy on following that dream and seeing it through those initial obstacles, challenges, hurdles. Like I said man that is the norm, you know. So it's what you do when you encounter those things

as opposed to avoiding them in the first place. Especially for something that's as I said not just a mistake but some information that you don't really have until you do it. Here I'm thinking about like when they go to the markets and they make too much food. They also haven't designed an order process that accommodates a lot of people. You kind of learn that as you go along, right? So you adjust, you tweak, you know, you improve, etc.

Now also what I like here is the California versus Texas thing, you know, what they discovered, what they realized is, you know, there's rising interest in barbecue in California and other parts of the country. But Texas, you know, is hyper competitive in that market. So you've got rising interest but less competition, you know, where they live. And so that's a big part of what allows them to get started without spending as much money, without taking as much of a risk, could be, you know, trying to start the next barbecue, you know, food truck or whatever in Austin. So maybe a good question to ask is what else is like that? Like where can you find something that,

you know, less competition in your market but with rising interest? I just mentioned food trucks. I was just thinking about that in general because like I live much of the time in Portland, Oregon, which is kind of the mecca of food trucks. I don't know if it's where they got started but, you know, it's definitely a place where, you know, for a long time there were hundreds and hundreds of food trucks, food stalls, you know, etc. whereas lots of other cities, you know, had very few. And then, you know, food

trucks kind of started having a moment basically. And so even if I go back like seven, eight years, I would travel to a city in the Midwest to speak at an event or meet readers or whatever. And I remember being surprised a couple times when the organizers of an event were like really, really excited about having a food truck. And they would be like, we're gonna have, they would advertise like on the flyer or whatever, you know, food truck here tonight with no mention of like what the actual food was going to be or who the vendor was. This is interesting, you know, all you have to do because the standard is kind of low in that situation, you know, if you're a food vendor, you know, set up your food truck, you know, in this part of the country. And if you do a good job, you're going to

be really successful. You don't have to worry about the 300 other food carts or food trucks that are competing with you because you're new. So that's just one example. It can be lots of different things. What can you think of where less competition but rising interest?

That's kind of the formula for success here, at least a big part of it here in this story. So good luck to Jeff and Nancy. Excited to hear about the Rustic Q, keep us posted. And listeners, inspiration is good but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes include links to everything I mentioned. Just go to sidehustleschool.com/921.

Episode 921. Thanks so much, my friends. I'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.