Spokane Simple Syrups Stock Store Shelves

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In today's story, a Spokane brewmaster creates a side hustle crafting syrups to be used in cocktails, baked goods, and more. Now, this story brings up an important issue for anyone interested in selling some kind of food or beverage product. Food and beverage, we could say. Unlike lots of other projects, businesses, and ideas, there is a certain amount of legality involved in this industry. What I mean is that in a lot of cases, you can't just start selling a food and beverage product without jumping through some hoops in terms of inspections and certifications.

You can sometimes do it on a very small level, but if you're going to grow that business at all, or you'd like the option to at some point, there often are some things you need to take care of. But how do you figure out what inspections and certifications you need? You don't want to get in trouble, but you also don't want to get bogged down. So we're going to talk about that at the end of the story, and I'll give you three tips to make it easier. Welcome to Side Hustle School.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. Spokane Simple Syrups Stock Store Shelves is coming right up. Dylan Huser was a full-time brewmaster at a Spokane, Washington brewery for many years. He also enjoyed making his own beer on the side, and joined a home brew club known as Wart, or Warriors of the Rotating Tap, in his spare time. When he wasn't working on new concoctions and recipes, he spent his time hanging out at Dry Fly Distillery next door.

He became friends with the team at Dry Fly, and chatted with them often about all things brewing. When it was time for them to expand their operations and open a tasting room, they decided they wanted to have a house ginger beer. Now, if anybody's not familiar, ginger beer is a non-alcoholic beverage made by fermenting ginger, yeast, and sugar. Dylan jumped on the opportunity and began testing out different flavors and ratios. He enjoyed the process, but hauling around large kegs to and from the distillery was exhausting.

This got him thinking, what if he could make something that had the flavor of ginger beer, but without the weight or time commitment of brewing it? He began to experiment further, and came up with a recipe for making a craft syrup that could be used in cocktails or mixed with soda water. He started with a syrup composed of fresh ginger root, lemon juice, lime juice, and brown sugar. And then, instead of carrying around kegs a finished product, you just needed to add an ounce of syrup to 4 ounces of soda water. You could have a delicious beverage, either non-alcoholic or as a base for cocktails.

While it took some time to get the flavor profile perfectly distilled, it only cost him about $1,000 to cover his initial inspections, commercial kitchen rental, and the cost of goods and supplies to facilitate production. The dry fly distilling team was also impressed with Dylan's creation. They encouraged him to take it to the next level by making it in larger batches. This required a lot of work and research, but Dylan was up for it. He learned that in order to sell perishable items, he would need to acquire certifications from the Washington Department of Agriculture.

Each certification took about 5 weeks to complete between studying and testing. But he wasn't in a rush, so for the next year he worked on them periodically, all while continuing to perfect his recipe. That hard work paid off, and the certifications allowed Dylan to improve the quality and integrity of his syrups. So now, Side Hustle Syrups, that is the name by the way Side Hustle Syrups, is officially in business. He started by selling at local farmer's markets.

Customers enjoyed the flavor, and he brought in a profit right away. With that profit came a desire to share his products more widely. His first version was only available as a refrigerated syrup, and so was therefore more limited in its distribution. In order to make it more marketable, he needed to make it shelf-stable. And guess what?

That came with another round of certifications. Determined to create the highest quality product, he once again spent time and some money to get those additional credentials. That effort paid off as well, as he is now able to sell Side Hustle Syrups to local retailers. Eager to get the word out, he began cold calling, doing demos, and approaching stores directly. He would bring samples of his product and ask to speak to a buyer.

As a result of his persistence, he's been able to build solid relationships, which in turn has increased his distribution, achieving his goal. Throughout the process, the folks at Dry Fly Distillery, that original inspiration, have continued to support him. They've used his products in some of their drinks, and they've just teamed up to produce a new canned cocktail featuring the syrups. Finally, since completing his certifications, Dylan has expanded the flavors of his syrups to include tonic, orange vanilla, elderflower, and lemon lavender. He's also moving beyond cocktails, seeing a market for the syrups to be used as tea and coffee flavoring, dessert toppings, even in baked goods.

All right, so if you have the desire to make your own simple syrup or something totally different, let's say something food and beverage related, how do you figure out what the necessary inspections, certifications, requirements are. Couple things you can do, actually three steps. First thing is read up on cottage laws in your state. Cottage laws often allow people to produce small amounts of food and beverage for sale without going through a lot of process. For example, if you are selling at a farmer's market, if you are selling out of your home, et cetera, often there are limits in terms of how much you're able to sell.

It may be a dollar limit or a quantity limit, perhaps something else, but the point is you may be able to avoid some of that. Now, as I said, if you're going to grow or scale, you won't be able to avoid it. So the next thing you can do is check with any local food startup hubs, food startup hubs or incubators or commercial kitchens. You're going to start working with a commercial kitchen. The people there, both the people who are running it and anyone else who's running space there are probably a good resource to ask, what are the necessary things I have to do?

And then lastly, once you discover the need for one particular requirement, whether it's a simple business license that you need to pay for or some kind of certification you actually have to go through, like what Dylan had to do, then ask that office or that government department, whoever the official or the contact is, if there's anything else they know of that you should be doing or you should know about, because often the local contact will at least be aware of what the state or province or, you know, national requirements are. If nothing else, they can point you in the right direction. By the way, this is always a good question to ask anyway, you know, in general, is there anything else I should know? Is there anything else I should be doing? Not just in the food and beverage world, but whenever you're kind of moving into a new industry and just trying to figure stuff out, ask people, what should I know that I don't know?

Or what have I not asked about? That's important for me to be aware of. All right, congratulations to Dylan. I look forward to trying these side hustle syrups at some point and listeners inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1040 that is one zero four zero one thousand and forty.

I'll be back tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle school. the Onward Project.