This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up everyone? Hey, it's Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Sign Us Old School." So glad you're here. Today, I've got an episode in our category of "Throwback Thursday." Well, it just so happens to be Thursday, the day the episode's coming out, at least. "Throwback Thursday/Where Are They Now?" Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved quite a bit since we first featured them. Now, last week in the series, we heard from Willem, one of the guys behind "Virtalis," which is a board game to facilitate deep conversations.
They did extremely well when it first came out in the Netherlands and then went worldwide. A couple weeks ago, we featured the graphic designer for "Dogs," who's now grown into a full-fledged agency, retrieving clients from other industries, naturally. Now, today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Alex French, the co-founder of Busy Coffee. We first heard about Busy Coffee in episode 511, 511, and a lot of stuff has happened since then. They actually started their business while they were training for an obstacle course race, two guys, two founders, and they needed some energy that was better than energy drinks, that they really liked coffee, but they had to drink it quickly.
I hope there's a whole story about it. And their first idea ended up not being a great success, which you'll hear a little bit about, but they now sell 48-ounce, ready-to-drink cold brew in various grocery stores, and I think on Amazon.com as well, lots of other places. Also, just one note, in case it's not clear in the update, Busy Coffee ended up joining an accelerator, and raising capital, which is not usually the side hustle school way. So if you heard that and you're like, "Wait a second, Chris, "what are we talking about, like regular startups now?" No, this happened after they already started the business on the side. At least one of the guys, if not both, were working at General Mills, and they ended up starting this on the side, eventually then went all in.
So it's not a startup in the typical startup way. Anyway, without further ado, let's hear directly from him. His name is Alex. I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
- Alex French, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States.
My company is Busy Coffee, and I was featured on episode 511. I got started by making cold brew coffee myself, in my apartment with my best friend and co-founder now. We literally would go to the grocery store down the road, buy coffee beans, grind 'em ourselves, brew 'em in our kitchen. We then bottled them, and we wanted to test the market as quickly as possible. So we went down to our neighbors, dropped off samples, got their feedback, and then instantly launched an Indiegogo campaign, to see if people would actually buy it online without knowing who we are.
Prior to Busy Coffee, I was working in marketing at General Mills, actually on the Cheerios brand. And after launching the business as a side hustle, we ended up getting into an accelerator program in New York. And one of the stipulations of participating in the program is we had to go full-time, and we've been full-time since. A lot has happened since the last time we've been on the show. One of the exciting things when we were on the show is we were saying how we were gonna be launching some new products, and we did in fact launch those products, and they have been wildly successful.
In fact, the initial interview that we had, we were selling coffee shots, and those ended up being a massive failure. Despite raising a million dollars in capital, those did fail, and we have since pivoted to producing multi-serve cold-brew coffee products. So we have 48-ounce bottles of ready-to-drink coffee, as well as one-pound bags of coarse ground coffee for the do-it-yourself consumer. So that's one of the major things that's happened. Big pivot, but it's been wildly successful.
Pre-coronavirus, one of our big challenges was cash flow. So because we produce a physical product and sell it into the grocery channel, when we get a large order, we have to finance it, the inventory, and the grocer typically doesn't pay you in 30, 45, 60 days. So managing cash is extremely challenging. Then COVID hit, and fortunately for us, we sell coffee for the at-home user, and a lot of people are drinking coffee at home now because they're stuck at home. So our business actually tripled due to COVID-19, which puts three times as much pressure on cash.
So it was a wonderful thing for our revenue and a terrible thing for our bank account. So that continues to be our biggest challenge, is financing the working capital. My advice is to sell either on your site or on Amazon. If you sell a physical product, specifically Amazon, the beautiful thing about that is people are actively searching for your product. So to get the customer is almost free, which is a very wonderful thing.
And just as importantly, when you sell on your sites, you get paid before you ship the product. And when you sell on Amazon, they pay you in 14 days. As I mentioned, when you sell into a retail store, they may take 60 days to pay you. And so you may get a very large order, but it's very difficult to fulfill that order. So generally speaking, my advice for anyone who's launching a product is to get to that first dollar as fast and as cheap as you can.
And I think that Amazon is the fastest way to do that while minimizing the investment upfront. - Awesome, thank you so much, Alex. Really appreciate that update. Congratulations on the big success of Busy Coffee. It's so interesting to see the businesses end up thriving in the time of COVID-19.
I think he said something about their sales have tripled. That's fantastic. Now, as he mentioned as well, it creates cashflow issues. Still, wouldn't you rather have the problem of, so many people want to buy my product that I have to figure out how to manage the inventory and the financing and all that kind of stuff. So I just took a quick look to see where Busy Coffee is being sold.
If you want to go check out busycoffee.com, that's actually with a Z, two Z's actually. So B-I-Z-Z-Y coffee.com, or I guess I could say Z, B-I-Z-Y, coffee.com. And in my area, at least they're being stocked at Target and Walmart, some other locations. I will also link it up on the notes page, which is at sidehustleschool.com/1349. One, three, four, nine.
Oh my gosh, 1349 episodes and counting. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for all your support. If you're listening, you're the reason that I make this show. You're the reason we work on all these stories and features and such.
So once again, thank you. I forgot a question for the show. Just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature those throughout the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners. Wherever you are in the world, I am cheering you on to come back tomorrow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
