This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there, what's up, welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau Forest Side Hustle School. We are beginning an all new week and I am excited, great story for you today. It's about two friends who start a $25,000 a month paleo bar business. Now it didn't happen overnight, it took some time and I'll tell you all about that.
But they actually started this while they were working their day jobs, of course. And I believe, though we'll find out for sure, that they're both actually still working their day jobs because they like their jobs. So that's cool. Now on the paleo diet, I think a couple times we've looked at specialized diets. The thing about diets like this or any kind of exercise or nutrition routine, in terms of a side hustle, the more polarizing, the better.
And paleo is certainly polarizing. There are a lot of people who love it, live by it, say that it changed their lives, et cetera. There are also a lot of other people who have different dietary choices that don't think very highly of paleo. And the same is true for literally every diet. Actually saw this thing recently and this is a true story.
There is, in fact, a Snickers bar diet, which sounds ridiculous, but there is, of course, a market for it. All kinds of people who are like, yeah, if I just eat more Snickers bars, then my life will be better. And you never know, anything is possible. I'm not suggesting that Snickers bars are paleo, by the way. I believe the cavemen were more into Mars bars and three musketeers.
In fact, Snickers didn't come out until fire was invented, allowing those delicious peanuts to be fire roasted. But that's just a free side note for you. The whole story about this very successful side hustle is coming up right after this. [Music]
Michael Winchell and Anthony Ostlund weren't trying to start a food business. They were just hungry.
See, Michael works full-time as a financial analyst, and Anthony works as a CrossFit instructor. Since they both follow a paleo diet, they wanted a bar that was made out of real food, didn't have any added sugar or weird stuff, and still tasted good. But when they couldn't find it in stores, they started prototyping bars in their kitchen at home from organic ingredients they bought at the store, like sprouted nuts, coconut, dates, and egg white protein. Their friends and family loved what they were making so much that they had to borrow more and more Cuisinart mixers to make the product. By the time they got to having five Cuisinarts in their home kitchen, they realized that maybe they had enough demand to consider a larger scale kitchen.
So they rented some space in a shared commercial kitchen so they could produce the bars more easily and keep up with the demand from friends and family. They had their eye on a side hustle, but before they started selling the bars to strangers, they set up a blind taste test with their target market. They compared their bar to 10 other bars that were similar using a simple rating system that took into consideration, taste, texture, and the million dollar question, would you pay money for what's in your mouth? Based on feedback from their blind taste testers, they went through nearly 100 iterations across four different flavors until they got the flavor profile dialed in. Mike explains, this is a process that I think very few food startups actually go through because they just assume that people will like what they make.
We didn't assume anything, we tested it until we had a winning hand. Then with the recipe dialed in, Mike and Tony were ready to scale up and introduce their paleo bars to the masses, and they called them mammoth bars. Why mammoth bars? Well, Mike says, we doubt that the legendary woolly mammoth did much surrendering back in the day, and we like that attitude when it comes to our health and nutrition. So they introduced the mammoth bars in a clear wrapper and a simple white wraparound label.
They kept that packaging for a long time as they continued to grow their demand. And during that time, they had to grapple with a lot of decisions they had anticipated and some that they hadn't. They knew they were gonna write their own content, design their own website using Shopify, and do their own bookkeeping. So that part was simple enough. But there were some additional pieces that they needed to figure out.
They had to find organic suppliers, figure out what business license they needed, and make sure they got all the proper inspections. The most surprising thing to them was that as they scaled up, they realized there's a natural temptation to add preservatives or otherwise tweak their recipe to make it easier to create in a larger kitchen and to extend the shelf life of the product. They made a decision early on. They would figure out a way to scale up without sacrificing quality and continue to manage their own production. Now, here's something else interesting.
They initially thought they were gonna get their brand out by going to events. They spent weekends going to CrossFit Games and other major athletic events where they thought people would appreciate an organic paleo bar. They did secure some loyal customers through this strategy, but they also realized they were spending way more money than they were bringing in from those events. Plus, since they had full-time jobs and were already spending their evenings in the kitchen grinding out the bars, their time was both valuable and limited. Any time spent at an event on the weekend was time they weren't making more bars.
So then they switched up their marketing to focus on growing their online presence in fan base, including email lists, social media, and tweaking their website. They also did a bit of a brand overhaul as part of launching their product to a larger audience via Kickstarter. They set their fundraising goal at $10,000 and offered pledge levels from $5 to $1,000. In the very first day, they surpassed that $10,000 goal and they went on to raise over $50,000. On the one hand, that was a huge success.
It meant they could fully move forward with their rebranding, but at the same time, it meant that they had to make way more bars than they'd ever done before in a short period of time. Prior to the Kickstarter campaign, their average monthly revenue was $6,000. Now, all of a sudden, they were fulfilling $50,000 worth of bars. On the strength of that campaign, a couple months later, their monthly revenue was up to an average of $10,000. And even more significantly, they were approached by Pete's Coffee about carrying their bars in store.
They did a test in the Sacramento area, had a great response. And then at the beginning of this year, Pete started rolling out their bars to their stores nationwide. Mammoth Bars' monthly income is now hovering around $25,000, split roughly evenly between Pete's Coffee Sales, Direct Online Sales, and sales at other independent retailers. But get this, as awesome as those numbers are, Michael and Anthony still both have their day jobs and very much consider themselves in the side hustle phase. They've finally hired a couple people to make the bars for them in their shared kitchen, but they say there's still always something that needs to be tweaked, from improving the production process, finding backup suppliers, getting into new retailers.
They know there's always more work to be done, and Michael and Anthony wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, Michael says, once things stop being a challenge, I think I'd probably hang it up and move on to another project. But I'm also guessing we'll never get to that point. [Music]
Hey, why did the Oreo cookie go to the dentist? Because it lost its filling.
Okay, I suppose Oreos are probably not paleo either, at least not as much as Snickers bars. But seriously, big congratulations to Michael and Anthony. What a fantastic story. I had not heard of Mammoth Bars before, but now I'm gonna go seek them out. In fact, I really like Pete's Coffee, so next time I walk into one of those stores, I will be on the lookout.
And in addition to everything else, I think it's fantastic that they started this project as a side hustle. I believe they're about three years in now. And even though it is very profitable, hopefully with potential to continue growing, they still have their day jobs. They're still committed to running this as a side hustle. And as you heard in the story, they haven't sacrificed quality.
They really believe in that mission and that brand that they built. So well done, guys, you inspire me. I know you're gonna inspire a lot of side hustle school listeners as well. And of course, I hope people are not just inspired. I hope they go and take action.
Friends and listeners, that means you. If you'd like to see the show notes for today's episode, learn more about Michael and Anthony's hustle. Just come over to sidehustleschool.com/219, 219. Been getting a lot of great voicemails from you guys. Feel free to leave a comment or question for the show on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle.
You can also record a little voice memo with your phone and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. This show is both listener supported and in a lot of ways listener created in the sense that I craft the stories around what I hope will be the most helpful to you. And as I've been hearing from folks through the year, we have added some stuff, we have adjusted some stuff, we have tweaked, just like the Mammoth Bars guys have done, and I look forward to continuing to make this show better and better for you. That's my commitment to you. I'm Chris Guillebeau, we'll be back tomorrow with another episode of Side Hustle School.
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