Vegan Food Lovers Sprout Plant-Based Festivals

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

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Welcome to episode 950 of "Side Hustle School." That's right, 950. Thank you so much, my friends. I feel so grateful to be able to make this program for you every single day. Every single day I've got a new story for you. Today is no exception.

I've mentioned before that special diets or any kind of conscious health choice tends to open the doors for all kinds of business opportunities. Being able to choose a special diet arguably is a matter of privilege and wealth because it costs money to seek out specialty items. Therefore, there are lots of ways to find and create markets in the communities of those people who choose a particular diet or lifestyle. Now we've seen this before with the ketogenic cookbook. That was Amanda MacArthur in episode 11, all the way in the beginning of the program.

Ketogenic cookbook author makes $1,000 the first day. We've seen it in "The Paleo Chef." That would be Mary Shinuda in episode 422. Private chef turns performance food into $30,000 a month hustle and probably some others as well. Those are just the first two I thought of. Now today we'll look at two women in New Jersey who are fed up with a lack of vegan options in their area.

They then help a series of plant-based food festivals take root in the garden state. That story is coming right up. By the way, did I mention episode 950? 950, that's amazing and so are you. All right, that story is coming up after this shout out to our sponsor.

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When New Jersey native Kendra Arnold switched over to a vegan lifestyle in the early 2000s, it became painfully obvious that food options for this new diet were rather scarce. Together with her vegan spouse, she began to host meatless Monday bike rides with her group of omnivore inclined friends, hitting up the downtown area in pursuit of falafel and hummus. But beyond those options, there was little else that made eating exciting. Food became a sustenance and nothing more. But all that changed one day thanks to a single Facebook post.

Another friend of Kendra's had just attended a vegan food festival and posted about her adventures on Facebook. For Kendra, it was the answer to her tempeh-fueled prayers. She set off to see what it was all about. And on the way there, serendipity struck. She ran into Marissa Sweeney, one of the only other vegans she knew, and fielded the idea of putting together their own vegan festival.

Marissa was on board. The only question she had was whether it should be for the town or the whole county. Kendra, on the other hand, was thinking much bigger than that. She envisioned a festival large enough for the entire state that would give restaurants and shops an opportunity to test out the demand for vegan food. Both Kendra and Marissa had some experience running nonprofit events, so they put their skills to work and began sourcing potential venues and vendors.

Their first venue ended up being a hotel a couple of blocks away from where they lived. Though the space was perfect for this germinating side hustle seed, it also didn't hurt that it was cheap. They shelled out a couple thousand dollars to secure the space and got started on the logistics. That festival, Vegfest, was announced in 2015, and Kendra and Marissa spent the next year and a half getting the word out via nonprofit organizations, Facebook groups, and restaurants. And in the midst of their marketing efforts, they discovered there were a whole lot of people out there keen to be part of what they were putting together.

To really drive in the numbers they were looking for, they designed a postcard highlighting the event and asked people they met to put them up on bulletin boards. And the response was overwhelming. More than 1,500 people paid $35 to attend the event, which was far more than their venue could actually hold. The fire marshal even made them cut off ticket sales. At the very least, it certainly proved that people were willing to eat plant-based foods on days other than Monday.

Building on a community that had sprouted up overnight following the festival, Kendra and Marissa started to organize other events. They stepped up their social media marketing efforts and began sending out more postcards. Simple though it may seem those postcards proved to be so effective that the team still sends them out today. And these days, Kendra and Marissa throw roughly seven vegan-themed festivals on an annual basis, with their biggest events bringing in up to 7,000 attendees and boasting over 100 to 150 vendors. Although Marissa has stuck with her day job as a dietician, Sprout Everywhere Events, that's the name of their business, has transitioned into Kendra's full-time focus, completely replacing her previous paycheck.

She truly felt that organizing these events was creating positive change in her state. With her festivals, more and more people were discovering that vegan food could be healthy and delicious. And it was an opportunity for vendors to get their products out to an audience they might not otherwise have access to. It was something that she simply couldn't shake off, and Kendra knew she needed to give it her all to have the best odds of reaching the most people. The team credits two key things for their success, the strength of the growing community and their being receptive to critical feedback.

Following that first event, Kendra and Marissa spent hours listening to people's insights regarding what they liked and didn't like about their event. Kendra said that listening to this feedback and making changes based on what people had to say has made their events so much better. It's even had the added bonus of turning some of their harshest critics into their biggest cheerleaders because they took the time to listen to their concerns and implement changes. As Kendra put it, it turns out that people who are complaining sometimes have good ideas. You just have to take the time to really listen.

It really pains me when I see other businesses deleting comments or having knee-jerk reactions because I think they are missing out on some potentially amazing feedback. Moving forward, Sprout Everywhere Festivals has been consulting with more vegan food festivals around the country. They're starting to branch out to other events too. Kendra isn't just content with merely growing a business. She wants to grow a movement as well.

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Awesome, congrats to Kendra and Marissa. Sounds fun, Sprout Everywhere Festivals. Be sure and check it out if you are nearby or perhaps they're gonna be nearby you with all their expansion, who knows? Now, whenever you're gonna run an event like this, especially a festival, something that relies a lot on these vendor relationships, it's important to understand who your customers are. And in a lot of ways, your first customers are those vendors for something like this.

And this is what Kendra had to say about that. She said, "Our first priority is our vendors. We really believe that the small local chefs and businesses are the ones creating the wave of change in New Jersey's food culture and helping them grow is what we try to keep in mind. So we do our best to help new vendors start up, putting them to commercial kitchens, talking about what the health inspectors are going to want, referring them to liability insurance, all this kind of stuff that seems pretty dull, but it's actually super important if you're trying to start up a food business in this state." So the reason why I highlight that is because your festival is only going to be successful because of those vendor relationships. It's not just all the people that are coming, like obviously the attendees, that's critical too.

They are ultimately paying this entrance fee. They are what allows it to be sustainable and so on. But by focusing on the vendors, they've been able to build this strong community, this ecosystem that can then be replicated, seven annual food festivals that they're doing now, just in New Jersey alone, it sounds like. So I thought that was interesting. And I'll leave you with that today on this 950th episode of "Satisfiable School." As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes, including links to Sprout everywhere and anything else that I mentioned. All right, sidehustleschool.com, guess what? Slash 950, nine five zero. Thanks so much, my friends. We are just 50 episodes away from 1000th.

Can't wait to share that with you. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.