The Boring Saturday Business Nobody Is Running

So let's talk farmers markets. Now I haven't spoken about this publicly yet, but it's a pretty cool story. So my wife and a friend launched their second kids farmers market here in the Dallas Fort worth area about a month ago, they did their first last year and it was a big success. Their first one last year had 50 booths and it took them a couple months to sell all the booths. This one took them about a week to sell twice as many booths, a hundred, and it was a huge success and it just got me thinking more and more about farmers markets, not just from the perspective of a vendor at a market, but from the perspective of the person who owns the market. So I know a farmer's market is like the least sexy business out there, but the unsexy businesses are the best. They're the most profitable ones. They're the ones that people are sleeping on. So hear me out for a few minutes and then I'll get into my interview with Michael. Let me try to convince you to start a farmer's market. I'll tell you exactly how ours broke down. So let me be very clear. My wife and her friend slash business partner did like 95% of the work here. I vibe coded an app for the judges so that they could score the booths on three different age categories and several different factors. That's what I did. And then I showed up and film content. They did all the work, but I had a cool inside look into how it works and how much money it could make. If the one that we didn't just do were a nonprofit, we're doing this to help kids become entrepreneurs and not to be rich, but plenty of people could do this to get rich and it costs almost nothing to start. So the magic is in the overhead or the lack thereof. We had almost zero overhead. Now, typically your biggest overhead is going to be your lease or your rent or your land or like, where are you going to put this market? All these people to set up 10 by 10 tents, six foot plastic folding tables and chairs. Where are you going to do this? Well, you could do it like near city hall like I do here in my small town. But what my wife and her friend did is they went to a popular outdoor walkable shopping area here in the Dallas Fort Worth area. It's been here for about 15 years. It's got all the typicals cheesecake factory, Grimaldi's, pizzeria, burger place, frozen yogurt, grocery store, you name it. It's nice. It's cool. But these guys are in the business of occupancy. They want as close to 100% occupancy as possible. And they also have apartments. It's a mixed use complex. So they need things to be bustling. They need things to appear busy. And so it's in their best interest to host a farmer's market. And so I think it was my wife called the marketing manager or emailed them or whatever. And they were thrilled to be a part of this. They said, yeah, let's set a date a few months in the future. Let's rope off some parking spaces for you and we'll help you advertise it. We'll put it up on our electronic billboard that like a hundred thousand people drive by every day. That's not an exaggeration. It's right on the freeway. We'll send an email out to our list. Like we will advertise this market for you and we won't charge you for it. And we're going to give you gift cards to our shopping center, to all the businesses here to give to the judges just to say thanks for helping participate. So we did it last year. It was a huge success. And then we did it this year and it was a mega success. And I basically played zero role in marketing it either to the vendors or to the people that showed up. I posted about it on Instagram the morning of, I have no idea if it drove any traffic, but it was way too short notice to make a difference. So I don't want anyone to think that you have to have an audience to do this. It was packed and it's perfect because people are already coming to that shopping center. Most of the people at the market probably had no idea there was even a market there that day. They just went there to buy some Lululemon leggings or whatever and then saw a bunch of kids selling cool stuff. And so they started shopping, but a lot of people did know there was a market. So they came there and then they might've bought some Lululemon leggings as well, which the shopping center would be thrilled about. And then you have all the friends and family. You have these seven to 17 year old kids with a booth and their parents are posting about it on Facebook and Instagram and everywhere to friends and family and extended family. And they're showing up and driving business to the shopping center and to the other kids as well. So it's this beautiful win-win all the way around. Now here's what we did wrong. We provided tables and chairs. Never again, ever, ever, ever again. What you need to provide is just a space on the ground. Hey, here's a map. You take a laminated piece of paper with a number on it, take a sandbag, you throw the piece of paper on the ground, you throw the sandbag on it so it doesn't blow away. And then you tell people the day before the week before you are booth number six. And then around 8am all the vendors show up an hour before it starts. They set up, they set up their tent. We set out the tables and chairs beforehand, which was a big pain. And I won't get into it, but we're not going to do that again. And that was basically our only overhead. That was our only cost. And then they have an hour to set up or two hours or whatever they want or need. And then people start showing up at nine and it lasts until 12, one two o'clock in the afternoon. That's how it works. A lot of these kids made hundreds of dollars in profit. I think a few made over a thousand and then some kids made less than a hundred. It just didn't go well. And the kids that typically didn't do well were the ones that sold really, really cheap knickknacks, you know, like 3d printed objects or crafts or stuff that people buy to be nice, but they don't really need. And it's also the stuff that takes forever for these kids to make. So side note, I don't recommend you sell that stuff. The kids that did well sold higher ticket stuff. And in this case, higher ticket is like 20 to $50. My daughter sold $35 custom hats. She had an 80% margin and she made hundreds of dollars of profit in a few hours. Her overhead was a $70 hat pressing machine and some like $4 blank hats. She bought on Amazon and some patches and stuff like that. Great business. So I think there's even more opportunity to do this for adults and you could charge a lot more on booth fees as well. And this concept of doing it at an outdoor shopping market, that's not really a thing. Now I know tractor supply, they have markets on Saturdays and it's genius because it brings people to the tractor supply and tractor supplies usually aren't like in as good of location as a Walmart. They're usually kind of off the beaten path in more rural areas. And so it's a great way for tractors to market to the community, to let people know that they're there. And then also to have a high sales day on that Saturday because people are showing up by hot chocolate. Then they go in and buy a bunch of chickens or whatever. So tractor supplies kind of pioneering this along with my wife and her business partner. But at the end of this, the shopping center went up to my wife. Remember this is the second time they did it and said, this was amazing. How soon can we do this again? And they don't even have results yet. It's not like they signed a bunch of 10 year leases on the spot. Like, you know, commercial real estate doesn't work that way, but they just want bustling activity and that's what they got. So here's how the unit economics breakdown. First of all, this shopping center is not massive. I would say it's midsize for DFW, certainly on the lower end of midsize, but it could fit at least 200 booths and these booths are on sidewalks and in parking spaces and they also have a parking garage. So they have plenty of parking. That's not an issue. So a booth fee realistically at an average market is 50 to a hundred bucks. And remember, you don't need to provide anything. They bring their tent, their tables and their chairs and their supplies and their equipment. And if they need electricity, they just plug up to an outlet. And you know, the shopping center covers that. So 200 stall market, $100 a piece, that's $20,000 for five or six hours of work on a Saturday. Plus of course, like some prep work beforehand, some marketing. But in the case of my wife, like they have a Facebook page with like 300 followers. Instagram page was something tiny. Like they didn't have a big audience. They're just piggybacking on an existing audience of the shopping center. That's why it works. So you do one of these every weekend, put 10 grand profit in your pocket, 40 grand a month. I think that's possible or just be a vendor at these things or show up to one of these and see which booths are consistently busy and then copy that concept at the same market or at a different market. I really, really love the branded bag idea that you're about to hear in this interview. They've heard of Justin's nut butter, multi hundred million dollar brand sold in thousands of grocery stores that started at a farmer's market. Tate's bake shop. I think that's a billion dollar business. Farmers market, Burt's bees, green goo, sprouts markets that started as a farmer's market. I am actually going to finally launch my powder drink mix business that I've been talking about for years called busy juice at my local farmer's market. That's two minutes down the road from me on May 9th and I'm going to document that whole process. Buying the bag, sealing the bags, buying ingredients, mixing it in my kitchen, regulatory stuff. I'm going to have a live stream set up at the tent all day. I'm going to bring samples of drinks. People are going to taste it. I'm going to sell it for 30 bucks a bag. It's got like 70% profit margins. I'm going to eat my own dog food or drink my own powder drink mix in this case. So be looking for that video in late May or June. These markets are just an amazing place to get immediate real time feedback from strangers on your product. It doesn't have to be food. It could be cutting boards. It could be anything. Beef jerky. I guess that's food, but go find what works in the case of this guy I'm about to interview. He had no precedent for a pizza mix making a thousand or $2,000 in four hours at a farmer's market. That wasn't a thing. He didn't go copy anyone else. He just blazed his own trail and now he's got a multimillion dollar business on his hand a couple of years later. So hey, believe it or not, this is actually just a small segment of the full episode. If you want to watch the full episode of this, check out the link in the description.