Final Setup Walkthrough and Closing

Remember raly, we never liked when I was like, we' going lie In five. Oh, four. wait What's up guys? Welcome back to another scintillating radio program called The Valour Coffee podcast. I'm Ross Walters Co founder of Valor Coffee. This is Ethan Rivers to my right, your left And to your right My left is Joey Christopinelli? O longest tenured employee And the catering director, your official title was catering zar. That's CZ AR. Look up It's true. It looks great. It looks great on a resume. Yeah. Come on What are you sending our resumes? Yeah, man, I'm sending our resumes, guys. If anybody's shhout out to indndeed dot comot They welcome my job listing. Welcome to your live exit interview, J. Yeah. this is it, man. This is It's been a great run, boyy, come on. We here to navigate the nuance of coffee carts in twenty twenty six on our YouTube channel, we have released, you know, probably under ten videos about coffee cards, but they're always our most popular videos? Why? Because apparently there's a lot of people on YouTube and in the world that want to start a coffee cart Um, and so in our company Really the mantra of this YouTube channel is full transparency When we were starting out We were nineteen years old. It was twenty sixteen We didn't really have anyone to help us. A lot of times when we would ask people for help They didn't. understandably because, you know, you gott to give your time and all that sort of thing. But we are here wanting to give our time excited to bear all for people. that not barl in that way U that's for that's for the Anatreon realiz it was that kind of b for the first Patreon. But Honestly, I think the more transparent we can be The real win is convincing people not to start something that they're not supposed to start Thanks son Because then they don't take on unnecessary risk that they should have never taken on in the first place There's a lot of people that listen to this that operate coffee shops that are considering adding coffee carts to their business as another vertical for their business So we can talk about that U We started back in twenty sixteen, as I said, as a coffee cart The coffee cart private event landscape was much different back then and has, you, ten years later has significantly grown, it seems like You can't swing a cat and not hit somebody that's thought about starting a coffee cart. So We're going to share are numbers of our sales and our average booking and our pricing We'll talk about some of the rough costs involved with operating an event, how to get leads. Come on. We're just gonna to try to cover It all. yesterday on my Instagram, I posted prompt to ask questions about coffee carts And we got twenty six questions. So we're not going to have time to get to all those, but I've I've had my friend Claude rank All of them from like you know, early stages kind of thinking about starting something all the way to like actively operating A coffee cp Are you guys ready Did you give a bo for Joey? why you know why is he sitting at the table? Besides caterings are, I mean, well, you're coming up in five years with Valor. Yeah. You had coffee experience before, you were killing in the cafes And then you've been running The catering arm Yeah Catering department four. Um, a year and a half earar and. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So you got lot changed in that ear and hf and. You got some experience on your belt now. Yeah, yeah. So much has changed yet somehow 's all still the same You're still here man.ust trying to deal with people and manage your intake as much as you can early on Again, the title was Catering Tsar, which is just an absolute generalist and any small business owner will be able to relate to that. Whenever you're scaling your business and you want to hand something off to someone You kind of just have to give them like all of it Mbe like, yo figure this out. Yeah. so I'm going to be on my yacht I'm gonna be on my yacht. Classic owner movement. counting all of our profit from our own coffee shops. so much profit. Making be sixties Come on and Early on it was like Joey, You're everything from cooking the event and planning to staffing, not even staffing the event, like you're working the event Yeah Um, maintenance of the carts Inbox. Everything in Um We'll get into this a bit later There was this point where we just had to take the risk and jump off the cliff where we only had One event per week Like is's that But we were like, we know that If we can get someone focusing on this full time It is going to grow That is not the only reason we thought it would grow. But that was one of the main ones. So I want to start us off. Um, with a question that I think is very pertent to a lot of people that are listening and was certainly pertinent to us. We got this on our Instagram Is the coffee cart market getting over saturated And how relevant is that to someone's decision in starting a coffee card mayaybe a quick backup ten years ago, I would say There was little to no coffee carts in our area And there's probably many more now I think you have the do you ever catch people like saying I'm looking around at quotes? Oh yeah, all the time. Okay.. I think The answer is probably yes and no Um there are a lot of coffee carts or a lot there are more coffee carts than there ever have been However, if you If you're able to have a brand and market yourself in a certain way I think that It's not really going to matter. Also depends on your market, man Like if you live, Like us here in Atlanta versus like LA. Two birds one stone, another question was Optimal market for a coffee cart can carts be profitable in towns under eighty thousand people? You know just At that point, you have to decide what your pricing structure is Um If it's just like you and a homie or two Yeah, you can definitely be profitable If you're trying to scale You're going to inevitably have to think about a bigger market down the line, but That's not everybody's vision I have homies who have one cart and they want one cart and then I have some friends who who have Uh, you know, seventy carts seven states and They're doing it. You know, it's epic. Um It just depends on what you want. So I mean that yeah, kind of goes hand in hand with the first question of like, if you know yourself and you know your business and you You have vision for this is what I want it to look like Not that that can't evolve later on, but startart with that vision and have confidence in that vision. I think it'll It'll work out regardless of market. Clarifying question. we're talking about carts doing well, carts doing events Um, We mostly speaking about like we're getting paid to go serve drinks because my thought would be, you know, small town. You'd probably be trying to look for like recurring places to go sell coffee. Yeah, that's true. But we never do that. Yeah We do not do that. It's if you come to me and you want us to sell. 's in immediate now. We're just not interested There's just not enough return At least in my experience, I mean, maybe you get that one super hot event where you sell a bunch. But then I'd be like the farmer' market, things like that. For every farmer's market, and again, Atlanta has a great farmmer's market scene. I'm sure we could do some business there But there are also at least two or three other coffee carts already there. Sure. you know, part of part of marketing is is Zigging where everyone else's eags, right? Like trying to counter the market. and so that feels a little redundant to me And to me Whenever you sell coffee to someone, they're expecting a twelve ounce beverage That That's a of coffee shop quality Coffee carts just aren't set up to do that at scale at volume and To me, I just think like if you were to take the average of average sales of Coffee cart farmerss market It wouldn't be over a thousand dollars, even at a really busy one. I mean, maybe I'm wrong But even if that is the case, like average, your profit model is is a fraction of what it is in private catering. So as always on this podcast We're only going to speak from our experience of what we have actually lived and share from that If you want to dive deeper on this topic, I would highly recommend checking out the FlashQotes podcast which is a software that we use to structure hour catering program, and we would be nothing without it. And they have a podcast that is compleomtely geared towards people that are starting coffee carts, so definitely check that out. Um But Moving on from that topic, maybe just before we keep going down questions Let's review some of our numbers of what are catering operation has done in the last year. So a little bit of context around it. Like I said, we started pretty early on, but then we just stopp doing coffee carts in general because We just were convinced that it was not a profitable business model And we were convinced that like we, you know, we're not going to get leads. who even are these people U If someone's going to focus on this side of the business, it's going to be one of the three owners. We don't have time Well, in twenty eighteen, we used our cart to be a coffee shop. Yeah. So and then We also didn't have like a a base of operations Correct. Yeah. so we just stopp doing it And then we were like, you know what Let's try again And so U we did a little bit of groundwork to get a build a new cart and Get some systems in place and then that's when you stepped into the role in March of twenty twenty five Yes, right. So I stepped in technically uh like halfway in. in October of twenty four because we was doing half and half. so I'd work someome here and then I was like one foot in at the cafe and just balancing it and then eventually by March, then we shiifted over fully to Kittering. That's when you went full time. Yeah.ah So from March of twenty twenty five to March of twenty twenty six, can you run us through some of the numbers that S. We our total revenue was two hundred thirty nine thousand dollars hundred and seven and thirty four cents. And sure probably save the dollar for later on in that but. You get it So two Yeah two hundred forty K pretty Yeah two hundred forty K one hundred and fifty eight bookings, average booking, about fifteen hundred. And ninety four percent paid in full. So we're still wighing on a couple homies. that's just to be honest, that's discounts That'ales? Okay. so A metric that a lot of people want to know and especially cooffee shop owners that talk to me about starting a coffee catering branch is how many bookings per week do you guys do So As as you've gone about This process, how has that evolved and grown? Yeah. So, okay March In March of ' twenty five We had three events. I'm looking at it right now. March of twenty six We had thirty events So things have changed a lot ten X. They have in fact ten X U great problem to have Oh God On average, I'd say we probably do about fourour to five events a week, somewhere between like four and seven, just depending on the busyiness obbviously it comes in waves and I would say I'm still learning what those waves are Like we kind of talked a little bit about this offline of how We haven't had necessarily a full year Uh, like you know, actual like calendar year to to learn how people respond Yeah, based on your clientele Yeah. you know, if it's like a lot of corporate stuff are the summers chill. Yeah, and you know and it has been. it's always There's always something new every single month for the last year There has been something new to my role or something different to my role. It is complete brand new every month. But it's been awesome. I mean we've gotten to work with some really cool people and I mean, one hundred and fifty eight bookings, pretty sick So I you know, I think we the thing that I rest on a lot is that there's still a lot more room for growth. Yeah. Yeah. So if we are at thirty events months Let's just say twenty five at twenty five minutes per month A an average booking of fifteen hundred. Anybody know what twenty five times fifteen hundred is That's thirty seven five and revenue per month Times There's twelve months in a year. Times u twelve. Y is four hundred fifty thousand So what you' you going for?t Don't you have a goal set and what is that? Yeah, u the main goal this year was four hundred K in revenue. That is ideally what we will hit. We're on track still little bit behind but it's hard to really say that simply because We like with the summer Things are a little bit chiller You see a lot of corporate clients, they don't want to necessarily spend money for their offices because you have a bunch of employees traveling Yada yada yada Bye. Something I'm learning is that every time I think it's going to be a chill month Something happens and it is not going to be a chill mod. H there is probably not I think There's no such thing as a chill month in Catater Yeah. I was surprised with how last minute these bookings are. Yeah. I thought it would be way more months in advance But that was because early on we really focused on weddings. Yeah. and people book those out in advance, whereas we've really pivoted to corporate. Yeah. That's a lot more of like, hey, next month, we have Yeah or next week We have this employee appreciation thing. We need to get a coffee cart stat. Yeah, I mean, we I was looking at July like a month ago and I was like, wow, there are like two events for July. What's going on? And then There's now like twelve events for July. in like a two week turnaround which is tough You have to have a good team. You have to have people in place that you can trust. and that are going to show up with excellence. I don't need perfection, I need excellence S with your best self U And I think when you have a team that you can trust and a team that's willing to be flexible because that is just the nature of our game Like yeah a lot of our Yeah, a lot of our baristas come from cafes, right? And they are used to I work Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Fridays and Saturdays and I don't work the rest of the week And in catering, you can't always get that. You have to be okay going, this week, I'm working a Monday and a Wednesday and Thursday and then next week I'm working a Tuesday, Friday, Saturday. Like you just have to be okay with the flexibility. Now All that being said We love weekends and I want to be able to give weekends to our team H but you still really have to be okay with justust the the waves of the business, right? Like you Yeah, so contextually you're pulling on to Valor cafes for some peeps. Yeah, you're building a network of Bruceays and We're operating on two carts right now. Yeah. two point five That' kind it's kind of a loaded question. So we have a three headed monster, if you will, Of O two cafes and then a team of specifically contracted baristas that we use Th those are almost equal now. whichich is great because that's been part of the shift that we wanted to make. h One of the goals this year was to create a sustainable And what's not sustainable is a bunch of baristas who are working full time in cafes like helping out when they can Right? So That has been a really big part of our growth track Developing team members, the way I've always looked at it in the cafe sense is that catering is kind of like the Avengers We're going to treat you really, really well And we're going to know that you're going to show up and you're going to kill it. You're going to fight aliens and you're going to fight aliens. And by aliens, we mean peoplee who work in corporate spaces who are really sad they just want Really? and some joy And so u Yeah, I think that That is awesome And some of those people have chosen to transition a little bit out of their roles more into the catering space. And then some of like honestly, this iss just me talking to head coaches of our cafes us kind of collaborating onm like, hey, who can you likeike who's kind of phasing out and phasing more indicatering? who whoo do you need to like kind of hold it down I trade deals? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we try and put together the best trade package possible.. A lot of draft picks going out But that's okay U An fry agency I guess that's kind of like our contractors contractors. Yeah, yeah, contontractors. Yeah, yeah, that's free agent signings And they' they're killing that right now. So that's great. Let's let's keep on these like early stage coffee card questions, okay. So This is really tactical is it worth investing in a branded cart versus DIY. cheaper options. And I think this could be a good Oh good time to such good question Good time to talk about simple carts. Yeah. good time to talk about the the demand or lack thereof for custom branded carts and our evolution throughout the years of just like the cart in general. So what have we learned I would say if you're looking to get a custom branded cart I would not do that. I think that there' we can we define custom l Yeah there y custom bnded c. I mean Cacter. that has your logo on it. permanently. Yeah. Like what you inherited. I think that if you do that, like what I inherited, which by the way, what They're great. loveove these guys. I'm talking two months. I was like, we gott to get this card out of here. It was giant and it was metal and it was we had to drive in a trailer. It was just talk about not scalable So I'm grateful for leaders who let me do what I needed to do And we sold it Um And now we work with simple cards which is great They're awesome. They've been really, really good H U how do I they're a great tool for growth If you're somebody like we, I think where we would like to head is building, fabricating our own We're not there yet That is a like mini goal this year of hopefully we can Create that, but we're not there yet. Um Simple carts have been awesome for us last year. They are a great way to get into your market and into the game, especially if you are in a market where there's not a lot of other options Dude, you' It's easy. So highly recommend Um But yeah, as far as branding goes, you are leaving a lot of money on the table if you get a cart with permanent branding don't do that Eespecially if you're trying to get into a corporate space So many companies want their logo, they want their experience My My side of the business, and listen, Valor's brand is amazing That is why we're able to do so many great things. In my side of the business Nobody cares Yeah they want cooffee cart They don't care who it is. Are you going to show up? Are you going to be excellent? Are you going to give them a great time? and are you going to be in their budget That's what people care about They barely know how to talk about coffee So that's not what I'm going to focus on with them What they care about is client experience, they care about. Qite frankly, joy and a good deal. And so how are we going to Be valor in a space that China doesn't care about us. But that's what makes it so fun and engaging is you're like I mean we're not character. Yeah when we started the cafe when we started, I've been there for a long time. I wasn't there at the beginning. but U when when when y'all started the cafe, you say we? we whatever. You know, they're I remember working in the cafe and there being this joy of someone who had never heard about us before. coming in and their mind being blown. They were like, whooa, coffee can be nice This is sick. They're not going to judge me because I want a vanilla latte Everybody wants a vanilla ladete. This is not shocking We should be kind to people regardless of whether or not they have the same preferences or depth of knowledge as us, right? with the cart I just get to do that all over again It's a bunch of people who have never experienced valor And so yeah, I give them joy anyway All that being said We don't need to highlight our brand What we need to do is make Quite frankly. Well then we need to experience hypes the brand because What is this? Where are you guys from? We need to get in the door and when we're in the door, people are going to love us because of the people we hire and our culture and the way we show up and the way we care and the way we serve them It's going to be the best coffee they've ever had And it's in their office. Yeah. That's amazing, dude. All that being said Our newest approach when it comes to custom carts is we use a Cricut vinyl printer U, It's pretty great I like it. I mean, I'm going to be real with you It's a hassle It can be a lot of some of your moments of frustration, I've I witnessed are you trying to per evenly put a vinyl on your cart. It is unforgiving. and let's put it that way. Unforgiving. But the results speak for themselves The results do speak for themselves. People love it and it highlights their brand, which that is the goal is, you know, client care Um Maybe there's a better way to do it I don't know the better way yet. U I'll keep you pusting But hand painted. Hly yeah, hand painted. U Highly recommend the Cricet. It has been a really good tool for us and The only the only other issue is when clients asked me to do gradient logos there's nothing more frustrating on this planet me. than a gradient logo, I think. Yeah was Chat Probs, right Chat, clip that. Oh yeah. so when it comes to pricing, when it comes to What you were saying about brand, I think the key distinction is that Coffee catering is a service business, whereereas cafes our retail business And then our roasted coffee is a consumer packaged goods business. Right? So those are three different arenas we operate in spepecifically with catering One of the reasons why you can charge the prices you charge is because it's a service business. Yeah coming to them. And so that's, you know, it's just kind of further driving home the point of like You're starting a coffee catering company or you're starting a cart because it's a lower barrier of entry to have your own business and coffee Don't go the route of farmers markets and think that you're going to makeake a living, let alone have employees. If I have a question for Joey on that, I remember When we were talking to people a while ago sometometimes when they're trying to like get pricing sorted they would And it's fine. they would use that model like, well coffes are you going to make? and can we pay based off of that? Like Yeah, I think only I think there's going to be two hundred people, but I think only fifty people are going get coffee. so how much would like you coming out and making fifty coffees cost? And it's like Honestly, whether we make like fifty or two hundred and fifty That's not a huge swing on like the costs of this whole thing happening cost, this whole thing happening is your salary . setetting it all up the cart itself And then it just moves like the needle moves a little bit based on your cost of goods sold Do you have conversations like that? Mm. Oh, hundred hundred percent all the time. U Yeah, I think a lot of it is just, u A lot of it is probablyrobably just the people' side like treating every Treating every quote that comes in across my desk Uh, treating them all with the same level of like, intention and humanity That can be really tough, but I do think it's worth it and Uh, It's like community. Yeah. It like everybody everybody needs something different or wants something different. Um And so yeah, if you're someone that comes to us and you're like, hey We are having a two hundred person event, only fifty we think are going to drink coffee. I'm willing to talk to you like that. I'm just going I'll shoot straight with you. I know our minimums, I know what we can provide But if you If you finalize fifty people We're probably only going to bring materials for like seventy five people What I'm not going to do is if you submit a quote and then you book the quote for fifty people and then you have two hundred and fifty people qu would have look a lot different. And so I'm just not I would rather not play that game. we had When we started out, we had a lot of Not a lot, but we had a few moments where Like a client would book us for way less guests or way less time And then we would get there and in the heat they wanted more And that's just a it's terrible for our baristas. It stresses everybody out And my goal as a director is more care for her team than it is anythingthing else. It's like team client. Ies. Love that Joe Um, to this. Well This might be really good for people that operate cop cards What do you do when someone asks you to stay longer Um I mean Again, it's contextual, man Um If it is a Good situation and we have the materials And the baristas can with their schedule Yeah, then we're I I give them the ability to say yes to that They typically will text me and check in I love that always try and just affirm our team because I trust our team Um There have been situations where it was not. it was a little bit more aggressive and the client was was not really kind And point, we have a harassment policy in our contract. And so at that point, if it starts getting up to that line of, hey O rist that feels a little bit uncomfortable and may be forced to do something U They know that they can talk to me and I mean, I've had there was one time I was like, Hey, just put me on the phone with them And and I'll I'll tell him off essentially You know, it's like, I will I will put the foot down because I have no that's my job. My job is to handle the people that are uh, upset sometimes And very rare, but it does happen. likeike that's just life. so Um Out of those out of those one hundred and fifty eight, what do you think? probablyrobably like five thirty? Yeah, not it's not It's not crazy Most of the time, it's not crazy. because if you show up As a real person I think that that changes everything, right? If I'm able to Yeah, if I'm able to get you on a phone call, And you just realize that I'm a guy and I hopefully make you feel like you're just a guy. reggardless of your status. We've gotten to work with some really cool companies and we've also done a lot of baby showers You know what I mean? It's like two very, very different environments. Yeah The thing that connects us all is that we're people And so if I can show up, to every single person and make them feel like a real person That I think that that paves the way for our team to have a great experience and then the client to have a great experience Yeah, so what I'm hearing we don't have this like Yes, if you'd like to extend us for another hour, we'll charge you another invoice for three hundred dollars. That does happen Like I am going to charge you probably You know, I'll be straight up with them.' like, Hey, we're you know this how much you call is Yeah it costs this much. Yeah, yeah. sometimes if they need us for fifteen more minutes Sure There's just there's a lot of flexibility with with And that's like the beautiful thing about it Yeah is Yeah, if you need a little bit, I'm totally willing to flex. Yeah It just yeah, totally depends. But I hope that kind of help sureure. No, I just I feel like the Those are like the what's going to happen hypotheticals that I feel like a lot of people would consider when they're having a cart, you know, because it is like this service And someone's like, can we have more service? Yeah. And I'll say scalability wise. Me treating everybody like they're human is errible Like it's really hard now Like I I am My job is constantly just responding. And even then, I'm not able to always get to everything Um That is that is probably the next step of scaling for us once we figure out the cart thing. Um my dear sweet friend, Isaiah who handles all of our barista coms and He does essentially like concierge post bookings So I will talk to them. We'll set up a sale book with us and then Isaiah kind of takes it from there. He takes the baton and he talks through different details of their events, make sure that our team is kind of prepped Um he he has unlocked so much for us and given me the opportunity. Yeah, shout out to Isaiah. Let's gog He's unlocked so much for our business because he's given me the opportunity to just Pone in on sales Um But then yeah, the next step is How do we split that up and have more sales, like more salespeople So who knows what twenty twenty seven holds, but that That's probably where we're headed That and a lot more carts, man. We got a We got to expand pretty fast, so. Okay. All right. So on the note of carts catering and coffee. That's why. Let's talk about espresso machines. Cool, so We've always done Lamarzoo GS three s We have and They are great performers They are heavy U And so for our third cart, we're going to go with a lineia mini We've seen that people use Um What is that? What is that machine called The Luca Luca A fifty three. Yeah, ye Luca magic. Yeah. and they We had one in our space for a while because one of our one of the people on our team started their own coffee cart and he had it for his cart, Aiden Um then once we find out, you know, obviously we let them go. Yeah That's crazy No, I'm kid But apparently they work They do. They're way They're way cheaper. I say apparently they work because they're like way cheaper. They And it's lo ses. Yeah it's like thousand dollars, two thousand dollars It's like two. like G could be like eighty four hundred it's beyond Is it eight thousandy four hundred now? Yeah, GS three is at least eight thousand four hundred. I don't have eighty four hundred dude It's nuts. It's just yeah. And it's eight four hundred And it's so heavy which the more events you do Most of the time they're going to be solo barista events. Okay And so our context We have a lot of lovely ladies who work in our cafes, and they work For me in catering And I want to be clear Okay, so don't come at me They brought it up to me that it was heavy, okay I trust them and they are empowered For I love them Those are my dogs The catering baddies We'll li forever All that being said, ammen. They brought it up and they were like, yo, this is funny thing de. This things like seventy five pounds not filled And so it was like, hey, I get that. I want to make this U accessible to everybody And we didn't necessarily talk about it, but I've been kind of jumping around it with simmbple carts O our biggest shift for growth was how do we put this whole kit, everything that you need into your car and not into a trailer that you then have to drive and we have to train someone We there are some companies that do the Like trailer guy meets Barista guy And for us, it just didn't make I didn't like that approach, but just wasn't what I felt like works for us. So Um The goal was how can we put everything into your car. We fit stuff in a camera That is a classic line that I say all the time. It' like We want to get smaller We want to get more efficent. I would love to get in a smart twenty seven. I want to figure out how to put our whole setup in a smart car That would be so fun to No way, dude. Dude, There's no way try me your seat. Try me. I think we could. I don't know how, but I'm willing to, you know, give him my best shot. That's what I'm here for. That's the tenacity we're looking for. one hundred percent. We'll get it, don. J just put on top. Okay it did. Anyway. Oh, all that being said, that's why We are tryrying out something that isn't a GS three because the women were like, hey would love something a little bit lighter. What are the What are the concerns of a linear. Uh I mean In theory isn't as fast as a GS three Um Well that's what I've heard is that it is Yeah, that's But isn't vole metrics, right It just it doesn't have volume metrics. That seems to be the only concern on my mind. Can you steam and pull at the same time? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can. I had one friend who I asked about it. And he was like, it's a little slow And that's that's just where that's coming from TBH. It's a lot of asking friend if you're that friend. Comment below your lineia mini. The thing that changed for me is I worked an event with A friend uh on their cart. because they had a lennium mini, and I was like, let me see. And, um It was autumn It was great. So that changed my mind completely. This is a little bit bigger picture, but you know, with the trend of coffee, do you think people are just getting more eye drinks? So this idea of like steaming all the time Yeah is probably just like on this decline that like people get less and less hot drinks. I don't think so. I'll be honest. Not in the event world. In the event world. In the cafe world probably Not for most corporate people are drinking hot C fair you Hot Americana. You're pretty much like wazzoo right In inside. Hot Americanas. Oh yeah. How do you do that? well with water Okay, smarty pants. But youre you don't have like a hot water tower Yeah we have a hot water tap And then depending on the context of the event, we'll bring like a kettle so we can heat up hot water in Be most of the time because you're not doing a drip don't do drip anymore That was another big change for us When I started, we would show up early enough to brew like a few pots of drip, bring the cambro. just to dump out the old just to get rid of it. Yeah Nope It's okay. It's espresso bar. It's okay. Yeah. it will be fine. They will survive without drip. So many people ask for drip and you go, Americana, okay? And they go, yeah And here's an idea, makeake your American' is good. And it's it's good You don't have to Like you don't have to think about this if you have a good product. S. ye, but of sorry Of course, someone who loves drip is going to be a little disappointed by an Americano. But sure they're gonna to be like, o, well, this is a coffee cart in my office. This is cool. You know Yeah. And then you have to think about the broader perspective of the operation It is a hassle to bring drip and ye. It would get item. We put it. Yeahah, the temperature is a concern. We tried it for a while A lot of times it would get ordered maybe twice. maybe. Um, sometimes not at all and we bring this big thing of you know, big camber of coffee. So on the note of water, someone asked Best water option if you can't afford filtration. Uh, and I I think If you're running this coffee cart illegally out of your house, which a lot of people are Be they they don't have a base of operations. Hey, what' you gonna to do? And we did that for a while Allegedly People said we did it for a while I would go if you really want to be coffee excellent I would go get reverse osmosis water from the grocery store. and remineralize it with third wave water packets They have my five gallon. friendly packets, right? Y. Yeah. Yep. someone said Can I borrow twelve thousand dollars U all of this money goes to y'all, I don't know Right. This is for your this is the yacht funund Yeah, well, that wouldnt have to come out of the yacht fund. Yeah. Someone also said, how fast did they go It look like the carts. I mean, depends. Is it like a flat surface U If it's a hill, pretty fast. pretty fast. Health Someone also said health permits have slowed us down advice on both permits and momentum I guess's about permits. F In case you don't know most health departments or Department of A requires you have a base of operations, which is a dedicated Establishment. That's not your house unless you live in some sort of small town and they have some sort of cottage license where You can do it out of your kitchen, but I think that's I've never heard of that actually working Hanging out in coffee carts And of course becausecause so many people, including us in twenty sixteen get into coffee carts because it's a low barrier of entry They're like, o, all I need to do is, you know put up ten, fifteen, twenty K for a cart and then I'm off to the races not realizing that you also need the base of operations Um a few different options and you can weigh in on this too you've heard if you've heard of other approaches. I've heard people reenting time in commissary kitchens We have a A local wholesale partner here and now U I believe that's what they do Or they did that for a period of time and they were able to get fully certified and licensed Um, you know, we're in the position now where we have a warehouse not primarily because of our catering but because of our roasting and our just headquarters in general. So we have You know, we have the mop snink, we have the three comp synink We have the hand sink, we have non porous surfaces Shout out Just the basic all my non porous surfaces. Yeah. whereerever you are All across this world. You know who you are Yeah, was we have all those things. I've, you know, I have heard of people building out their garage to be certified and that works. It's kind of awesome. But I would just call your local health authorities and say, hey, My friend is thinking about starting a coffee cart ot me My friend. What are my options? And another question got at this. but they were like When is the health department going to start recognizing coffee carts as their own Not hot dog carts. I mean ye 'Cacause we're a food truck. Yeah. and we're not any of these other things. In twenty sixteen, they had no idea what it was T years later, they probably would have more of an idea. They have more of an idea. one thing I was going to throw onto this fire is Um county by county laws can really change. Oh yeah. We the only time we've ever gotten kicked out an event in Gwinette and that county they had specific laws about popping up And they were like, getet out of here, buddy we got out I heard the story. I mean, it wasn't really I was hiding in front you it just was it didn't really like affect us too much. The cop was chilling and he was like You can finish up serving these people. It was like most of the event was already done So it didn't affect anything. was a catering event? Yeah it was just catering event. It was for an auto dealership and Most of the time, this is another I guess add on to not selling. your coffee, M of the time if you're selling your coffee, there are different laws in place than if You are giving away your coffee because someone else has purchased it. Um Sing versus nding. Yes. that is a big part of this too So highly recommend at least considering that Check into your local laws and that includes county. You're telling me a police officer showed up to the auto dealership. He was driving by Shout out to Trip shhot, Sophia, she was working this event Um, and she's so good under pressure That girl is so she's so rock solid. It was awesome. But he's driving by it. He just throws on the lights Falls into the auto dealership. It was like yupper me U Hello. Um We did not have a permit we didn't know. I don't know if you need permit to cater in each separate county. I don't know the answer. Well when a police officer is looking at you and going Do you have a permit You better hope you got a permit Um I honestly crazy. Yeah from what I can gather you u here. in Georgia They tend to classify coffee carts now as food like food and beverage carts And so they prefer you to have permanent Like I know with Thoughtorton, I've had to jump through some hoops before Um justust depends. againg, a lot of it depends on where you're popping up to Like we had a I was just emailing this person. They they wanted us to pop up outside of the Capitol Building for like some event and we're probably not going to be able to do it because of permitting um, there are just certain like really specific ways that they want you to serve when you're at like a government building anyway But we've served inside the Capitol before multiple times. So But yeah Yeah I some I got some stories. before we wrap up, we do we do need a couple like where we been moments. Sure. whereere we've been. We're just getting started, man. Come on, dog. I want this to be. I can I can try and rapid fire more. I'm sorry I'm long way. Let's rapid fire some quest. Come on, I got this. I'm ready. I'm locked in. Rro I would just sayQuies De Give me with some questies, boy. How many menu items is manageable on a mobile setup and what does a typical menu look like for your cart A whole menu, we have a big menu. We have Chai, we have matcha, we have a tea sweite. It's actually easy if you just have materials, you have a good place to store these things. Green te sweet Ferbal te. A sweet of. Not a SW you heard sweet tea. You've heard of sweet tea How about a suite of teas? anyway Um We do all of it. we do the whole nine yards. In fact, that is one of my biggest sales points to potential clients It' like we are going to bring the full coffee shop to you. You don't have to pay extra for matcha. If you choose to structure your payments like that, that's great. But we just say, hey, Matcha is going to be there, Chai's going to be there. whatever you want. You know, this kind of circles back around to the whole like guest count thing when we started and your approach has always been, I'd love for it to be unlimited And for us, was just with how many events we're doing, it was kind of like, well, that feels kind of impossible So when it came to my sales strategy with clients Um, whether it was possible or not because it is in fact possible But it just became a kind of a burden on our team. Um I swapped from saying unlimited service to highlighting all of the different options that our menu going to have. It just helped bring the conversation around to a more manageable Um So I don't know if that makes sense, but It has really helped in sales. So Like both like both are going to happen. Yeah most likely. Yeah, but let's hype up the variety over the Yes, exactly. Let's talk more about variety, less about quantity. Most people I mean, if it's a wedding, wedding context, they want unlimited. They love that verbage. Yeah corporate is a lot more like, oh, well, that person wants this and that person's going so they're just thinking more about variety. And they got to get back to their desk. So they have that time constraint whereas a wedding is just like wide open You know, that open in a pouse six focus Pless wedding W. Shout out to the Harlist. Let's go back to someone also asked about pricing and like the different add ons available. Yeah, I love it. That sort of thing. So how do we do that We love add ons. We have four major add ons, I believe. Um custom cart Custom drink which sometimes doubles as custom menu Again, depends on the client If they're asking for like some really simple stuff, I'm down to be flexible with them. Um We have a latte art printer That is really cool. Which one? Well, we have two. We have a ripple And we have the Evebot which is essentially just like the China version We needed it in a pinch and low key, it might be better. They're both I'm sorry, made was shred and designed Yes, Sh up. I love the ripple. It's really great. It's a very it's kind of like Apple Android vibes. where like you bought dude, you just hit a button, I think starts frinting. you don't have to You're not having to go through any design every time, you never know what's going to put on there, but it's just isn' in anything. Anyway, All how much do you our printers awesome. How much you charge for all those things? I know you're not done. four thing is pastries. How much do I charge? U It's changed over the year cururrently we Chge one hundred and fifty dollars for a custom cart We charge two hundred and fifty dollars for Latte Art printers U, we charge Oh gosh, I believe it's four dollars per pastry We do a suite of mini pastries, not a S U ITE. gotta love sweets. sweets for Days Um We do a bunch of mini pastries, our baking team, shout out Good Neighbor Market. they're great U They are really flexible and awesome and they love me and I love them. Um That's four bucks per pastry. custom drink is, I believe three dollars per guest So o, just depends on the situation with custom drink There's a lot more like creativity that can come with it. and I really that's part of the sale is, hey, whatever you want If you say jump, I say he high And we're going try and we're going try and accomplish Christ. I'm trying to accomplish this. I mean, dude, next week we're doing a cookie butter iced latte with cold foam and a biscf crumble on top for a client. Very excited. It's going be delicious. It's a company called Salt Box Sell boat, sell boox. This is the part. G sry. No, it's okay. We've just they're returning customer Also a really big thing about corporate They'll use you again You know who's not going to use you again? hopefully that person that got married M' using for a baby shower. Yeah. by Yeah. baby shower. wedding the baby. S peline wedding baby shower corporate It's all there. It's all there. it's all. All have. Wii it's a salt box set that up. Yeah. Yeah it's just the pipeline If you're getting any value out of this Subscribe Thank you. Backs to the show Before we move on We have another video. Uh here on our channel You know, we actually have our videographer And YouTune director. Dom in studio today And we also have he just clapped for himself. I just want to like let the record. they climb for each other. Our full time editor who you trust him undisclosed state other than Georgia Grayson Thanks for being here, man U guys, would you guys mind at this part of the video putting a little link to the U the video where I'm sitting at a desk talking aboutart course. Poffee cart course. Yes. Poffee Cart courseorse. That one's good guys. That one's good. It's a little bit more U highly tactical do this, do this tactical and it And it u wants of coffee yourrains in the air if you want a coffee. My word is tactical, Joey's word is sweet, okay We have our words We're going to use it. Mine's like yeah, check out, check out that video. It's going to go even deeper on these topics we're talking about When it comes to Coldber concentrate U versus espresso. me talk about batched espresso a little bit Yeah We haven't tried that yet I was gonna I want I want to try it. We haven't But I'm very intrigued as to what that could unlock for us. But it does mean that you'd have to pay someone to stand there and they're and like rip shot. And so I don't know if that is actually well wise, but maybe that's the question is h you have to pay someone to make the cold brew So you know, imagine a world where where we make Colra obsolete for our kegs And we also make colder obsolete for our coffee carts. You know, does it equal out you know, the prep time for batch espresso versus Cber concentrate. I don't know Uh That's add an E sis and then then see how long it takes to break even on it. That's actually Proably the way to go. Fair enough P is We use Coldber cononcentrate for our icice lattes and our cold brew. and that's awesome. We love you. On catering events down the cafes. On catering events and that that's really divided our team. Oh, I'll tell you that much. It's been just a point of contention Some Barce says love it Other beriests hate it I of hey, they can al that. They just for whatever reason, they think it's annoying to bring And I'm like, bro, grow up You know? Yeah. U So we set we set our foot down. aboutb a month ago. We had a We had a catering What did we call it? Okay I said this earlier. We call all of our catering baristas batties because why not? Um So we had a batty bonanza if you will Was that what was also going the catering all stff? I knew were gonna bring it up. So I was like, are you going to Are you going to the All staff tonight and I was like the all staff? I didn't know what else just called it. I was like, when a specific department is meeting, I don't think you would call that an all staff. I'm like, It's the only staff that matters I'm sorry cafe. don't I don't agree with what I just say. Remember where you canr. I know I gott I got to go back to my roots, man. You gotta go you to book me. sllit Um Yeah, so we had a batdy bonanza Nice. And we we set some some structure to what is And that structure is. We are bringing Colbw concentrate to everyvent. It was, hey, guys, I know that this has been a question mark But it's not one anymore. It's a period Al also, we shifted to building your own bens which was a huge shift for us For a long time, Isaiah, the Pp man prep all of the bs for events and now Our baristes come in and they prep the event themselves. What's in the bin? What's in the bin? H Napkins S. trrash can, trash bags. It's getting really tactical. Hey, I don't use that word There's a suite of things from the bin There's so tactical items. There's so many tactical items. It's crazy Yeah, what else What rel to the event. Yeah, yeah, all of our ye, all of our materials, like all of our consumables including like Is there a certain benefit to the team doing it day of versus Pp Man Um The real benefit is workload We've been trying to free up the Isaiah role, the concierge role to do more client care No we just were at a point where This is not sustainable because it was either he or I coming in on the weekends and having to prep the bnds for our team And that it was just like, dude, the weekends. I mean, I worked I worked almost probably six to seven days Don't do it. Don't do it.on'told. You can do it. hold off.'s unk. But no, I worked I was working way too much Um And that was really unsustainable That's why you got the sustainer. That's sustainable. Yes, yes. and now It's successful Do we have a a cart sitting over there right now. That's like, and it's Grab zero Primal phase. Yeah I don'asis. Yeah, we should I think I want to at the end of this program If everybody makes it all the way to the end, I want to reward all of you by taking my iPhone and embedding some footage of a walkthrough of our little little operation there because you know, back to like, telling everyone what peopleople wish that People tell them, I want to walk through that. J kind of like show the different things, what's in our bins. Yeah dude. you know. so that'll be fun. M show them our broken refrigerator. Yeah, and our new refrigerator. That's really nice and cool. We'll just walk through, maybe me and you will just walk over there and I'll stay here. What a base of operations looks like. you hang back there, but we gota do There's so much to do. Dude, Holy cow, he's so underwater. Okay. We're gonna crank through these questions here. Crank. How to find your niche and start booking events That's open ended. How to find your niche. Maybe do we have a niche? we must I would say that our niches is probably service I think that when I think of of valor think of coffee less than I think of care L the offering is the experience I was thinking the question was like, clientle niche.. I customer Yeah yeah, your avatar. There you go. Um, Yeah, u For us, it It is corporate now. So I mean, not to get crazy specific, but it typically is it for a while My thought was corporate businessman, like in their thirties, like general That is not true over time. It's actually the receptionist So we actually want to market and talk to her because she is the one that's actually putting the boots to the ground and getting us in front of the right people Well that's what that' It's using empathy as a business mindset, right of like Okay if someone's in charge of getting this event together. Yeah. They probably, you know, we are with just one piece of their event. So they're probably going to look up coffee cart catering or like coffee catering Atlanta. Yeah And we A from the SEO standpoint, we want to be up there. And then once they get to us We want to We want to make it pretty seamless for them to getet a custom quote within seconds. Yeah And if we're not accessible to them If we're not speaking their language then we're not going to accomplish the sale. You can't man explain. Yeah. like Yeahah. and I can't be here explaining, you know, what cool anaerobic natural coffees we have Like they don't care. You know, and by the way, I'm going to be bringing the linea Yes, it's like, yeah like Like they don't care about what espress machine you have. They care about do you have vanilla and caramel. you know, it's like like they just want simple things. And u in coffee because it's such a big industry. We love to make it complex and that's wonderful. but I think that if we can return to just Good coffee That typically is what the normal person takeake of the details. Yeah How to find bookings without spending thousands on SEO. cirles Like that's going to be that's going to have to be your approach. Our business has changed because of SEO Um, Cold calls would probably be your move I'd go to Claude. Or I have a friend right now who's working on an app for coffee cards. don't I don't think he has a name yet But u esssentially it would kind of like already source the likeike the business highigh level, high ranking professionals for major businesses in your area. And it would give kind of give you access to like their emails and their info, which is pretty cool Um You can get clawed to kind of do something pretty similar So I would probably do that and just start cold calling and get good at sales, to be honest with you It is tough. But at the same time It's really fun if you let it be fun and you treat people like They're humans. Don't stick to a script. have your points, have your talking points but learn how to be comomfortable. Just be authentically you And, you know, that kind of goes back to the you know, what's my what's my niche? um You is you like, you know what I mean? Like your relationship. Yeah, your your relationship with people. The way you care for folks, that's going to translate over time So just keep showing up Keep trying to put your best foot forward. and then hopefully you can find a few thousand dollars to put Desio. There are some basic things you can do for SEO like Literally just open ChatGBT or cllawed and say, hey, I'm trying to Start a coffee cart and these are my ideal customers. I'm in this city What's some advice for SEO from my website? And it's going to tell you your H one, your heading needs to be this Or like just go Go to a competitor's website and just copy them. Like go to their website and you know, look at their headings All those things matter We also have a free course on the Valor Coffee commommunity which is the top link link in the description of this video signign up for free there under Courses, there's SEO one hundred one Kent from localize teaches a course four coffee cards on how to rank higher So you can check that out completely for free And then When you're at events, get reviews. That's a huge part too. We have a QR code Little stand that says having a good time question mark, Lave a review. And so I think that's a huge unlock If you can get Everyone at the event attending the event to leave a review That opens up Hundreds more people to leave reviews as opposed to just the person that booked you That's a that's a good note. Um, if you're launching a coffee cart have an event at your home or a friend's home and just be like, yo, peopleople pull up and I will give you a drink if you leave us a review picture and a good description. notot just love this place like actually give me something That has been super helpful for us. We did a pop up early on. Um are Alfareredta and Dwoody locations And that really helped kind of kickst our reviews. Be where we looked like we had some experience. Nice. Yeah. let's jump into some pricing for coffee carts. Okay So U what is the minimum that we charge for an event and what does that event look like Um fifty people or less for one hour of service would be five hundred dollars plus travel fee That is our bare minimum. Um, and what's the travel fee I believe it's seventy five cents a mile Soenty five cents a mile. Yeah, I'm pretty sure ways one way Both ways. Three ways. Well we have to go back I mean, yeah, what if? Well that's four? So I don really All of a sudden you hear No I forgot the spoons Yeah. screwed. Sorry I'm forgetting. That's okay. So five hundred is the minimum for a fifty person eventes for an hour of service. Typ typically going to be a personal event, a party, a baby shower. Yeah. something like that. Yeah, something small. Um O minimum is five hundred. That's just kind of how we look at it where we're located Um for Atlanta contexts, we're located like more in the suburbs. Um Simes it's like the real heart of the city though Ros I don't think anyone' saying it. Ive never heard that. I don't think. Well maybe like the cultural epicenter. I've heard that say before. Like the hospitality episice. It's fine, whatever. Yeah. Oh, it's becausecause there's that summit coffee in Russell. You must run in some different cult circles Yeah, ye Well, that's good. Okay, But you saw our average bookend was fif thousandteen hundred dollars. So what would we charge What kind of event would necessitate a fif thousand five hundred dollars price tag? Probably excuse me. probablyrobably somewhere in the one hundred and fifty to two hundred guest range for twoo to three hours That's our Typical that means two baristas are showing up Um How do you know when to schedule one barista versus two baristas? So our pricing structure U let me see if I can find it just because it's kind of a cool little thing. Um Shout out to FlashQotes. This is why like one of the biggest reasons why I recommend them to people U is that they they put in a really, really nice My pricing structure chart makes things super easy. so you don't have to stress out about it Hey, while are you' looking at that I don't know if there's a whesale plug. I didn't know that Joey like talks to people sometimes and that's kind of like if you partner, with valor for your coffee needs. you not only get stuff like this like everybody gets, but you get like kind of access to us in a sense, depending on, you know, the level of partnership And so Whether that's Ross having more of a one on one conversation with you or I know you were talking like Austin and Keaton about Yeah like theiring their cing operation. Yeah,ll we'll have free coaching. for coffee shops who are adding a coffee cart the reason for that is coffee cart. Coffee cards in general. are very low cost of goods Models, right? whichich is good for you But as your supplier, we're selling you less coffee. It makes a little bit less sense for us to spend hours on the phone with you which is why we do this content so that we can help a lot of different people. That's why you made an entire coffee cart course. And that's right. So but if you're a coffee shop That's, you know, ordering fifty plus pounds a week That's when more of that like one on one coaching comes in And I think I think it I want to hit this as a main topic. I want to hear your perspective on it Ethan later. but Um, coffee shops that are adding a coffee cart, you know, why do that? Is it a good idea to do that. Yeah Okay, well so we were talking about pricing. Yeah, back to this. I have our staffing model here. Essentially our rules are from one to sixty guests You're going to have one barista the entire time. They can handle that Um And then the real thing is like U Take your top line, your X x axis, right? Oh, sure. Well, it's not really good like that. I don't know what they're called anyway Um top line is gonna to be like hours, like number of hours Serving Sving And then down this way is going to be a number of guests. So Um, like are we have a portion of this structure from one hundred fifty one to two hundred guests if it is for One to one and a half hours That is pretty chaotic Right? So you're asking us to serve at least one hundred and fifty people in an hour. It can get pretty crazy so That's probably happening more commonly than you think, right? Oh yeah. We have this conference. There's going to be two hundred people and they're going to be here We need to get them all served in thirty to forty minutes before they go in for the session. Yep. So you're going to have four baristas and two carts If you if you want to accomplish that. That's what's going to have to happen. The powerower of the double cart. Power of the double cart And maybe the power of having friends, right You know, we've leaned on complicators with their card to be like, y'all want to collab or hey can we re? Well as we've as we are in the process of developing our own cart build We are pulling on other homies who already have carts to kind of help supplement because Again, simple carts are great, but they are expensive And we would love to create a world where We don't have to rely on that. We would love to be sustaining in some capacity. So ye, our friends at Patients coffee U, they lend their cart to our cause all the time. Shout out Jason and Blake M. And then our friend Aiden uh with his c, he was lending his cart to us for a really long time as well St he just moved to Phoenix, Arizona. from what I understand And he's launching his card out there So Whatever name it ends up being. heard buff beans for a little bit? I don't know if that's true shhout out to him. He's pretty buff. He is he's pretty yoked So Chat it anywhay He's awesome, but we were using both of their carts as like supplemental equipment Yeah It was awesome. and they were very, very helpful. We just paid them an extra fee Really nice to be able to have that while we are. tinkering around and figuring out how to make our buildouts sustainable so that we can scale and then take over the world. Exactly. Exactly. So if you're serving if you're serving over two hundred and ninety nine guests for clarity That's like a four cart eight barista situation. across the board. That's just a lot of people We're not messing around Do you price weddings differently than corporate Maybe, most of the time, no Like I've said, lot and this is kind of annoying. Everybody's different So if you have a conversation with someone And You're picking up on a vibe They have a budget that they're trying to stick in I'm willing to work with you. That's my job There's a little bit of flexibility. But most of the time, it stays pretty consistent If you want us to serve one hundred and fifty people in two hours probably going to be in the one thousand to tw thousandve hundred dollars range, depending on different variables like travel and if you're asking for anything specific almost every time So what would you say to coffee shop owners that are thinking about adding a coffee cart to their business Boy. I think you're starting A second business. Now like I was talking to somebody who was like Yeah, I want to start a coffee shop and I guess I have to start a roastery too. And I was like No I mean, you totally can. I'm not trying to like pitch you to use valor, but like you're just starting two businesses at once that are very different that are extremely different. Yeah. I think catering is a little bit more similar, but totally see the value and like, Especially if you believe in who you are and like the sustenance of your brand. I love what you're talking about when you're talking about We just pick up the culture and uplifting experience of valor and we just get to like drop it. all over our city. Yeah That's awesome. And it's usually to people that have no idea who we are even though we like low key have kind of a brand to some people. When you actually get out in the world, you're like Yeah no one knows who we are hundred percent Maybe in like a tiny circle, we're kind of known But it's like there's so many people, there's millions, millions, millions of people in Atlanta Uh And so I think that's just fun. Like if you're a local coffee shop and you're like, I want to like, serve my greater community doing that with a cart. I think A, you'd have to either have a lot of space in your cafe to have like Maybe like three hundred square feet dedicated to like a cart area orr you have like a warehouse space kind of like the Mayday peeps do where it's like, all right, we have like kind of a more industrial space to have a base of operations. because I still think you need something like that. And that kind of leans into the whole like second side of the business And I feel like you did a great job because you're so awesome of not only starting it, you know But then because you operate in a company like we do where we have awesome people. It's cool to give Joey this opportunity. I mean we're not here to just wax eloquently about Yeah know like, you worked for Valid for a long time. You really laid your life on the line And yet there there wasn't this like natural progression for you of like Well, are you gonna what are you going to do? you know? Oh yeah. And then most people that come to Valley move on But it's like, man, if we can create positions that have higher ceilings, it's so awesome to invite people into that. So. if you'd like killing it and have a cob sharkp with coffee shop with a cart. That's a cool opportunity for someomeone on your team um, to like project, you know, run that project which is I think it's pretty cool And it can be a meaningful source of profit for your business Yeah because yeah You know, two hundred and forty K of revenue for a coffee shop. is Nothing for a year whereereas two hundred and forty K for a catering operation is great because the profit is way higher So can it can really help And it like you said, it can give opportunities for people in your company to move into more of a career role. Yeah, yeah. and like just on the growth track. point like Also for baristas, just generally. Yeah the way that we structure like like I said, Avengers's mindset. The way that we structure is you're going to get paid pretty significantly higher As a catering barista And we're going to expect a lot out of you Mhm. But We trust you and you've proven yourself to be a really solid. Yeah, you're not just a cog on the bar shift. We're like, I'm brewer for two hours. It's like, No, no, you're like You've already been a leader in our cafes. Yeah. And so now it's like, okay I would love to create a world where you could be a career Barisa like Pul Marisa, and they're actually being prorack financially I remember the years where I was in Racing. It was like kind of like the pinnacle of what Good byye commity my city I make. I loved where I was working. I didn't really want to move on Like I love coffee. I want to eventually own my own space But I didn't really feel like it was my time yet And becausecause of this role, I've been able to not only provide for my family and provide for myself and have that growth track But we've also been able to create opportunity for our other baristas to grow and level their skills up. and level their leadership up level their sales likeability up, like you just are creating a more well rounded individual Yeah. so it's really awesome. I highly recommend if you are a cafe and you want to start a cart Go for it and think about it as its own business where you're able to give Baristas the opportunity to. grow as people It's so worth it So highly recommend Yeah, like anything else, it needs the proper time, energy and resources to be sustainable, healthy arm, c business. But if you just think you're gonna order a simple cart And then be like, ye Yeahah, well, the events are just going to start coming. Yeah. We'll put it Yeahah, it's going to take poster in the cafe and then it'll just come in like gravy it's like, who, The poosther's not going to do a lot guys. I know we only talked about speaking from experience, but I will say if you're trying to start a coffee shop in a town with less than fifty K people in it It's going to be way harder. Sure Like And if you're trying to start a coffee shop or a coffee cart in like Dallas, Texas, or like These some of these Texas cities, there are so many coffee cars And I talk to some of them, yeah, the competition is really fierce out here. That's one hundred percent going to play a role We've Our philosophy with competition is like, we don't care. We're going to stay on our stuff and do the best we can and let people decide what they want to do. But with coffee carts,s like, yeah, it's competitive, man. because People You have to think about how clients are finding you. They are Googling Coffee Cart, Dallas, Texas, Coffee Cart Alphareta, Georgia And you're just literally putut in a list next to people Yeah and they are just objectively, subjectively, however they're deciding likeike just comparing all of you So compompetition plays a factor. The reason I say that You know, less than fifty k city You're going to have a harder time is To really like book events consistently that are paying you high enough to where this could be a job for you could actually be a viable business for you is you need corporate clients. Corporate is just like a constant engine of events that are happening where they're like always going to need a coffee cart. So Um, you know, you can only do so many baby showers. There's not there's not like, Yeahah a ton of stuff happening all the time and they're just not going to be high revenue enough for you. Any closing thoughts for you guys before I take us over to though Part setu. note, one note on what you're saying And you guys have already done this and made my life easier. But if you're starting a carart and it's in a situation like especially like a Dallas thing Um G get on social media, dude Like you need to be out there and be you need to be posting and be consistent with it as Lame as that might be to some of you And as lame as that is sometimes to me I just feel very uncomfortable posting on my personal Instagram a lot Um It has It has a huge effect on you. create like Yes, coffee is huge. And you want to have great coffee, you want to have great materials, but learning how to be authentic in your brand learearning to be just yourself and to be able to communicate that online. That's going to really help you take off So for what it's worth. I think that that's That's relevant Dt get him Let's go check out the setu Go get him. You wantan to come jooy? Sure That's where we record the podcast, by the way. That's Riley. So really with this setup, what one of the main goals was making it as lightweight as possible and having as few items as possible while still being able to accomplish everything we wanted to serve the full menu, executeing the full menu. So Joey, why don't you walk us through set up. Hey everybody. these are our cards. This is a simple card. It's a bunch of panels. That means we can fit it into our cardars. It's awesome. We use a three bend system. I' take you over here because it's right here. Th these two, They're sustainers. They're stackable We're getting a third one for waste, but it's not here yet, which is just going. Rotate, open up. If you're wondering where all the stuff is, we didn't plan for any of this and we just had a bunch of events. So all of our stuff is on those drying racks over there. I'll go show you right now.ool. Yeah, we've got these drying racks here that they're separated, you know per cart. but yeah, all of these sort of wears Milk pitchers, ice scoops shot catchers, speed porerers, those sorts of things They get stored there and in their part his role is that is what he's restocking. when we talk about like resetting for our cart? This down here H your waist. Jump We have our fresh water. Bam be a lot. and then this right here is a simple hub G'sonna be two things an accumulator and a pump for your water, veryery easy, one of the nicest things about simple carton simple hubs is it's all very clear. Your fresh water is gonna go in and it's gonna go through the accumulator and then get pumped out to your water sources And it's really easy to just take a cap off And then plug your line in, and then when you're done Click it back in. suuper easy. This is our GS three There it is. our one of our few. It's great. It's an espressoa machine. I don't really know. If you're watching this video, you probably know what that is. Okay, so the cool thing about these is that when theyre to the side, they interlock, so you don't have to worry about it like toppling over. Well So This is where we hold all of our like heavy duty equipment. So we're going to have like our grinder. We're gonna have extension cord, our power strip, we have our water line. The pitcher rinser that was over there goes in here. Stuff like that Is that back around Also here You're going have all your hardcore equipment, your tam, your whisk. This is one of the new things that we've been doing to provide Kind of like an extra just level of experience for our clients is we include a instant printer for like a Polaroid. What we'll do is when we show up and get fully set up, we'll take a picture, like a selfie with our phone, they send it to me, which then A lets me know that they got there on time and that everything looks good And then they that picture doubles as a printed kind of like almost like a parting gift, if you will. We The barista will write a note for the client, staple or pt the picture on and leave it with the client as just like a way for us to go, hey, we love being here, we love you guys. Hopefully it just adds an extra punch of care You know, 'use that's always the goal. C for people. So that go there, all your like heavy duty equipment, when it comes to like assembly bolts for your b Stuff like that. It's al right there We have a cooler. We use a artic We just really like these. if it's a smaller event We' use the yeti? And yeah, so when a barista gets here for their event They're going to see the c essentially set up like this, right? You have everything Everything in here Everything just like this. So They show up and their first step to their process is driving this bin and filling it with the materials that they're gonna need. In it already, you haveash your trash can, your trash bags, you have a dust, pan, a broom. These are parts of the cart. So just simple stuff. They come over here to the wall And we're gonna get cups. they're gonna get lids. Um this is a tea tray. Let's see the Actually like well designed Surade. This is kind of what our tea setup looks like. We have all of your teas, some sugar, some stevia, we bring some cinnamon. We have this is our matcha container. Yeah. So here's that We have free throw, we have decaf. We use preground decaf. We just date it and we don't like we cycle through it pretty fast. So we do that. We have Chi. we have extra te, we have extra matcha. sideidebar about this matcha, it's not that good. So I would not recommend you get this matcha. It's low quality matcha. We tried it out, bad idea. Matcha update coming soon. Is the fridge Oh yeah. Bom. That's exciting. Yeah, we haven't we've used a lot of our milk stock, but typically this is just full of milk. Yeah. That's our typical setup. We have an ice machine over there, but we also have in case of emergency ice. There you go. That was kinding yucky. but we don't use it. so that's what I get for showing you that. Senthos towels Boom, we were using our own towel system for a really long time and like washing them and drying them here in the roctery. and that has proven to be kind of a time waste. So we don't do that anymore. Weve sent uss. V cool. It's fine.ll give it your account U Yeah, I feel like that's kind of our whole setup. I don't think there's anything else. I hope all of that makes sense if it doesn't. I don't know, leave a comment or something and I'll try and respond to it. But yeah, that's generally what you're gonna get from us. If you're if you're getting into catra Let me know. Let's talk about it. It's pretty cool. Carts are awesome. A life, baby