After playing around in the food truck world, I got a little interested in selling packaged goods. Some of the trucks had BBQ sauce, rub, spice mixes and such. I thought it was a great add-on idea. But, we were in no position to take on something like that. Unfortunately, you can’t just make it and sell it. On a food truck, there are quite a few rules about how you source the products you can sell.
Fast forward a couple of years. The truck has closed. I’m working full-time again and have my eye on retirement, looking for ways to have fun and bring in income on the side and after retirement.
I was at a party and made Mom’s sweet hot pickles. They were a hit, as always. I remember telling people how, on the food truck, we called them Pickle Shots and they sold out every time I made them. “If there were only some easy way I could get this stuff out in a super easy to make version without spending a fortune in startup costs…”
Hello Texas Cottage Laws!
Under Cottage, I can build the brand on a small scale rather than having to buy 1000lb minimums or 10k units. You can make up to 50k per year under Cottage. Fair enough. If I’m bringing in 50k from this, I will be totally ok with investing in 10k units or whatever.
For the past few months, I’ve been working on converting some of my recipes to dry mix form. I’m wanting to make something where you only have to buy minimal ingredients, then just dump the bag of mix in and you’re done. I like simple.
So, what can you expect? For now, I’m wrapping up testing on a few guinea pigs (I mean, friends) to perfect the conversion to dry mix and instructions. I think that will be my operating plan. Try it out on friends, tweak it, then bring it out to the public.
Right now, we’re testing the sweet hot pickles. I’ll post more detail on the what they are and their history a bit later. For now, just know that the wheels are turning. They’re turning with this website, too. I’m updating it, making it pretty, on my spare time. So, if you see something that doesn’t make sense, know that I’m aware and will have things all in line by the time I have anything available for sale.
That’s it for now. Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading. I hope to see you again along this journey!
Jeff