Throwback: Writing Code to Sell $200,000/Month of Cookies with Sam Eaton of Crave Cookie
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I just got back home to seattle from a special conference for founders. I went to beautiful baloney italy, I want, with my brother chanting, and there were ten of the actors there. I think there's only thirty people at the conference, but at least six people were previous guests in the podcast.

And we spent just two days breaking up to groups, talking about business chAllenges, writing books, work life baLance, managing employees and all that good stuff, and also getting drunk and seeking cariole, eating a delicious lizzie and pasta and all sorts of italian food. IT was great until the end, uh, when there was a slight outbreak of coffee and me and five or ten founders got cover and ended up getting extend ed in italy for way too long. And so i'm finally back.

But in the meantime, i've been publishing throwback episodes, and today's episode is no exception. Today's po de is one of my favorites. I was saying the founder of crave cookie, and I guess an honor of me getting coffee. I picked episode that recorded way back at the beginning of the pandemic. enjoy.

What's up, everybody? This is court ln from ni hakau com, and you're listening to the any hacker's podcast on this show. I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I tried to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How do they get to where they are today, how do they make decisions, both their companies and of their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick. And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and going to build our own profitable internet business. If you've been enjoying the show and you want an easy way to support IT, you should leave us a review on apple podcasts.

Probably the easiest way to do that if a mac just go to N D. Hacking, to comm. Site review and that will open up apple podcast for you today. I'm talking to sam in one of the founders of a cookie company called crave cookie. I noticed him posting just a tone of milestones and andi hackers about how much money is cookie business is making and it's set out to me because not very many india kers are doing food delivery businesses. Not very many india kers are backing cookies. So I wanted to talk to stand to find out, you know, how cover in nineteen is affecting this food business, how a software n engineer got involved, and in baking cookies and selling cookies in the first place, and know what lessons we can learn from this type of business as a foot in the real world and the early enjoy the pit. Yeah, I think the fact that you're doing a cookie business is going to settle part from pretty everybody else who comes on the podcast.

Yeah, I was always trying of trying to do necessary like be to be side, you know like that. That's where my experience always was and that you always try to do what you think you you always done or whatever you know like you know you don't see what what's available to you just having been in new big tech for like six years.

And then my sister saying that he was gonna start a cookie thing with my cousin, yeah, oh, my cousin is gonna me set up a shop of fight side and selling cookies. And I, no, please love me. I've i've been hacked.

I was arted giving any hacker stuff for a couple years before that. Please let me help you set up your set up your company. Yeah so yeah, I was a yet ended up being me, my sister.

It's really word dad. I mean, I just talked to Scott ys from scotch cheap flights. And his business has been pretty threatened by coffee because these in the travel industry helps people save money on flights.

Yeah, and you're in the food industry. I think most food businesses are also suffering. Most restaurants have been closed down. But you, on the other hand, are driving. You've been blown up.

You've been posting these milestones and any hackers about how you're making one hundred thousand dollars in revenue every month and how cov a has been like almost the best thing that could have happened to crave cookie because you are in the delivery business. Is that just pear luck? Or is that like you you change your business model because of copy?

no. IT was a we were already up into the right as far as growth every months, every quarter, but that just gave us probably what is probably a fifteen percent bump in what are Normal trajectory was we are already hitting like the one hundred K A month or whatever before that. And then yet after that, we just like what was that like an April or may?

Yeah, I think last was one hundred .

months in April. How .

many we do?

Probably fifteen thousand cookies a week.

And that's all just to your local area.

Yeah it's one kitchen with drivers going around and doing these cookies. Yeah that's see the thing is though, it's a part of that is I say eighty hundred and ninety percent of IT is just from our line orders, but we have also partners with a local coffee shop that has like five locations, but that still part of a Normal business model.

We bake up the cookies and we deliver them to the coffee shop and then people come and pick up the warm cookies so they know to do IT at a certain time. And so there's a line of cars lined up at this coffee drive through to pick up these cookies. But yeah, it's no IT doesn't have any complexity to us .

is the same business for the co hundred thousand.

Our margins are much harder than the the typical restaurant industry. So like Normally, margins for restaurant is is under fifteen percent. Ours are thirty five, forty percent nice. It's been really, really good on that. I think most .

technologies secure a software, right? Yeah and you also do design because you are b sites beautiful yeah thanks. So you're like the sort of full stack engineer unicorn. You've started indie hacker businesses before. I think most people in that position would never really dream of doing something in the real world because the margins are low because you can't really move atoms as passage. You can move bids and these all sorts of pain to deal with and things in the real world that just seem antiquated, unattractive.

If you're developer, why did you decide do this? Why did you get excited when your resident says he was going to make cookie business and not say, you know what, that's for the birds? I'm a stick with the digital stuff.

I don't know if something because a group in sports or whatever, but like I just get super enthusiastic about stuff really easily no matter what what company is matter whatever. If if someone is coming to me with an idea and they're pumped about IT, I turned to a mirror and yeah can be sick to do that. This thing of the data base, we're going to start doing all the stuff.

And so when she's talking about like herself and cookies like I don't even think about the Normal model of people doing shop of file size. So I don't you think about that soft. I'm just thinking about from a software engineering point of view, like how efficient can like when I was a growth engineer to isn't just like A I do all the full stack would like for like most of my software engineering career so far, i've been a growth engineer.

So that was A A few tech companies do not. It's why I love the marketing and growth in that side of things. And so actually building up her cookie forms and trying to optimize how people are putting in the information, you know, the way that you make IT.

So people are choosing the flavors right away before they even have to put in any information. And then finally they put in their address. And IT does all that self.

So like trying to optimize that and just even adding things like how amazon has my orders, you need to go back and see your order history adding that is built into the product. And like seeing how many people, how many thousands of emails we collect after people we launched at three weeks. And we have like over ten thousand emails locally.

This is in a local little place that we have that many emails. It's like crazy. Yes, it's how it's extremely focused on how good those emails we have are, you know so its yes, no, yes, it's just I get too pretentious asy about this kind stuff and I don't really care what the the product is.

I just love doing this new new things. But yeah I do and still want to do the B2B sid e eve n doi ng the coo kie thi ng lik e I s ti ll hav e a b un ch of fri ends who are in sal es and all tha t sel f and it' s jus t i'm wha t is tal king abo ut ide as. There's something about how big the the text I can be.

You have faster growth or faster potential or bigger potential, but you do have a lots of growth on the consumers side. I feel like especially with a physical product like we're limited by how much we can do in a store. I have been super fishing with one sore, but we have to add more, more hubs.

yeah. So but once we are doing that, it's just it'll just snowball. Mean, the numbers are .

still pretty crazy. If you think about the typical internet business, you have access to theoretically, everybody on earth, everybody is connected to the web. And you see company is spending month, year trying to grow their email list and find customers and they don't get to ten thousand. And you have a business where you're pretty much limited to your local area and you've managed to get ten thousand people on an email list.

they were limited to a ten mile radius, such a delivered radius.

And that's 对。 And maybe there's something about that focus that helps you build a Better product or deliver more happiness or convert more or sign up. Why is that even able to get to such high numbers even though you have such you know relatively small pool that you complain?

Yeah that I think that is focus. So I think this I always loved building my own stuff. And so like with the effort IT takes to build things, you actually kind of constrained and how much how many features you can add an amount of time and all that stuff.

So like really, we added the the online form, and then I just goes into this back. So something that we kind of just keep focusing on the efficiency. And so as we just get a high volume of cookies, they're still always straight from the event.

And like that's the kind of stuff where a lot of customers complain about certain things like go I can't make match the flavors in a box after by two boxes if I want two flavors. But that's part of our focus is we see in our system how many cookies we have to make for a thirty minute time slot of this many chocolate chip in this many cheero cookies or this many sugar cookies. And we know that that each box is whatever we kind of make all the boxes.

And then we start grouping this for the drivers. Looks like, yeah, we are extremely focused and limited. And so that means that you can just guarantee equality at that point. And so people are just constantly in ordinary. These cookies are recurring customers. Um it's really high um you know sixty percent of people back again, there is always quality and there is people so surprised when y're like to stand up warm when they're pulling out the box. So like we just made them.

I've never ordered cookie delivery, but I think I would also be surprised if I order and the cookies come and they are super warm because I mean, you got your shit together. You really think about the customer experience.

Yeah, it's definitely one of those things where if you were to make cookies at home and you have to start from the event and there's still kind of falling apart, you can pick my 边。 We're almost at that, that level, but there's still really the really fresh. And you can tell you tell that we just made him.

We are there's other cookie companies like this, but in different parts of the country, we were the first ones to do IT in california, I like in the mountain west was not like arizona. You talk all right on that kind of area. But as they were growing, they're doing a lot of with franchise all that.

And we're finding that a lot of the equality is going down and really fashion and as a kind of really branching out and not really. So yeah, there they're grown too fast like these places. So yeah, we're just extremely focused on the equality.

We only have one location right now, so it's not easier to do that. But that's part of the chAllenge. That's the fun part still in that.

So the goal, I think, for most inaccurate, and I talk to you, is usually some form of freedom, right? They don't like working a Normal job because you get a monetary ceiling, what how much you can make your salary. You have to work on this for a fix ninety five schedule.

You can control the time that you work or all sorts of other things. You know, when you have your own business, you can control all that. You can work from wherever you want.

You can work with what, whatever you want, your sister or your friends, you can be as creative as you want. Does any of the stuff a line with why you are building and growing crave? Cookie, what god I started .

doing on the hacker step because I had other singles. I think what I was as I was just kind of an interested in the companies or the just the dynamic of the way that I was assigned work at some of these companies. Yeah, I IT is a freedom. But like it's one of the things I really like about like the netflix culture dog and sport t their big culture thing is they have a they call like their freedom and responsibility is a big part of their their culture.

And I really like just the enthusiasm, freedom of doing something if I don't care from working for someone, if I get the that freedom in that recognition of what you doing and is actually having an impact, yeah you probably even have more opportunities in a big company to to do lot of things could have to focus on every single little thing you do as founder. But yeah, I do like the freedom because I love the enthusiasm. Enthusiasm contagious. I do feel little lonely when you're found here. You're not like just talking to your colleagues and you found you're you're you're just bring an idea of people and no politics involved that being founder .

is an essentially kind of lonely job because even if you have employees, there are concerns, like you said, are much more focused, do not worry about the entire business and not wearing every hat. And there isn't really anyone, I guess, besides other founders or perhaps your cofounder and investors who can really appetites with exactly what you're going to at any point time who are really like, you know, you're true colleagues. He's unin cry. Besides, as you is your sister holic.

yes. So it's me, my sister, who's running all the cookie R N D, and like the the kitchen efficiency and my brother in law, he's running the Operation side.

What free cooking r yeah.

there's something about being on a team with other engineers and other designers who have your same skill set and bigger. Talk to them. When I talk to my sister about engineering, SHE has no idea i'm talking about.

I could talk about the business, but you can't talk about like the user experience that people have like a different features. I want to ask she's that sounds cool. okay. I've seen you posting any .

across about on the tech side of crave cookie, talking about how you've kept simple server cost and like that seems almost like it's your escape where you could talk to some other developers who actually care and know what you're talking about and just .

going to be like OK cool. Yeah so I like that one thing I like about like any hackers and hacker news or whatever was like you you'll see people with comments and then I say, actually I use this technology like there's just opposed on a parking news recently about like Crystal, which is a new programme language and i'm actually all in on crustal on on on crave like that's our survey language and it's even at one point now. Yeah, so it's kind of A A bad choice from a business perspective. But like I don't care .

what is the freedom you get a founder you could do what if you want no one is gna say.

don't do that is a bad choice if it's fun for you, you just do so good I like i'm actually when i'm doing everything is extremely simple but not going going on the no code said everything is on one server in production and there's a secure light database, meaning it's not a separate database, is not a separate server. It's literally a file in that same database yeah.

When i've started IT, I was writing to A J sum file the whole database that was IT, and I was reading and writing from that file, and I was started, get twenty ords too slow to reading, right? So I moved to secret light, and I ve never changed IT. I have to do things like change the way I do my database indexing to speed up my my queries and all that. But yeah, just getting super optimize and it's it's cheap like you know, we're paying less than three hundred dollars a month for the server stuff and that includes like the deployment and all that have another server for deployment and building on the stuff.

So what other stuff are you building a customer experience in crave cookie or i'm an employee of crave cookie. What are the sort of digital properties and .

all this code is is running. Yeah, so most of the code or most of the APP is on the add side. So that's a very similar to how and shop of five you log in and shop five dock slash ad and that's that's your as the store that you are side of the APP.

And so from them, when people purchase cookies, IT feeds into our orders and we can basically view all the orders. There's a lot of filters and things reviewing orders views by time slot, by customer, by whatever. And in the orders, when we got all these orders by time slot, we have to let group those because we have we open up maps in the APP.

It'll open up maps for each time slaw, for each thirty minute time slaw. And you can see the clusters of all these orders are. So we have people who are literally clustering these orders on the map in the APP, like grouping them.

And then when a drivers is available, we start giving them these groups of clusters. Like here you got these five orders, and then the next hour you ve got these other five orders. Here's always, here's ten orders of cookies.

go. That's one of the the benefits of being a suffet engineer like this. This cookie business wouldn't have all these little tools, this little competitive advantages of a local delivery business without me kind of customising like i'm using google maps or other apps with the built into our ad. There's other things as far as like flavor management, calendars, all that stuffer when flavorous available or delivery hours, how many deliveries per slot you we have a driver causing sic. We have one less driver for that few times lots.

This sounds pretty complex. I mean, if I go to order from a website like a typical website, half time, I not even sure they are going to get my online order like their website. Looks like I was made in microsoft int.

And I guess everything going to work. Meanwhile, you've got like a very modern tech business going with this sort of cookie front where it's super optimized. You put a lot of work into actually building on all this stuff. How much of an advantage that really give you, does that help you save a tone of money to help you make your business much more efficient?

Yeah, there's features that before I added them, before I added the maps that we're built in, you literally had the address that was a link. You would click on that orders address and would open google maps in a separate window with that icon. And we have in one time slot, sixty to seventy orders in thirty minutes you can go through and see where you tube are.

You're trying to guess i'm looking at the strict name where a driver like which orders go to which driver and I wasn't grouping them either like you were just assigning them individually to a driver. He was a lot of time when there's six or seventy of them and you have one person assigning orders, you have to do one a minute that since ane, you literally don't have anything. So you can use take a back in brick.

And so it's more like the technology has enabled us to have a higher ceiling of how many orders we could actually fulfill based on how efficient designing and and grouping and make sure the driver has the maxim amount of of orders in his car when he's leaving, right? Otherwise you you're giving them and then you realized the two drivers in the same area. Then one has a driver accrued sed town after that is is really bad.

And so yeah there's there's even more like now we're doing all this with group thing like I could start adding software to just just start clustering these groups automatically. I don't need someone to assign them know that it's more ideas I have. And as I keep doing that, the softer is more viable, the business more able actually innovating. And there a lot of restaurants that probably wanted use .

this stuff here. Yeah, you can strip this out and basically sell IT like way label to any other rational that's doing its own delivery.

Yeah.

there's something so fun about a building internal tools because your sister is, she's doing cookie R N D. Her customers are really the people who are eating the cookies, right? He needs to make delicious cooies, make sure their process is repeatable. Your customers, as you know, sort of A C T O technical cofounder or to your really your employees, making sure, like you said, your delivering drivers can take a bathroom break, making their job as easy and efficient and payments as possible.

And when you're developing code and tools for your own employees, it's just wonderful because because you get such good feedback like these are people you see all the time, you can talk to them, people you have to hunt down and try to figure out how are you going to talk to your customers. They're right. They are working for you all the time. And just, I think, create such a positive feedback loop is much easier to make sure you're building the right thing.

That's the reason why I don't always like remote work is there are some of these feedback of especially really in a company when you're building internal tools, you need to see the people using them. So I i'd have to visit the warehouse a few times.

They actually just sit there and watch them or just talk him about IT um because they don't always like a lot of these people are there are Young like are one of our manager where our manager over the warehouse is a girl or twice and like shift I I don't know he feels intimidated to to always give me a little feedback. X about this things broke in as a back here. Yeah so like actually being in more involved with that with the the the support tooling or the employ tooling, but not just the employee site. And I I don the the form that when people checked out and like their confirmation and their orders page and their building history, no no stuff. So like doing both one engineer.

it's a lot of yes. So just you're writing all this code.

doing all this design party was like I used like stripe in gool maps and William that this would be impossible .

yeah than ever or maybe not easier. But it's more it's more powering than it's ever been to be kind of a solo developer starting online business because you can do all this crazy stuff by yourself and it's not easy. I mean, you still have try to work at on.

You start to be good at what you do and you probably develop a lot of skills over the years, but it's possible you actually can do IT. And that means that. You can basically scale up an Operation like this with as few cost as possible. You don't need a giant team of developers. You can just do one thing and I have a tunnel profit. And also, I think you just get the increased efficiency that comes from having a small team or you don't have a ton of communication overhead, you don't have a bunch of other developers or managers or people, you have to communicate your product plans to do you and take, you know six months to develop a feature. You can just think of something and build IT today because you're just a move one.

Yeah but that also means I get excited about the future and it's not really the the most important thing. But yeah, I don't care and i'm I love seeing the thing out and actually most people yeah, I get this hunch to build something and it's not like as important as something else, but people are excited when they see IT, especially like my sister, whatever. So that's just being exposed to product development um in product managers, they always have these features they wanted to build.

But now I actually get to go off my hat and what I feel like is distinguishing like just little things like when there's only one or two orders left in a time slot, like just actually showing that in that time slot on the form like that kind of stuff, like I just it's not as much of our priority as online shipping like actually as shipping cookies in in the mail. We probably a lot of money from that, but I want to really optimize our current business model before it's are any other, other things. So because you like hood of me, going back and optimizing these things when I have two things on my plate is not lower.

And that kind of a recency bye role for myself in any hackers were always get excited about some new thing that I thought I love or someone suggested that i've really wanted build. And usually whatever i've recently thought of just becomes, by far, the most exciting thing in my mind, and anything else kind of get to push to the back. And pretty consistently has been the case where if I am excited about building something that excitement out, ways like my rational decision making process, I haven't really thought there IT. So I role for myself now is basically, I have to be still excited about something a month after I first thought about IT, for me to actually build IT metal out, to just build anything that that comes to mind other's I want to waste time of time, but IT is super fund to just indulge and do whatever you want and and just, you know, he is a programme language that you want build features that you're excited about and realized that like it's pretty not going to kill your business and you're having a lot of fun .

doing what you want to do. Yeah, everything does go in my backlog and I do order IT. So there's only some accountability there. But yeah, I I I do feel like that if you're excited about something it'll show when you build IT. If i'm excited, i'm feeling and i'm in the zone, I put a little extra touch on my form validation, all different things of the the form is processing. If it's just a paint, you you forget to put a little loading. I come and so he cooks on a form like is is submitting I don't know you know that kind of stuff you do need to be excited about we working on because and what's the point if you're founder like this, be excited about IT. So let's think .

about how you ve got here because you weren't always running a cookie business and you're previous and hacker businesses. Your last project was a SaaS business, was all online. Tell me about that. What are you working on? How to come up with the idea?

Yeah, my last thing was called griffe, and that was a tool that was basically for game fiction. And you make these achievement lists that people can embed inside of their APP. And so for example, when someone signs up for, I have this idea when I was qual tricks, which just like the big survey, the interpret survey company, so like a three part.

S A P no. But like a yeah. So when someone signs up, there are so many things to do. Imagine going until, like photoshop for the first time, you never use photoshop before.

How many things do you can do? You kind of want a list of things? Hey, just draw, swear for the first time, then you like. And then once you do IT checking off, the item of the list automatically is part of the built into the things.

So like, yeah, with that achievement less idea, there was a lot with stars like detecting stuff in the in the browser, like doing all is this dome diffin and not self? Like when some of icks in element, how do I detect that element? Is what they wanted to be done? Or yeah there's there's a there's a lot of complexity there.

And I I still think I kind of have works people like if the people want, like guys and Walkers were kind of forces you around the APP. I don't like that self. People usually use click s on them. But like if it's a little list that can I gives you some tasks that you can kind of check off, I think that helps with me. So I don't I don't know what what the market says.

So the idea would be that with know if I to use this as a customer, let's say, uses for andy hackers, I wouldn't stall in on my website. And there would be a little list in the bottom writer, something that says here, five things you can do, like fill out your profile, create a product at an avatar, make a post. And as they do those things, it's kind of checking off the list and feel like they are getting Better at using.

And the hacks, yeah, I need even in more advancin that because IT has he had built in A P. S. And so so like you can say, get five up votes. And you can actually, as any hackers kind of figure out how to detect something has five votes, and then talk to my A P, I and tell them if they have five votes and then they'll see that in the list. And so you can kind of game fight even more is kind of like what a badge systems you would see, like on read or whatever, like, right? But kind of letting other companies have IT built in and it's a separate platform.

why do you stop working on this .

was kind of the art of the story with B2Be at tha t you hav e a p eo ple per son on on the oth er sid e. So I did I had a guy who he's A V P of sales at another tech company. I still talk to all the time we were talking about ideas.

But like it's more like I was completely in on the code and building in the design, but that he was still in the let's test the see if this is viable even though I already built everything. So he's kind of just like floating ideas is kind of just talk to some people in the discovery phase. So I have jump the going a little bit, buy a lot. I get to time on the thing, probably eight months.

eight months, just coding IT, yeah. wow. Before you had any sales.

IT wasn't a IT was in a full time job, but like eight months of times. So like probably a was a full time job part would have been two, three months. And so he was kind of flooding.

Who's talking to people on linton? He was a here, a good email list. He was talking to people with product managers and all stuff.

And I just it's really hard to just do that grind. And I I don't think he was as invested enough yet because he was still really he wasn't as excited about that. Sounds like, well, what more can I really do? So IT was just finding the the product market fit in getting a customer base like I do think that it's still something that super valuable to people, but every time I show the actual product people that, that was pretty cool.

Did you make any sales? Did you make any genre revenue this thing?

No, I didn't even have a payment form. Everything up still in the beat stage.

still building IT yeah so what was like deciding .

to to quit that? Yeah that was actually IT was not me deciding to quit IT was more like, oh, look at that over there um so is yeah I am like I saying I just get super excited other ideas if something is not successful naturally, i'll just find some elsey .

things will take .

place yeah I don't get for A B about I am A I am a growth engineer. I am a data analyst. I I just see the logical side of things too.

It's not i'm just all emotion and excitement. So I will just be like this, uh, screw that little thing. I'm just so bert.

I assume the shiny thing that distracted you was just as saying he wants to launch a cookie company yes.

that was around the same time I started that when I still lived in seattle. Yeah so that was that was a not long after that that was in two twenty eighteen, like twenty yeah and you're .

thinking OK a growth engineer, my sir, want to do to some shop fy. I can make this so much Better, so much cool. Where did you start with crave cookie? What's the first thing that you do?

We did look at all the stuff of how expensive that is just for an M. B. P, I don't want to have a commitment of, like how much have to pay month, sixty dollars a month or whatever IT is, plus bigger cut of your salesmen.

So like, so I can easily build a website. I can easily build a form that feeds into A J on file and we just handle payments through stripe, whatever. And then when you go to the add side, you just see all the orders.

That's pretty simple. And when once in orders, mark, deliver IT, if filters, that will. Now you don't see anymore, that was the M V P, and is extremely easy. He just looped through all the orders in in the file. And I just find .

to a table how long until you made your first cookie sales? Because I building .

grate IT took me one to two build this thing. And we had our first sale, cool. And IT was growing fast in a little small town.

And my sister was living in so SHE moves and sent to a bigger city. Oh yeah, we were a little small town. Rip in california, little tiny town. And so he said, okay, we're going to move the bigger town and put in some roots in the same growing.

So the online business know the way people find their first customer is. Creating an email is they're tweet or posting on something like product on or hacked or news or called mAiling people. How did you make your first sales? And just one to two weeks in the real world selling cookies to people in this town.

instagram and facebook groups. This was in twenty eighteen. So yeah, we should just started contacting people SHE knew on instagram and facebook. IT is announcing that there is these warm cookies are available. So like, yeah, I think I think people kind like the idea of buying buying some homy cookies.

But IT definitely looked different than just, oh, this this girl I know is selling cookies because once you go to the website, IT definite doesn't feel like some local person selling cookies. That was my side. I trying to make you feel like A A repeatable company instead of A A someone some cookies from their kitchen in my mom's house because, yes, he was.

Yet they were in between houses. They were moving from secret. O lived in my mom for a while until they're moving down to dress no clovers.

And so they yet from my mom's kidon with a college food license, we allowed to sell up before the grand of product a year without much regulation. Yes, that she's started selling there. So give me like A A snapshot.

like all the rules and regulations that go into this because I have no idea how to start a food company. You've got ta get a license. I seem you to do something to make sure you know your kitchen is up to quality.

up to send up. If you're going to to start one of these things in your in hacker wanting to do M V P, you just have to get what's called a cottage food license. IT might be different in different states, but in california just need to cottage food license.

And that means, like I was saying, you can sell up to forty grand a year and is much less regulated. You can be in your home kitchen. You don't have to have all the nutrition facts.

You can just put allergens. The way that you package things is different. There's rules about you can have any pets in the kitchen.

You have have your gates up around the kitchen itself, but yes, or four people wanted to get something started if you just want to try selling food locally. Yeah, it's just very simple regulations. It's like people who go to A A.

like a big sale or a big sale.

or like when they have the farmer protests, we gna go by armers market. Yeah, farmers market people have always little things they can sell. Our farmers markets, they have ice chesley treats they made or whatever.

A lot of people like, like i'm sure, don't have any kind of license unless the farmers and market requires you to have IT so that so they probably do yeah, it's a very simple license to real sale stuff like that. But with our volume, we quickly needed a real license so that when is to get really expensive because you have to actually relatively expensive. We don't have a huge store front with all the C D M in 那个 the nice bathrooms or whatever。 So like it's different.

So we would just have a warehouse you don't see. But still there's still regulation you have to have with IT the way that the kitchen set up, the way that ceiling has to be over the kitchen, where you store your ingredients, how you store your ingredient. Um the dress code for people making these things, you know the hair nets. And I there's a lot to learn. Not of us had any experience, but just making cookies for a long time, but she's never done IT commercially.

So I was a lot of experiencing a and growth hacking kind of doing things and asking questions later yeah setting up a kitchen and then getting a license for the big warehouse after it's already running you know doing stuff like the end once you start working, it's not so like all the police are going to come and shut you down. You're working with the county to get these things set up and then they know you're working with them. They gonna give me some slack if they know you, you're trying to be legitimate and they you you're running, you're trying start a business that was good. And especially since we were working with a coffee shop and then they had some experience doing that soup, you really need friends who who have any kind of experience in IT. You you'll find that if you're doing sales and you working with people.

was there an inflection point where you went from this is just an MVP. It's me, my sister. See, others goes self cookies online to, oh, shit.

We need to hire people. We need to expand our Operations. This is a real business. I want to put a lot of time and effort .

this yeah so for me, it's different than for my sister. I always saw this as passive income. I was fine working in the tech companies I was working in and given before quanti and all the cover stuff, like I was supposed to go to work at google.

And so I was doing this on the side. But like that happened and things changed. And yes, I was always kind of seeing this as passive income and I I was just keep optimizing the engineering side and put the nights, weekends.

But yeah, after the happened and we got such a huge bump and I could actually see how much growth we could get, how this is a seven figure business out of one delivery hub. Having a food business makes seven figures is crazy. That's like chick fully and in an alberga do that.

But not every one can own a prime location check fine and Albert, you know. So to get a restaurant that can make seven figures and have almost forty percent margins is is a rare opportunity now after the current tines going, we actually have some some capital to work with. Or yeah, after the current tine happening like those like march, we saw the all the potential and we actually had some some money in the bank to work with on track for seven figures.

Yeah, we got to get a second location so that that we that's when things are to get real. Now we we are looking down the second location. We have IT for, for going to get the second delivery hub.

There's to be a lot of things now that have to change with the software for as having multiple b support, especially when you're ordering which delivery hood are you in? Are there differences in harmony slaughter available? Because there are given number of drivers for different delivery hub.

But these are the kind of problems that once I solve them, the company can just cop in paste. Now I can copy pace. More delivery helps at that point. And we once you do the first second, once you do the first new hub, the third and forth and fifth, we're going to be so much easier, right? And once we have like ten locations, you know, this is something I can franchise, this is something that I can is a softer that I can finally sell other people because we're managing ten locations.

You kind of like constructing and perfecting the playbook right now. And then after that, the goal gest to run the playbook as many locations as .

you possible can. My philosophy is always keep things as simple as possible, but optimize IT. You wanted stand out because there's other cookie companies and there's even ones that are starting in california moving over now they're expanding and so we can beat them with just Better cookies, always warm and they deliver them fast.

And yeah, that part of me too. It's like when people get deliveries, all of our drivers are wearing her crave gear. And it's just part of the experience. You know, you're getting a crave driver. The whole thing is just our brand.

And we even have things where because people can write write messages on the box as part when you order and those people like they aren't notes and say told the driver to to spin before he hands me the box. Just little weird things. And then he'll do IT and they posted on our instagram.

That's a kind of stuff for we're kind of building a brand that's that's more holistic is not just a cookie delivery service. It's very popular in the town. The end and the the amount of people posting about IT like them opening the boxer and excited when they open the door, it's our delivery driver.

There is a definite local brand there. That's why it's one against the benefits of us having gone completely do with ourselves. Don't hire any external services.

Yeah, maybe I would have been good to to use door to whatever anger getting started with M. V. P. But my brother now is driving an so if we kind of is naturally went from my brother while driving to hiring a driver instead of scaling up the the third party service.

yeah strikes me as a pretty crucial part of how your business works. Because most restaurants that do you deliver, I mean, you always faced with the choice.

Do we do deliver ourselves to hire own drivers? Or do we use one of these services like door dash, post mates, grab hub, uber reads? And it's not just delivery like all these services provide discovery to a lot of people figure out what they're going to eat because they are go into these platforms and sea list of restaurants.

But you're not using then, you're not there. You have to somehow get people to know about grave cookie and want to worry you without you being a part of all these delivery services. What's been your ort of strategy for a great growth? You know how even able to reach so many tens of thousands of people?

It's been completely organic. It's people posting about us and this is benefit of us being a hybrid company. When people post, it's their friends and neighbors seeing IT.

And so and those are who are other customers or potential customers once people are kind of raving about a local cookie delivery thing is just spreading fast. And so there were some things that injecting the growth are getting featured on some prominent local people's feed. It's not like we pay just IT was organic.

But then like a news company, like a local fox station or something, wanting us to be on their their morning news for local coq delivery for national chocolate chip day or something, we gave free cookies to like policeman and firefighters or I don't know what I was yeah yes. So IT was that kind of stuff that that got us to be more discovered efforts, but now is just mostly people posting about our time and then I get other people to see IT and go yeah about some cookies right now. Um and then if we just put put posting on instagram, but yeah, we haven't needed to do any email email marketing at all, no text message marketing at all.

Even though every order has a phone number and usually a customer uh, email, we haven't use those ever to a send marketing stuff. So yes, we have been having hyper organic growth. Yes, it's completely based off of the social media. Let's say one of the .

one of the the best things you can do is an edition ckt. When you're trying to get your first football and grow your businesses, you want to pick a really small nitch. There's so many big companies are targeting the mainstream ament.

If you can find you some small group of people who are all know, who share products, we have water mount with each other and who are prety similar and who are underserved by some bigger market than you can look, get a football. And I think what you've done that super cool is like your niche is just spending in your local community. As you said, everybody in local community, they all know each other.

Somebody orders a box of cookies is kind of a naturally viral product. You don't order box OK. And you are all yourself unless you me, you're Price share with other people and they're going to know want to know where you're got him and said and you going to talk to other people about if it's a good experience.

And so this seems like such a great way to like just start growing your business and you kind of escape the competition that way is not about to other giant cookie company is competing with you. And it's kind of easier to get on the local news and is to get you on some sort of massive news website online or be the top product time. Everything is gae down and there's just much less competition and you can just really shine and then grow from there. So I think it's prety cool to see the way that you've actually .

executed on this. yeah. And having the big tech experience, I see how cut through the big tech world is and how optimize a lot of surface for marketing and all itself.

And taking that down to the local pond, it's much easier from that side. There's things that are harder. But to go back from the growth thing we did also have early on gift messages that we hand right on every box.

So you can, when you're checking out, put in it's lesson hundred fifty characters or something, but we will write IT on the box. And so we get a lot of gift daughters. So people are gifting them to other people at a very creative gift. It's a box of cookies from a local cke delivery company that are huge and warm sound like and it's a hundred message from that person. So it's a lot of gifts and that is people to discover IT .

super smart. There's nothing more viral than a product that you can get you like a hallmark card. You never buy how mart card and just keep that you give IT to somebody. And then now they know about how mart cards and no one to give you to somebody else. And so kind built into your product to be viral if you you know selling cookies as gift boxes.

Is that such a great natural way for the product to basically be something that others discovered ah and it's not something like with online products out of people put a feature in their religious say, oh you know a share this with a friend here's a share button you know and it's like, well, the poet doesn't naturally something that you want to give away, so why would anyone use that? But with something like cookies kind of is you know it's a great gift for a birth day around ka day or any any sort of thing like that. And so you know if you just like large people to do IT, you're not trying to convince them to engage in some totally foregate behavior that they wouldn't do Normally. You're just of going with the flow sort of a jum like k people want to share cookie that just make that easier and make that experience Better.

Yeah, we literally broke our single day delivery record on father's day, the saturday before father's day or yeah yes, it's all about the gifting. It's not all gifting. But yeah, it's even if you're like me, i'm kind of a health net where I don't like eating a lot of a cookies or just process food in general.

No, when I say process, I just mean like not whole natural ingredients. Like, I like black, almost like trade up, just put cucumber and cares in with some penance ausone. You know like that I like the symbol, but like a even me would gift these to someone they know. It's nice to gifts that even if someone just has a few bites, still really good. Yeah so even though I don't eat our cookies, I definitely enjoy my samples.

So let's talk about the um you know you're talking about the competitive landscape with a local business and you know some things are easier. There's less competition, your competence less sophisticated. They haven't marketing at a big tech company, they haven't optimize everything. And so you can kind of compete easier in the smaller pond. But there are some things that, that are harder because it's what's harder about a local business.

Yeah, once you start doing local business, there's just more regulation. Local businesses the way the business has always been done before tech disrupted IT. And so there's human history of regulation or at least american law history of regulation.

There's a lot of groups to jump through compared to just starting an online business is where it's still kind of the wild, the west, he cannot do with everyone. So there's the regulation side. There's the it's not just local.

There's also there's B2Be lev ers A, B to c because you can be local and and serving local businesses. But yeah, we're serving local consumers. And so in any consumer company, you always have to like hava, strong focus on your brand and reputation.

And with local, it's crucial to have a good reputation and it's at work. My spread because we don't even have occasions of people aren't finding us on google maps and reading our reviews, there's no location on to look up. And so we are we are kind of lucky that there is not me like bad reviews, like my cookies were too soft.

They were undercooked like no cause like in the early in the first slot of the day, sometimes like when the oven we haven't warmed them up enough. You know that that might happen, you know. So like that you know people posting on yet or, uh, google map review or something like that, that could hurt you bad if you ever drop you down a star.

We don't we don't care about that stuff. We're just on instagram. People see as an instagram, they see all their friends committing that we have hundreds of comments on on a thread. And so is like you, we gotta get me some of those and goes more like reading reviews in a live thread.

Like if you want to go read reviews on how can use on redit or something forces read looking at reviews on a static review site that's more of like where are yet more of the local where people are just kind of talking locally um how to how to get involved that self. It's not like any business can do this. There's a lot of you would sell locally like that like they just I don't know at what point is like that.

The homemade factor really like help you versus hurt you, like if you're selling something or ten notion screen or something like can you do that home made? Who wants to buy that to solve the problem or something you can just go to that whatever you like, do you want to? But like tactic might be OK.

I don't know if you wanted be someone who's making like I have my own be hives and I have this this my home, like my be wax or what ever really like that might be something you can do or like I my uncle owns this is not my uncle, just as an example, um owns a uh dairy farm or something like maybe I can try to do a different kind of local delivery for the milk. Man, you know, I can do that again. yeah. So there are certain things that they might have a certain kind of cash or survive that you can do canvas premium, homemade kind of product you thought .

about that expanding and is something besides just cookies?

Yes, I want to make smoothies. I love healthy food like i'm not i'm not a strict vegan like I was vegan for for years, but I don't I still want to dairy anything, but like I do like the the healthier plant base kind of stuff. And so I think just having something like these premiums movies that people can get and you just deliver him.

But like that companies literally only delivering ing smoothes. We're we're not branching into jamba juice where they start to sell these little payed trees or pressure or whatever. It's like literally just deliver smoothes.

And that's the kind of focus that you get and you serve to you get a brand. People started to show you strongly with that product instead of like so this U S premium cookies, premium smoothies instead of a cookie company or A A smoothly company. So like everything is like um we've had a lot of change in the last but fifty years since the rise of fast food.

People don't make food anymore at home or not. Well, a lot of the acknowledge that people got from their parents, grandparents and stuff has kind of been lost family recipe and that and so is there a way to get back to homemade food but still taste Better than everything else? So like you're not losing anything, you actually gaining everything.

You're you're getting Better, food taste Better, is higher quality, is Better for you and is our way to have a delivery service just has hey, this is this your meals for the week today or thursday, we have lisa or port roast. Friday we have these two things, like, and then you have stomach IT simple because you, anna, make IT so you can have a superficial. But then he starts be sending out these these foil trays to people.

So like families, moms, whatever, can buy actual good dinners, but it's when we're convenient and Better than everything else. Like there's really not anything like that, that I know of, but it's just super focus and that has a really predict table calendar equal look at. And that has a variety a lot of the things with variety, people think that having A A big menu is variety.

But I like, I like change. People like change. People like changing seasons.

They like IT when it's cold and then they get hot. And when it's middle summer, you're missing the winter. It's middle winter missing the summer.

You like change. And people type about IT like all bring back your super cookie, but they like IT when IT comes back and they buy IT. So variety isn't always just having a lot of features or having a lot of products.

Sometimes it's just changing your products or having a just a calendar or I know just A A rotating revolving product line. So like that's when we added flavor of the week. And we had our hero cookie, which was our second flavor, and I was very popular.

People love IT. When we announce we were not going to have that to stable anymore. We're going to do flavor of the week.

People were freaked in out. He is very popular, do you know? Like forty percent .

of our sales.

And yeah but we said it's not gone. We will bring you back in flavor the week, probably once or twice a month. So you'll still get IT. But now you're probably trust that mouse that is your favorite cokie and that is jacket.

What happened when we we offered Cherry cookie once before I was a stable, and we had a guy who kept going on every single time we post instagram, bring back the chair cookie, bring back the chair. And we did. We made a staple.

He loves IT and then we get rid of IT we had of over the week. He tried the sugar cookie and he said it's a very cookies ever heard and he's like, bring back the sugar cooking. They will make you a flavor in the week anymore like people love the rotation even if they complain.

But like today's society, where we have always advanced technology things, you can also get everything to want when you want IT. You can get air conditioning when you want IT you can get, you can exercise when you want, not because you have to you can there are so many things available to you that you're not told no lot. And so to tell people know we're not going to give you that flavor or no, we have a limited amount of deliveries.

We're not going to hire more drivers. No, when I opened past ten pianer, we don't open before certain time. Like IT really does create some kind of scarcity yeah that people like even if they say they don't.

That's as part of like one new year a kid like collecting pokemon cards. There's the wide why were pokemon cards so popular? Because you were just there is a scarce sey, there's a renomme. It's kind of gambling 你 you don't .

know you going to get in that pack。

yeah. So that's trying to have that kind of is this was all completely luck. Starting IT like IT was the constraint of me building the software from scratch.

And me not wanted to add multiple flavor support. When I had to change, we had chocolate ship. When I want to add another flavor, we little had to get rid of chocolate chip. And at the other favor be the chocolate chip.

But in the in the software, I was changing IT to say not chocolate chip or whatever IT is if it's between these days, show this flavor instead in the afternoon, even though it's still as a chip in the database. So IT was completely like me, slowly adding multiple flavorous support. Now we can add as many flavors we want on the form, but we learned not the scarcity of smart.

There's a bakker y that I used to live by called mr. Home's bakehouse. And they had instagram account where they would post, you know, here's our menu for today.

And every day we'd be different flavors of donuts and different things. And there was like this one, like apple burbo dona. They made that I thought was the best thing in the world.

But they only had to like once a month. And if they had IT every day, I think I would have just gone there every day for like a week until I got sick of apple buran donuts and just stopped. But because they didn't, as long as I live there, check there in secret account every day.

And then like once a month, I would see that they had the apple burger dona, and I would go down to to the bake shop just because that scarcity and the fact that IT IT just caused me to miss that thing. They don't let me sort of gorge myself and go over the limit. They kind of limit how much I can get of the thing that I want, which makes me creative even more and that makes me more loyal customer over time. So I think it's super smart. And a super in line was just what psychologically, when we you know about marketing and selling .

people like scarcity, yeah we sell out daily. And so we by the by the end the day, like if you're at three o'clock, there's no times lots left and we delivered to the past nine and so yeah, there's default something too as far as like limiting what people can do even if we could hire a couple more drivers and get a few more thoughts in there.

Just let IT sell out and makes people have a higher opinion of your company just because I think it's more premium at everyone's buying from IT. It's like there was a huge social proof marketing there was happening a couple years ago where you would see this pop up x on the website. Oh, so so just got a shirt I like right there.

Is that social proof site? And just just by having things sold out or one slot left. And we're not lying. We're not just trying to eat, buy cookies. We only have one slot left then yeah, there there's there's some social proof there and they gets people to continue to associate with a higher quality.

There's a good book on this and it's not a business book at all. Just a psychology book is called influence by Robert child deny and he talks about kind of six principles of influence and you know how people can convince other people to do other things. And two of the big ones are scarcity and social proof.

We like to do things if we know that there's a time limit, we know that know there's not a lot of resources to go along, to go around. We want to make sure we get something before it's too late. And also proof, you know, we kind of a take our cues from other people.

We see the other people like things, and we trust those things more. We sort of outsource are thinking to others, rather than I having to figure out everything from first principles ourselves. So I recommend anyone who is trying to sell something, whether in the real world or online, to read this book as human psychology.

This is so important. And this works, you know, like an online communities. And and SaaS business is as well.

Then any hacks, for example, will have certain conversations, certain foreign post, that occur red pretty much irregularly. For example, we have, like a big hay show off and landing page post on the forum. And we tried building this and delicate of a permanent feature.

And there is always know, a little bit of participation. People would kind of post on any pages every now then, but then I be now. And if we just do like one big post, like once or twice a month, that post will get like three hundred comments because everybody's been waiting for the opportunity to share their thing.

And so I think it's not just cookies, is not just food or rural businesses. But even if you have like a sas business or a community online, if you sort of limit your features and you create some scarcity, I think that will create more demand. And it's just something I think it's underused and it's onna call to see how how you're doing IT with crave.

That was there was the philosophy with like with the the founders of base camp, there was had that kind of physical y where they they don't give out the customers of features I always wanted and they're still relevant today. There's there is still the news what they do that works. They're hey melting, they are just launching. So there's yeah, it's not the only philosopher other one's at work, but it's depends what you .

sell on yeah well, listen, sam, I don't want to take up too much your time. It's been super call to hear about crave cookie. Uh, your growth doesn't sane and that sounds like you've got a ridiculous number number of ideas or where you can go in the future. What would you have? I speed the other any hacks who are listening, who haven't found any success yet, who don't know what to work on, and who maybe, you know, considering starting something new, what do you think they should have?

So I can only speak to really like technical people because i'm a technical person. But I guess that is it's not plea true. But yeah the yeah you're probably really good at something or really interested in something and you don't realize how you compared with someone in a very random way to sell something.

I was a very good soft engineer growth market or whatever. And my sister makes cookies, and I set up a self cookies like kids. And we're making seven figures of reviews.

So like it's unreal how much more success I had doing something that I thought was I would have thought was beneath me. When people love cookie, who cares if it's just like it's like a it's not a big tech SaaS company. I'm not i'm not featured on tech cranch.

I am not whatever like I have more people love in my cookies than a lot of people have actually love in their stuff. Um even if it's a time thing they use all the time, just people are actually passionate about IT and seeing all these little kids posting things like you see little kids enjoying IT and like everything, they're gonna. I'm never growing up in getting ice cream from a certain place in my little town and like that.

Still, memory people have memories of this thing that I built from the childhood. You know, it's like you can do anything random with some people which find someone who has another skill in a different area and don't always go at solo and and yet try to build something quick and don't waste time like building a big old thing. So that's that's what I wish I would have done different.

I think that's great advice and I wanna just reiterated because I think it's understated. It's something people should think more about. Number one, if you combine your skills with somebody else, just the number of combinations of things you can do just explodes. Expansion ally, if you're just like i'm a developer, i've got to write something with code, you know there's not that many ideas that are going to come.

But if you're like, hey, i'm going to pair with sales person is an expert at selling this and I want to pay with the cookie maker something suddenly the combination of that mean that you can build something being that super unique a lot of other people hadn't thought of and aren't doing. So I think that's a great advice. And the number two, you don't have to have the fanciest flash st, coolest, newest thing.

There's lots of things out there that people already know in love. People love cooies. Like he said, there's a million things that people love. You don't necessarily to innovate to find out what people love.

You could just look at what people already love and figure out a Better way to bring IT to them or a different way to bring IT to them. And what of d rescue basses in that way. So I think that's super smart.

Yeah, you don't have, like you said, have to innovate. You just have to be Better at something that people already like or be more convenient or just what make what gives you that competitive advantage and then optimized for that competitive advantage. Different, different ates you people.

that is exactly. It's fresh because so many people stuck on this like I don't know what to build phase and it's like the world is full of a million things that work really well, just build one of those. But for, you know, an underserved group of people in a Better way or optimize, and you don't have to worry about what people love.

Like the answer to what people love is out there. You have the answers to that test. Just go build IT. Sam, thanks so much for come on on the show been really entertained up to you about your cookie business. Can you let listeners know where they can go to find more about crave cookie? And you know maybe where they can buy .

one if they're interested. yes. So where craze cookie 点 com， we don't have online shipping yet. I've built IT out and I table LED IT.

So it's it's just a matter of time, probably the next month, i'll probably add some on landed things. You try this, but there basically I don't not on a lot of social media. I read books by candle light at night.

I I don't like things to be overly ly stimulating. I like being in control. And so yeah, I don't have a lot of social presence online yeah, if you want to connect me a link and I guess send me a message of whatever family questions, my email is sam at craft cookie a com. Family questions.

That's where you fine. Alright, thanks to on them. yeah. Thanks, man listening ers. If you enjoy this episode, you want an easy way to support the podcast. You should leave a review for us on itunes to our apple podcasts.

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