Derek and Andrea Johnston share their journey from enjoying a charcuterie board on their first date to founding The Gathering Board, a successful charcuterie business started during the pandemic.
• Started business without formal planning after discovering no similar services existed in their area
• Built their website in three days and received their first non-friend order while grocery shopping
• Initially operated as a "bootleg" business until securing proper licensing and a commercial space
• Gained traction through Facebook group "Cherokee Connect," generating 500 website visits overnight
• Adopted Gordon Ramsay's quality standards after Andrea watched Hell's Kitchen while recovering from a broken jaw
• Expanded from small home delivery boards to event catering, now representing 75% of their business
• Secured their liquor license to provide full-service events including charcuterie and their signature "Pasta Baby" dish
• Partner with Rally Foundation for childhood cancer research, raising $20,000 through donated services
• Now employ a manager plus several staff members after five years in business
• Maintain the same high standards for every client regardless of size or profile
Follow the same high standards for all your work because you never know when a small job will lead to a major opportunity – many clients try a small order before booking a wedding or large event.
andrea@thegatheringboard.co
https://www.instagram.com/thegatheringboard.co/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/thegatheringboard.co/?ref=_xav_ig_profile_page_web#
www.thegatheringboard.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-johnston-70a8271bb/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-johnston-4806746a/
#rallyfoundation#pastababy#focaccia#cherokeecountyfacebook#rallyontherunway#charcuterieboard#love#wine#pasta#grazingtables#catering#delivery#Atlanta#smallbusiness#money#entreprenuer
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We were bootlegging.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Right, so I didn't want anybody coming to us until
we were legit.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Hey, I'm thinking like Duke's a hazard right.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Remember the I just like moonshine, except for with
meat and cheese.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
They're like Derek go Look the back of the car.
No go, hit it Go.
Roll out of the garage at nightwith no lights on, with your
charcuterie board, the of thegarage at night with no lights
on, with your charcuterie boardthe whole time like but I'm here
to save lives, I'm here to tellpeople how to do things the
right way, and now you got meout here bootlegging me to Jesus
.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
If they choke on the cheese, I can save that, I can
fix them.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
That's right.
That's how we justify it.
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari, where I help guide you
to avoid those traps, pitfallsand dangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
(00:53):
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
(01:19):
We're laughing already, ellen,because eyes on me.
Ellen don't do not.
Are you staring at my food?
Don't you stare at my food?
Don't you stare at my food?
Oh my God, what are we?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
doing If you don't want to stare.
You know, if you don't wantsomebody to stare at your chest,
you shouldn't have your logothere.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That's kind of why we're yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's what I put, you're like eyes up here, big
fella that's right, big fella.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
No, I'm like right here, eyes where I want them,
the trusted toolbox right hereon my chest.
Huh, I wonder, is that whyHooters was so popular?
I'm not going there.
Okay, we're not going there asthey are now going bankrupt.
I know Crazy, right, it's aturn of the page, isn't it?
It is a turn of the page.
Now, let's turn the page andtalk about what we're going to
(01:59):
talk about today.
Oh wait.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I got something to tell you.
What's that?
Oh, let me guess Weekend'scoming.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Weekend came.
Oh, you don't look particularlyhungover on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Right, I, uh I kept it together for the weekend
because I got new clubs.
Were those the ones I just sawin the garage?
That's right, baby.
I almost went over there causeit looked really clean.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I asked Titleist if they wanted to sponsor the
podcast and they said, yeah,you're going to have to get in
line because we've got too manyothers.
But I'm like they aren't ascool as us.
I need new clubs and I wouldn'tmind it if you wanted to kind
of comp them for me.
So there's no comp, by the way,but I've got them, Titleist Big
surprise, yeah, and how are youhitting them?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I loved it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I had a good time so I played one round.
Dispersion came down.
You know I didn't have a wholelot going on this weekend.
Well, so we're doing thispodcast in the middle of the
week, as we always do.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
There's a golf course literally right there.
Have I ever played with Chris?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
No, I won't let him come with me.
No.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I can't Super rude, thank you.
Thank you, no, I meant rudethat you haven't asked him.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right, rude, that I haven't asked him.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He seems like a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I am a nice guy, he's a nice guy, and I can hit the
ball.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
okay, he does hit the ball.
Okay, because I did use him ina scramble at a charity event.
Yeah, but not here.
But just not here, wait, yeah.
So guess what I'm doing afterwe're done with this show.
We're doing this during themiddle of the week.
I've got another big eventhappening tomorrow, what I'm
going to be playing in the 680the Fan charity golf event for
(03:33):
Children's Healthcare of AtlantaVery cool.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I got invited because I do the radio show and they
said, hey, we'd love to have youcome out there?
Because you're a bigpersonality now, so they want
the celebrities, I guess.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So people have to bid on you to be in their foursome.
They're like who's this guy?
Five cents, I'm your a player?
No, we don't want that.
No, uh, but I'm going out therewith my new sticks and I'm
going to show off.
Nice, yes, all right.
But now speaking of showing off, what do we talk about?
Most of the time when we're on,we're always talking about
business, when we're alwayshaving a drink or two, unless
somebody bangs on us about abreathalyzer test.
I live here, so we're good.
(04:09):
Alan has a bed here, we're fine.
If he has to, he can stay andnot leave next time, all right.
So what else do we talk aboutall the time?
Alan loves to cook.
Chris loves to eat.
Chris cook, chris loves to eat.
Chris loves to cook.
I love to cook too, so I and Ialso being the president of Nary
(04:29):
, we had our Nary event earlierthis year.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Notice how he name dropped.
He could have just said we hada Nary event, but you know.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I am the president Resident, you like that?
Yes, that's his flax rightthere.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
It was a little humble, I'm going to genuflect
right now, but are you thepresident of your HOA?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Oh, gosh, no, I am, oh, no, uh-oh, you know what?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Oh, God bless you.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So much power.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Oh dude, Such a thankless, brutal job.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We have a really good neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
How many homes?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It's a condo unit.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So there's 59.
You can't hide from each other,then we're in our own little
tiny building, three of us, andthen everybody else is in there,
so I can hide a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Oh my gosh, that's serious power.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I got called a Nazi because I'm on our board and we
won't allow red mulch.
I'm like I don't think that wasin mind, conf, but you know,
just saying thou shall not havered mulch.
No, okay, call that nazi I'mthe I'm not opposed to that I
actually found an article sayingtrends that you know, bad
landscaping trends that aredying, and it was red mulch, I'm
(05:40):
like we published it in thenext newsletter, attaboy, just
double down.
Yep in the all right.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
What was the worst thing you've ever had to do at
the hoa?
Like tell somebody it.
You can't do that or you can'tshoot somebody.
You can't keep your dead mom ina freezer.
What was?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
we had a lady that that was feeding the squirrels.
So she would throw peanuts outto the squirrels and they got so
dependent on that they wouldsit on the tree branch and
scream, screaming at her windowfor her to throw more down.
I mean, that's not the worst,but we have pretty good
(06:21):
neighbors.
We had a guy that got up on theroof and was going to film a
YouTube video up there.
He had like a whole contractand everything for the people
that he had hired.
But like you can't go on a roof, like you'll fall, yeah,
there's no ledge.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It's just kind of weird things like that Screaming
squirrels.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
That's not going to be the episode title.
Definitely not that intendedconsequences.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I don't hate it, it's good people.
We have good people.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
All right, let's get into it.
Yeah, you ready, yeah, segwaythat, chris, I can't Screaming
squirrels to the charcuterieboard.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh no, I'm going to start screaming until we open it
up.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
All right, we have the gathering board.
All right, andrea and DerekJohnston are here.
All right, we have thegathering board.
All right, andrea and DerekJohnston are here.
And I met them at this eventand I just was I really love
their food Number one and I juststarted talking to Andrea and
she said, well, we've startedthis business and we're going
all in, we're jumping in anddoing this, and I was like,
(07:26):
really, I said I really want tohave you come on the podcast
because I'm talking to somebodynext week who thinks that
starting your own business isjust nothing.
But you know, high in the sky,getting new clubs, getting to
play golf, doing all the greatcool stuff that's 17 years later
and I'm still hustling.
Bro.
He does not realize how hardit's going to be.
So I'm excited to talk tosomebody who's just getting
started, to see what theyexpected and get into all this
stuff.
But I would say welcome first,but let's get a little
(07:47):
background.
So you guys are married.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Correct, did that happen?
Yes, we are.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
And you guys started this business together before
you were married.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
We did.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Do tell.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So we have only been married for three years.
We met in 2018, and Derek livedin our condo that we live in
right now, and then I lived upin Canton.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So Derek's attracted to power is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
You brought her in and you made her HOA president.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
She's admired of this .
So Derek moved up with me up inCanton because my daughter was
in high school and we wereliving up there until she
graduated and we I'm kind ofjumping the gun so we met in
(08:40):
2018.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And you guys are both full-time job.
This thing wasn't even aroundthe gathering board not an idea.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Either of you involved in food at all to this
point.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Just loving to eat.
Okay, yeah, I just love food.
I went through this hugemade-from-scratch phase and so
when my kids were little, I madethem a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich and I made the bread.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I made them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I
made the bread, I made thepeanut butter.
I love that.
I made the jelly.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yes, I even had a cow for a while.
I was a chicken farmer for alittle bit, which sounds just
ridiculous to say that now, butit was so much fun.
So I've made butter, I've madeice cream, I actually you guys
have some ricotta right here.
I wish I would have milked thecow to make the ricotta, because
it would taste better.
But this is second best.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So my son is a hunter and he married a girl who's
basically a farmer and theirdream is to have a Thanksgiving
where they source all their owningredients and I think that
would just be amazing.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I love that.
Yeah, it tastes, it just tastesbetter.
Be amazing.
I love that.
Yeah, it tastes, it just tastesbetter.
And there's this satisfactionthat you receive from eating a
meal that you made yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
All right, so from farm to table, but let's talk
about from farm to table tomaking money, to making money.
I love what your uh, your son'sgoing to do, but ain't going to
make no money.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You know he probably could make some money doing that
.
Okay yeah, all right, challengeaccepted I like it, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
So you know he probably could make some money
doing that.
Okay, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Challenge accepted, I like it, I think so.
You know once a year event andhe'd happily go shoot some stuff
.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think so All right.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So Derek and I started dating and Derek took me
down to a place in Atlanta, alittle Italian restaurant, and
we got a charcuterie board.
And I'd gone on dates beforewhen I got in a charcuterie
board and it was okay, it wasfine.
But with him it was justtotally different.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Maybe it was a halo effect because of Derek.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I think I actually liked him.
Yeah, you know versus anybodyelse.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I did like him.
The ambiance was better, thewine was delicious, the
presentation of the board wasreally spot on and the flavors
were amazing.
So we were sharing it.
You know, I was hogging all thetomato jam and like totally
turning my nose up to the oliveslike gross, get those out of
here.
He loved them.
I didn't.
(11:00):
You know what do you think thisis?
Let's try some more of that.
It was just a great experienceand I really think that that
meal that we shared togetherover you know, we just shared
one plate of food it really wasintimate and bonded us in a
really interesting way.
And so after that, a coupleweeks later, we went to another
(11:24):
restaurant let's get anothercharcuterie board and that one
was boring and dry.
They served it on like a metalcookie sheet.
Didn't taste good.
We were really disappointedbecause we had spent a lot of
money on it.
So we joked around about goingon to different restaurants and
doing like videos of our foodand putting it up on YouTube and
maybe doing like charcuterieboard reviews doing and putting
it up on YouTube and maybe doinglike charcuterie board reviews
(11:47):
of different restaurants.
That would be fun, kind of acool date night idea.
But then COVID hit and so wedidn't go anywhere.
We just stayed home and at home, left to our own devices.
We just made a lot of food anddrink a lot of alcohol, and I
know a lot of people struggledthrough COVID.
We had a great time.
(12:07):
We had a good time.
I was doing real estate at thetime.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So you were in real estate, I was doing real estate.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, so I have a background in general
construction.
My ex-husband and I owned ageneral contracting company up
in Michigan, so I'm unique inthat I pretty much know how to
build a house Most girls don'tand it's kind of fun.
I have a lot of experiencedoing things like that.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So, Derek, do you give her the honey-do list?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
then, of course, he doesn't really need to, because
I like doing it, so get it done.
You want that mirror hung?
I could do that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You were in real estate in 2020 and COVID.
Actually, people probably don'trealize this, but it was not a
bad time for you, was it?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It was not a bad time .
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, we did pretty well.
There was a.
You know I could still sellhouses, but I'd make my own
schedule.
I could work when I wanted tostay home when I wanted to.
Derek owned a CPR company.
He's a paramedic and hisbusiness is teaching CPR classes
to doctors, surgeons, dentists,and COVID shut that down 100%.
(13:13):
They weren't allowed to takeclasses.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, you can't Zoom that one, can you, derek?
Not really.
No, you're not giving enoughpressure there.
No, he actually just broke hisribs Right.
Oh my gosh.
No wrong counts.
What do you do?
You just shut it down?
Speaker 4 (13:27):
shut it down.
I had contracts at severalhospitals, uh, and everything
just shut down.
Hospital shut down, Um, we lostour contracts.
So I went from uh over 20employees to just me, so
everything shut down overnight.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So, uh, you're saying , hey, we had a great time.
That doesn't sound like a greattime.
Were you in the right headspace?
Were you like okay, well, thisis just meant to be, and I can
see the next option in front ofme.
Or tell me what were youthinking.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
That was a tough time for me because my business just
dried up so I had plenty ofsavings, so I didn't have to
worry too much for a while.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
He also did some contract work, so with his
paramedic license he went toCongress Center.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
I think they had a Three months as overflow for
Grady with COVID patients, didthree months there, did three
months in Chinle, arizona, atone of the Indian reservations
and then did three months in NewYork.
So that was very interestingwork to do.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So we weren't thinking about starting that
business then.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
We were.
So we're going to back up alittle bit.
Yeah, we're at home, we'rewatching movies till 2 in the
morning.
We're making food, so I wasmaking charcuterie boards for
ourselves.
It was just fun.
My personality is such like thefirst one I made.
It was not impressive, it wasjust meat cheese.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
You've come a long way, because the one you have
right in front of us here islike art.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Thank you.
I think it's maybe our podcastcover art.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, no kidding, think it's beautiful.
I think it's maybe our podcastcover art.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, no kidding, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Thank you.
Well, so my personality is suchthat I'll look at it and go I
can do better.
I don't understand the conceptof doing something just for the
fun of it if you're terrible atit.
I know there's a lot of peoplethat are fine with that.
That's great For me.
Personally, I don't have fun ifI'm not somewhat good at what
I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It sounds like golf yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
I will.
I won't go golfing because I'mnot good at it.
If I golfed, I might be betterat it, but it's not my thing.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
And that's the weird thing about that game is you
just really can't ever get goodat it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
No, I mean no.
I played with one guy who eversaid, man, that was the best
shot of my life and it wasn't ahole-in-one.
And I'm like, no, you didn'tget a hole-in-one.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
You can't master it, you can't master it.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So you just kept iterating.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So I just kept making more boards and we just had fun
doing that and I was postingpictures to my Facebook.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
How's your sodium level we?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
don't check that Blissful ignorance.
Yeah, yeah, but still, I meanshe's in shape.
They both look great too, soobviously they're not partaking
of much of their stuff, or maybe?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
they're running a marathon every day.
Well, you can only eat so muchcharcuterie, day after day after
day, and we've been doing thisfor five years.
So I posted pictures onFacebook and his mom saw them
and so she asked for one for herbirthday.
I was like, okay, that's cool.
So we went Not really theirforte, but they had a pretty
nice selection.
And then, cause I'm a littlebougie, I was like, hey, let's
(16:50):
find some cheese knives, make itlike a whole package.
And cause, also, I wanted toimpress future mother-in-law.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right Good move.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Right, so there's.
There's not any like real homegoods stores down there, so we
went to a little antique shop.
I said, hey, I'm looking forsome knives that could work for
a charcuterie board.
And right off the bat she goesoh, did you know there's a place
that makes and deliverscharcuterie boards.
And it was this like aha, what,what a cool idea.
(17:22):
You can't do that.
So, that was a cool idea.
You can't do that, so that wasa cool idea to me.
Now I started multiplebusinesses in my head, never
really got around to startingthem, but it's sort of like a
hobby to find things like theblender bottle.
There's a problem they put apowder in a drink.
(17:43):
He has to get a whisk and stirit up.
Would that be cool if we couldjust put a whisk right at the
bottom?
Comes up with this product,millionaire.
I love that.
I love that concept, and so Iwould always look at different
things and see what's theproblem and how could I fix it.
I like to fix problems, and sothis was something completely
(18:07):
unexpected.
Nothing I had been looking forto do anything with food, but
the concept of something uniquelike charcuterie boards as a
business was.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I don't know.
It was fascinating to me andjust stuck.
Let me guess what you talkedabout all the way home from
Mississippi, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I knew that I'm getting a.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I'm getting a knowing look from Derek.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
Hey, do you think your motherliked me?
Hey, uh, derek, what do youthink about this?
Uh, what do you think aboutthis idea?
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So, would you guys Amazon?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
No, no, we did not.
Um, we went home, home, and Ijust couldn't shake the idea.
It wasn't local to their city,it was in a different city.
So I just I couldn't shake theidea and I was like I can do
that.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
She had a fever.
She had a fever for salami andprosciutto and cheese and
organizing they make it look sonice.
Okay, so you had this fever.
It's always good, right RightTo have a business plan.
What'd you do?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I winged it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That a girl, here we go.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So this was August 2020.
We are smack dab in the middleof COVID.
Still, I decided a greatbusiness name was calling it the
Gathering Board.
I wanted people to gatheraround and get that same feeling
like we had on our first date,where you're sharing a meal.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You're right about that.
I mean there is a strongbusiness principle.
I mean the bond that you createwith somebody over a good meal.
It really applies in business100%.
Yeah, and I mean better than asales call, better than you know
, yeah, you sit over a good mealand suddenly you know you.
There's a connection there thatyou wouldn't otherwise have.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
It's a feeling.
Right, there's that phrase.
You know you always.
You don't never forget howsomebody made you feel, but if
you can evoke that feeling withgood food or a unique food
experience, it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
So she actually did.
Do the Simon Sinek.
Find your why, her why wasbringing people together over a
food and bonding and gathering,especially during a time where
none of us were gathering?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Well, and you're hitting a couple extra senses
than you would normally get in asales call, for example.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Right, all right yeah .
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Derek started teaching classes again and so
there was one specifically thatwas for some oral surgeons and
he had the class set up andthere was maybe eight of them
and I made a board and I broughtit with and I said hey, I
brought you guys snacks, andthey took one look of it at the
board and they just likedevoured.
(20:47):
They were so excited.
Just the response from themlike, hey, can I get your
business card?
Sorry, I don't have one yet.
Well, what's your website?
Like don't have that yet either.
Like this is just R&D at thispoint, trying to find out, is
this even something that I wouldget good reactions for?
(21:07):
There's nothing like thisaround.
There was no other businessesthat were specifically focused
on charcuterie.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So far, the first focus group was really positive.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Very positive yes.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
She went to the right people oral surgeons, lots of
money and then Derek probablyhad them doing CPR all day,
working their ass off makingsure they didn't have lunch.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Hail this salami and we're going to go to the
Heimlich, by the way how's thisstuff look?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Hey, by the way, can you boost our business?
Oh, you guys loved it.
Oh, why?
Because you haven't eaten sinceyesterday.
Ah, don't worry about that.
Ah, good strategy Derek wearsthem out and you come in and
knock them down.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Hey, we make a great team.
I like it yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
All right.
So from that great start of nobusiness plan winging it, no
business cards, no website, hereI go.
I'm backing into a business.
What'd you do then?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I started a website.
So that took about three daysand I took a bunch of pictures.
I made some boards you knowtook my time because I was able
to and got pictures with myphone is very homemade and I put
together a website and Ithought it looked pretty good as
(22:17):
basic, came up with somepricing and then let's see here
my friend Janine she is mychampion has been by my side
forever.
She made sure she wanted to bemy first customer and so she
ordered off of our website.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So you built a website where you could order
off the website in three days.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yes, that's amazing for me.
I have no idea what I'm doingwith websites.
I don't it was just the.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So yeah, I mean I've got so many questions because
not only do you have thepackaging and the fulfillment
and all that, but then okay,there's probably something to do
with the health department andstarting a food business and you
have an entrepreneurialbackground.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
In real estate and in construction.
So you kind of know your wayaround that registering with the
secretary of state and all thatstuff.
But, then it's like okay, I'mdoing a food business.
That's a completely differentanimal.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
La dee, da, dee, da, da, da da insurance.
Oh government regulations,screw it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Sell stuff.
Let's go.
You sound like you belong in anHOA.
Just saying Thank you Rules.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Get out of here.
Sell that stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You're correct.
So there are some regulationsand things like that.
We didn't know if this wasgoing to be a legit, if we would
have enough business to sustain.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Is this something that I could sell a board to a
couple of friends, a couple ofneighbors.
Oh, so you started a reallyblack market, backed into the
legal stuff.
Is that what I'm hearing?
True crime, we got true crimeagain.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I am totally fine with that big dog.
I am so fine with backing inScrew the government.
We're libertarian.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Big time libertarian yes.
However, once we determinedthis is definitely something
that we can make a business outof, then we went and found a
location and went through thecorrect path of getting a health
department license.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Do you have a retail location?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
We do.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Why did you choose to do that?
Because that's a big expenseyou have to.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
So you can make cakes and cookies and crackers as in
your own home with a cottagefood license.
You cannot do that withcharcuterie.
It's a meat and cheese producthas to be refrigerated, so they
call that a time temperaturecontrol or TCS food.
You cannot do that with acottage food license unless you
have a specific kitchen in yourhome that is separate and is
(24:46):
licensed as a commercial kitchen.
So we have to If you want tohave charcuterie business the
chicken salad chick.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
That reminds me of her story of starting out doing
it in Auburn, alabama and thenrealizing she had to have a real
commercial grade kitchen thatwas separate of her own kitchen
and ran into all those rules.
So when we say you have aretail, do you have actually a
storefront?
We do.
It's open for the public tocome walking in.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yes, yes, and where is that located?
That's in Holly Springs, whichis between Woodstock and Canton,
and we were the firstcharcuterie catering company
with a storefront in the stateof Georgia.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
So do you have something like we're taping this
episode during the week?
Do you have somebody thereright now, man in the store for
you.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Normally, yes, um, but our gal is on vacation this
week, so we put up a sign thatsays uh, closed for a private
event.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Oh, that is so smart, yeah, so smart Cause you know
what that makes me want to doFind out how I get my private
event there.
That's right, all right.
So when I met you guys earlierthis year, you already had a
retail storefront.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yes, we signed the lease in March of 2021.
So that was about six monthsafter we launched the business
and officially got our licensein August.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
All right, wanganit, I got to hear about this because
there's one thing I do in mybusiness is I definitely don't
have a retail storefront and Iwas always shaken from that,
because I started my business in08 and I realized that there
were remodelers who were puttingup storefronts quote unquote to
put cabinets out, show offproduct.
People just will walk in andbuy, which doesn't ever happen
in my world.
That's a lot of money.
(26:29):
So I mean monthly, your outlaythere is pretty, pretty pricey
and plus the equipment you hadto put in there.
So that was a pretty bigcapital investment.
So that's a lot of securityboards.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
We were fortunate in that the health department did
not make us do like an overheadhood, like for the stove.
They didn't make us do thosebig commercial items because we
weren't cooking raw meats, weweren't cooking hamburgers,
things like that.
Everything we did at the timewas just preparing already
(27:00):
cooked food.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So no, grease trap.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So no, grease trap either.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
That's a big savings yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I mean that is because barrier entry into
restaurants I mean that's thebiggest one is the build out.
It is you think you gotgrandma's recipes nailed.
But it is the build out andthen the carrying costs of that
place every month is a number.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's always twice as expensive as you think it will
be and takes two to three timesas long.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Oh, it sounds like my wife.
Yeah, every home project I do.
Yeah, double the time, triplethe budget Okay Sounds like my
start.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yep, that's what I tell people now.
If you can, if you can doublethe expenses and half the
revenue and double the time it'sgoing to take for you to break
even, would you still do thisbusiness?
Then let's go.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Right and we were fortunate because you know, I
told you, I have experience withconstruction and so I did a lot
of the work myself.
I had my son helped.
He's super, you know, superknowledgeable on building things
.
His boss came and framed out awall for us.
The city didn't make us well,we had to get a building permit,
(28:08):
but they didn't make itdifficult.
I'm on the DDA, so that'shelpful because I know a lot of
the people at the city and soyou know, pull the permit and
they were just easy to work with.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
That's awesome that they were business friendly,
because you have enough hurdles,because I was talking about
getting started and having themoney.
Now you've got to get people toshow up and buy the stuff.
So you're obviously you'rehaving good success on your
website through orderfulfillment.
Buy the stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
So you're obviously having good success on your
website through orderfulfillment.
So I would like to give a shoutout to the Facebook group
called Cherokee Connect.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Cherokee Connect, cherokee Connect, cherokee
Connect.
We're going to put that in theshow notes.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Please.
I really feel like they arewhat launched us in our town,
because we were selling theboards when we just got started
and I put a post up on there Atthe time I think they had maybe
27,000 followers and I postedsome pictures of what we'd done
(29:04):
and I said charcuterie boardsdelivered.
That's a thing.
It is now Introducing thegathering board where we make
you know blah blah and I postedthat onto their site around 5 pm
and it was insane.
I had immediate, immediate.
(29:25):
I had over 500 visits to mywebsite that night.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Wow, oh, come on, let's go.
Hashtag Cherokee Connect, do itagain.
It's 500.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Chris, I think you need to get on Cherokee.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Connect, hey Cherokee Connect.
Do you guys need a greathandyman?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
What'd you do?
You need a commercial realestate guy.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, commercial real estate.
Alan Wyatt, Keller, Willow.
All right, so I mean, that'sone of those things where you're
like we've seen this in themovies like hey, we got an order
, hey, we got two, hey, we got20.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Hey, we got 40.
We got 400.
We need to order some moresalami now.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Get the Red Bull.
Hey, you ain't going to worktomorrow.
Big guy, we got work to do whathappened?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So it was.
It was pretty quick responseand you know nobody's going to
order a charcuterie boardimmediately, but it got us on
their radar and they're like I'mgoing to have to try that.
So, aside from Janine being myfirst order paid order, I was in
the grocery store one day andmy phone made this weird dinging
(30:24):
sound and I pulled it up and Igot a live like I got a legit.
I don't know who this person is.
Live like I got a legit.
I don't know who this person is.
They just ordered something onmy website.
It was so exciting and I may ormay not have done this happy
dance in the middle of theproduce section.
Yeah, pretty much it was.
(30:45):
It was just phenomenal to methat I could make a product,
build a website, put thatproduct on my website and then
somebody who doesn't know meordered it because they liked
what I had.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's so awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It was really awesome and I called Derek.
I'm like, oh my gosh, we justgot an order.
It was so exciting.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Okay.
So you put it out there thatyou'll make all these different
charcuterie boards and that youwould deliver them.
Is that part of it out therethat you'll make all these
different charcuterie boards andthat you would?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
deliver them.
We delivered everything at thatpoint because we were
bootlegging.
I didn't want anybody coming tous until we were legit.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Hey, I'm thinking like Dukes of Hazzard right it's
like Moonshine, except for withmeat and cheese.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Go Go, Roll out like moonshine except for with meat
and cheese.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
They're like Derek, go Look the back of the car, no,
go Hit it go.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Roll out of the garage at night with no lights
on, with your charcuterie board.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
The whole time like but I'm here to save lives, I'm
here to tell people how to dothings the right way, and now
you got me out here bootleggingmeat and cheeses.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
If they choke on the cheese, I can save that, I can
fix them.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
That's right.
Yeah, that's how we justifiedit.
Give that, give that driver'sseat, bo, we got to go, go, go
go.
I dropped off another one.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Go, go, go.
So we knew full well like thisis something that has to change.
If we were going to have alegitimate business, we have to
get a storefront.
In the meantime I needed to payfor said storefront and so we,
you know, sold some boards, butwe made sure that we had a
process that was exactly likewhat we would do and we had a
commercial kitchen.
So I got my serve safe managerlicense.
We had a separate fridge,separate pantry, separate.
(32:25):
I don't want anybody reachingin the bag of grapes that are
going to be going to a customer.
That's not.
That's not okay.
I wouldn't be okay with that.
So we made sure that we dideverything like we were supposed
to.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
If a grape hypothetically rolls on the
ground for five seconds, youpick it up.
Is that allowed to still go tothe customer?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I think so, because you just wipe it off.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
That is a hard.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
no, it's a hard surface.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Good for everybody on the podcast that we are not
running a restaurant, Because athome that'd be like a ch-ch-ch.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Dick to what you know , Chris.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's a hard no, damn it.
You know, mythbusters actuallydid an experiment on that and it
really doesn't pick up thatmuch stuff on the ground If it's
a hard surface like that Now,if it was like butter, but not
if you serve it to people whoyou could actually kill.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It's still a no, that's.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
She's a serve safe.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
She's gone to the other side now I know that
doesn't sound very libertarianto me.
She's got to serve to otherpeople.
I get it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
So I want to back up the story slightly and explain
to you our quality standards andwhy so.
We started the business priorto launching talking about it on
Cherokee Connect, and I hadlaunched the website.
(33:41):
I think it was up maybe threedays and I went, got picked up
as a player a girl player it'salways hard to find girls
playing on softball teams so Igot a phone call hey, do you
want to play on our team?
I said absolutely, Went to playthe next day and, maybe like
the third inning, I broke my jaw.
I got hit with the ball.
It wasn't even off the bat.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I got through it.
I didn't expect that.
I thought the third inning.
She brings out the charcuterieball.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
No Broke my jaw.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh my God, oh my God.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, so it was pretty traumatic.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I'm thinking.
You're probably thinking toyourself this is my moneymaker,
this is how I'm making money.
I talk.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I can buy my boards.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Oh my God, derek, you're going to be the voice
from now on, derek and so, yes,bring it in the right arm, get
in there, buddy, they're selling.
Yeah, oh, but seriously, I meanall jokes aside, how long did
that set you down?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
A couple of weeks?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Starting a business.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Right after three days, like three days after I
launched the website and I wasall excited and ready to go, and
now I'm in the hospital.
I had to have surgery.
I couldn't eat anything.
I'm just miserable.
It didn't hurt that bad.
It really didn't, surprisingly.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Did you get some guilt orders out of it though?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
No, nobody knew, because we hadn't.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Because she didn't have a chance to talk to him.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, this was pre.
Somebody shut her up.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
She should be on the ground, writhing, holding her
jaw and handing out a card.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
You know what I'm thinking.
We're going to get to this in aminute because I have seen a.
The charcuterie boardcharcuterie company is popular.
I think this is competition.
I think somebody took her out.
Sweep the leg, danny.
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
That's a little deep conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Tanya Harding Do it Boom.
She will not.
You will not.
You will not skate again, nancy.
Yes, andrea, you will not bestarting that thing, all right.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
All right.
So I'm in bed, laid up, can'tdo anything, can't move, can't
anything.
And uh, I turn on the tv and Idon't know what made me start
watching it.
But hell's kitchen was, was on,and so I started watching
hell's kitchen.
I'd not watched it before, butI'd heard of, you know, gordon
ramsay and all that.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But that's when you started screaming at people I
know, because they couldn't talk.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Oh yeah, so I started watching this.
I'm like this is ridiculous.
I can't even eat, I can justdrink my meals.
But I'm watching this cookingshow, but I enjoyed it.
And and I'm watching, he'sthrowing food and he's yelling
at people and I'm trying tofigure out why this guy is so
crazy about making sure his foodlooks the way it's supposed to
(36:11):
look.
And as I'm going from episodeto episode, season to season
because I'm pretty sure Iwatched the entire I think we
were 16 seasons at that point itdawned on me this is his brand,
this is his food, this is hisstandard, and he's not lowering
his standard for anybody.
He expects them to come up tohis standard and he values the
(36:37):
people that come to his business, the people that give him money
for a good meal.
He values them and what theythink of him, and so he makes
sure that it's perfect.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Gold nugget.
That is a great gold nugget.
You got to bring everybody upto your standards, not lower
your standards until everybodycome into your business and sell
your reputation.
That's a great one.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
It's difficult to do.
It really is difficult to keepyour standards and not be like.
So you're talking about thegrape on the floor.
That wasn't my example, myexample.
But once I started buildingboards again, it was a couple of
weeks later.
I distinctly remember cutting astrawberry and the strawberry
(37:20):
was fine.
I would have eaten it.
It wasn't rotten or moldy oranything like that, but it was a
little squishy.
And I remember going to put iton the board and going it's fine
.
And I swear to you I heard avoice say would Gordon Ramsay
put that on his board?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
What would Gordon do?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
What would Gordon do?
There you go.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
WWDD.
What would Gordon do?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And I knew he would not.
There is no way that he wouldhave been okay with that.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And I was like, okay, and I got a different one
because I don't like wastingfood.
No, I don't want to waste it.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Well, that's a huge part of the food service
business is waste and I wasthinking about that At least
with cured meats and cheeses andstuff there is a better shelf
life than your average produce.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
But not the produce.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Not the produce.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Strawberries.
I threw away so manystrawberries.
We finally quit putting thestrawberries on our boards
because I was throwing them awayfaster than I could use them,
because they weren't perfect.
So from that moment on, I knewI needed to be perfection every
single board, every single time.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, that definitely holds that you got blackberries
on ours, okay, good.
And grapes, um, so we could putit on the ground and then we
can eat it.
Let's test that.
I'm going to throw it on thefloor and you can eat it.
I love that you did.
Again, if you're going to get aboard from you, you expect that
when they get that, it's one ofthose aha wow moments and
that's what you were thinking todeliver to your customer and
the customer experience.
(38:43):
Yeah, yes.
So talk a little bit about yourgrowing it and the customer
experience and some of thefeedback you've gotten from what
you've done.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well, what we found is when people would come to our
store to pick up their board,the first thing they would do is
they would take it and theywould look at it.
They would instantly.
They weren't even looking at me.
They're looking at their boardand like, oh, it's so pretty
every single time.
And so what we did at the timewe don't do it now because of
(39:14):
our volume.
It just takes too much time.
But we would leave the box on,like we wouldn't have the
sticker on the front of it.
And when somebody would come topick up their board, we would
pull it out of the fridge, walkit over to them with the front
of it facing them and open itand say, here it is, what do you
think?
And they would drop right downto look at it and that kind of
(39:37):
the smells would waft up.
And it was an entire experiencefor them to get to see their
board, smell it and anticipatewhat it was going to be like it
was.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Who thought about doing that presentation like
that?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I did.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
And so everybody does that.
If I walk in right now and Iget a board, we don't do that
right now, but we have two.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Our volume's too high .
We started wrapping it in thisplastic because it just feels
like it's If you're taking itsomewhere else, it just seems
more safe.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Nobody's you're taking it somewhere else, it
just seems more safe, likenobody's tampered with it
actually the presentation isstill pretty good and smelling
it from here and it's alreadystill plastic and we do a lot of
things on these platters righthere, these palm leaf platters,
and you can't open it but youcan see through it.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
So they still get to see the experience and I'll try
to, you know, hold it up to themstill.
We still present it with thefront facing them.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, it still looks great.
And then I bet the second youopen that lid it smells good, it
smells real good.
Chris told me I couldn't haveany right now because he didn't
want me smacking into themicrophone.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Hey, chris, I got something else.
I gotta say no, you can't.
It's horrible radio.
Nobody wants to listen to ustalking about food.
We are going to chop the crapout of this after we're done.
All right, so in your biz,retail, walk-in online.
And then how?
I met you doing events, correct?
What is the split on therevenue percentage-wise?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Originally we did smaller boards like this for two
people.
You know up to six.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
This is what.
Eight inches square.
Nine inches square.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
This is eight inch yeah, this that I brought for
you guys is off menu.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Ooh.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Got it custom.
Hey everybody.
Hey, if you go to the GatheringBoard, you won't be getting the
Chris and Ellen special.
But I will tell you what.
If you go on the GatheringBoard and you put in a note that
you heard us and you want toorder one, they did say they
give us, you give you a discount.
So check it out, don't worry,it works every time, all right.
So fine, all right wow, do thaton the air, that's nice chris we
(41:43):
would be happy to let me tellyou the times I can hit up on
that one.
Yeah, you'd be thrilled, I meanespecially if you get 500 more
orders off this absolutely doyou.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Do you ship to Australia?
We do not ship to Australia.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
How about the US?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
We do not do any shipping right now.
We have okay.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
so I'll tell you what .
If you do it, you can say thatChris said he would give me a
Delta drink voucher to come pickit up.
If you have to fly to Atlanta,I will give you a drink voucher.
Put that on there.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I will fly to them.
If they would like to hire meto do an event, I would love to
do that.
That would be phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
So you actually?
So let's get Chris's questionfirst, but then I'm dying to
know because you've branched outinto some other stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yes, so originally this is what we did the most of.
I get super excited if we got aboard that served 20 people,
like, oh my gosh, this isamazing, huge order.
Uh, it would take me so long toput it together.
Um, now I can do a box likethis in 10 minutes because we
have everything prepped and wehave everything ready and we
have this big, you know sandwichprep cooler and just we're set
(42:46):
up really cool meat slicer I'llbet yes, yeah, of course I still
want to get one reference now.
Now now in ones we've seen ashift, especially this last year
or two.
Instead of the smallerindividual boards, now we're
doing events, and so I would say, um, we are probably 75 percent
(43:06):
events and 25 boards, but theevents doesn't have to be like
what you, where you met me, itcould be.
Hey, we're going to order, youknow, platters that serve 50
people.
We just don't necessarily wanta whole grazing table.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
So and of the 25 boards, what percentage are
ordered online versus peoplewalking in?
Speaker 1 (43:30):
um, probably 50 50.
We don't really get a whole lotof walk-ins.
We're not a restaurant, we'renot a catering company.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
We're not retail A high walkable area.
And so I think, when people arethinking about your city having
been through it, no, but Icould think.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
So.
A realtor is an example.
I've got an open house.
I'm going to swing by and get aboard.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And we do that.
Fridays definitely are busierfor that, so we anticipate we're
going to have walk-ins andwe'll have them ready.
We do have a space right nowthat you can come sit down and
eat, but we're not quite set upfor that yet.
That's why we're a little bitof everything, but nothing
specifically.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
So events as you guys right now are thinking, that's
probably where we want to focus.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Events yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
So let's talk about that event, the event that I
went to.
They had this amazing spread,but they also presented it.
So just absolutely, it was awork of art that you didn't want
to eat, but you, of course, ate, because I eat.
Yeah, how long did that last?
Then they had the big Parmesanthe wheel, the full wheel, the
full wheel, the full wheel.
(44:34):
And I said I got to have some.
And Derek was working the wheel, he was getting the pasta going
.
Out came the pasta, here itcomes, I eat some.
I honestly could have sat thereand just ate pasta all night,
but I had to go talk.
So that night I go home and Italked to my wife and my
daughter who were in.
(44:54):
They were in, they were inSouth beach and they had just
got done doing the same thingand sent me some pictures of it.
They they had spent $50 a plateto get.
And I said you know what I'mgoing to bet mine might might've
been better and what I got backwas but I'll bet our waiter was
cuter.
I'm like, oh, okay, honey.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I would disagree with that.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Right.
Well, I can't say that.
Look at Derek, I mean come onhe's horrible he is, he is, but
that was my wife saying that.
I was like that didn't feelgood.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So you have the full Parmigiano-Reggiano wheel.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Correct His name is Reggie and we call the
experience Pasta Baby.
It is awesome.
I mean, I mean, guys, it is oneof the best things.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I really I'm not joking, I have so many questions
about that pasta wheel.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Just off air maybe, but since then, I went to a.
We went to an Italianrestaurant and I refused to get
it because I still rememberedhow good this one was and I just
didn't want to spoil it.
Uh, so I did something else,but back to you and the reason I
bring that up is because yousaid something originally was
the whole inspiration for thiswas you sharing a board and the
intimacy and the gathering boardwhich your name is, and when I
(46:06):
had that wheel and this was anon-intimate moment this was a
big networking event.
We had 180 people there doingeverything and you guys were
slinging it moving to happen.
It was awesome, though, and Iwould say it still resonates
with me on how good that was.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
It is just phenomenal .
It's the best pasta I've everhad.
I think it ruins you for otherpasta and we've heard it from
enough people who've traveledextensively, from just them
saying this is the best pastaI've ever had.
And you hear it enough time.
Like the first couple timesyou're like they're just being
(46:42):
nice, but you hear it enoughtimes you do believe it's good
and actually since you had it,we've perfected it even better
we've sourced out a differentpasta so this is a different
business or just part of thewhole charcuterie experience it
is um.
It is a product that thegathering board provides right
now with, with the intention oflaunching it as its own the
(47:06):
pasta baby shall be launched.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Yeah, can we birth the pasta baby ellen?
Oh my gosh, we're coming to theend of this thing and I'm
having so much fun.
I hate that we got to end this,but, guys, we're coming to the
end, but uh, but there's more totalk about.
I mean, they've got wine.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
They've got a charity .
They have a charity that theydo.
Can we give it a mention?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
About that real quick .
I'd love to talk about that.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Let's shout out a charity.
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Okay, so we, three years ago, got started with this
group called Rally Foundation,and it happened because three
different clients of ourspurchased something from us.
Two of them were grazing tablesfor a charity event and another
one was a board Grazing table.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
That sounds like right up your alley.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Strap on the feedback , bro.
I would go right up there andyou couldn't get me off.
That Moo Moo.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I don't even know what to say with that.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Back to the charity.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Back to the charity.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Three Moo.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Moo.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Charity.
We heard about it from threedifferent people three different
times, all naturally, and whenyou hear something different
ways, you want to pay attention,and so we started looking into
this charity.
It's called Rally Foundation.
What they do is they raisemoney to fund childhood cancer
research and so like how do yousay no to that?
Speaker 2 (48:20):
you're talking about something with choa.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
it's an incredible, incredible group of people and
um, I think they're they givelike 97 cents of every dollar
towards researchers.
They don't hardly keep anything.
So we've catered a coupleevents for them.
We did their board of directorsmeeting last December, and then
(48:43):
they have this rally on therunway in April, and two years
ago so in 2023, was the firsttime we were part of it we
donated a class, a Shakiriboardmaking class, and that
brought in $900.
So we're pretty excited aboutthat, yeah, that was in their
silent auction.
And then last year we donatedan item for the live auction and
(49:09):
so we did a 25-personcharcuterie grazing table, pasta
baby how much did that go for?
And then alcohol as well.
So, bar and we raised $6,700last year.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Right there, buddy, I would have right there.
Hell yes, I want that Right$6,700, right.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
And then this year.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
She might sell a second one if you match.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
This year our same item went for $10,000.
And we had a matching.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
A little rich for the internet.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So we sold two of those for $10,000.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Let's go Way to go.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Phenomenal.
We were so excited.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
How can people find the Rally Foundation?
Speaker 1 (49:47):
It's rallyfoundationorg.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Dot org.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
You guys are not dot com, you guys are dot co we are
dot co.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
And when we started the business I thought it'll be
fine and it's okay, definitely.
People struggle sometimes tofind us or they'll email at
thegatheringboardcom and they'llsay it bounced back, but we're
co because we're the gatheringboard co.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
What does thegatheringboardcom do?
Cause that's jack man, I hatethat one.
Those guys suck.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
That's so mean I know , it did flow over to another
company and now it's just kindof sitting there.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah.
So don't tell anybody.
Don't tell anybody.
And you know what, if you gotit, you better give it to them,
because they're giving to kidswith cancer and if you don't
give to them, you're going tokill the kids.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Oh, it's all down man .
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Oh, that's over, it's on, it's on now, that's it.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Chris is going to mess him up, but we got Derek.
He can make him feel better.
That's right.
Derek will bring him back,derek will fix him.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Chris, it's a crap.
I don't cut their tires, dorian, it's not a.
Sicilian thing, at all.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
I mean, you're talking about charcuterie to
Allen, we do.
We got our liquor license lastyear and so we do bartending.
We can bring the alcohol toyour event, which is very
unusual for most bartenders andcaterers because we have our
caterer's license in ourstorefront.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
So you guys enjoy doing these events because you
guys do them together.
They're so fun.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yes, they're so fun.
We love doing them.
We love feeding people.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
So can I come to Holly Springs, get a little
bored and have a bottle of wineat your place?
Yet yes, really yes, yep.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
We have some tables in the front and we can pour you
a glass of wine.
You know, wine by the glass, bythe bottle.
We can do cocktails.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
There are a lot of verticals, go Quickly.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
We can.
That is a COVID-era thing thingthat got signed into law Before
we get going you guys aremaking great money, right?
Speaker 3 (51:41):
I mean it worked.
I'm going to say great moneybecause everybody else is always
killing it right?
Oh my God, chris handyman doingthis whole thing, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Don't ask him how much.
Chris, I know you want to.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
No, no, no but my point is in my business.
I'm like I just in fact I'mtalking with another handyman
potential guy.
He's thinking about scaling hisbusiness.
So I'm like, all right, bud,let's talk.
I said because if I had achance to do it all over again,
I'd probably pick something elsebecause it's really flipping
hard.
So you guys are in the middleof really flipping hard, you're
(52:13):
near five which kudos becauseyou are now.
You beat nine out of ten, soare you killing it?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I mean yes and no, yes and no.
So Derek worked and taughtclasses.
I sold real estate for thefirst couple of years, so this
was not something andimmediately we could have quit
our jobs and done Now.
I worked longer and more hoursdoing this business.
(52:39):
He supported us more with hisbusiness once it started going
again and eventually with thegoal that we would like to do
this full-time.
And it's taken a while andwe're not rolling in the money
but we are both full-time.
We hired a manager in Januaryand we have, I think, three to
(53:01):
four other employees.
One is mostly full-time andthen a couple of part-time.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
The big question I've got, because a lot of our guys
are thinking of starting abusiness and we just talked
about that.
Was it as easy as you thought?
Once you got into it, did it goas well as you thought, or was
it infinitely harder than you?
Speaker 1 (53:17):
thought the feedback and the customer side of it has
been phenomenal.
We do not have anybody yellingus.
We don't have anybody refusingto pay us.
We also set it up so that weget paid prior to going to any
event.
We don't have to collect moneyafter the event.
(53:37):
You pay or we don't go and Isay it nicer than that, clearly,
but that's the way that we setit up from the get-go and to the
point that we even our regularboards.
Would you like to pay now?
Sometimes we'll let them paywhen they pick up.
So that aspect has beenphenomenal.
We have some clients that arenow friends and we have so many
(53:58):
great people we work with.
Was it hard?
Yes, many nights we slept there.
You know.
We actually finally got a cotso that we didn't have to sleep
on the floor anymore, becauseone time, specifically in
October, we had two weddings inone day.
We hired somebody to help, likea temp person to help, and he
(54:22):
arrived and I was like, hey,how's your knife skills?
He was like, oh, they're legit.
Like, okay, great, go cut allthis up.
And it was not legit, it wasbad, it was bad, not legit.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
So actually if we were in a knife fight he
probably wouldn't have got meand you wouldn't have had to do
CPR.
Is that what I'm?
Speaker 1 (54:41):
saying no, maybe those knife skills were good he
was known right where to put theknife, but he didn't know how
to cut salami.
Well at least he showed upbecause I could tell you to say
(55:06):
andy didn't show up, well, wesent him home.
Welcome to my monday.
No, we sent him home.
He was so bad.
So we ended up spending thenight twice in a row to get our
food done, to get our prep done,to present an event that was
worthy of our name, because it'snot their fault that we hired
somebody that didn't know whatthey were doing.
They wanted good food and wehad to provide that.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
I think again back to protecting your brand at all
costs.
That's the business owner,that's the business owner's
thing and that's my gold nuggetI'm going to leave with
everybody.
You have to protect your brand,regardless of what you've tried
and you know what.
It's not as easy as you thinkand it's so hard.
The reason you think and it'sso hard you know, the reason I
got into business is I saw allthese guys golfing on Friday and
(55:40):
I was working my butt offworking at a financial
institution.
And then you come to find outno man, we're working way more
than I ever worked in my life.
But I do it because I love it.
17 years later still grind andmaking it happen.
So kudos to you guys.
Five years into it, I think youguys have nothing but upside in
front of you.
I've started to see a lot morecharcuterie board companies out
there.
I think that just makes themarket.
(56:02):
Alan wanted to talk about this.
He says hey, I think that'scompetition.
I'm like I think that justbrings awareness because I don't
think people even knew this wasa thing.
So if you are the top of thething and other people are just
filling it in, I think that'sgoing to help you guys.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
I'm not opposed to competition.
It really makes you work harderand make sure that you're doing
what you're supposed to bedoing, and we've been so
fortunate to get into theseamazing businesses and different
places, like where we met you.
(56:36):
Can I do a shout out?
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
David at Cambria is awesome.
He's my favorite person everand he Hashtag David.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Leonard.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Hashtag David Leonard .
He's the best.
He's introduced us to so manyother people Besides you, derek
of course they look the same.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
There's a type.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
So you're probably top ten, Chris.
I'm close.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
I'm almost in there.
I'm almost there.
Finally, we brought somebody inwith the same hairstyle we have
.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
That's not really a style, but okay.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Yes, it is.
It depends on how you rock it.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
I like to call it cheap and buzz cut.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
But no, we've served the governor.
I have a selfie with thegovernor.
We've worked with senators, oh,now, we're just jealous.
Mayors Are you kidding me.
And billionaires.
Our boards go on private jetsand you don't.
It's amazing to say that.
It feels a little surreal.
It's amazing to say that itfeels a little surreal, but I
really honestly can say we spendas much time putting a board
(57:41):
together for the local PTA as wewould for the governor, and
that's just our standard.
And that's where we teach ouremployees, our team members
Pretend every single one is atest run, cause we have had
people come in order a box thissize and then the next week call
(58:01):
us up hey, we ordered a boardfrom you last week.
We loved it.
We would like you to cater ourwedding.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
You know I hate but I love what you just said because
that's exactly what happens tome in my business is that they
try us out on a handyman job andthen they say, okay, you guys
did so well on that, you cancome do my bathroom now.
Well, it's a totally differentskill set, but we showed them
that we have, and we do have thecapability of doing it.
But we showed them through ourprocesses and our customer
service that, hey, if you gowith us, this is the kind of
(58:27):
service you're going to get.
And that's what you do,regardless of level, regardless
if it's a charity or justsomebody who's looking a little
small coming off it because youhave no idea who you've got in
front of you.
You don't.
That's the fun and the gorethat happens when you have to
serve the general public.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (58:44):
Fun Guys.
This has been awesome.
Continued success to everythingyou guys are doing.
Let's give a shout out.
It's the the gatheringboardco.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
The gatheringboard company.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Dot co.
All WTO, the Gathering BoardCompany, daco.
All right guys, you learnedsomething on this one, and guess
what?
It's not always sunshine androses.
If you think you're a greatcook and start a restaurant,
check yourself.
Listen to this episode.
If you think you love food,keep eating it, but don't think
you can make money doing it.
If you want to make money doingit, I would not recommend
winging it, like Andrea, but Iwould definitely recommend
having a whole lot of passion,like Derek and Andrea.
(59:16):
Get out of here, go make agreat buck.
We'll see you next week.
We got to go.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Cheers everybody.
Speaker 3 (59:20):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the
small business safari.
Remember we're a positiveattitude.
We'll help you achieve thathigher altitude you're looking
for in the wild world smallbusiness ownership.
And until next time, make it agreat day.
We were bootlegging.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Right, so I didn't want anybody coming to us until
we were legit.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Hey, I'm thinking like Duke's a hazard right.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Remember the I just like moonshine, except for with
meat and cheese.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
They're like Derek go Look the back of the car.
No go, hit it Go.
Roll out of the garage at nightwith no lights on, with your
charcuterie board, the of thegarage at night with no lights
on, with your charcuterie boardthe whole time like but I'm here
to save lives, I'm here to tellpeople how to do things the
right way, and now you got meout here bootlegging me to Jesus
.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
If they choke on the cheese, I can save that, I can
fix them.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
That's right.
That's how we justify it.
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari, where I help guide you
to avoid those traps, pitfallsand dangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
(00:53):
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
(01:19):
We're laughing already, ellen,because eyes on me.
Ellen don't do not.
Are you staring at my food?
Don't you stare at my food?
Don't you stare at my food?
Oh my God, what are we?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
doing If you don't want to stare.
You know, if you don't wantsomebody to stare at your chest,
you shouldn't have your logothere.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That's kind of why we're yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's what I put, you're like eyes up here, big
fella that's right, big fella.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
No, I'm like right here, eyes where I want them,
the trusted toolbox right hereon my chest.
Huh, I wonder, is that whyHooters was so popular?
I'm not going there.
Okay, we're not going there asthey are now going bankrupt.
I know Crazy, right, it's aturn of the page, isn't it?
It is a turn of the page.
Now, let's turn the page andtalk about what we're going to
(01:59):
talk about today.
Oh wait.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I got something to tell you.
What's that?
Oh, let me guess Weekend'scoming.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Weekend came.
Oh, you don't look particularlyhungover on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Right, I, uh I kept it together for the weekend
because I got new clubs.
Were those the ones I just sawin the garage?
That's right, baby.
I almost went over there causeit looked really clean.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I asked Titleist if they wanted to sponsor the
podcast and they said, yeah,you're going to have to get in
line because we've got too manyothers.
But I'm like they aren't ascool as us.
I need new clubs and I wouldn'tmind it if you wanted to kind
of comp them for me.
So there's no comp, by the way,but I've got them, Titleist Big
surprise, yeah, and how are youhitting them?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I loved it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I had a good time so I played one round.
Dispersion came down.
You know I didn't have a wholelot going on this weekend.
Well, so we're doing thispodcast in the middle of the
week, as we always do.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
There's a golf course literally right there.
Have I ever played with Chris?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
No, I won't let him come with me.
No.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I can't Super rude, thank you.
Thank you, no, I meant rudethat you haven't asked him.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right, rude, that I haven't asked him.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He seems like a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I am a nice guy, he's a nice guy, and I can hit the
ball.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
okay, he does hit the ball.
Okay, because I did use him ina scramble at a charity event.
Yeah, but not here.
But just not here, wait, yeah.
So guess what I'm doing afterwe're done with this show.
We're doing this during themiddle of the week.
I've got another big eventhappening tomorrow, what I'm
going to be playing in the 680the Fan charity golf event for
(03:33):
Children's Healthcare of AtlantaVery cool.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I got invited because I do the radio show and they
said, hey, we'd love to have youcome out there?
Because you're a bigpersonality now, so they want
the celebrities, I guess.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So people have to bid on you to be in their foursome.
They're like who's this guy?
Five cents, I'm your a player?
No, we don't want that.
No, uh, but I'm going out therewith my new sticks and I'm
going to show off.
Nice, yes, all right.
But now speaking of showing off, what do we talk about?
Most of the time when we're on,we're always talking about
business, when we're alwayshaving a drink or two, unless
somebody bangs on us about abreathalyzer test.
I live here, so we're good.
(04:09):
Alan has a bed here, we're fine.
If he has to, he can stay andnot leave next time, all right.
So what else do we talk aboutall the time?
Alan loves to cook.
Chris loves to eat.
Chris cook, chris loves to eat.
Chris loves to cook.
I love to cook too, so I and Ialso being the president of Nary
(04:29):
, we had our Nary event earlierthis year.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Notice how he name dropped.
He could have just said we hada Nary event, but you know.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I am the president Resident, you like that?
Yes, that's his flax rightthere.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
It was a little humble, I'm going to genuflect
right now, but are you thepresident of your HOA?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Oh, gosh, no, I am, oh, no, uh-oh, you know what?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Oh, God bless you.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So much power.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Oh dude, Such a thankless, brutal job.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We have a really good neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
How many homes?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It's a condo unit.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So there's 59.
You can't hide from each other,then we're in our own little
tiny building, three of us, andthen everybody else is in there,
so I can hide a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Oh my gosh, that's serious power.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I got called a Nazi because I'm on our board and we
won't allow red mulch.
I'm like I don't think that wasin mind, conf, but you know,
just saying thou shall not havered mulch.
No, okay, call that nazi I'mthe I'm not opposed to that I
actually found an article sayingtrends that you know, bad
landscaping trends that aredying, and it was red mulch, I'm
(05:40):
like we published it in thenext newsletter, attaboy, just
double down.
Yep in the all right.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
What was the worst thing you've ever had to do at
the hoa?
Like tell somebody it.
You can't do that or you can'tshoot somebody.
You can't keep your dead mom ina freezer.
What was?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
we had a lady that that was feeding the squirrels.
So she would throw peanuts outto the squirrels and they got so
dependent on that they wouldsit on the tree branch and
scream, screaming at her windowfor her to throw more down.
I mean, that's not the worst,but we have pretty good
(06:21):
neighbors.
We had a guy that got up on theroof and was going to film a
YouTube video up there.
He had like a whole contractand everything for the people
that he had hired.
But like you can't go on a roof, like you'll fall, yeah,
there's no ledge.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It's just kind of weird things like that Screaming
squirrels.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
That's not going to be the episode title.
Definitely not that intendedconsequences.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I don't hate it, it's good people.
We have good people.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
All right, let's get into it.
Yeah, you ready, yeah, segwaythat, chris, I can't Screaming
squirrels to the charcuterieboard.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh no, I'm going to start screaming until we open it
up.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
All right, we have the gathering board.
All right, andrea and DerekJohnston are here.
All right, we have thegathering board.
All right, andrea and DerekJohnston are here.
And I met them at this eventand I just was I really love
their food Number one and I juststarted talking to Andrea and
she said, well, we've startedthis business and we're going
all in, we're jumping in anddoing this, and I was like,
(07:26):
really, I said I really want tohave you come on the podcast
because I'm talking to somebodynext week who thinks that
starting your own business isjust nothing.
But you know, high in the sky,getting new clubs, getting to
play golf, doing all the greatcool stuff that's 17 years later
and I'm still hustling.
Bro.
He does not realize how hardit's going to be.
So I'm excited to talk tosomebody who's just getting
started, to see what theyexpected and get into all this
stuff.
But I would say welcome first,but let's get a little
(07:47):
background.
So you guys are married.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Correct, did that happen?
Yes, we are.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
And you guys started this business together before
you were married.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
We did.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Do tell.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So we have only been married for three years.
We met in 2018, and Derek livedin our condo that we live in
right now, and then I lived upin Canton.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So Derek's attracted to power is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
You brought her in and you made her HOA president.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
She's admired of this .
So Derek moved up with me up inCanton because my daughter was
in high school and we wereliving up there until she
graduated and we I'm kind ofjumping the gun so we met in
(08:40):
2018.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And you guys are both full-time job.
This thing wasn't even aroundthe gathering board not an idea.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Either of you involved in food at all to this
point.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Just loving to eat.
Okay, yeah, I just love food.
I went through this hugemade-from-scratch phase and so
when my kids were little, I madethem a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich and I made the bread.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I made them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I
made the bread, I made thepeanut butter.
I love that.
I made the jelly.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yes, I even had a cow for a while.
I was a chicken farmer for alittle bit, which sounds just
ridiculous to say that now, butit was so much fun.
So I've made butter, I've madeice cream, I actually you guys
have some ricotta right here.
I wish I would have milked thecow to make the ricotta, because
it would taste better.
But this is second best.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So my son is a hunter and he married a girl who's
basically a farmer and theirdream is to have a Thanksgiving
where they source all their owningredients and I think that
would just be amazing.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I love that.
Yeah, it tastes, it just tastesbetter.
Be amazing.
I love that.
Yeah, it tastes, it just tastesbetter.
And there's this satisfactionthat you receive from eating a
meal that you made yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
All right, so from farm to table, but let's talk
about from farm to table tomaking money, to making money.
I love what your uh, your son'sgoing to do, but ain't going to
make no money.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You know he probably could make some money doing that
.
Okay yeah, all right, challengeaccepted I like it, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
So you know he probably could make some money
doing that.
Okay, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Challenge accepted, I like it, I think so.
You know once a year event andhe'd happily go shoot some stuff
.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think so All right.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So Derek and I started dating and Derek took me
down to a place in Atlanta, alittle Italian restaurant, and
we got a charcuterie board.
And I'd gone on dates beforewhen I got in a charcuterie
board and it was okay, it wasfine.
But with him it was justtotally different.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Maybe it was a halo effect because of Derek.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I think I actually liked him.
Yeah, you know versus anybodyelse.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I did like him.
The ambiance was better, thewine was delicious, the
presentation of the board wasreally spot on and the flavors
were amazing.
So we were sharing it.
You know, I was hogging all thetomato jam and like totally
turning my nose up to the oliveslike gross, get those out of
here.
He loved them.
I didn't.
(11:00):
You know what do you think thisis?
Let's try some more of that.
It was just a great experienceand I really think that that
meal that we shared togetherover you know, we just shared
one plate of food it really wasintimate and bonded us in a
really interesting way.
And so after that, a coupleweeks later, we went to another
(11:24):
restaurant let's get anothercharcuterie board and that one
was boring and dry.
They served it on like a metalcookie sheet.
Didn't taste good.
We were really disappointedbecause we had spent a lot of
money on it.
So we joked around about goingon to different restaurants and
doing like videos of our foodand putting it up on YouTube and
maybe doing like charcuterieboard reviews doing and putting
it up on YouTube and maybe doinglike charcuterie board reviews
(11:47):
of different restaurants.
That would be fun, kind of acool date night idea.
But then COVID hit and so wedidn't go anywhere.
We just stayed home and at home, left to our own devices.
We just made a lot of food anddrink a lot of alcohol, and I
know a lot of people struggledthrough COVID.
We had a great time.
(12:07):
We had a good time.
I was doing real estate at thetime.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So you were in real estate, I was doing real estate.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, so I have a background in general
construction.
My ex-husband and I owned ageneral contracting company up
in Michigan, so I'm unique inthat I pretty much know how to
build a house Most girls don'tand it's kind of fun.
I have a lot of experiencedoing things like that.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So, Derek, do you give her the honey-do list?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
then, of course, he doesn't really need to, because
I like doing it, so get it done.
You want that mirror hung?
I could do that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You were in real estate in 2020 and COVID.
Actually, people probably don'trealize this, but it was not a
bad time for you, was it?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It was not a bad time .
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, we did pretty well.
There was a.
You know I could still sellhouses, but I'd make my own
schedule.
I could work when I wanted tostay home when I wanted to.
Derek owned a CPR company.
He's a paramedic and hisbusiness is teaching CPR classes
to doctors, surgeons, dentists,and COVID shut that down 100%.
(13:13):
They weren't allowed to takeclasses.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, you can't Zoom that one, can you, derek?
Not really.
No, you're not giving enoughpressure there.
No, he actually just broke hisribs Right.
Oh my gosh.
No wrong counts.
What do you do?
You just shut it down?
Speaker 4 (13:27):
shut it down.
I had contracts at severalhospitals, uh, and everything
just shut down.
Hospital shut down, Um, we lostour contracts.
So I went from uh over 20employees to just me, so
everything shut down overnight.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So, uh, you're saying , hey, we had a great time.
That doesn't sound like a greattime.
Were you in the right headspace?
Were you like okay, well, thisis just meant to be, and I can
see the next option in front ofme.
Or tell me what were youthinking.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
That was a tough time for me because my business just
dried up so I had plenty ofsavings, so I didn't have to
worry too much for a while.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
He also did some contract work, so with his
paramedic license he went toCongress Center.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
I think they had a Three months as overflow for
Grady with COVID patients, didthree months there, did three
months in Chinle, arizona, atone of the Indian reservations
and then did three months in NewYork.
So that was very interestingwork to do.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So we weren't thinking about starting that
business then.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
We were.
So we're going to back up alittle bit.
Yeah, we're at home, we'rewatching movies till 2 in the
morning.
We're making food, so I wasmaking charcuterie boards for
ourselves.
It was just fun.
My personality is such like thefirst one I made.
It was not impressive, it wasjust meat cheese.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
You've come a long way, because the one you have
right in front of us here islike art.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Thank you.
I think it's maybe our podcastcover art.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, no kidding, think it's beautiful.
I think it's maybe our podcastcover art.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, no kidding, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Thank you.
Well, so my personality is suchthat I'll look at it and go I
can do better.
I don't understand the conceptof doing something just for the
fun of it if you're terrible atit.
I know there's a lot of peoplethat are fine with that.
That's great For me.
Personally, I don't have fun ifI'm not somewhat good at what
I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It sounds like golf yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
I will.
I won't go golfing because I'mnot good at it.
If I golfed, I might be betterat it, but it's not my thing.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
And that's the weird thing about that game is you
just really can't ever get goodat it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
No, I mean no.
I played with one guy who eversaid, man, that was the best
shot of my life and it wasn't ahole-in-one.
And I'm like, no, you didn'tget a hole-in-one.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
You can't master it, you can't master it.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So you just kept iterating.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So I just kept making more boards and we just had fun
doing that and I was postingpictures to my Facebook.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
How's your sodium level we?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
don't check that Blissful ignorance.
Yeah, yeah, but still, I meanshe's in shape.
They both look great too, soobviously they're not partaking
of much of their stuff, or maybe?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
they're running a marathon every day.
Well, you can only eat so muchcharcuterie, day after day after
day, and we've been doing thisfor five years.
So I posted pictures onFacebook and his mom saw them
and so she asked for one for herbirthday.
I was like, okay, that's cool.
So we went Not really theirforte, but they had a pretty
nice selection.
And then, cause I'm a littlebougie, I was like, hey, let's
(16:50):
find some cheese knives, make itlike a whole package.
And cause, also, I wanted toimpress future mother-in-law.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right Good move.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Right, so there's.
There's not any like real homegoods stores down there, so we
went to a little antique shop.
I said, hey, I'm looking forsome knives that could work for
a charcuterie board.
And right off the bat she goesoh, did you know there's a place
that makes and deliverscharcuterie boards.
And it was this like aha, what,what a cool idea.
(17:22):
You can't do that.
So, that was a cool idea.
You can't do that, so that wasa cool idea to me.
Now I started multiplebusinesses in my head, never
really got around to startingthem, but it's sort of like a
hobby to find things like theblender bottle.
There's a problem they put apowder in a drink.
(17:43):
He has to get a whisk and stirit up.
Would that be cool if we couldjust put a whisk right at the
bottom?
Comes up with this product,millionaire.
I love that.
I love that concept, and so Iwould always look at different
things and see what's theproblem and how could I fix it.
I like to fix problems, and sothis was something completely
(18:07):
unexpected.
Nothing I had been looking forto do anything with food, but
the concept of something uniquelike charcuterie boards as a
business was.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I don't know.
It was fascinating to me andjust stuck.
Let me guess what you talkedabout all the way home from
Mississippi, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I knew that I'm getting a.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I'm getting a knowing look from Derek.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
Hey, do you think your motherliked me?
Hey, uh, derek, what do youthink about this?
Uh, what do you think aboutthis idea?
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So, would you guys Amazon?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
No, no, we did not.
Um, we went home, home, and Ijust couldn't shake the idea.
It wasn't local to their city,it was in a different city.
So I just I couldn't shake theidea and I was like I can do
that.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
She had a fever.
She had a fever for salami andprosciutto and cheese and
organizing they make it look sonice.
Okay, so you had this fever.
It's always good, right RightTo have a business plan.
What'd you do?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I winged it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That a girl, here we go.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So this was August 2020.
We are smack dab in the middleof COVID.
Still, I decided a greatbusiness name was calling it the
Gathering Board.
I wanted people to gatheraround and get that same feeling
like we had on our first date,where you're sharing a meal.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You're right about that.
I mean there is a strongbusiness principle.
I mean the bond that you createwith somebody over a good meal.
It really applies in business100%.
Yeah, and I mean better than asales call, better than you know
, yeah, you sit over a good mealand suddenly you know you.
There's a connection there thatyou wouldn't otherwise have.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
It's a feeling.
Right, there's that phrase.
You know you always.
You don't never forget howsomebody made you feel, but if
you can evoke that feeling withgood food or a unique food
experience, it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
So she actually did.
Do the Simon Sinek.
Find your why, her why wasbringing people together over a
food and bonding and gathering,especially during a time where
none of us were gathering?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Well, and you're hitting a couple extra senses
than you would normally get in asales call, for example.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Right, all right yeah .
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Derek started teaching classes again and so
there was one specifically thatwas for some oral surgeons and
he had the class set up andthere was maybe eight of them
and I made a board and I broughtit with and I said hey, I
brought you guys snacks, andthey took one look of it at the
board and they just likedevoured.
(20:47):
They were so excited.
Just the response from themlike, hey, can I get your
business card?
Sorry, I don't have one yet.
Well, what's your website?
Like don't have that yet either.
Like this is just R&D at thispoint, trying to find out, is
this even something that I wouldget good reactions for?
(21:07):
There's nothing like thisaround.
There was no other businessesthat were specifically focused
on charcuterie.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So far, the first focus group was really positive.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Very positive yes.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
She went to the right people oral surgeons, lots of
money and then Derek probablyhad them doing CPR all day,
working their ass off makingsure they didn't have lunch.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Hail this salami and we're going to go to the
Heimlich, by the way how's thisstuff look?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Hey, by the way, can you boost our business?
Oh, you guys loved it.
Oh, why?
Because you haven't eaten sinceyesterday.
Ah, don't worry about that.
Ah, good strategy Derek wearsthem out and you come in and
knock them down.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Hey, we make a great team.
I like it yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
All right.
So from that great start of nobusiness plan winging it, no
business cards, no website, hereI go.
I'm backing into a business.
What'd you do then?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I started a website.
So that took about three daysand I took a bunch of pictures.
I made some boards you knowtook my time because I was able
to and got pictures with myphone is very homemade and I put
together a website and Ithought it looked pretty good as
(22:17):
basic, came up with somepricing and then let's see here
my friend Janine she is mychampion has been by my side
forever.
She made sure she wanted to bemy first customer and so she
ordered off of our website.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So you built a website where you could order
off the website in three days.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yes, that's amazing for me.
I have no idea what I'm doingwith websites.
I don't it was just the.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So yeah, I mean I've got so many questions because
not only do you have thepackaging and the fulfillment
and all that, but then okay,there's probably something to do
with the health department andstarting a food business and you
have an entrepreneurialbackground.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
In real estate and in construction.
So you kind of know your wayaround that registering with the
secretary of state and all thatstuff.
But, then it's like okay, I'mdoing a food business.
That's a completely differentanimal.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
La dee, da, dee, da, da, da da insurance.
Oh government regulations,screw it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Sell stuff.
Let's go.
You sound like you belong in anHOA.
Just saying Thank you Rules.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Get out of here.
Sell that stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You're correct.
So there are some regulationsand things like that.
We didn't know if this wasgoing to be a legit, if we would
have enough business to sustain.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Is this something that I could sell a board to a
couple of friends, a couple ofneighbors.
Oh, so you started a reallyblack market, backed into the
legal stuff.
Is that what I'm hearing?
True crime, we got true crimeagain.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I am totally fine with that big dog.
I am so fine with backing inScrew the government.
We're libertarian.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Big time libertarian yes.
However, once we determinedthis is definitely something
that we can make a business outof, then we went and found a
location and went through thecorrect path of getting a health
department license.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Do you have a retail location?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
We do.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Why did you choose to do that?
Because that's a big expenseyou have to.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
So you can make cakes and cookies and crackers as in
your own home with a cottagefood license.
You cannot do that withcharcuterie.
It's a meat and cheese producthas to be refrigerated, so they
call that a time temperaturecontrol or TCS food.
You cannot do that with acottage food license unless you
have a specific kitchen in yourhome that is separate and is
(24:46):
licensed as a commercial kitchen.
So we have to If you want tohave charcuterie business the
chicken salad chick.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
That reminds me of her story of starting out doing
it in Auburn, alabama and thenrealizing she had to have a real
commercial grade kitchen thatwas separate of her own kitchen
and ran into all those rules.
So when we say you have aretail, do you have actually a
storefront?
We do.
It's open for the public tocome walking in.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yes, yes, and where is that located?
That's in Holly Springs, whichis between Woodstock and Canton,
and we were the firstcharcuterie catering company
with a storefront in the stateof Georgia.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
So do you have something like we're taping this
episode during the week?
Do you have somebody thereright now, man in the store for
you.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Normally, yes, um, but our gal is on vacation this
week, so we put up a sign thatsays uh, closed for a private
event.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Oh, that is so smart, yeah, so smart Cause you know
what that makes me want to doFind out how I get my private
event there.
That's right, all right.
So when I met you guys earlierthis year, you already had a
retail storefront.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yes, we signed the lease in March of 2021.
So that was about six monthsafter we launched the business
and officially got our licensein August.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
All right, wanganit, I got to hear about this because
there's one thing I do in mybusiness is I definitely don't
have a retail storefront and Iwas always shaken from that,
because I started my business in08 and I realized that there
were remodelers who were puttingup storefronts quote unquote to
put cabinets out, show offproduct.
People just will walk in andbuy, which doesn't ever happen
in my world.
That's a lot of money.
(26:29):
So I mean monthly, your outlaythere is pretty, pretty pricey
and plus the equipment you hadto put in there.
So that was a pretty bigcapital investment.
So that's a lot of securityboards.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
We were fortunate in that the health department did
not make us do like an overheadhood, like for the stove.
They didn't make us do thosebig commercial items because we
weren't cooking raw meats, weweren't cooking hamburgers,
things like that.
Everything we did at the timewas just preparing already
(27:00):
cooked food.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So no, grease trap.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So no, grease trap either.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
That's a big savings yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I mean that is because barrier entry into
restaurants I mean that's thebiggest one is the build out.
It is you think you gotgrandma's recipes nailed.
But it is the build out andthen the carrying costs of that
place every month is a number.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's always twice as expensive as you think it will
be and takes two to three timesas long.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Oh, it sounds like my wife.
Yeah, every home project I do.
Yeah, double the time, triplethe budget Okay Sounds like my
start.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yep, that's what I tell people now.
If you can, if you can doublethe expenses and half the
revenue and double the time it'sgoing to take for you to break
even, would you still do thisbusiness?
Then let's go.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Right and we were fortunate because you know, I
told you, I have experience withconstruction and so I did a lot
of the work myself.
I had my son helped.
He's super, you know, superknowledgeable on building things
.
His boss came and framed out awall for us.
The city didn't make us well,we had to get a building permit,
(28:08):
but they didn't make itdifficult.
I'm on the DDA, so that'shelpful because I know a lot of
the people at the city and soyou know, pull the permit and
they were just easy to work with.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
That's awesome that they were business friendly,
because you have enough hurdles,because I was talking about
getting started and having themoney.
Now you've got to get people toshow up and buy the stuff.
So you're obviously you'rehaving good success on your
website through orderfulfillment.
Buy the stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
So you're obviously having good success on your
website through orderfulfillment.
So I would like to give a shoutout to the Facebook group
called Cherokee Connect.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Cherokee Connect, cherokee Connect, cherokee
Connect.
We're going to put that in theshow notes.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Please.
I really feel like they arewhat launched us in our town,
because we were selling theboards when we just got started
and I put a post up on there Atthe time I think they had maybe
27,000 followers and I postedsome pictures of what we'd done
(29:04):
and I said charcuterie boardsdelivered.
That's a thing.
It is now Introducing thegathering board where we make
you know blah blah and I postedthat onto their site around 5 pm
and it was insane.
I had immediate, immediate.
(29:25):
I had over 500 visits to mywebsite that night.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Wow, oh, come on, let's go.
Hashtag Cherokee Connect, do itagain.
It's 500.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Chris, I think you need to get on Cherokee.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Connect, hey Cherokee Connect.
Do you guys need a greathandyman?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
What'd you do?
You need a commercial realestate guy.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, commercial real estate.
Alan Wyatt, Keller, Willow.
All right, so I mean, that'sone of those things where you're
like we've seen this in themovies like hey, we got an order
, hey, we got two, hey, we got20.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Hey, we got 40.
We got 400.
We need to order some moresalami now.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Get the Red Bull.
Hey, you ain't going to worktomorrow.
Big guy, we got work to do whathappened?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So it was.
It was pretty quick responseand you know nobody's going to
order a charcuterie boardimmediately, but it got us on
their radar and they're like I'mgoing to have to try that.
So, aside from Janine being myfirst order paid order, I was in
the grocery store one day andmy phone made this weird dinging
(30:24):
sound and I pulled it up and Igot a live like I got a legit.
I don't know who this person is.
Live like I got a legit.
I don't know who this person is.
They just ordered something onmy website.
It was so exciting and I may ormay not have done this happy
dance in the middle of theproduce section.
Yeah, pretty much it was.
(30:45):
It was just phenomenal to methat I could make a product,
build a website, put thatproduct on my website and then
somebody who doesn't know meordered it because they liked
what I had.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's so awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It was really awesome and I called Derek.
I'm like, oh my gosh, we justgot an order.
It was so exciting.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Okay.
So you put it out there thatyou'll make all these different
charcuterie boards and that youwould deliver them.
Is that part of it out therethat you'll make all these
different charcuterie boards andthat you would?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
deliver them.
We delivered everything at thatpoint because we were
bootlegging.
I didn't want anybody coming tous until we were legit.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Hey, I'm thinking like Dukes of Hazzard right it's
like Moonshine, except for withmeat and cheese.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Go Go, Roll out like moonshine except for with meat
and cheese.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
They're like Derek, go Look the back of the car, no,
go Hit it go.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Roll out of the garage at night with no lights
on, with your charcuterie board.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
The whole time like but I'm here to save lives, I'm
here to tell people how to dothings the right way, and now
you got me out here bootleggingmeat and cheeses.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
If they choke on the cheese, I can save that, I can
fix them.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
That's right.
Yeah, that's how we justifiedit.
Give that, give that driver'sseat, bo, we got to go, go, go
go.
I dropped off another one.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Go, go, go.
So we knew full well like thisis something that has to change.
If we were going to have alegitimate business, we have to
get a storefront.
In the meantime I needed to payfor said storefront and so we,
you know, sold some boards, butwe made sure that we had a
process that was exactly likewhat we would do and we had a
commercial kitchen.
So I got my serve safe managerlicense.
We had a separate fridge,separate pantry, separate.
(32:25):
I don't want anybody reachingin the bag of grapes that are
going to be going to a customer.
That's not.
That's not okay.
I wouldn't be okay with that.
So we made sure that we dideverything like we were supposed
to.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
If a grape hypothetically rolls on the
ground for five seconds, youpick it up.
Is that allowed to still go tothe customer?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I think so, because you just wipe it off.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
That is a hard.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
no, it's a hard surface.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Good for everybody on the podcast that we are not
running a restaurant, Because athome that'd be like a ch-ch-ch.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Dick to what you know , Chris.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's a hard no, damn it.
You know, mythbusters actuallydid an experiment on that and it
really doesn't pick up thatmuch stuff on the ground If it's
a hard surface like that Now,if it was like butter, but not
if you serve it to people whoyou could actually kill.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It's still a no, that's.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
She's a serve safe.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
She's gone to the other side now I know that
doesn't sound very libertarianto me.
She's got to serve to otherpeople.
I get it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
So I want to back up the story slightly and explain
to you our quality standards andwhy so.
We started the business priorto launching talking about it on
Cherokee Connect, and I hadlaunched the website.
(33:41):
I think it was up maybe threedays and I went, got picked up
as a player a girl player it'salways hard to find girls
playing on softball teams so Igot a phone call hey, do you
want to play on our team?
I said absolutely, Went to playthe next day and, maybe like
the third inning, I broke my jaw.
I got hit with the ball.
It wasn't even off the bat.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I got through it.
I didn't expect that.
I thought the third inning.
She brings out the charcuterieball.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
No Broke my jaw.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh my God, oh my God.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, so it was pretty traumatic.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I'm thinking.
You're probably thinking toyourself this is my moneymaker,
this is how I'm making money.
I talk.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I can buy my boards.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Oh my God, derek, you're going to be the voice
from now on, derek and so, yes,bring it in the right arm, get
in there, buddy, they're selling.
Yeah, oh, but seriously, I meanall jokes aside, how long did
that set you down?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
A couple of weeks?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Starting a business.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Right after three days, like three days after I
launched the website and I wasall excited and ready to go, and
now I'm in the hospital.
I had to have surgery.
I couldn't eat anything.
I'm just miserable.
It didn't hurt that bad.
It really didn't, surprisingly.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Did you get some guilt orders out of it though?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
No, nobody knew, because we hadn't.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Because she didn't have a chance to talk to him.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, this was pre.
Somebody shut her up.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
She should be on the ground, writhing, holding her
jaw and handing out a card.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
You know what I'm thinking.
We're going to get to this in aminute because I have seen a.
The charcuterie boardcharcuterie company is popular.
I think this is competition.
I think somebody took her out.
Sweep the leg, danny.
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
That's a little deep conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Tanya Harding Do it Boom.
She will not.
You will not.
You will not skate again, nancy.
Yes, andrea, you will not bestarting that thing, all right.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
All right.
So I'm in bed, laid up, can'tdo anything, can't move, can't
anything.
And uh, I turn on the tv and Idon't know what made me start
watching it.
But hell's kitchen was, was on,and so I started watching
hell's kitchen.
I'd not watched it before, butI'd heard of, you know, gordon
ramsay and all that.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But that's when you started screaming at people I
know, because they couldn't talk.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Oh yeah, so I started watching this.
I'm like this is ridiculous.
I can't even eat, I can justdrink my meals.
But I'm watching this cookingshow, but I enjoyed it.
And and I'm watching, he'sthrowing food and he's yelling
at people and I'm trying tofigure out why this guy is so
crazy about making sure his foodlooks the way it's supposed to
(36:11):
look.
And as I'm going from episodeto episode, season to season
because I'm pretty sure Iwatched the entire I think we
were 16 seasons at that point itdawned on me this is his brand,
this is his food, this is hisstandard, and he's not lowering
his standard for anybody.
He expects them to come up tohis standard and he values the
(36:37):
people that come to his business, the people that give him money
for a good meal.
He values them and what theythink of him, and so he makes
sure that it's perfect.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Gold nugget.
That is a great gold nugget.
You got to bring everybody upto your standards, not lower
your standards until everybodycome into your business and sell
your reputation.
That's a great one.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
It's difficult to do.
It really is difficult to keepyour standards and not be like.
So you're talking about thegrape on the floor.
That wasn't my example, myexample.
But once I started buildingboards again, it was a couple of
weeks later.
I distinctly remember cutting astrawberry and the strawberry
(37:20):
was fine.
I would have eaten it.
It wasn't rotten or moldy oranything like that, but it was a
little squishy.
And I remember going to put iton the board and going it's fine
.
And I swear to you I heard avoice say would Gordon Ramsay
put that on his board?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
What would Gordon do?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
What would Gordon do?
There you go.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
WWDD.
What would Gordon do?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And I knew he would not.
There is no way that he wouldhave been okay with that.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And I was like, okay, and I got a different one
because I don't like wastingfood.
No, I don't want to waste it.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Well, that's a huge part of the food service
business is waste and I wasthinking about that At least
with cured meats and cheeses andstuff there is a better shelf
life than your average produce.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
But not the produce.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Not the produce.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Strawberries.
I threw away so manystrawberries.
We finally quit putting thestrawberries on our boards
because I was throwing them awayfaster than I could use them,
because they weren't perfect.
So from that moment on, I knewI needed to be perfection every
single board, every single time.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, that definitely holds that you got blackberries
on ours, okay, good.
And grapes, um, so we could putit on the ground and then we
can eat it.
Let's test that.
I'm going to throw it on thefloor and you can eat it.
I love that you did.
Again, if you're going to get aboard from you, you expect that
when they get that, it's one ofthose aha wow moments and
that's what you were thinking todeliver to your customer and
the customer experience.
(38:43):
Yeah, yes.
So talk a little bit about yourgrowing it and the customer
experience and some of thefeedback you've gotten from what
you've done.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well, what we found is when people would come to our
store to pick up their board,the first thing they would do is
they would take it and theywould look at it.
They would instantly.
They weren't even looking at me.
They're looking at their boardand like, oh, it's so pretty
every single time.
And so what we did at the timewe don't do it now because of
(39:14):
our volume.
It just takes too much time.
But we would leave the box on,like we wouldn't have the
sticker on the front of it.
And when somebody would come topick up their board, we would
pull it out of the fridge, walkit over to them with the front
of it facing them and open itand say, here it is, what do you
think?
And they would drop right downto look at it and that kind of
(39:37):
the smells would waft up.
And it was an entire experiencefor them to get to see their
board, smell it and anticipatewhat it was going to be like it
was.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Who thought about doing that presentation like
that?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I did.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
And so everybody does that.
If I walk in right now and Iget a board, we don't do that
right now, but we have two.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Our volume's too high .
We started wrapping it in thisplastic because it just feels
like it's If you're taking itsomewhere else, it just seems
more safe.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Nobody's you're taking it somewhere else, it
just seems more safe, likenobody's tampered with it
actually the presentation isstill pretty good and smelling
it from here and it's alreadystill plastic and we do a lot of
things on these platters righthere, these palm leaf platters,
and you can't open it but youcan see through it.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
So they still get to see the experience and I'll try
to, you know, hold it up to themstill.
We still present it with thefront facing them.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, it still looks great.
And then I bet the second youopen that lid it smells good, it
smells real good.
Chris told me I couldn't haveany right now because he didn't
want me smacking into themicrophone.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Hey, chris, I got something else.
I gotta say no, you can't.
It's horrible radio.
Nobody wants to listen to ustalking about food.
We are going to chop the crapout of this after we're done.
All right, so in your biz,retail, walk-in online.
And then how?
I met you doing events, correct?
What is the split on therevenue percentage-wise?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Originally we did smaller boards like this for two
people.
You know up to six.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
This is what.
Eight inches square.
Nine inches square.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
This is eight inch yeah, this that I brought for
you guys is off menu.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Ooh.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Got it custom.
Hey everybody.
Hey, if you go to the GatheringBoard, you won't be getting the
Chris and Ellen special.
But I will tell you what.
If you go on the GatheringBoard and you put in a note that
you heard us and you want toorder one, they did say they
give us, you give you a discount.
So check it out, don't worry,it works every time, all right.
So fine, all right wow, do thaton the air, that's nice chris we
(41:43):
would be happy to let me tellyou the times I can hit up on
that one.
Yeah, you'd be thrilled, I meanespecially if you get 500 more
orders off this absolutely doyou.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Do you ship to Australia?
We do not ship to Australia.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
How about the US?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
We do not do any shipping right now.
We have okay.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
so I'll tell you what .
If you do it, you can say thatChris said he would give me a
Delta drink voucher to come pickit up.
If you have to fly to Atlanta,I will give you a drink voucher.
Put that on there.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I will fly to them.
If they would like to hire meto do an event, I would love to
do that.
That would be phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
So you actually?
So let's get Chris's questionfirst, but then I'm dying to
know because you've branched outinto some other stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yes, so originally this is what we did the most of.
I get super excited if we got aboard that served 20 people,
like, oh my gosh, this isamazing, huge order.
Uh, it would take me so long toput it together.
Um, now I can do a box likethis in 10 minutes because we
have everything prepped and wehave everything ready and we
have this big, you know sandwichprep cooler and just we're set
(42:46):
up really cool meat slicer I'llbet yes, yeah, of course I still
want to get one reference now.
Now now in ones we've seen ashift, especially this last year
or two.
Instead of the smallerindividual boards, now we're
doing events, and so I would say, um, we are probably 75 percent
(43:06):
events and 25 boards, but theevents doesn't have to be like
what you, where you met me, itcould be.
Hey, we're going to order, youknow, platters that serve 50
people.
We just don't necessarily wanta whole grazing table.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
So and of the 25 boards, what percentage are
ordered online versus peoplewalking in?
Speaker 1 (43:30):
um, probably 50 50.
We don't really get a whole lotof walk-ins.
We're not a restaurant, we'renot a catering company.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
We're not retail A high walkable area.
And so I think, when people arethinking about your city having
been through it, no, but Icould think.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
So.
A realtor is an example.
I've got an open house.
I'm going to swing by and get aboard.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And we do that.
Fridays definitely are busierfor that, so we anticipate we're
going to have walk-ins andwe'll have them ready.
We do have a space right nowthat you can come sit down and
eat, but we're not quite set upfor that yet.
That's why we're a little bitof everything, but nothing
specifically.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
So events as you guys right now are thinking, that's
probably where we want to focus.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Events yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
So let's talk about that event, the event that I
went to.
They had this amazing spread,but they also presented it.
So just absolutely, it was awork of art that you didn't want
to eat, but you, of course, ate, because I eat.
Yeah, how long did that last?
Then they had the big Parmesanthe wheel, the full wheel, the
full wheel, the full wheel.
(44:34):
And I said I got to have some.
And Derek was working the wheel, he was getting the pasta going
.
Out came the pasta, here itcomes, I eat some.
I honestly could have sat thereand just ate pasta all night,
but I had to go talk.
So that night I go home and Italked to my wife and my
daughter who were in.
(44:54):
They were in, they were inSouth beach and they had just
got done doing the same thingand sent me some pictures of it.
They they had spent $50 a plateto get.
And I said you know what I'mgoing to bet mine might might've
been better and what I got backwas but I'll bet our waiter was
cuter.
I'm like, oh, okay, honey.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I would disagree with that.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Right.
Well, I can't say that.
Look at Derek, I mean come onhe's horrible he is, he is, but
that was my wife saying that.
I was like that didn't feelgood.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So you have the full Parmigiano-Reggiano wheel.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Correct His name is Reggie and we call the
experience Pasta Baby.
It is awesome.
I mean, I mean, guys, it is oneof the best things.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I really I'm not joking, I have so many questions
about that pasta wheel.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Just off air maybe, but since then, I went to a.
We went to an Italianrestaurant and I refused to get
it because I still rememberedhow good this one was and I just
didn't want to spoil it.
Uh, so I did something else,but back to you and the reason I
bring that up is because yousaid something originally was
the whole inspiration for thiswas you sharing a board and the
intimacy and the gathering boardwhich your name is, and when I
(46:06):
had that wheel and this was anon-intimate moment this was a
big networking event.
We had 180 people there doingeverything and you guys were
slinging it moving to happen.
It was awesome, though, and Iwould say it still resonates
with me on how good that was.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
It is just phenomenal .
It's the best pasta I've everhad.
I think it ruins you for otherpasta and we've heard it from
enough people who've traveledextensively, from just them
saying this is the best pastaI've ever had.
And you hear it enough time.
Like the first couple timesyou're like they're just being
(46:42):
nice, but you hear it enoughtimes you do believe it's good
and actually since you had it,we've perfected it even better
we've sourced out a differentpasta so this is a different
business or just part of thewhole charcuterie experience it
is um.
It is a product that thegathering board provides right
now with, with the intention oflaunching it as its own the
(47:06):
pasta baby shall be launched.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Yeah, can we birth the pasta baby ellen?
Oh my gosh, we're coming to theend of this thing and I'm
having so much fun.
I hate that we got to end this,but, guys, we're coming to the
end, but uh, but there's more totalk about.
I mean, they've got wine.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
They've got a charity .
They have a charity that theydo.
Can we give it a mention?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
About that real quick .
I'd love to talk about that.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Let's shout out a charity.
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Okay, so we, three years ago, got started with this
group called Rally Foundation,and it happened because three
different clients of ourspurchased something from us.
Two of them were grazing tablesfor a charity event and another
one was a board Grazing table.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
That sounds like right up your alley.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Strap on the feedback , bro.
I would go right up there andyou couldn't get me off.
That Moo Moo.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I don't even know what to say with that.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Back to the charity.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Back to the charity.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Three Moo.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Moo.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Charity.
We heard about it from threedifferent people three different
times, all naturally, and whenyou hear something different
ways, you want to pay attention,and so we started looking into
this charity.
It's called Rally Foundation.
What they do is they raisemoney to fund childhood cancer
research and so like how do yousay no to that?
Speaker 2 (48:20):
you're talking about something with choa.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
it's an incredible, incredible group of people and
um, I think they're they givelike 97 cents of every dollar
towards researchers.
They don't hardly keep anything.
So we've catered a coupleevents for them.
We did their board of directorsmeeting last December, and then
(48:43):
they have this rally on therunway in April, and two years
ago so in 2023, was the firsttime we were part of it we
donated a class, a Shakiriboardmaking class, and that
brought in $900.
So we're pretty excited aboutthat, yeah, that was in their
silent auction.
And then last year we donatedan item for the live auction and
(49:09):
so we did a 25-personcharcuterie grazing table, pasta
baby how much did that go for?
And then alcohol as well.
So, bar and we raised $6,700last year.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Right there, buddy, I would have right there.
Hell yes, I want that Right$6,700, right.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
And then this year.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
She might sell a second one if you match.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
This year our same item went for $10,000.
And we had a matching.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
A little rich for the internet.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So we sold two of those for $10,000.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Let's go Way to go.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Phenomenal.
We were so excited.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
How can people find the Rally Foundation?
Speaker 1 (49:47):
It's rallyfoundationorg.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Dot org.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
You guys are not dot com, you guys are dot co we are
dot co.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
And when we started the business I thought it'll be
fine and it's okay, definitely.
People struggle sometimes tofind us or they'll email at
thegatheringboardcom and they'llsay it bounced back, but we're
co because we're the gatheringboard co.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
What does thegatheringboardcom do?
Cause that's jack man, I hatethat one.
Those guys suck.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
That's so mean I know , it did flow over to another
company and now it's just kindof sitting there.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah.
So don't tell anybody.
Don't tell anybody.
And you know what, if you gotit, you better give it to them,
because they're giving to kidswith cancer and if you don't
give to them, you're going tokill the kids.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Oh, it's all down man .
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Oh, that's over, it's on, it's on now, that's it.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Chris is going to mess him up, but we got Derek.
He can make him feel better.
That's right.
Derek will bring him back,derek will fix him.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Chris, it's a crap.
I don't cut their tires, dorian, it's not a.
Sicilian thing, at all.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
I mean, you're talking about charcuterie to
Allen, we do.
We got our liquor license lastyear and so we do bartending.
We can bring the alcohol toyour event, which is very
unusual for most bartenders andcaterers because we have our
caterer's license in ourstorefront.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
So you guys enjoy doing these events because you
guys do them together.
They're so fun.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yes, they're so fun.
We love doing them.
We love feeding people.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
So can I come to Holly Springs, get a little
bored and have a bottle of wineat your place?
Yet yes, really yes, yep.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
We have some tables in the front and we can pour you
a glass of wine.
You know, wine by the glass, bythe bottle.
We can do cocktails.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
There are a lot of verticals, go Quickly.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
We can.
That is a COVID-era thing thingthat got signed into law Before
we get going you guys aremaking great money, right?
Speaker 3 (51:41):
I mean it worked.
I'm going to say great moneybecause everybody else is always
killing it right?
Oh my God, chris handyman doingthis whole thing, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Don't ask him how much.
Chris, I know you want to.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
No, no, no but my point is in my business.
I'm like I just in fact I'mtalking with another handyman
potential guy.
He's thinking about scaling hisbusiness.
So I'm like, all right, bud,let's talk.
I said because if I had achance to do it all over again,
I'd probably pick something elsebecause it's really flipping
hard.
So you guys are in the middleof really flipping hard, you're
(52:13):
near five which kudos becauseyou are now.
You beat nine out of ten, soare you killing it?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I mean yes and no, yes and no.
So Derek worked and taughtclasses.
I sold real estate for thefirst couple of years, so this
was not something andimmediately we could have quit
our jobs and done Now.
I worked longer and more hoursdoing this business.
(52:39):
He supported us more with hisbusiness once it started going
again and eventually with thegoal that we would like to do
this full-time.
And it's taken a while andwe're not rolling in the money
but we are both full-time.
We hired a manager in Januaryand we have, I think, three to
(53:01):
four other employees.
One is mostly full-time andthen a couple of part-time.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
The big question I've got, because a lot of our guys
are thinking of starting abusiness and we just talked
about that.
Was it as easy as you thought?
Once you got into it, did it goas well as you thought, or was
it infinitely harder than you?
Speaker 1 (53:17):
thought the feedback and the customer side of it has
been phenomenal.
We do not have anybody yellingus.
We don't have anybody refusingto pay us.
We also set it up so that weget paid prior to going to any
event.
We don't have to collect moneyafter the event.
(53:37):
You pay or we don't go and Isay it nicer than that, clearly,
but that's the way that we setit up from the get-go and to the
point that we even our regularboards.
Would you like to pay now?
Sometimes we'll let them paywhen they pick up.
So that aspect has beenphenomenal.
We have some clients that arenow friends and we have so many
(53:58):
great people we work with.
Was it hard?
Yes, many nights we slept there.
You know.
We actually finally got a cotso that we didn't have to sleep
on the floor anymore, becauseone time, specifically in
October, we had two weddings inone day.
We hired somebody to help, likea temp person to help, and he
(54:22):
arrived and I was like, hey,how's your knife skills?
He was like, oh, they're legit.
Like, okay, great, go cut allthis up.
And it was not legit, it wasbad, it was bad, not legit.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
So actually if we were in a knife fight he
probably wouldn't have got meand you wouldn't have had to do
CPR.
Is that what I'm?
Speaker 1 (54:41):
saying no, maybe those knife skills were good he
was known right where to put theknife, but he didn't know how
to cut salami.
Well at least he showed upbecause I could tell you to say
(55:06):
andy didn't show up, well, wesent him home.
Welcome to my monday.
No, we sent him home.
He was so bad.
So we ended up spending thenight twice in a row to get our
food done, to get our prep done,to present an event that was
worthy of our name, because it'snot their fault that we hired
somebody that didn't know whatthey were doing.
They wanted good food and wehad to provide that.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
I think again back to protecting your brand at all
costs.
That's the business owner,that's the business owner's
thing and that's my gold nuggetI'm going to leave with
everybody.
You have to protect your brand,regardless of what you've tried
and you know what.
It's not as easy as you thinkand it's so hard.
The reason you think and it'sso hard you know, the reason I
got into business is I saw allthese guys golfing on Friday and
(55:40):
I was working my butt offworking at a financial
institution.
And then you come to find outno man, we're working way more
than I ever worked in my life.
But I do it because I love it.
17 years later still grind andmaking it happen.
So kudos to you guys.
Five years into it, I think youguys have nothing but upside in
front of you.
I've started to see a lot morecharcuterie board companies out
there.
I think that just makes themarket.
(56:02):
Alan wanted to talk about this.
He says hey, I think that'scompetition.
I'm like I think that justbrings awareness because I don't
think people even knew this wasa thing.
So if you are the top of thething and other people are just
filling it in, I think that'sgoing to help you guys.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
I'm not opposed to competition.
It really makes you work harderand make sure that you're doing
what you're supposed to bedoing, and we've been so
fortunate to get into theseamazing businesses and different
places, like where we met you.
(56:36):
Can I do a shout out?
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
David at Cambria is awesome.
He's my favorite person everand he Hashtag David.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Leonard.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Hashtag David Leonard .
He's the best.
He's introduced us to so manyother people Besides you, derek
of course they look the same.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
There's a type.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
So you're probably top ten, Chris.
I'm close.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
I'm almost in there.
I'm almost there.
Finally, we brought somebody inwith the same hairstyle we have
.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
That's not really a style, but okay.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Yes, it is.
It depends on how you rock it.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
I like to call it cheap and buzz cut.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
But no, we've served the governor.
I have a selfie with thegovernor.
We've worked with senators, oh,now, we're just jealous.
Mayors Are you kidding me.
And billionaires.
Our boards go on private jetsand you don't.
It's amazing to say that.
It feels a little surreal.
It's amazing to say that itfeels a little surreal, but I
really honestly can say we spendas much time putting a board
(57:41):
together for the local PTA as wewould for the governor, and
that's just our standard.
And that's where we teach ouremployees, our team members
Pretend every single one is atest run, cause we have had
people come in order a box thissize and then the next week call
(58:01):
us up hey, we ordered a boardfrom you last week.
We loved it.
We would like you to cater ourwedding.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
You know I hate but I love what you just said because
that's exactly what happens tome in my business is that they
try us out on a handyman job andthen they say, okay, you guys
did so well on that, you cancome do my bathroom now.
Well, it's a totally differentskill set, but we showed them
that we have, and we do have thecapability of doing it.
But we showed them through ourprocesses and our customer
service that, hey, if you gowith us, this is the kind of
(58:27):
service you're going to get.
And that's what you do,regardless of level, regardless
if it's a charity or justsomebody who's looking a little
small coming off it because youhave no idea who you've got in
front of you.
You don't.
That's the fun and the gorethat happens when you have to
serve the general public.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (58:44):
Fun Guys.
This has been awesome.
Continued success to everythingyou guys are doing.
Let's give a shout out.
It's the the gatheringboardco.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
The gatheringboard company.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Dot co.
All WTO, the Gathering BoardCompany, daco.
All right guys, you learnedsomething on this one, and guess
what?
It's not always sunshine androses.
If you think you're a greatcook and start a restaurant,
check yourself.
Listen to this episode.
If you think you love food,keep eating it, but don't think
you can make money doing it.
If you want to make money doingit, I would not recommend
winging it, like Andrea, but Iwould definitely recommend
having a whole lot of passion,like Derek and Andrea.
(59:16):
Get out of here, go make agreat buck.
We'll see you next week.
We got to go.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Cheers everybody.
Speaker 3 (59:20):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the
small business safari.
Remember we're a positiveattitude.
We'll help you achieve thathigher altitude you're looking
for in the wild world smallbusiness ownership.
And until next time, make it agreat day.
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