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She's the founder and namesake of Stacey's PETA chips. Stacey, it's great to have you back on the show. Thank you so much. I was really excited and I'm flattered that you asked me.
When you were first on the show in 2019, you went to the High Built this Summit. And as always, for those of you who haven't heard Stacey's original episode, we will put a link to it in the episode description. Stacey, so many listeners of these, we have like 600 plus episodes in our archives. So many people tell me yours is their all-time favorite.
I hear it again and again. All the time. Do people still come up to you and say, oh, I remember your story from now to this? They do.
That's the connection that they make. It's crazy. I mean, it's an amazing story. You talk about how you started out as a social worker.
You were in Washington, D.C. and then you moved around a bit and then you tried a bunch of different things. And then you and your partner at the time, Mark, you decided to come back to Boston area where you guys bought a hot dog cart and kind of turned it into a sandwich cart like PETA sandwiches. And you had all this extra PETA every day.
So you started to toast it and toss it in Parmesan cheese. And then you would offer these to PETA chips to people waiting in line for their PETA sandwich. And this is how Stacey's PETA chips began. I mean, it's an amazing story because they were so popular.
It became this huge brand. You eventually sold it to Pepsi in 2006. I know that you started a couple of brands. You had a juice bar.
You had an energy bar business, which were awesome. I love them. Neither of them are going at the moment. But tell me a little bit about what you've been up to in the last couple of years.
Yeah. So I'd like to say I've been raising my kids and both of them are seniors in college and going to graduate this year. I had Stacey's juice bar, which I have to say was really next to Stacey's PETA chips was my passion. Because when I started the PETA chip company, I was selling healthy sandwiches.
And with the juice bar, I was able to kind of make the cart come to life and make healthy lunches come to fruition through juices and smoothies. And we sold salads and quinoa's. And we sold to be both bars. You basically started an energy bar.
They were so good. They were like oats and chocolate chips. And they were so popular that people said you've got to sell these in the stores. You got to sell these grocery stores.
Yeah. Everybody would buy one with their lunch. And I had a huge following. I was in the suburbs.
It was very kind of local, not a social media person. So we also got a buyer actually who listened to how I built this. And they had the PETA chips forever and was interested in buying the bars. And so we got 1200 stores, put more money into it, produced enough to stock the shelves, produced enough to have backup for it.
And then the pandemic hit. And then it ended up costing a lot of money. It definitely burned me out of the entrepreneurial world. And it still hits hard.
I can imagine how much energy that was sucking from you. And I guess it sounds like it just wasn't fun anymore. What were we doing? No, it's a real hard because.
It's $250,000 in bars. And had to make the decision. Am I going to take and throw $250,000 in the dumpster? Or am I going to invest some more and try to make a go of it?
Yeah. At a certain point, you're saying, well, I can pour more money into this and keep going. Or I can say, all right, it was an interesting experiment and move on. There are all these other things that you do.
You are an investor. I think you're an early investor in sweet green and evolution juice and a couple of cool food brands. I want to go back to Stacey's for a moment because that story, it's a story that comes up often in my conversations, in part because it was the side hustle to the main hustle, right? And really what you started to see was people asking for those chips.
It wasn't part of the plan. And I wonder if you can kind of speak to this idea of when you know that actually the site project is really the thing that you have to hit the ass on. And the thing that you thought you were doing, you've got to kind of roll it up. When did you start to understand that the sandwiches were not actually the business?
It was these chips that you were handing out for free to people waiting in line. Yeah. It's kind of like you have to make a decision. Am I going in the fork in the road?
Am I going right? Am I going left? Right? And the decision was based on we're in New England.
And so your income's really only in the good weather. And over the winter, worked on the marketing, the packaging, went to trade shows, talked to other snack food companies, and kind of got it ready to launch. The second year we had a little help at the food cart so that we could focus more on the chips. And then eventually we ended up doing the chips.
It just made more sense because of the demand that you were hearing from people to chatter. Or did you actually start to see the dollars coming in or have a little more heavily weighed toward the chips? Chatter. And can you make me an extra bag like just bulk so I can take them home when people ask you questions like that.
You know, listen to your customers. Yeah. I mean, that is so super important. And then you know what you ask the question, well, when do you know when you switch or you make that decision?
My answer would be you need to prove out the concept outside of just where you are. So you have to take whether it's taking the bags of chips to the stores, talking to the stores, sampling them at the stores, things like that. Like, you know, that's what helps you make those kinds of decisions. Yeah.
Before we get to two colors, I want to ask you just one more question, which is, you know, you started this, right? The food cart, this is in the 90s. And when you started this, it was like people had to show up at the cart and you find out about it because somebody would say, oh, I'm going to stay, I'm going to stay in a car in Boston, common or downtown crossing. Now you would have an Instagram account and you would have a bunch of social media accounts and I hear you.
I hear you. I mean, do you think that if you were starting Stacey's cart today and then the chips, would you do you think you'd have to go about it differently to have the same kind of impact? I would say I'd have to be a victim of the times. I think it would be very hard to speak to this to the times right now and to this generation if you don't get on their own microphone.
Like if they're on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, it is hard to reach people. So that's an important part of it. Yeah. All right, Stacey, why don't we go ahead and take our first call?
Are you ready? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Definitely ready.
Okay. Hello, caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Stacey Madison.
Founded by Stacey Petitris. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from and just one quick line about your business. Yeah. Hey, Stacey and my name is Sam Kaggle and I am based in Utah.
I'm the founder of Do-Guy. It's an online community and an e-commerce brand dedicated to homemade pizza making. And so we provide the physical tools, the resources and inspiration so that anybody can make restaurant quality pizza right at home with nothing but a regular home oven. What do you sell?
It's a pizza steel. It's a 16 inch by 16 inch steel that you bake pizzas on in normal oven. So like a pizza stone where it's a piece of steel. It's a hand before and you put the steel in the oven and then you heat the oven up and then the idea is that you're going to get a pizza that's more like a restaurant pizza.
Exactly. Awesome. Tell me, when did you start the business? Yeah.
So I officially launched the business April of this year, about end of April. So it's been pretty recent. And how did you come up? Were you like a, were you a baker?
Were you working in restaurants? No. So I mean, I've always loved baking. I've always loved baking like desserts and breads.
But I never really dabbled with pizza. And so the story goes, so summer 2024 last year, I quit my job to become stay at home dad. And like I said, I always loved baking, but to keep my sanity, I decided to dive into homemade pizza making and start an Instagram page to document the journey. And I discovered you don't need like a fancy pizza oven to make really good pizza at home.
And so in January, I decided to do a series where I made a pizza every single day until I got a Dave Port and my pizza review. And so obviously- Wow. How'd you do that? How'd you get Dave Port and I review your pizza?
Because he's like the pizza king. He's the pizza king. He's a pretty controversial guy, so it kind of took off. But like I said, I started a series where I made a pizza every single day, posted every single day until I got his attention.
And I flew out to Chicago and I got a pizza review from him. The first homemade pizza from Utah, and he gave me a really good score. And I had about two weeks before the review came out where I basically set up my entire company, set everything with my manufacturing because I had nothing ready to go because I thought this was going to take like a year or longer. I didn't think he was just going to have any random guy come out and make him a pizza.
But the day came out, I launched my business. And after that, that was off to the races. How much have you done so far in sales? Yeah, so since April, we've done just north of 300,000 in revenue.
It's awesome. And congrats on getting Dave Port and I review it. I've had a pizza steal in the past. It's an awesome, again, this is not a new product.
You didn't invent the pizza steal. But you basically have a community of people who follow you on social media and you make pizza and stuff. Yeah, that's right. And so that's really where I differentiate myself.
So I built this community on Instagram. I have since January, I've grown to about 130,000 followers and people are very into it. People are very loyal to the brand-dough guy and they love everything pizza making. My whole brand is making it as simple and easy and fun as possible.
And to show that really anybody can do it. It's not like some hidden or gate-kept thing that's so hard to do to make pizza. Anybody can do it and it's really fun and easy to do. It's fun to do with your kids too.
It is. Let me ask you a question. I have for years I've had pizza ovens. And the beauty of these things is they get really hot.
Usually you want to put your pizza between six and 750. A conventional home oven only gets up to 550. So why would somebody pick the steal over an uni pizza oven or even a big green egg? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of reasons.
The first reason is a lot cheaper and it's a lot more convenient to do. A lot like how many Americans live in an apartment where they can't have a pizza oven outside and they can't have all this space to make pizzas. And that's where the pizza steal comes in. So pizza stones have been around forever.
They don't get quite hot enough to get that perfect black and undercarriage that everyone loves on a New York style slice of pizza. The steal gets up high enough. It can preheat up to 550 plus degrees and it retains its heat super good so transfer to the pizza and makes it super easy to make really high quality pizza home. All right.
Before we dive in for the tell us what your question is. Yeah, so I've grown this awesome community online. But my vision for doe guy actually is to turn it into a full fledged brand for all things baking. Right now, like most of the momentum depends on me personally.
I'm running the entire thing. I'm editing the videos. I'm doing all the content all by myself. But I want to scale it in a way where the brand can thrive without me at the center of everything.
And so my question is, how can I make the leap from being the guy on Instagram that makes pizza to building a lasting brand that stands on its own? All right. Awesome question. I want to be a piece of medicine and that's for Sam questions for Sam answers for Sam.
What you were saying about how do you get get it from you? Hmm. I mean, you got to be in it. Yeah.
You have tapped into the secret sauce of the internet and you know how many companies are trying to do what you've already done and you have a following and you have, I mean, you can go. You're the value right now. Yeah. Yeah.
No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Okay. I have a question for you.
What you mentioned that you have this idea for creating a full like a full on baking brand. So you've got the steel. Tell me like, let's just get a crystal ball. If you had your Barbie dream house, right?
I always say that because when I was a little kid, I watched my sister's play with the Barbie dream house. And I kind of wanted one too because it was a pretty awesome house. You have pool and all that cool stuff. Yeah.
What kind of things are you selling in 10 years now? Yeah. So obviously all things pizza making in terms of cutting and launching even hot honey type things, things like selling shelves, but also bread, desserts, anything baking related. And it happens to me.
So my audience is mostly bail. And so there isn't really a baking brand that exists that is targeted towards the male audience. But I think there's a big market for men to get into sourdough baking and things like that. Totally.
Do you have, I mean, I wonder, I mean, I agree with Stacey 100%. Right now you're, it's too early. You have to be the brand guy and you're going to have to do everything for a while and really establish the steel as the steel to get. And you're right.
I mean, if you want to buy a new year of a gozener or these ovens, you're looking at three, four, or five hundred more dollars. And how much is your retail for your product? 119. So yeah, it's a great deal.
You can make a pretty great pizza at home with a steel. I wonder whether you are, I mean, to me, it seems like you have an opportunity. How many, how many followers do you have on Instagram? About 130,000.
That's amazing. I mean, now you have an opportunity to end. It's all about pizza, basically. Do you have, have you put in any, if featuring like community content, like pizza fails that, you know, great pizza fails from people or anything like that?
Because everyone screws up pizza, the first time they get up the peel, when they're trying to put it from the peel into the oven, they always mess it up. Have you had anything like that? That's a great question. That's a great question.
I, so I do have people tagging me every single day. I always post about other people's pizza, pizza, making creations, but I haven't tried the fail thing, which could be, which could be really funny because I, I failed a lot. You know, it's hard to get it going. My goal is to make it so it's not so hard, but it's definitely, it's definitely learning curve.
So that's a good idea. I think that's good because I quit after I made one. Why'd you quit? Oh, I was just such a disaster.
I'm like, I'm not a fan of pizza maker. No, you didn't put enough flour on the peel. That's why you got it. You got to work fast.
You got to be fast. You have to follow dough guy. I was very good at making it pretty. I was, but oh, Sam, isn't it true?
Isn't it true? You've got it while you're making the pizza. You got to shake the peel a little bit. Everyone's a problem.
Make sure it's still loose. You know, you're going to put the sauce on, shake it a little bit. Okay, it's moving. Put the cheese on, put the whatever you want on and shake it around.
And then you can still save it by pulling up the dough and blowing a little bit of flour under it. Yeah, you know, you know, yeah. But you know, you know, you're going to be the best friend. And yeah, shake it and make sure you're not using too much sauce.
All that stuff. So Stacey, do you think, I mean, you said this that he's got to really be the guy, right? He's got to grind. But at what point can he say, all right, now I need somebody else to run stuff or operations while I focus on building out this brand.
Like, can you hire some other people to do all the other stuff? Yeah. Like, let, you know, bring in others to help with the other tasks so that you can stay on the Internet. And you have to, because you need to be on it now while you're hot.
Yeah. Well, thank you. And I love that you are hitting the men. Yeah.
I mean, and there's so much, like, what else do men cook? Meat. Grilling meat. Smoking meat.
Right. You know, on the grill and maybe you're, you know, maybe it's a spatula. Maybe it's a, I don't know. But you know, guys, I mean, again, I hate to hate these categories, but they are true sometimes.
And guys, you see a lot of guys will want to bake with like cast iron, right? Yeah. Like they're camping and make like a cobbler or, you know, some kind of like cookie thing and a cast iron pan. That's way better, right?
Yeah. You like that? You know, it's kind of cast iron pan. Because that's special.
Like, you know, that's like, ooh, I want to try that. Look at that man making brownies and a cast iron pan. A real man. Yeah.
No, that's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. The outdoor space is huge.
And look at Sam, right? Look at him. See, he's the man. He's got the magic.
Handsome guy. I mean, right? Like he's the guy, cast iron brownies. Yeah.
Okay. I mean, I think I might be going into the brownie space. Who knows? But you know what?
But you have that making something delicious while keeping it simple. Yeah. If you can think of things that are unique to the male population and that you're going to make it easy, something that's difficult, you're going to make it easy. Like you just speaking to you now, I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to make a pizza again.
I'm going to get myself a steal because my oven doesn't get hot enough. There you go. Or, you know, it's going to retain the heat. Who knew?
Maybe that's why my, maybe it was my pan. I think it was. Maybe it wasn't me. And, yeah, and Stacy, you know how you're going to figure that out?
I'd figure how to do this right. I'm going to go to your house and you're going to show me. No, you're going to go to Sam's Instagram and you're going to see all the videos there. All the how to.
Sam's and then I'm going to, yeah, and I'm going to watch all those videos. I'm going to get myself a steal square and I'm going to make it for my kids. I'm telling you what, forget about Naples, forget about Sicily, forget about even the Roman style pizza. It's the Salt Lake City style.
It's all about the Italy. That's awesome. I love the story. Sam, thanks for calling the brands called Dogai, San Kegel.
Good luck and we'll keep telling you man. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Stay with us because after the break, we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level.
That's after the break. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to the advice line right here. I'm going to talk about how I built this lab. All right.
Let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Stacey Madison, founder of Stacey's. Putsch, tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a line about your business, please.
Hi, Guy. I'm Stacey. My name is Alex Hildebrandt and I live in Boston, but I'm currently New York City where I spend a lot of time for my business. And I'm a co-founder of Suio Pisco.
Suio is a spirits company and we're introducing the world to single origin Pisco, which is the national spirit of Peru. And Pisco also happens to be the only spirit in the world that by law is made with one ingredient. Which is grapes, presumably. That's right, which is grapes.
Alex, thanks for calling in and thanks for asking us hopefully to help you out. Tell me a little bit about how you started this business. I mean, I think most people, a lot of people know Pisco's sour, right? Tell me about how you got into making and selling Pisco.
I'm from Peru, which is what really inspired me to do something, really to reconnect with my home country as a Peruvian who's not most of his life in the United States. I always felt like I wanted to do something that reconnected me. And I don't come from the Pisco space. I don't come from a family of producers or anything like that.
But one of my best friends and now co-founder is a Peruvian. And we have been bringing it in for really long period of time. And we decided to both share this passion about doing something that reconnected us with our roots. And so it hit us right in the head one time.
We were back home in Meda Frotis in Lima, Peru. And we were drinking a Pisco cocktail. And we kind of looked at each other and we were wondering, wait, what do you know about Pisco? And we explored and we decided to launch a Pisco brand.
Okay. So first of all, I'm assuming like tequila or other certain other spirits, it has to be made in Peru to be called Pisco. That's exactly right. So you can't just distill grapes in California and call it Pisco.
Correct. So much like a tequila or a champagne, it has the nomination of origin. So that means it's come from a very specific place in Peru and be produced a very specific type of wave, which I think for the most part is a good thing because that ensures that we have this spirit that only has one ingredient at the end of the day, which is very, very cool and unique. When did you launch the brand?
CEO. We launched the brand in 2020 after having started the project in 2019. Of course, COVID came around and we imported our first paladin to the United States in late 2021 and started selling it in early 2022. Where are you selling it right now?
We're very focused geographically, mostly between New York and Boston and then between San Francisco and LA, that's about the majority of our California sales. And that's kind of at the request of our distributor. And again, we should mention with spirits, tricky because you got to go state by state, every state has different regulations. So you got to start with one state and then grow from there.
What is the in terms of like your sales, where does most of the restaurants and bars, mostly from liquor stores, where are you seeing sales? Great question. So roughly 80% of our sales this year today have been in bars and restaurants. Roughly 20% will be liquor stores, which is kind of in line with what we expected when we launched the brand because when you're introducing someone to something new, I think it's oftentimes more approachable to purchase a cocktail at a more approachable price point than going into a liquor store and buying a bottle, something that's, you know, it tends to be a little bit more premium price and you may not know what to do with it.
So it's kind of line with our expectations. And give us a sense, Alex, of what kind of revenue you expect to do this year? Do you expect to break 300,000, 400,000? Yeah, we think we'll do a little bit of 400,000 this year.
Okay. And before I dive in further, tell us what your question is. What question about for us? Yeah.
So I'm sort of facing a consumer behavior dilemma. If we take, for instance, being at a bar or liquor store, consumers tend to first decide what kind of alcohol to drink, for example, say, vodka. Yeah. Yeah.
Or vodka, I feel like I'm in a vodka soda today. I'm going to have Tito's, which is the brand. But on the other hand, sometimes consumers also just order a brand without knowing or even caring what kind of alcohol category it is. One example is Tennessee, which is often thought of as its own thing, but it's a cognac, which is also a non-issue or a control spirit.
Right. It's a great spirit. That's right. So here I'm building a brand that's in a category that's relatively unknown.
And I'm wondering if you, Stacy or Guy could offer any advice on how to prioritize my efforts in educating consumers about PSCO while also building my brand's awareness, which is so interesting because I can't think of a single PSCO brand, right? I can think of vodka brands or gin brands, but I cannot think of a PSCO brand, which to me seems like a great opportunity. Before I win, I want to bring in Stacy Madison. Stacy, a lot to think about here.
Alex, has this PSCO brand? I'm sure you've had PSCO Sours in Miami because there's some awesome Peruvian restaurants down there. What do you think? What do you think?
Okay. Brand or category or what? Okay. Well, first I went last night and had a PSCO Sour.
I asked the bartender, you know, can I see your PSCO? Like, what kind of PSCO you're born here? Because I wanted to hear what he... Did he know anything about it?
You know, things like that. The question is, is there like a Suryo Sour? Great question. We actually tend to lean away from the PSCO Sour, which could be another question to phrase back at you.
The PSCO Sour is what everybody intuitively orders because that's really all they know, but our experience has been that the PSCO Sour tends to be a little less approachable in that it has an egg white in it and it's kind of complicated to make it at home. So we've been looking for something that can be made at home. It has very few ingredients. It's very simple.
So what we push is the PSCO punch, which I think maybe it's your point, doesn't have our name in it. And maybe we should find a way to incorporate our name into it. But it is a traditional cocktail that we... What's in the PSCO punch?
Yeah. The PSCO punch traditionally is really just three ingredients. And because we love simplicity, this has made a lot of sense for us. It's going to be PSCO, of course, pineapple juice and lime juice.
And that's all you need. If you know how to make a margarita, you can make a PSCO punch. It's the way we've been approaching it. You just made those three ingredients.
Got it. Okay, cool. Yep. Other than a PSCO Sour, what else is PSCO used for?
There are a lot of options, which is a double-edged sword. There's so many different directions we can go. But how do you keep it simple and try to find that one thing that really, really takes off? So we play a lot with the martini, swap in PSCO for the vodka or the gin, because we have two different expressions that have similar profiles to both vodka and gin, respectively.
You can do other easy high balls like a PSCO tonic, which is a super-approving drink as well, because tonic comes from Guainine, which is originally from Peru. So it's a fun storytelling opportunity for us that we use. And then there's some others that are more traditional in Peru, for instance. If you go to a house party or you go to a family gathering, a celebration, which is about everybody's going to be drinking what's called a Chicano, which is just PSCO and ginger ale, and you put a dash of wine on top.
That is super simple. It's much like a mule, if you've had a mule before. Most people enjoy that if you drink. You have to bring your name into it.
I agree. I agree 100%. Yeah. I mean, if it were me, and you're selling to all these bars, take, you know, 10 free drink cards, you know, work it out with the bar.
And you have a whole underground crew of ambassadors to go into the bar, and people do this a free drink to go in and to order a Suyatonic and have the people next to that person go with Suyatonic. Like, what's that? Oh, it's made with PSCO and, you know, the PSCO, Suyat, PSCO and buy them a drink. That's your underground network.
I completely agree. Stacy, because look, consumers, they rarely champion a category unless there's a brand to rally behind, right? So you think of like, Apparol, like, Apparol, there are other things that are like Apparol, but you order an Apparol spritz. Patron is a great example in tequila, right?
You have an opportunity to make Suyoh synonymous with PSCO to US consumers because there isn't anything like that. There is no Patron for PSCO. Like the brand is the tip of the spear here, right? Like you're leading with the story of Suyoh and what it says.
I mean, the other thing is, Peruvian food is some of the greatest food in the world, some of the greatest restaurants in the world are in Lima. So people who know about food know about Peruvian food, but like, I didn't know that PSCO had to have a single ingredient, you know, single origin. I didn't know that. And maybe on the bottle, you know, something like, you know, Peru's best kept secret or something like that.
I would really lean into talking to bartenders about making Suyoh drinks. As Stacy said, Suyoh tonics, Suyoh and orange juice, but then also the punch, Suyoh punch. And really just start to build on the brand and a mixer rather than PSCO and a mixer. Suyoh sours.
It can be a PSCO sour. So, Yatini. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really what the opportunity is to make your brand synonymous with PSCO.
It's just a category that is, to me, it seems wide open. I mean tequila, everybody's in tequila, you know, gin, vodka, but not that many PSCO brands known in the US, if any. None. None.
And the market is wide open. It was the exact same thing with the PDA chips. You know what a PDA chip was, which is crazy. It's what Stacy said.
You were such a perfect person to ask this question. And I think you've answered the question here, but you know, it's like, we get asked to come to bars and do what they call staff trainings or staff educations. And we 100% of the time start with, let me talk to you quickly about what PSCO is to set the basis. And then now let me talk to you about Suyoh.
What I'm hearing from you two is maybe it makes sense to flip the script. And we leave with Suyoh. And oh, by the way, this is a PSCO. Let me tell you a couple of things about what that means.
So how much, can I ask how much does the bar pay for a bottle? Yeah, of course. For our core line, which are the different value that you see in there, they pay depending on the tier that they get because it changes depending on how many bytes between about $30 a bottle and about $33 a bottle depending on the market. So it ends up at retail roughly $45.
This is the SRP that we aim for. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to get a handle on that feel for your both your sales and for what kind of drink you're creating.
Because if you're creating, I have to say I'm not a big fan of the punch thing. I think of something red. Oh, you're a good punch. Now, yeah.
I think of something red. And I think of something that's not as expensive. And I think that you should keep it equivalent to the more expensive cocktails. It sounds like jungle juice.
It doesn't sound as elevated to you. Well, but it can. But it can. I mean, I have you had milk punch at some of these high end bars.
But then such a category is so small. Like the general public, I think, in order to get that extra buck. So Alex, I think there's a huge opportunity here. It's all about Suio.
It's not about Pisco. Pisco comes next. People discover Pisco through Suio. That's a direction to take.
The brand is called Suio Pisco. Alex Hillbrand. Good luck. Thanks, Stacey, for talking about it.
Thank you. Yeah, I tell you what, I love Pisco. I don't know what they're offering, but every time everyone's around, like, oh, Pisco sour, that sounds great. I want that egg white.
Yeah. It's like you're drinking an egg white. I mean, how about that? It's delicious.
Spirits is a tricky category because there's so many spirits brands. But certain kind of wormholes in that world, right, like Pisco's or other kinds of spirits have an opportunity. And I would also think about partnering with maybe some interesting Peruvian chefs. Because that, I mean, I think the number one restaurant in the world for a while was in Lima.
So there you go. I think he's on to something he can really, it can really take off. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question and another round of advice. I'm Guy Ross.
Stick around. You're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab. Let's bring in our final caller. Welcome to the advice line.
You are on with Stacey Madison, founder of Stacey's Peetish Tips. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and one line about your business, please. I'm Stephanie Stuckey. I am with Stuckey's.
I'm calling from Ren Storja, and we make pecan snacks and candies. Awesome. Stephanie, welcome to the show Stuckeys. You make pecan candy.
So like, just give me kind of a sense of what kind of candy do you sell? We're best known for the pecan log roll, which is my grandmother's recipe. We've actually been making it since 1937. Wow.
Yeah, I call ourselves an 88-year-old startup. Yeah. Yeah. And we also make pralines and gophers, caramel pecans and chocolate.
We do dark chocolate pecans, white chocolate pecans, and then we have a whole line of flavor pecans, everything from roasted and salted to honey roasted, kettle glazed, bourbon. I love it. We're crazy about pecans. Wow.
This is an old new brand, right? Right. So tell me what is the story of Stuckeys? It's a crazy journey.
So I am an attorney. I spent my entire life doing different things. I was a public defender, a state representative, and head of sustainability for the city of Atlanta. And five years ago, I got a phone call that the company that my grandfather had founded and sold was for sale.
And it's your last name, Stuckey? It's my last name. Yeah. So he started it as a roadside with constant.
When did he start it? 1937. Wow. Okay.
Yeah. People love that he made snacks and candies and people said, oh, this is great, but where's the restroom? Where can I get gas? So he built a gas station that sold snacks, candies, kitschy, fun, souvets, and stuff like that.
Kitchen, fun, souvenirs, clean restrooms, and he just built it from there. And it's peak. Stuckeys had 370 stores and 40 states at a candy company, a trucking company, a billboard company. We were synonymous with road tripping in America.
Wow. You were the... What's it called? The Bucky's or the...
Wow. Of that time. Yeah. Before there was TA, loaves or Bucky's, there were Stuckeys.
We were the first roadside retail chain. Wow. And so what happened to it? Did he sell it?
When did he sell it? He sold it when I was a little girl. So in 1964, he's sold it. But he remained involved in controlling it until the mid 70s.
I totally remember Stuckeys. I think I was 13. We did a trip across country and we would always stop the Stuckeys. So all right.
So your grandfather starts to sell it. Yes. And how does it end up back in your hands? I got a phone call that the company was for sale.
It was six figures in the red. The owners at the time were looking to sell. How many gas stations do they have? There are about a dozen original stores still around.
We do not own or operate them and they were losing money. It was a hot mess. So the brand comes up for sale. I mean, how much do they want or how much were they willing to take?
I paid 500,000. It was my life savings. So you bought the brand back with the idea to revive this roadside stand or to do something different. Yeah.
And then I realized it wasn't working and we were sinking further into debt. So I made a pivot after about a year and I got some business partners and we decided to reinvent the brand just the way it started as a pecan snack and candy company. And we bought a manufacturing facility. Wow.
Everything was outsourced and the pecans came from Mexico and pecans are the only snack nut native to this country. They are absolutely delicious. They are. Georgia grows more pecans than anywhere else in the world.
I know. Why is it called a peach thing? It should be the pecans. Is it pecans or pecans?
What do you say? I say pecans, but I thought it was pecans. Yeah, the customer is always right. Yeah, you're supposed to say pecans.
So it's just a stuckies. That's what I want. I want to be synonymous with pecans. Before I get your question, give me a sense of where like, how is the business doing now as a candy business?
It's doing well. We're in about 4,000 doors nationwide, which is very well in farm and hardware. We're in some sea stores, some grocery, like food, line and angles. We just launched in select Walmart and Sam's Club.
And we have 65 employees with a largest employer in Ren's, Georgia. Miss Alte, you're going to two to 10 million. 10 million. Yeah, but it's still a challenge, right?
It's still. So that's my question. So Stuckeys was once known as this roadside stand, but today we're reinventing ourselves as a pecan snacking candy company and a market that is dominated by big budget brands, backing pistachios, cashews, almonds, peanuts. How do we position Stuckeys and pecans as a distinctive must have choice for new generation of consumers who didn't grow up like Stacy stopping a Stuckey's.
We got to introduce ourselves. We're getting on shelves. How do we move off the shelf? All right.
All right. Good question. Stacy, I want to bring you in. Um, you obviously know this brand from when you were a kid, but now it's not a gas station road size.
Stop. It's a pecan logs and rolls and pecans and, you know, they're doing pretty well. 11, $10 million in sales, probably still not right. You guys made some investments in manufacturing equipment and you've got a lot of it.
You've got a lot of employees. So you probably still have some debt and you still are probably not able to pay yourself a whole lot. Cause people here 10 million, nothing year rolling and pecan dough. Yeah, they do.
No, you're not. No, right. No, it's very manufacturing is very capital intensive. We pay our, our employees very well.
We, that was one of the most important things we did. We bought an existing facility and we gave everyone a pay raise and we brought in insurance and so all of that costs money. It's worth it. Yeah.
All right. So let's get to Stacy. I want to bring you in before we answer Stephanie's question. Maybe you've got some questions for her.
Yeah. Oh, I definitely do. Well, first of all, you're talking to somebody that does not eat peanuts. Oh, I like pecans.
I, I just, I love, you know, and that's my first choice. Yeah. It's my first choice of not. I love that.
I have a question. Like you seem to have a lot of SKUs. Yes. Right.
Just to clarify, there's like dark chocolate, white chocolate, becans, cinnamon becans. There's the bourbon becans. I mean, there's a lot of stuff here is what you're saying. Yeah, it's a lot to manage.
We do have a core line for mass distribution. So we have, we call them the seven core. OK. So what area of the store, where would I find you?
And where would I find it? Like if you have all these things that are like, it seems like they're very different to have a pecan roll than a bag of pecans or a chocolate or like what section of the store, are you targeting the nut aisle, snack, nut aisle, and then also the candy aisle. And ideally, like we're in a fair amount of convenience stores, a lot of independent convenience stores. So you might find a center store and a perfect world where in the impulse section, right?
At the register, right? What's your top seller? The pecan log roll. The log roll is the number one seller.
It's been delivering for us since my grandmother first whipped it up in her country kitchen. Who's buying them? Probably mostly 50 fish and up. Yeah.
I mean, it's people who recognize the brand. And that's the exact direction I'm going. And it may not be what you want to hear. Yeah, I hear.
But I'll tell you, I would flood the current older population. Like you have a population out there who knows and recognizes your brand. Yeah. So I would start with hitting all the stuffy people.
And you know, all the that age range, the over 50. Yeah. Grow the corner. It's not as big.
It's not. Yeah, for your core population. And then once you've kind of tapped out that market, then I would, you know, expand from there. Yeah.