How to Build a Charcuterie Board Business

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Therese Merkel – Tricky Foods

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Driven by Money, Not Passion
08:51 Considering Investing in a Storefront
13:36 Unexpected Offer for Dream Space
19:30 Adjusting Business Hours
24:38 Indifferent Sports Parent
28:28 Madison’s New Entrepreneurship Hub
34:05 First Experience with Delegation
41:51 Creative Holiday Charcuterie Artists
43:32 Navigating Bureaucracy for Permits
49:29 Prioritize Engagement Over Acquisition
55:55 “Profitable Meat Shipping Realization”

Podcast Transcription:

Therese Merkel [00:00:00]:
Opposed to using. As opposed to using like Harry and David or like 1-800-FLOWERS. They can support a local company and shippable boards that only uses Wisconsin cheeses. And we’re from Wisconsin. It just feels like a good way. It. It’s serendipitous with like, my feel on community and supporting local and like the. The local economy.

Therese Merkel [00:00:19]:
Here.

James Kademan [00:00:28]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link fund@drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie, and today we’re welcoming, preparing to learn from Therese Merkel of Tricky Foods. We’re talking foods today, so that’s always a good thing. How’s it going today?

Therese Merkel [00:00:54]:
It’s going good. Yeah. Nothing really crazy going on such a sweet podcast.

James Kademan [00:01:00]:
I know, right?

Therese Merkel [00:01:01]:
You’re right. This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve done today.

James Kademan [00:01:04]:
I’m gonna call that a compliment.

Therese Merkel [00:01:05]:
Yeah, it is. This is the only thing I did today, actually, the only thing on my schedule. The rest was just computer work, like.

James Kademan [00:01:10]:
Nice. Tell us the story. What is Tricky Foods?

Therese Merkel [00:01:13]:
So Tricky Foods is a cheese and charcuterie shop, wine and beer bar, and event space located in Madison. So, like 20 minutes from where we are now. Yeah, but it’s. I mean, that’s one part of what we do. That’s.

James Kademan [00:01:24]:
Tiny part.

Therese Merkel [00:01:25]:
Well, that’s a big part, but that’s of my entrepreneurial everything, you know, owner of Tricky Foods. But I have, like, you know, just like you do so many other little things. Irons in the fire.

James Kademan [00:01:35]:
That’s the game as an entrepreneur, right? You got 5 million ideas every single idea idea day, and then you just have to choose one of them every six weeks or year.

Therese Merkel [00:01:45]:
I know, I know. So, yeah, that’s like a big part of what I’m doing, but I’m also trying to expand the business, which I feel like is a bigger focus for me right now.

James Kademan [00:01:53]:
Okay, so tell me a story.

Therese Merkel [00:01:55]:
Okay, well, what story do you want to hear?

James Kademan [00:01:57]:
Let’s start with. Let’s start with the beginning.

Therese Merkel [00:01:59]:
Okay. All right.

James Kademan [00:02:00]:
So there I was. Right?

Therese Merkel [00:02:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So the story I always tell people, the story starts in 2018. So I had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. I had a degree in information technology and Spanish, and I moved to Madison to work at Epic as a project manager.

James Kademan [00:02:16]:
Like you do.

Therese Merkel [00:02:16]:
Yeah, like everyone does. And I knew that. I knew the stories, but I was like, this paycheck is going to look really nice and someone’s fresh out of college college debt. So I worked there for a year and a half. I had just paid off my last college loan, and I’m like, I couldn’t find anyone there that was living the life I wanted. I’m like, well, why do you stay here? And it was all about the money. Everyone had their feelings about working there, but it was all about the money. Even people that have been there for 10 years, I’m like, why do you stay here? The money’s just too good.

Therese Merkel [00:02:47]:
Okay, that’s kind of miserable because.

James Kademan [00:02:49]:
Sounds like it.

Therese Merkel [00:02:50]:
Yeah. Like, I don’t have debt now, and I’m more sad than when I had college debt. Like, what? And so I realized when they had asked me to take on more work, I said, I think I’m gonna end here. I’m done. So I put in a six week notice like everyone does. And then four weeks later, the pandemic happened. And I was like, oh, can I actually keep my job? And they’re like, actually, no. Like you said, no.

Therese Merkel [00:03:10]:
And we don’t have any work anymore. Like, everything is delayed. Every project got delayed. Everyone, no traveling anymore. So I thought it was like the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. But it ended up being just like the springboard for everything I did after. So when I quit, after I put in my notice, I started applying for other jobs, other management type jobs, project management jobs. And when the pandemic happened, everything was frozen.

Therese Merkel [00:03:33]:
You know, they’re not looking to hire people, they’re laying people off. So I thought, okay, this is a good reason to have a gap in my resume. And my other plan was to travel and have fun and, like, get my life back. And that was all, you know, canceled. Everything that I had planned was canceled. And so I lived alone at this time. All my roommates moved away. And I started thinking, like, what do I want my life to be? We’re gonna die soon because of this pandemic.

Therese Merkel [00:03:56]:
What do I want my final days to be? And I went back.

James Kademan [00:04:00]:
It’s 20 something. You’re like, what are my final days?

Therese Merkel [00:04:03]:
Because the pandemic, I thought we were all gonna die. Remember everyone like, you know, peace, peace to your mother. So I literally was like, okay, I’ll have like about a year probably left. Let me just. What do I want to do? Not actually, but like, oh, that’s funny. I was thinking, life is short. Literally, people are dying. So, like, what do I want to do with my life? And of course, I came out very burnt out.

Therese Merkel [00:04:25]:
I had a small stint of like, I just need to recoup my energy back. I started waitressing at a country club, and I started teaching kids cooking classes just to kind of get my toes in the water. And then I saw the charcuterie board trend. So I had had an Instagram page called Tricky Foods for years. Like, I’ve always loved cooking. I have little pictures when I was little at J.C. penney’s with, like, a chef hat and a bowl. That was my hobby.

Therese Merkel [00:04:47]:
You know, you get those professional photos taken. So I’m just like. So I’m like, that was my hobby. And my dad always said, don’t go into food because you’re not gonna make money. And I’m like, okay, dad. Like, no problem. And I hear him on that. I mean, being a chef, you’re working weekends, nights, holidays.

Therese Merkel [00:05:03]:
But no one told me that there was another route. There’s other food businesses you can start.

James Kademan [00:05:08]:
That’s fair. When I worked at a movie theater, my boss said, never get in the restaurant business. He said, the movie theater business people are already fed, so they’ll buy their popcorn. They’re there for a good time. The restaurant, they just got done with work, and they’re cranky and they’re hungry. And Friday, Saturday night, that’s when you make all your money and you’re dealing with all these cranky people. So don’t do that. Yeah, so I got the same advice.

Therese Merkel [00:05:30]:
Yeah, it is. I mean, but the thing that I do realize that if you’re passionate about food, think about, like, you go to the grocery store and you buy food like Kellogg’s. I mean, every food brand out there is also a business. You could work in the food industry.

James Kademan [00:05:42]:
We all eat.

Therese Merkel [00:05:43]:
Exactly. You don’t have to just be in food service. I mean, think about companies like, you know, Chick Fil A that started or raising canes. Like, those are all food entrepreneurs, but they’re not working Friday and Saturday nights anymore. They built a franchise. So no one told me that there were different routes with food. Everyone thinks you just work at a mom and pop restaurant and you’re scraping by in life. And that is, I would say that’s like level one in the food industry.

Therese Merkel [00:06:07]:
The easiest to enter. I mean, restaurant, it’s not easy to enter, but, like, no food industry job is easy to enter. But then there’s like, you know, level 100, where it’s like you’re working for a gigantic food company. But anyway, so I’m very passionate about food. And I started a food company making charcuterie boards. I just saw a trend. I decided I was gonna make them from my house, which is illegal. I found that out later on.

James Kademan [00:06:31]:
Like for you or to sell.

Therese Merkel [00:06:32]:
It’s illegal to make any food from your house and sell it if it needs to be refrigerated.

James Kademan [00:06:37]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:06:37]:
So I can cook, I can bake cookies and sell. And that’s legal. So it’s under something called the cottage law. I’m giving law advice now, but no, under the cottage law, you can sell baked goods.

James Kademan [00:06:47]:
That’s fairly new though, right? I mean, five, 10 years maybe.

Therese Merkel [00:06:50]:
The cottage law is different in every state. Like, every state has its own version. Some states, maybe what I’m doing could. But if you. The second you cut cheese or cut a strawberry in half, it needs to be refrigerated.

James Kademan [00:07:00]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:07:01]:
And then you have to be in a commercial kitchen. Oh, yeah. So that’s where I’m happy. I didn’t know that when I started. It’s good that I didn’t know everything because I don’t know if I would have continued, you know, gotten involved. But yeah, started making charcuterie boards. And the long story short, to like preface it is like, got into a commercial kitchen, started hiring help. So started growing, realized I was working just as much as I had been at Epic and making not exactly the same amount, but like a similar amount.

Therese Merkel [00:07:31]:
And I’m like, well, now I’m back to square. Like the beginning. I don’t wanna do this. So then you have to start thinking. Or what I started thinking about was, how do I build a machine that works without me so that I can still be involved in this business, but I’m not the one working Friday, Saturdays and weekends? So then I eventually went the storefront route, got a storefront a couple years ago, hired. Well, that’s me. Two full time employees, eight part time charcuterie artists, two charcuterie proteges, which are interns, a marketing person and a salesperson part time. So that’s the whole team now.

Therese Merkel [00:08:00]:
They run it.

James Kademan [00:08:01]:
Dang.

Therese Merkel [00:08:02]:
They run it. But so anyways, that’s the day. That’s like, they run the day to day. And now I’m working on the expansion.

James Kademan [00:08:08]:
All right.

Therese Merkel [00:08:09]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:08:10]:
So, man, we got a lot of gears to hit.

Therese Merkel [00:08:12]:
I know. I kind of went through the fast version.

James Kademan [00:08:14]:
No, you’re good, you’re good. That’s the outline.

Therese Merkel [00:08:17]:
Yes, that’s the outline.

James Kademan [00:08:17]:
And now we can just hit the individual chapters here.

Therese Merkel [00:08:19]:
Yeah, I like it. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:08:21]:
Tell me a story. About location. How’d you find the spot?

Therese Merkel [00:08:24]:
Ooh, good question. No one really asks about that because.

James Kademan [00:08:27]:
Suddenly, what was a special podcast?

Therese Merkel [00:08:29]:
So people always see a spot and they’re like, oh, cool, she got a spot. It was very difficult to find a spot. One coming to terms that. I’m not from Madison. I’m from the Milwaukee area. I was planning to leave Madison years, like, after a year and a half into my twenties.

James Kademan [00:08:44]:
I was too.

Therese Merkel [00:08:44]:
Yeah, we all think about it, which I’m glad I didn’t, because this is an incredible place, in my opinion.

James Kademan [00:08:50]:
Fair.

Therese Merkel [00:08:51]:
Totally fair to have to have a business, especially, like, with the capital and all these tech companies. So coming to terms with the fact of, like, I could actually see myself going, you know, locking in a loan for a place like this, locking in five years in a place like this. Once I kind of came to that terms. Those terms. Well, I didn’t really come to those terms. Those terms kind of came to me. So I was on a trip, and one of my good friends who owns a different small business was like, I found a storefront because she really needed one. And she’s like, there’s another one next to it.

Therese Merkel [00:09:23]:
You should check it out. I know. I’m like, I’m only doing it if you’re doing it. Like, this is amazing. We. I mean, it wasn’t easy to get one because, like, we had to have the landlord on our side. We’re 25. I was 25 at that point.

Therese Merkel [00:09:39]:
No, 27. Let me say I was 26 when I was looking to get a storefront.

James Kademan [00:09:44]:
You could just say 20. We don’t know.

Therese Merkel [00:09:45]:
Okay, mid-20s. Yeah, mid-20s. No. Yeah, we went down.

James Kademan [00:09:49]:
No one’s checking.

Therese Merkel [00:09:50]:
Okay. So I’m like, you know, the bank’s not really excited about a mid-20s girl that has no collateral and is single. And, like, I don’t have, like, a huge nest egg. So, like, you have to have a landlord that is. Okay, waiting. You have to have a banker that’s like, believes in you, or you have, like, stats to back up your profitability of your business. And so we found a place that worked out really well. But then we roped in a third friend to try to get her to be in the third space.

James Kademan [00:10:17]:
Holy cow.

Therese Merkel [00:10:17]:
It ended up falling through for one of them.

James Kademan [00:10:20]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:10:21]:
And then number one or number three? Number three. And then ended up falling through for number one. And it was only gonna work for me. And I said, I’m out. I’m not doing this if it’s not gonna be with you guys. So I kind of stopped looking, but I still had it in my mind of like, I actually think this is the way to go. Started looking. I mean, you.

Therese Merkel [00:10:37]:
You pay per square foot. Not to get into the details, but like, we’re looking at rent of. I mean, thousands of dollars every month versus where?

James Kademan [00:10:44]:
Help me out with where. As far as downtown.

Therese Merkel [00:10:46]:
Oh, Middleton.

James Kademan [00:10:47]:
Middleton.

Therese Merkel [00:10:48]:
I was always looking at Middleton. Yeah. Because that’s where a lot of my customers are. Mind you, I was in Stoughton at the time.

James Kademan [00:10:53]:
So Middleton, Greenway, cross type, kind of.

Therese Merkel [00:10:57]:
Off the beaten path a little bit more. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:10:59]:
I didn’t know. I guess the question is, are you looking for a place with foot traffic or more industrial?

Therese Merkel [00:11:05]:
Foot traffic? More so, but more just like. Okay, so there’s two ways that I was thinking about it, and I never really knew what way I wanted to go. It happened to work out. I went the way that came to me. But I started this during the pandemic. People were picking up boards. I wanted just a pickup location, a small kitchen pickup location, small footprint. Wine, beer, maybe pick up to go and then leave.

Therese Merkel [00:11:26]:
It wouldn’t be like you walk and stay a while. Well, I’m happy that place didn’t work out because the place that did work out was kind of an interesting story, but it ended up being like a whole storefront with a patio. We rent it out for. Yeah. My place is 1400 square feet. A whole storefront wine, beer bar were open 55 hours a week. People can just walk in and order stuff or they rent a out the store for a day or for hours. And that it’s really good for baby bridal corporate events under 50 people.

James Kademan [00:11:53]:
Well, my Aunt Therese. I didn’t know all this.

Therese Merkel [00:11:55]:
You didn’t know that?

James Kademan [00:11:56]:
Oh, my.

Therese Merkel [00:11:57]:
What did you think I was doing? Making charcuterie boards? Just here’s a board.

James Kademan [00:12:00]:
Here’s a board with me and cheese. No, I knew you had a. Oh, so.

Therese Merkel [00:12:02]:
I don’t mean to clap. I wasn’t trying to get that out.

James Kademan [00:12:04]:
I knew you had a retail spot.

Therese Merkel [00:12:06]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:12:06]:
I didn’t know that alcohol was involved and I didn’t know that there was rental space and all that kind of stuff. So.

Therese Merkel [00:12:11]:
This is cool.

James Kademan [00:12:11]:
This is so cool.

Therese Merkel [00:12:12]:
Oh, yeah, it’s. I mean, you always have to think about how to get as much. How to keep the revenue coming in. All the things.

James Kademan [00:12:18]:
Yeah. All the avenues. All of them.

Therese Merkel [00:12:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. So we do tons of public events too, but private events are really good. We do tons of grazing tables, which is like you know, long form catering. We do that mostly at people’s homes or corporate offices. So, you know, we can have five events in a day, you know, two of them in our store, three of them in other places, or five outside of our storefront. Like, it’s really hard to not get into the weeds. So stop me.

Therese Merkel [00:12:41]:
But as I was basically to kind of go back to like the storefront, because then I can go into, like, scaling, because that’s a whole different thing.

James Kademan [00:12:49]:
Sure, fair.

Therese Merkel [00:12:50]:
But so, yeah, the storefront, I stopped looking. And then this is just a very funny, like, this is how the luck part of business comes into play. I had happened to live at a place that was next to a commercial building. I’m in a neighborhood, right. This is back a couple years ago. I’m in a place, right next to it is a commercial building. And then right across from that is an old vfw. So when I started my business, I asked the VFW if I could work in their kitchen, rent it out.

Therese Merkel [00:13:16]:
They said, no, we’re getting bought and torn down. So I’m like, okay, no problem. This is relevant. And then the people that were buying and tearing it down and building an apartment building were across the street from them. Well, they always ordered and they pick up from my house. So I’d make the charcuterie boards in Stoughton and bring it back to my house and they would buy them. So one day they came up to me. They came up to order, you know, grab the board.

Therese Merkel [00:13:36]:
And I happened to be home, so I chatted with them and I’m like, when is it gonna be ready? I had a boy, you know, my husband was my boyfriend at the time. And I’m like, I’d love for him to live there. That’d be so cool. And then I get a text from the president of the company that day, and he’s like, hey, Therese, we’ve been buying your boards for years. Like, would you want a space, a commercial space? And I’m like, a brand new build commercial space in the exact building I wanted to be in. Like, you know, because that was the old vfw. I tried to. Yeah, does that, like, make sense? Do I need to draw that out? But, like, that’s it.

James Kademan [00:14:05]:
These stuff, the stars are.

Therese Merkel [00:14:07]:
Yes, exactly. Like, the place that I tried originally five years ago to get a commercial space ended up being my footprint of where my commercial space is. But so they came to me, and when they come to you, it’s obviously like they want you there for a reason.

James Kademan [00:14:21]:
Right?

Therese Merkel [00:14:22]:
I’M a good kind of an amenity for them and their real bread and butter is apartments. But they had to have a mixed use building. So I’m just kind of like the cherry on top.

James Kademan [00:14:35]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:14:35]:
So anyways, it worked out really fair. I got to build out the space completely. Like I, I’m the one that said line office here, bathroom here, light here, switch here.

James Kademan [00:14:47]:
Whoa.

Therese Merkel [00:14:48]:
Just drew it out on a, you know, piece of paper and then, then you pay the big bucks for like an architecture to put it together and make it legal. And you have a general contractor that actually subbed, gets the subs and stuff.

James Kademan [00:14:58]:
Holy cow. That was your first building.

Therese Merkel [00:15:00]:
Yeah, I’ve never bought, I mean, yeah, my first building, I never bought furniture even in my life. I had just always. My roommates had bought it and now I’m furnishing it. You know, I’m buying 50 chairs and I’m buying like, you know, granite countertops and custom woodworked. But I mean they, I got lucky in the sense that it was a brand new build, they wanted me there and it went hand in hand with when they were kind of building the building. So I got to use all their, like they’re. I was too small of a fish for to work with those big of people. But because they were building the building, they built mine too.

James Kademan [00:15:32]:
Nice.

Therese Merkel [00:15:33]:
So I got. That was like the lucky part.

James Kademan [00:15:37]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:15:38]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:15:39]:
That’s awesome.

Therese Merkel [00:15:40]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:15:40]:
Tell me roughly what year are we talking?

Therese Merkel [00:15:42]:
This is 2023. So.

James Kademan [00:15:44]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:15:44]:
January, September 2022. I got the text and by September 2023, we’re opened. Yeah. So that’s, that’s probably on the slower end.

James Kademan [00:15:54]:
Holy cow.

Therese Merkel [00:15:55]:
I would go in with a hard hat. You know, the building was being built.

James Kademan [00:15:58]:
So I was thinking it was going to take a year to bang that out.

Therese Merkel [00:16:02]:
No, most general contractors when they’re in spaces take like three months or something. Yeah. To build a space. But mine, you know, was from scratch. All the plumbing and electric, all the framing.

James Kademan [00:16:12]:
Holy cow.

Therese Merkel [00:16:12]:
It’s like too much freedom though, when you can go do whatever you want.

James Kademan [00:16:16]:
It’s like, it’s too much.

Therese Merkel [00:16:18]:
Yeah. I think we did a pretty good job for the first one though. I had a lot of guidance.

James Kademan [00:16:23]:
I guess that’s what I’m thinking because since you’ve never been in a space, I don’t mean that to be mean. I just mean like you don’t even know what you don’t know.

Therese Merkel [00:16:30]:
Yeah, I had no idea.

James Kademan [00:16:31]:
I mean it’s like moving out of your parents place for the first Time, like, what kind of apartment do I want?

Therese Merkel [00:16:35]:
Yeah, I don’t know.

James Kademan [00:16:37]:
I guess I need a bathroom and a kitchen.

Therese Merkel [00:16:38]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:16:39]:
Like, I don’t know, the things that I don’t like. I know, noisy neighbors or this door should go this way instead of that way or whatever.

Therese Merkel [00:16:46]:
Yeah. That’s where kind of like, I’ve had to pay a lot of professionals to give me the advice. You know, you could describe on a piece of paper how you want it done, and then the architecture without over telling you everything they’re gonna say, you can’t do that. You have to have, by code, two bathrooms.

James Kademan [00:17:02]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:17:02]:
Okay. Well, now, that’s, like, a ton of space. And the bathrooms have to be big enough for a wheelchair to be able to do a 360. So some stuff you can’t determine. You can say, this is the general vibe. And I drew it out. And then, you know, I had a bunch of people on that project that were, like, I said I was a small fish for this company. They were very experienced, and some people were, like, they were definitely going to bat for me.

Therese Merkel [00:17:24]:
They’d call me after our weekly meeting and be like, hey, don’t let them push you around. Like, you can push back on that, you know? So I.

James Kademan [00:17:30]:
That’s awesome.

Therese Merkel [00:17:31]:
Yeah. I mean, looking back, I was so overwhelmed.

James Kademan [00:17:34]:
All right.

Therese Merkel [00:17:35]:
I would be overwhelmed to do it again, but I would know a little bit more.

James Kademan [00:17:39]:
But it sounds, like, awfully lucky. And since people were working with you and it wasn’t like, oh, this little thing.

Therese Merkel [00:17:47]:
Yeah, yeah, no. I had a lot of. You know, I had, like, a hundred people that I probably got advice from throughout that time period on just how to build a house or to build a storefront.

James Kademan [00:17:56]:
Dang. They must like charcuterie boards.

Therese Merkel [00:17:58]:
No. Yeah. Or just they didn’t want to see someone go through the same thing they had already gone through. You know, it was like, paying it forward. Some people were just about to retire and were really, like, this was their last project.

James Kademan [00:18:08]:
Oh, nice.

Therese Merkel [00:18:09]:
Okay. So, yeah, that’s a part of the story that honestly is so deep in the archives. Like, I was, like, just trying to stay alive during that time because I also. I didn’t have employees. I had one employee at that time. So you’re running the business while also building what the future business is going to look like. Nothing was ever harder than that.

James Kademan [00:18:30]:
You’re perfect as segue here, because next question was employees, because you get the space, and now you gotta man it for whatever you’re open.

Therese Merkel [00:18:39]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:18:39]:
Like, let’s shift gears. There, Right. How do you figure out what hours are gonna be open?

Therese Merkel [00:18:43]:
Good question. How did I decide? Well, I know people like to pick up charcuterie boards around noon. I had a pickup time of noon to 2. I had settled on through a lot of trial and error. I realized you can’t just be open 365 days a year. Then I realized it was more like the end of the week that people wanted stuff. And then it was like the earliest people would want it would be lunch. And most people are done.

Therese Merkel [00:19:06]:
I mean, they’re enjoying it around like lunchtime or like 5, 6:30. So I thought, okay, if this is gonna be a wine and beer bar, I don’t want it to be a late night place. It’s in a neighborhood and that’s not even my vibe. So I just said 11 to 8. And I could change it at any point. You know, like I could say we’re open from 11 until 2 and that’s how it would be. But we have to ultimately, like my full time people have work that they have to do. So they’re at the store.

Therese Merkel [00:19:30]:
And if someone happens to walk in and ask about it, I want them to be there. You know, that helps a place where people can call, you know, So I don’t know, I think sometimes you just kind of throw something out there and go, well, would it make any sense to open at 12? Well, no, people need their stuff by 12. So we’d probably be coming in here early all the time and we have to make it. And then I noticed the spike of people coming at the 6:30 time was. And then they’re there for about 8:30 at night. Yeah, they’re there for like an hour or so. So we close at 8. We tried late hour, you know, later hours, like till 10pm but is this.

James Kademan [00:20:06]:
Crickets or people you don’t want?

Therese Merkel [00:20:08]:
Yeah, it’s probably both. It’s probably both. But there’s. I kind of joke around like what I do now in the business is I’m like, I joke around that I’m a cfo and I also actually mean it because like, all I do is look at numbers and stats all day and I say, okay, when are peak times? Or what are our labor numbers? And oh wait, where. I forgot where I was going with this.

James Kademan [00:20:28]:
Open hours, employees.

Therese Merkel [00:20:30]:
Yeah, it’s like I kind of forgot where I was going. Basically. Like, I’m looking at charts all the time to decide if our labor numbers make sense versus our sales numbers. So like, oh, this. I was going to say when you look at our. When I look at my sales, I see in store, walk in sales, they’re not. They’re steady or they’re dropping. But catering, outside catering sales go up.

Therese Merkel [00:20:55]:
So the storefront really is more of like a place to kind of do work for my employees, but also for a place to people to pick up or rent. But what really drives like the bottom line is catering orders. So I know that’s why we don’t need to be open until 10pm because walk ins don’t drive revenue.

James Kademan [00:21:11]:
No catering orders getting picked up or it’s rare. No. Picked up at 9:30.

Therese Merkel [00:21:15]:
No. And if they want to do a special thing, then they can book us and we have minimums and that’s profitable. But just waiting around, like, waiting for someone to like come in.

James Kademan [00:21:22]:
Let me just.

Therese Merkel [00:21:23]:
Yeah, yeah. It just doesn’t make sense. But that’s one piece of the pie fair.

James Kademan [00:21:28]:
So when you. This place opens day one, do you have ribbon cutting or anything cool like that?

Therese Merkel [00:21:32]:
We never cut a ribbon technically, but we did have like a big party where it’s like if you were a piece of cheese or like a cheese head or something, you got like a free cookie.

James Kademan [00:21:40]:
Well, there you go.

Therese Merkel [00:21:41]:
So we had a line out the door, which was great. And you know we have bigger Instagram, so getting people to show up wasn’t horrendous. We were horribly understaffed the first day. Two people called in with COVID Come on. I know, right? Two employees. Yes. That day I’m like, this is 20, 23. But I mean, people still got Covid in.

Therese Merkel [00:21:59]:
20 people are still getting Covid now.

James Kademan [00:22:01]:
Yeah. Beside the aunts die or whatever. Employees are employees.

Therese Merkel [00:22:05]:
No, I mean, ultimately they were sick. So basically they called in the day of and I’m like, oh, we’re screwed. And we only prepped a few boxes. I didn’t know so many people would come through and support. So, yeah, we had like my employees, sisters and moms and friends coming in. And my, my family showed up right when we opened. So they were, they were helpful, but they weren’t able to like get in the back and like make stuff.

James Kademan [00:22:26]:
Gotcha.

Therese Merkel [00:22:27]:
And then the thing is this, like any business owner would feel. Probably feels this way, but it’s like, I can’t be everywhere. So when we’re opening, my staff might think, oh, Treece can help make charcuterie boards. But it’s like I didn’t even get to go to the bathroom.

James Kademan [00:22:41]:
Yeah. Shake hands and kiss babies.

Therese Merkel [00:22:43]:
I know. That’s. That’s the that is when I realized, like, everything is gonn. I cannot keep making charcuterie boards. I can’t be at every catering event. People want to chat. They want to, like, they want to work. I don’t know.

Therese Merkel [00:22:55]:
They want to. I’m in a different role now. And when I realized that, that’s when we really were able to.

James Kademan [00:23:01]:
Yeah. You’re representing. Not building.

Therese Merkel [00:23:03]:
Yeah. Or building library, but not like in the weeds of cutting cheese. Like, I can help grow the business and serve my employees better by doing something else. And same with all management. Like, we’re not too proud to do anything anyone’s done. I’ve done everything that they’re doing. But I can. I can close, you know, thousands of dollars in sales if I’m just in my office, versus I can make a board that someone bought for $50.

James Kademan [00:23:25]:
A way to guarantee that they have a job.

Therese Merkel [00:23:27]:
Exactly.

James Kademan [00:23:28]:
The business is theirs. That you do your thing, they do their thing. Rinse and repeat.

Therese Merkel [00:23:32]:
That’s the hard thing to sometimes get across, especially when you’re growing it alongside other employees.

James Kademan [00:23:38]:
I remember being frustrated with some of my previous day jobs where I was W2 employee thinking, what are these people doing all day?

Therese Merkel [00:23:47]:
The management people? Yeah, I know. My dad always said that too. He’d be like, the most paid people do the least amount of work. I’m like, actually, they’re. They’re. I mean, that can be true sometimes, but, like, sometimes they’re closing deals that are like, they’re astronomically large.

James Kademan [00:24:03]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:24:03]:
And it’s like someone that you’re paying, I mean, it might only take a day for them to close it, but like, someone else at a different level and a different pay grade wouldn’t be able to do that same task.

James Kademan [00:24:12]:
No, it’s risk and reward, and there’s a skill set involved. So.

Therese Merkel [00:24:17]:
Yeah, I know.

James Kademan [00:24:19]:
It’s the game. Right.

Therese Merkel [00:24:20]:
I know. It’s hard to get that understanding from employees. That’s why maybe you feel this way. You hang out with other entrepreneurs. Like, I do at least.

James Kademan [00:24:27]:
Like, I. Oh, my gosh, I love it.

Therese Merkel [00:24:29]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:24:29]:
That’s what we’re doing here, right?

Therese Merkel [00:24:30]:
Yeah, exactly.

James Kademan [00:24:31]:
Happens to be recorded.

Therese Merkel [00:24:32]:
Yeah, exactly. They understand it more. It’s really hard to relate when someone doesn’t know what it’s like. Like to, like, risk everything.

James Kademan [00:24:38]:
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting you say that because I. So I got a kid in baseball, soccer, these little sportsy things. You’re hanging out with the parents, and the parents are talking about what is important to them. And at that time, what is important to them is coach or ref or ump or whatever. And I’m like, I could not possibly care less. I love watching my kid play. It’s enjoyable, but I don’t care if they win or lose.

James Kademan [00:25:05]:
I don’t care what that call was.

Therese Merkel [00:25:07]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:25:07]:
And so I was trying to find a parent who has something more in their life going on than this past game that we need to talk about for three hours. Like, this isn’t Sports center, man. I don’t even like Sports Center. We just need to talk about something going on.

Therese Merkel [00:25:21]:
Did you find someone?

James Kademan [00:25:22]:
Every once in a while, I find a parent that’s got either their own business or they’re investing in something that’s kind of cool.

Therese Merkel [00:25:29]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:25:29]:
Or something other than their kid.

Therese Merkel [00:25:31]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:25:33]:
That’s tough.

Therese Merkel [00:25:34]:
Yeah. I know. Entrepreneurs are. I feel like they’re just so interesting. And I’m not discounting other people that aren’t entrepreneurs, but it’s like what I felt like when I was an entrepreneur is like, you live for the weekend and then you complain about your job.

James Kademan [00:25:46]:
Yeah. I hate Mondays.

Therese Merkel [00:25:47]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m like, I just like my. I really like my life. I like every aspect of it. Like, I. It just feels like life.

James Kademan [00:25:55]:
It’s a charge, right?

Therese Merkel [00:25:56]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:25:57]:
It’s just. I don’t know, it’s fun, and there’s a certain game element to it.

Therese Merkel [00:26:02]:
It feels like a game. Especially early on when I closed the sale, I mean, I was elated. Now I’m like, oh, I gotta send another proposal. It’s like, oh. And I don’t do too many of them, but, like, when I need to jump in for those things, you know? Because when you get sick of doing something, it’s like, well, maybe I could find someone else to do it then, or. I standardized this enough. Now that’s why it’s boring.

James Kademan [00:26:23]:
Right. Systematize and outsource. Right. Systematize and outsource.

Therese Merkel [00:26:28]:
All we do. I’m like, I love this idea, but could we do it you a thousand times over? And if not, we shouldn’t do it for one person? Typically, sometimes we.

James Kademan [00:26:36]:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a gray area and everything, so. That’s fair. That’s fair. Tell me a story about your first employee.

Therese Merkel [00:26:44]:
I got so lucky.

James Kademan [00:26:45]:
All right, man. We’re stacking them up.

Therese Merkel [00:26:48]:
I know, right? Well, I think when you kind of, like, put. What’s the. What’s the right term for this? When you put it all on the table.

James Kademan [00:26:56]:
Yeah. Risk.

Therese Merkel [00:26:57]:
Yeah. Like, when you. When you kind of put your. There’s like a certain phrase where it’s like.

James Kademan [00:27:02]:
Like a manifestation type thing or.

Therese Merkel [00:27:04]:
No, it’s like when you put your balls on the chopping block, but in a different sense. That sounds really kind of dirty.

James Kademan [00:27:10]:
So maybe it was a safe place here too.

Therese Merkel [00:27:12]:
Okay. But like, when I posted on Facebook after I had decided to start this business saying, I’ve decided to quit my job. I’m starting a business. First off, I had already told my family, and I got an immense amount of pushback. They’re like, no, you did not. You did not quit your job.

James Kademan [00:27:29]:
Come on.

Therese Merkel [00:27:30]:
Oh, that. That happens forever. And especially if you’re. I don’t know how long you’ve been an entrepreneur, actually. How long have you.

James Kademan [00:27:35]:
Since 2006.

Therese Merkel [00:27:36]:
Okay, so did your parents have anything to say about it or did it not matter at that point?

James Kademan [00:27:41]:
No, they probably similar. My. So I went to college for four years, and I never graduated because I was like, man, I’ve had enough. And the major I was in just wasn’t my jam. Right. And so what are you gonna do? You gonna change majors after four years and not end up as a doctor? So my dad would bug me and say, when are you gonna finish your degree? And I’m like, I don’t know. And eventually that turned into never. Dad, I don’t need to ever send a resume again.

James Kademan [00:28:14]:
Yeah, never.

Therese Merkel [00:28:15]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:28:16]:
So that piece of paper would be for literally no one. Because I don’t care about it.

Therese Merkel [00:28:19]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:28:20]:
And no one that I care about cares about it. So.

Therese Merkel [00:28:25]:
Yeah, it’s. I know.

James Kademan [00:28:27]:
Unnecessary debt.

Therese Merkel [00:28:28]:
I didn’t even know that was an option. You know, I know about entrepreneurship ever. Which it just is a cool side note, being in Madison. Maybe you’ve seen this on the news or haven’t yet, but they’re doing a big initiative to create an entrepreneurial hub where it’s like a huge. I don’t know if it’s a new building or a program at uw, but I just had a meeting right before this one. It’s the only other meeting I had today, so another exciting part of my day, but it was. They’re starting a club called Women in Entrepreneurship. You know, like, there’s entrepreneurship.

Therese Merkel [00:28:57]:
There’s like, I’m sure boy entrepreneurship clubs, but, like, specifically women entrepreneurship. I’m like, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I never even heard of that. I’m like, if that was an option, I probably would have tried to, like, start a business. Actually, I did try to start a business in College. But I didn’t know what entrepreneurship was. I didn’t know it was called that. Beside the point.

Therese Merkel [00:29:15]:
I love to see that. That’s like, being talked about.

James Kademan [00:29:19]:
Just shove college down your throat.

Therese Merkel [00:29:21]:
I know.

James Kademan [00:29:21]:
And now that that’s not exactly the most fiscally responsible choice. Not saying it’s bad. It’s just one of those, like, you. You really gotta weigh it.

Therese Merkel [00:29:30]:
I know, I know.

James Kademan [00:29:31]:
Back when I went to school, it was like, go get your college degree and life.

Therese Merkel [00:29:35]:
Well, now there’s all this talk. Also, this is kind of a tangent, but, like, not even just starting your own business, but like buying an existing business with all the boomers, you know, retiring and stuff. And it’s like, that’s a really cool. Like, that’s really cool. A lot of people, they decide they’re done working and then their business shuts down. It’s like, you could. You could sell that.

James Kademan [00:29:54]:
There’s value there.

Therese Merkel [00:29:55]:
Yeah. But anyways, I think there’s a lot.

James Kademan [00:29:58]:
Hopefully there’s value. Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:29:59]:
Or room for improvement.

James Kademan [00:30:01]:
Agreed.

Therese Merkel [00:30:01]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:30:02]:
Agree.

Therese Merkel [00:30:02]:
Yeah, but.

James Kademan [00:30:03]:
So first employee, your family gives you pushback.

Therese Merkel [00:30:05]:
They give me pushback.

James Kademan [00:30:07]:
Settle down.

Therese Merkel [00:30:08]:
Yeah. That first year, I was just trying to gain the confidence to be like, I can actually make a living. And you know all these comments that people are making, like, when are you gonna get a real job? It still happens. It still happens.

James Kademan [00:30:21]:
It still happens.

Therese Merkel [00:30:22]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

James Kademan [00:30:24]:
Like, the level of success that you could possibly make being like, hey, I own the world. And they’re like, yeah, well, there’s no W2 there.

Therese Merkel [00:30:30]:
I’m not gonna even mention the people that do. But yeah, I have very high. Not for me personally, but, like, I have people in my life that have higher high expectations for me. And when I say that, I mean, like, in specific categories, like, I like to look at my life as a pie. And all the different categories mean something to me. It’s not just, is this like a stable. I mean, is entrepreneurship ever really fully stable?

James Kademan [00:30:51]:
Is a real job ever stable?

Therese Merkel [00:30:52]:
You’re right, it’s not. Thank you for saying that.

James Kademan [00:30:54]:
Pandemic.

Therese Merkel [00:30:55]:
Yeah. Yeah, you’re completely right. I mean, people can get fired all the time.

James Kademan [00:30:58]:
Yeah, whatever.

Therese Merkel [00:31:00]:
Some people are a little bit more like old fashioned, I guess, traditional, Whatever. But, like, there are different levels of success, you know, Like, I feel like I have found success in the food industry. I have, like, the life that I want, but I am searching for, like, even more at a different level.

James Kademan [00:31:14]:
When would you ever stop, though?

Therese Merkel [00:31:15]:
I don’t think you do.

James Kademan [00:31:16]:
When would you be Like, I’ve hit nirvana, right?

Therese Merkel [00:31:19]:
Yeah, I don’t think you really do. Because it’s like, it’s.

James Kademan [00:31:22]:
We’re trees, man. Grow or die.

Therese Merkel [00:31:24]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:31:24]:
Grow or die.

Therese Merkel [00:31:25]:
I know. It’s like, it’s like a high that you kind of chase.

James Kademan [00:31:28]:
Yes.

Therese Merkel [00:31:28]:
And when you feel like you’ve capped and you’re almost, like, bored, it’s like, okay, I can take this to the next level.

James Kademan [00:31:33]:
I guess from my perspective, it’s like a never ending Monopoly game.

Therese Merkel [00:31:37]:
Yes. And it’s a game, though, but it should be fun while you play it too.

James Kademan [00:31:39]:
Correct.

Therese Merkel [00:31:40]:
And that’s the thing where I. It’s. You kind of have to take a look back and be like, I’m not where I want to be in this category. But, like, I am really loving life right now. Or like, not really loving life at this very moment, but, like, boy, is cash coming in. Like, I will take this. So I love it. It’s a game.

Therese Merkel [00:31:55]:
And I don’t feel like a zombie.

James Kademan [00:31:57]:
And you have the brain or the. The awareness to. To even ask the question or have the conversation internally, externally, whatever, saying, like, where am I now? Where do I want to be? And yeah, cool.

Therese Merkel [00:32:11]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:32:12]:
Other people are just like, I want to Netflix Watch for 12 hours today.

Therese Merkel [00:32:16]:
Oh, yeah. I’m very. What’s introspective? I’m constantly analyzing and writing like, the day is 2030 or like the year’s 2030. This is what my life looks like.

James Kademan [00:32:24]:
Oh, you write letters to yourself and all that?

Therese Merkel [00:32:26]:
Well, in a way. I like to journal to myself. It gets me through. Oh, no. And I love it. I’ll wear it with a badge of honor. But some people are like, I don’t have time for that. I’m like, I don’t have time.

Therese Merkel [00:32:34]:
If I don’t do that, I can’t stop thinking about it. Then if I don’t get enough, you’re not making cake.

James Kademan [00:32:38]:
You gotta figure out the recipe. Right. Other people are just like, where did I land? Is it the cake I wanted?

Therese Merkel [00:32:42]:
I know. And there’s a quote. A goal without a plan is just a wish. You’ve heard that? I have that engraved on one of my journals.

James Kademan [00:32:49]:
Nice.

Therese Merkel [00:32:50]:
Beside the point. First employee. Okay.

James Kademan [00:32:52]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:32:54]:
So I put on Facebook, like, this is what I’m doing. And I got a few key people that changed the game for me in different areas. Like, one of my videographer friends reached out. He’s like, I want to make you a video. Like a legit video. You know, about your video, about your business. And he now Works. He does videos with, like, celebrities and the World cup and, like, all these, you know, he did a video for me when I worked with kwiktrip to have a video on their gas pump at one point.

Therese Merkel [00:33:16]:
Like, he’s the real deal. But he gave me a free video early on. Dang, that makes me look legit. Okay. Then I had other people reaching out. One friend was like, oh, you should work at my family friend’s cooking studio. So then I started teaching the kids cooking classes. Okay, great.

Therese Merkel [00:33:32]:
That gets me more involved in the food industry. Then a third person reached out, and she’s like, this is my old roommate. And she’s like, my cousin is really bored. He’s like a junior or a sophomore in high school. Do you want him to work for you? I’m like, okay, sure. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:33:47]:
That’s the qualifications.

Therese Merkel [00:33:49]:
Oh, yeah. I’m like, okay, sure. But I did actually forget I had. He was the first person I ever paid. The person. A person before that was an old co worker of mine. Again, this is the pandemic. When are we ever looking for, like, things to fill our time? Like, at this point, everyone is so busy, but no one had anything to do.

Therese Merkel [00:34:05]:
So I had a friend reach out, and he’s like, I’d really be interested in the food industry. Can I work for you for free? It’d be really fun. And he had just quit working at Epic also, so he would, like, come tour kitchens with me or come make charcuterie boards with me. And this was not his forte. He doesn’t even live in Wisconsin anymore. He moved away. He got a different job, but he was the first person that I kind of had, and I kind of was able to attempt delegation to. And then when I got this high school boy, Jack.

Therese Merkel [00:34:31]:
He’s amazing. He worked for. Or not. He came from a family that’s just really hard workers. They also own a business. His dad was the first ever employee to clock in at Culver’s.

James Kademan [00:34:41]:
Oh, wow.

Therese Merkel [00:34:42]:
Okay. So, like, and plus, I had that connection of my best friend at the time, cousin is who it was. So he came to my house, and I said, can you just cut string? That’s all I had him do was cut string. String to wrap boxes.

James Kademan [00:34:55]:
Oh, gotcha.

Therese Merkel [00:34:55]:
I said, just. Just cut string. And, you know, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just, you know, very slowly cutting string. Now. We can do it in like, four seconds. But I spend an hour, you know, him doing string. And then like, okay, good job.

Therese Merkel [00:35:07]:
Can you hole punch cards? Then he Would start hole punching cards. And I’m like, do you want to come in the kitchen? Like, I don’t know, put crackers in boxes with me. And he did. And again, he’s working for free at this point. He’s volunteering. And when he came to the kitchen with me, I said, okay, yeah, put crackers. See, I’m gonna put crackers in this box. Do it the same way for all 30 of these.

Therese Merkel [00:35:28]:
I said, now watch, I’m gonna put grapes in this box right here. Do it in all 30 of these. And I would do one box and I’d say, do it again. We’re building a puzzle. Then I’d get to the end and I didn’t have. I wasn’t super. What’s it called? Like systemized at that point. So I was like, I think I want to put this here.

Therese Merkel [00:35:48]:
So then just copy it. And then at the end I’d have to come in and help. And I realized, oh my gosh, we got done early. So then I’d go on Instagram and be like, flash sale, we’re selling another two boards. Okay, that’s another 100 bucks. Like, Jack, let’s make them. And then like, even if I paid him $8 an hour, he just helped me increase my output and double my output and in half the time. And this is probably obvious for anyone that thinks about it, but like, yeah, more people equals more output.

James Kademan [00:36:17]:
To a point.

Therese Merkel [00:36:18]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:36:18]:
Yeah, there’s a curve.

Therese Merkel [00:36:19]:
Exactly. But like, then I wasn’t exhausted. Making charcuterie boards is very. It’s very labor intensive.

James Kademan [00:36:25]:
It’s tedious.

Therese Merkel [00:36:26]:
It’s more labor intensive than people think. I mean, we’re bringing in hundreds of pounds of items on a weekly basis. I mean, even a jug of pickles right at this point is £50. But. So.

James Kademan [00:36:38]:
Yeah, is it really?

Therese Merkel [00:36:40]:
Well, I can’t really lift it properly, so I’m just gonna assume.

James Kademan [00:36:44]:
Sounds good.

Therese Merkel [00:36:44]:
Yeah, I can’t.

James Kademan [00:36:45]:
50, 75. I don’t know.

Therese Merkel [00:36:46]:
Yeah, I can’t even open the jar though. We have to have our distributor open it for us. But back in the day, I couldn’t open the pickle jars. So like, you know, I’m like banging on it like this. So like, to have someone help with that. To cut cheese. We’d cut so much cheese, people would blister and bleed. That was before we had slicers.

James Kademan [00:37:01]:
What in the world?

Therese Merkel [00:37:01]:
I know. I didn’t know what we were doing. It was my 14 year old employee that’s like, hey, my dad and I looked up Slicers, like, we should buy this. I’m like, oh, it’s a hundred dollars. I don’t know. I’m like, what?

James Kademan [00:37:11]:
And he’s dripping blood.

Therese Merkel [00:37:12]:
I know. Just consider it blistering. I know, right? And then so, but so anyways, you’re bringing all this produce. You have to wash, cut, process, take out all this garbage and then you’re going in. It takes, you know, 15 to 45 minutes per board. And you’re crouched over like this. So people are like, oh, it’s so easy to make a charcuterie. Oh yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:37:30]:
It’s. When you make one, it’s super easy. If you’re gonna make real money, you have to be like doing a lot more.

James Kademan [00:37:36]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:37:37]:
And I had made boards so much by myself. I remember shaking making a board because I was so fatigued.

James Kademan [00:37:43]:
Holy cow.

Therese Merkel [00:37:44]:
I know, right? Anyways, that was like the early days. That was with my.

James Kademan [00:37:49]:
She earned it.

Therese Merkel [00:37:50]:
Exactly. That’s why I’m not. I don’t make boards as often as I used to.

James Kademan [00:37:55]:
Fair.

Therese Merkel [00:37:56]:
For special people. I do, but. Or for short staffed. But anyways, then I ended up hiring him when he turned 16 because his dad would drop him off at my house at like 5:30 in the morning and then I would drive him to the kitchen, we pick up Duncan and then we just cruise.

James Kademan [00:38:11]:
Dang. That’s awesome.

Therese Merkel [00:38:13]:
I know. So anyways, my first employee.

James Kademan [00:38:15]:
Is he still with.

Therese Merkel [00:38:16]:
No, he moved to Texas to go to school. So once he graduated, he ended up going to Texas. And although I was devastated, he was an incredibly organized person. He helped me learn so much about like being, you know, I guess, like how to train someone, how to like manage someone. But he also gave me the same respect that I gave him. And that’s hard to find, especially with young people. Like they might call in. Like, I don’t feel like coming in.

Therese Merkel [00:38:40]:
He never called in, ever.

James Kademan [00:38:42]:
Oh my gosh.

Therese Merkel [00:38:43]:
Yeah. So he set the tone of like, I’m not. I only want to attract people that are like high performers. I’m not. I mean, I’ve hired at least 35 people in the past five years. So I’ve had some people that did work out. And I’m like, turns out. Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:38:56]:
But now I know how to. I have not know for sure, but I know better how to vet them.

James Kademan [00:39:03]:
Fair.

Therese Merkel [00:39:04]:
So yeah, that was my first employee.

James Kademan [00:39:05]:
All right. So that was when you’re working out of your house still.

Therese Merkel [00:39:08]:
Yep. And then, well, very quickly that I moved to the commercial kitchen. So it was a little bit of both. I stored Stuff at my house. But then we did.

James Kademan [00:39:16]:
So when you got in the commercial kitchen, you figured out your hours, whatever they’re gonna be. At that time, how fast did you ramp up with employees?

Therese Merkel [00:39:24]:
Pretty slowly, because I still did. I needed the money. Like, I, you know, I couldn’t afford to pay anyone, really.

James Kademan [00:39:29]:
You got rent, and you got equipment and loan and blah, blah, blah.

Therese Merkel [00:39:32]:
Well, at that point, with the shared kitchen, everything was cash. I never got a loan until I built a storefront.

James Kademan [00:39:39]:
Oh.

Therese Merkel [00:39:39]:
So I personally invested. I had $10,000 in my bank account. Okay. Period. That’s all I had. And no debt. And probably some, like, savings a little bit. I moved $3,000 over, and that is.

Therese Merkel [00:39:50]:
I never put more money in the business ever, until I’ve had to do some cash infusions in the past year because of just it’s expensive, and sometimes it’s hard to manage cash flow.

James Kademan [00:40:01]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:40:02]:
So though everything was. Until I got that loan, everything grew at the speed of cash. So when I was like, I don’t know if I could buy this $100 cheese slicer. It’s like, well, I probably can, but I, you know, growing at the speed of cash. I also needed that $100 for my own living expenses.

James Kademan [00:40:15]:
Oh, gotcha.

Therese Merkel [00:40:16]:
But anyway, so, no, I didn’t have a loan. I negotiated a very low rent. I’m all about negotiation. I mean, I negotiated my house rent, I negotiated my kitchen rent. I negotiated with my employees. You know, I would, you know, give them fringe benefits, like free charcuterie boards.

James Kademan [00:40:33]:
Nice.

Therese Merkel [00:40:33]:
But you’re working for $8 an hour, you know.

James Kademan [00:40:36]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:40:37]:
So things have. Things have changed. It was very. The art and science of business early on. It’s more. I feel like it’s more of an.

James Kademan [00:40:43]:
Art fair, and that’s fair.

Therese Merkel [00:40:46]:
And now it’s more of a science with a little. With both.

James Kademan [00:40:49]:
I think once you get to a certain scaling point, the. I guess law gets involved in science and what people are willing to take or what they believe that you can give.

Therese Merkel [00:41:00]:
Yeah. And if people are, you know, negotiating for different wages, it’s like, well, do we even have that cash left based on profit margin? Because we also have, like, a lot of expenses fixed and variables, so.

James Kademan [00:41:11]:
Yeah, that’s fair.

Therese Merkel [00:41:13]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:41:14]:
So tell me, you called your employees. What did you call them? Charcuterie artists.

Therese Merkel [00:41:20]:
Yeah, charcuterie artists. Or proteges.

James Kademan [00:41:22]:
Okay, tell me a story about that.

Therese Merkel [00:41:24]:
Well, when I started hiring more employees, you know, I would go to Instagram and just be like, I’m hiring. I would say I started Getting a lot of like part time working moms or random people that could work random times. But. But it’s. It was very hard to get commitments from people because I needed them in the mornings when most people are working or like weekends or holidays. All the month of December is crazy busy. So then you know. Yeah, that’s really our busiest time of the year is gifting season.

Therese Merkel [00:41:51]:
November, December parties, you know, holiday parties, all that stuff. But yeah, we call them Charcuterie artists. And I would say like we attract a lot of artistic people, a lot of creative people. Like everyone. I feel like everyone that we’ve attracted is looking for an outlet outside of their place. Part time job or their full time job. And then the Proteges we started doing because you have to be 16 to serve wine and beer and you have to be 16 to slice meat. So if you’re not 16 and you can’t be left alone.

Therese Merkel [00:42:17]:
So a Charcuterie Protege is just at a different pay scale. But they’re like, you know, we have interns from CEOs of tomorrow, which is a non profit in town, or we’ve worked with Turning Point, which is another organization in town for kids with special needs. So yeah, we could put them as Charcuterie Protege and they just have a different. But yeah, there’s not a huge, not a huge story with the naming besides like trying to make it fun.

James Kademan [00:42:43]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:42:43]:
And then, and then we. Yeah, we get a lot of graphic design people, interior design people. Like art majors, I think people. You, you know, they use food as their medium for art.

James Kademan [00:42:51]:
Nice.

Therese Merkel [00:42:52]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:42:53]:
Do you tell me about the alcohol side? Was that tough to get a license?

Therese Merkel [00:42:57]:
So easy.

James Kademan [00:42:58]:
So easy.

Therese Merkel [00:42:59]:
So easy to get. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean everyone always. So I have people reaching out to me and they’re like, you know, I want to do this thing. I want to start a bar. I’m really nervous about licenses. It’s like that is literally in the lowest totem pole of difficult in my case.

James Kademan [00:43:13]:
Really?

Therese Merkel [00:43:14]:
Yeah. I mean, to get it. So there’s different classes.

James Kademan [00:43:16]:
Okay. Imagine you’re not a bar. Dance club.

Therese Merkel [00:43:19]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:43:19]:
Three in the morning or whatever.

Therese Merkel [00:43:20]:
Exactly. Like I’m not serving. Serving hard liquor. Although I could have gotten that license to not get too in the weeds. I’m considered. It’s like a class B. Class B and C, I think wine and beer license.

James Kademan [00:43:32]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:43:32]:
Which just means like we just sell wine and beer. You have to get. I mean there’s some red tape and it’s time consuming. But like, what’s a lot Harder is like getting building permits and like that type of stuff can be held up. You have to go to neighborhood meetings and pitch your case. You have to go to like other meetings and like, you know, it’s a public, what are they called? They post the agenda online and anyone from the public can go and say, I don’t want this here.

James Kademan [00:43:54]:
And this is why no charcuterie boards in my backyard.

Therese Merkel [00:43:57]:
I mean people do that all the time for business. If a competitive, a competitor business is coming into town, sometimes the competitor will come to me and be like, this is not okay, it’s way too close to me. Or they’ll come up with something like the gradient of your, like road is not ADA compliant. You know, so people can come up with anything but wine and beer. I mean getting a loan like that was difficult. More difficult as a restaurant than dealing.

James Kademan [00:44:23]:
With a wine and beer stuff.

Therese Merkel [00:44:24]:
Yeah, that is, that’s nothing. Okay. But I think early on it feels like getting my first food. What is it called? Walkthrough of my, of the kitchenette was more nerve wracking than like anything because you just don’t really know what you don’t know.

James Kademan [00:44:39]:
Like the health inspection.

Therese Merkel [00:44:40]:
Yeah, the health inspection. But when I then had my own kitchen, I can control everything. Like we’re very compliant. So that’s, I mean that’s like, literally was like a one day task. I mean it’s a thick thing. You have to apply, but if you’ve been in business for a couple years, you have it all.

James Kademan [00:44:55]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:44:55]:
Just have to find it all and complain.

James Kademan [00:44:57]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:44:58]:
Easy peasy.

James Kademan [00:44:59]:
All right, tell me, did you ever write a business plan?

Therese Merkel [00:45:02]:
I had to eventually put something. And this is before ChatGPT, because if I had chat GPT, it could be done in like a day. You know, maybe we don’t know if.

James Kademan [00:45:11]:
It’D be good or not.

Therese Merkel [00:45:12]:
Well, yeah, you’re right. Only if you had an existing business then it could be like, you know, chatgpt, scrub the Internet and find everything about my business that you know. But, but beside the point. I did have to put something together for my loan.

James Kademan [00:45:24]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:45:25]:
And I think that was a few pages long.

James Kademan [00:45:28]:
Oh, it wasn’t some big 30 page.

Therese Merkel [00:45:30]:
No, I mean you can add certain things to it. Like I’ll have to actually look probably back at it. I made it in like a few days because at that point, wow, these are really. It’s funny because I haven’t heard these questions in such a long time. Like to me none of this was the hard part, the hardest part. Was when I didn’t feel like doing it, I still had to do it, but it wasn’t actually hard to do.

James Kademan [00:45:50]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:45:50]:
Or like, you know, if a customer is yelling at me over the phone because they’re unhappy with something while I still have to fulfill other people’s orders, or if I have to deal with an employee that’s upset with me or whatever, like, those things were a lot harder. The, like, people aspect and the emotional aspect of it is a lot harder than the paperwork.

James Kademan [00:46:06]:
Fair.

Therese Merkel [00:46:06]:
But that is time consuming and can call us.

James Kademan [00:46:08]:
That is so interesting you say that because for me, it’s the opposite. I hate paperwork, but I can deal with grouchy people.

Therese Merkel [00:46:13]:
Yeah. Like, when I think back to what was hard, I don’t know if it was. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t remember because honestly, it was such a blur and I didn’t want to remember.

James Kademan [00:46:24]:
Get it out. Get it out.

Therese Merkel [00:46:25]:
Yeah. No, no. But I mean, there were so many components of it. Like, you have to get financial projections, for example, made. Well, there’s a free clinic at the SBDC Small Business Development center that can help make it for you. That took, like, four months for me to. Or three months to get those made. And that was one piece.

Therese Merkel [00:46:42]:
So all these individual things I was doing, and then I ended up just printing them all off and putting them in my application with, like, a business plan. So it’s part of the business plan, I suppose. But I didn’t do that on my own.

James Kademan [00:46:52]:
Right on.

Therese Merkel [00:46:53]:
And now I’m going to look back at my business plan because I don’t even know, like, what was I thinking?

James Kademan [00:46:57]:
And you’ll be like, what is this?

Therese Merkel [00:46:58]:
I know. I’m. I know I’m going off the beaten path from what I had intended.

James Kademan [00:47:03]:
That’s the game. Right? That’s usually what happens. Because they’re the business plan. You’re essentially speculating.

Therese Merkel [00:47:08]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:47:08]:
You don’t know.

Therese Merkel [00:47:09]:
Yeah. There’s something, though, that’s not a business plan that is way easier. It’s called the Business Canva Canvas.

James Kademan [00:47:14]:
Yeah. The one page.

Therese Merkel [00:47:15]:
Yeah, the one page. I did that, like, every year, and I redid it, and I’m like, I didn’t even know what this meant. Like, that’s why this doesn’t make any sense. And then I do it the next year, and I do feel like that helped make me think about it.

James Kademan [00:47:26]:
All right.

Therese Merkel [00:47:27]:
But. And then I just use that to make the plan.

James Kademan [00:47:30]:
Sweet.

Therese Merkel [00:47:31]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:47:32]:
Tell me about marketing. Little section on the one page thing. How did you and how do you market your business?

Therese Merkel [00:47:38]:
Okay, Instagram.

James Kademan [00:47:39]:
All right.

Therese Merkel [00:47:40]:
Period.

James Kademan [00:47:40]:
Yeah, you mentioned that a lot.

Therese Merkel [00:47:42]:
Yeah, that’s. That’s how we got all of our employees, all of our customers, all your employees. Oh, yeah. For me. For me, the most important thing is, like, I’m trying to. I didn’t know that I was doing this, but I’m crystal clear about this. Part of it now is, like, the culture of my business means everything. Like, huge.

Therese Merkel [00:47:59]:
It’s everything. So, like, when we’re on Instagram, I’ve been taking people on Instagram on the story along with, like, this is my first charcuterie board, everyone. Or, like, you know, this is me at the kitchen. Or, like, a video of me taking out the trash. You know, like, you bring people on the story, and they just, like, love that authenticity. So, you know, and then. Then also there’s a part of, like, trying to oversell it. Basically, I’d be like, we’re totally sold out, guys.

Therese Merkel [00:48:26]:
Thanks so much. And I’d be like, I’m just not taking any more orders because I’m leaving. I’m going on vacation. So we’re sold out, everyone. So there’s a bit of, like, trying to create this, like, holy cow. So many people are ordering from us, reposting everyone’s stuff, hyping everyone up. Anytime people message me, you get back to them instantly. I’ve, like, literally thumb tendonitis from responding to people.

James Kademan [00:48:47]:
What in the world?

Therese Merkel [00:48:48]:
I know, I know, right? That was Covid, though. Everyone was on their phones during COVID So, yeah, I mean, just Instagram and creative marketing things. So, like, I pitched working with Kwik Trip to make a Shark Quickery board, like, where I use quick trips. Yeah. And so that ended up on the gas pumps. And then it also. And I actually haven’t even posted it on our page, but everyone saw it on the gas pumps.

James Kademan [00:49:11]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:49:12]:
So that adds some credibility. And for me, I’m not a mark like marketing. I understand. I’m more about, like, the sales and the relationships. And, like, if I have one person and I go so far above and beyond for them, they’re gonna come back. So we’ve had repeat customers for five years. Every year they get us for their birthday, their anniversary. That’s awesome.

Therese Merkel [00:49:29]:
So annual recurring revenue is so much more important than getting in a new customer. It’s just, how do you give those people a good experience? Marketing now, though, it’s just about trying to grow our Instagram and also getting out into the wild. So for me, as someone that’s in this generation of online, we think we forget about all these in person brand activations that we can do. Like, so the other day I wore a cheese hat and I went around the Capitol and I interviewed people and basically said, like, do you have a cheese drawer in your fridge? Or how would you describe your ex in cheese and charcuterie terms? And people, people were like, how do you describe cheese on the bottom of your shoe that’s been dropped on the floor?

James Kademan [00:50:06]:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Therese Merkel [00:50:08]:
Or like moldy cracker or like the toothpick or something.

James Kademan [00:50:12]:
Wow.

Therese Merkel [00:50:13]:
So and then posting, we do that in the wild. We’re also giving out free samples and then we post it on Instagram.

James Kademan [00:50:19]:
You were just bumming around the Capitol, the cheese head hat with a little.

Therese Merkel [00:50:21]:
Phone to camera during Constantine Square. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:50:24]:
That’s amazing.

Therese Merkel [00:50:25]:
Yeah, it was. I mean, that takes a whole thing, like a whole initiative because I had my two social media, My one marketing girl, Social media girl. You know, it’s a lot of. But it’s fun.

James Kademan [00:50:35]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:50:35]:
So anyways, like, that’s us trying to get into the wild. Like, we have a cheese and charcuterie costume that, like, you know, I’m trying to get someone that wants to run like the Madison Marathon wearing the costume or something. Like, just to do something like guerilla marketing. We don’t pay for ads. Really. I spent in the past five years under $10,000 on any advertisements. Paid ads, we don’t really do. You can just.

Therese Merkel [00:50:59]:
You can. I feel like putting your face on Instagram. In my perspective, people trust you and they’re like, wow, look how busy you are. Look how friendly you are. Look how hyped you are. Like, look how good your products look. But then also getting reviews on Google, Facebook or Yelp, always asking for feedback and then reposting that.

James Kademan [00:51:19]:
Yeah. Have reviews been a challenge? Either getting or dealing with negative ones? If you get them or.

Therese Merkel [00:51:26]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

James Kademan [00:51:28]:
Oh, yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:51:29]:
Oh, yeah.

James Kademan [00:51:29]:
I mean, I didn’t mean to pick that scab. Here we are.

Therese Merkel [00:51:32]:
No, I really, actually, it’s funny, I remember getting a bad review. I remember I’ve gotten two bad reviews.

James Kademan [00:51:37]:
Okay, two.

Therese Merkel [00:51:38]:
One was recent, actually, which is kind of wild.

James Kademan [00:51:40]:
Okay, well, screw them.

Therese Merkel [00:51:41]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:51:42]:
They’re wrong.

Therese Merkel [00:51:42]:
I know. To me, I say I give them their money back and it never happened. I wash my hands of it. But it used to hurt a lot more when people would. They constantly penny pick. They’d be like, can you sharpen your pencil? Can you lower your prices? And now with the storefront, people don’t really do that, but we, I do find it a challenge. I mean, we’ve had thousands. We’ve had over a hundred thousand people eating our stuff, like, and we have only 300 or 230 reviews.

Therese Merkel [00:52:07]:
It’s like, hello, I’ve got more family members than that. Where are you guys? Why aren’t you writing reviews?

James Kademan [00:52:13]:
I feel that way for us with the book. Just trying to get reviews from people. The number of books that I’ve given away saying, read it, leave review.

Therese Merkel [00:52:22]:
You’re an author.

James Kademan [00:52:23]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:52:24]:
I don’t have your book. Do you have it here or where do I get it?

James Kademan [00:52:26]:
I’ll get you a copy.

Therese Merkel [00:52:27]:
Yeah, Okay. I love, I love reading people’s stories.

James Kademan [00:52:29]:
Yeah, I totally get your book. Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:52:30]:
Yeah. Reviews are. I mean, you have to ask for them then, though.

James Kademan [00:52:33]:
Oh, my gosh. You gotta ask like 50 times. Then they’re like, you have to send.

Therese Merkel [00:52:36]:
Them a gift card about it too.

James Kademan [00:52:37]:
10 seconds out of my day to leave review. Only if you piss me off.

Therese Merkel [00:52:41]:
No, I’m telling you, like, people don’t realize that if you want to see someone succeed, you don’t have to give them money. You can give them a review, tell a friend, repost something like, you don’t just have to give them money.

James Kademan [00:52:54]:
Right, right. Yeah. It’s interesting, the value of that, that people will trust random strangers or bots more than their neighbor that they’re talking to in person. Right. I know it’s kind of bizarre that that’s where we are, but.

Therese Merkel [00:53:10]:
Yeah, that’s.

James Kademan [00:53:12]:
I don’t know that’s where we are. So it’s a big deal.

Therese Merkel [00:53:14]:
I know it is a big deal. But I mean, apart from that, we do, we have a whole marketing initiative thing, but, you know, newsletters and radio ads. We’ve done, we’ve done like trades for radio ads, but. But yeah, I would say for me, I’m not super involved in all the marketing efforts.

James Kademan [00:53:30]:
Right on.

Therese Merkel [00:53:31]:
But I like sales a little bit more.

James Kademan [00:53:34]:
All right, fair.

Therese Merkel [00:53:34]:
But to be honest, it’s so time consuming. I just like growing the business.

James Kademan [00:53:38]:
That’s the game, right? Build, build, build. You mentioned expanding. So what’s going on there?

Therese Merkel [00:53:45]:
All right, so this is the story.

James Kademan [00:53:47]:
All right. This is the build up.

Therese Merkel [00:53:49]:
Yeah, I know, right? So I’ve been, you know, I’ve been doing this for five and a half years now. And I had always been building the business like a franchise. That’s how I wanted to grow it. We’re at the level where, like, we could franchise, you know, like, we do the same amount of sales as competitors in our space. I mean, even a Subway. Subway. We do just as many sales, if not more than some subways. Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing.

Therese Merkel [00:54:12]:
Like. Yeah, but I mean, there’s like, a true model. Yeah, I think so. But also, at the same time, it is risky. Having a storefront is very, very expensive. I even saw a down dip, you know, earlier in quarter one with just like the stock market. We didn’t get sales for days. And that’s scary.

Therese Merkel [00:54:30]:
Yeah, I mean, we probably got like a couple dollars worth of sales coming.

James Kademan [00:54:33]:
No, but I get you when it’s.

Therese Merkel [00:54:34]:
Like, it’s very scary. And so when you have so many fixed expenses, my thought was, you know what? This could work. It absolutely can work. But do I see this for myself? And after some soul searching and some conversations with. With Clarice, which is the name of my chat, GPT. Clarice. I know. Clarice.

Therese Merkel [00:54:54]:
Hi, Clarice.

James Kademan [00:54:56]:
I always think of Silence of the Lambs.

Therese Merkel [00:54:58]:
No, no, People call me that all the time because Therese and Clarice, the lamp.

James Kademan [00:55:03]:
Hello, Clarice.

Therese Merkel [00:55:04]:
So anyways, I’m like, this is like the two paths I’m thinking about taking. Or I didn’t tell you the second path yet. But anyways, I don’t foresee myself going down the franchise path. I don’t foresee. I think it’s gonna be. So it could be successful, but I’m pausing.

James Kademan [00:55:17]:
Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:55:18]:
What I’d like to get into is inspired by my own family. I have two siblings, and they’re both entrepreneurs. Our parents were not entrepreneurs, mind you, but they’re entrepreneurs. One of them is in the E Commerce game. And I have seen what they have been able to do in four years. Their market is nationwide. Their footprint is a warehouse, and they have exploded. You know, we have a really big customer base regionally, but, like, I think we could do more with less expenses.

Therese Merkel [00:55:50]:
So E Commerce is the way that I’m planning on going. And it’s shippable, ready to eat charcuterie boards.

James Kademan [00:55:54]:
I was going to ask you about shipments.

Therese Merkel [00:55:55]:
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. People have been asking us to ship, and I. For five years, and I have always said, that sounds horrible. I don’t want to deal with that. But then what I realized and what I believe is, like, you have a one warehouse, you have a slicer robot that cuts your meat. Like, you know, you’re just shipping out. And that means, like, my price point is very profitable for me here. But someone buying it in California, it Would be, like, a good deal for them, you know, but it’s still profitable for me.

Therese Merkel [00:56:20]:
I also recognize that our biggest clientele is corporate. Corporate gifting. Thank you. Gifts. Client appreciation gifts. Welcome boxes for employees. Like, that is us. And opposed to using.

Therese Merkel [00:56:31]:
As opposed to using, like, Harry and David or, like, 1, 800 flours. They can support a local company. And shippable boards that only uses Wisconsin cheeses. And we’re from Wisconsin. It feels like a good way. It’s serendipitous with, like, my feel on community and supporting local. And, like, the local economy here. While also, like, everyone knows the best cheese comes from Wisconsin.

Therese Merkel [00:56:54]:
50% of the cheese comes from Wisconsin. That’s in this country.

James Kademan [00:56:57]:
Amen, sister.

Therese Merkel [00:56:58]:
I know, right? You were dismissed. Yeah. So anyways, that’s what I’m working on. It’s a lot more complicated than I thought. But, like, this might, you know, this is my four.

James Kademan [00:57:10]:
Yeah, no joke. I’ll tell you a really quick story.

Therese Merkel [00:57:12]:
Oh, yeah.

James Kademan [00:57:12]:
Charcuterie board. I had a friend that. I helped her out a little bit with her business stuff. She sent me a charcuterie board. I didn’t know this.

Therese Merkel [00:57:21]:
It wasn’t for me, though.

James Kademan [00:57:22]:
No, no. Shipped ship. Ship shipped. So FedEx calls me up.

Therese Merkel [00:57:28]:
We’re talking offline after that. I know who sent. I know what she sent you.

James Kademan [00:57:31]:
All right, well, like, I didn’t. You didn’t get she was sending it? No, I did get it, but I didn’t know she was sending it. Yeah, so FedEx calls me up, I’m on the road, and they’re like, we got a package for you. And I’m racking my brain, like, what did I order? Right? Anyways, so I swing by and pick it up, and it’s this box. And it doesn’t say who it’s from, Right. It’s just someplace in California. And I get home, I open it up, and it’s a charcuterie board.

Therese Merkel [00:57:57]:
Do you remember the name?

James Kademan [00:57:59]:
I took pictures. I can probably look it up. Yeah, I’ll look it up.

Therese Merkel [00:58:02]:
I know it.

James Kademan [00:58:03]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:58:03]:
Yeah. I’m not even.

James Kademan [00:58:04]:
But I mean, like, this is food that traveled the country fast overnight.

Therese Merkel [00:58:09]:
FedEx.

James Kademan [00:58:10]:
And it’s got the freezer thing and all that kind of stuff.

Therese Merkel [00:58:12]:
Keeps it cold for 48 hours.

James Kademan [00:58:14]:
Yeah, that was. It was just one of those things where I was like, oh, somebody put some thought into this.

Therese Merkel [00:58:20]:
Did you enjoy it?

James Kademan [00:58:21]:
Yeah, I loved it.

Therese Merkel [00:58:21]:
Okay, good. Did you keep that wooden board that it came in?

James Kademan [00:58:24]:
I believe we did, yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:58:26]:
Okay.

James Kademan [00:58:27]:
You do know your game all right. Yeah.

Therese Merkel [00:58:31]:
Yeah, I do. I know it because I. Well, I don’t ever want my competitors to listen to this, so I’m not gonna even say it, but I’m very familiar with all the brands that ship charcuterie boards.

James Kademan [00:58:39]:
Oh, interesting.

Therese Merkel [00:58:40]:
Oh, you have to be, though. You have to be.

James Kademan [00:58:42]:
You gotta know your competitors. I get it.

Therese Merkel [00:58:43]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:58:43]:
I get it.

Therese Merkel [00:58:44]:
And the thing is, when I started my business, which I know we’re kind of at time. Sorry, but, like, I wasn’t the first one to do charcuterie boards. I’m, like, probably the thousandth one, I mean, in the nation. And I got all of my ideas, but now I’ve made it my own. I don’t look at my competitors anymore because I know we got something else going on. But with expanding, I think, what’s out there, how can it be a little bit better?

James Kademan [00:59:03]:
Yeah. You got to think like your customer. So what are they looking? What are they looking at? What do they see? What’s.

Therese Merkel [00:59:09]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:59:09]:
So I guess, what is your competition as far as what are their choices?

Therese Merkel [00:59:12]:
There’s only one.

James Kademan [00:59:13]:
Okay.

Therese Merkel [00:59:14]:
And there might be another one, but it’s not well known. There’s one, and they’re pretty big. I’m talking.

James Kademan [00:59:18]:
I thought you meant only you.

Therese Merkel [00:59:19]:
Oh, no, no, no. It will be. There’s only one coming this October. We’ll be shipping.

James Kademan [00:59:26]:
Well, that’s not that long from now.

Therese Merkel [00:59:28]:
I know. I got a packaging engineer on it. I got smart this time. I’m like, I don’t need to figure this all out. I’m just gonna try.

James Kademan [00:59:34]:
People with the brains have the experience to.

Therese Merkel [00:59:36]:
That’s my hope.

James Kademan [00:59:37]:
So you can skip the whole mistake part.

Therese Merkel [00:59:39]:
I know. That’s what I want.

James Kademan [00:59:40]:
Or minimize them. Right.

Therese Merkel [00:59:41]:
It costs a little bit, but, you know, I think it will be worth it the sooner we get it out.

James Kademan [00:59:44]:
Higher quality problems. I get it. I get it.

Therese Merkel [00:59:47]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:59:48]:
Therese, where can people find you?

Therese Merkel [00:59:50]:
Everyone can find me at TrickyFoods on Instagram. You can also listen to a podcast that I host, which is called Screw it, let’s do this.

James Kademan [00:59:57]:
I love that name.

Therese Merkel [00:59:57]:
Yeah. So find that all over the place.

James Kademan [00:59:58]:
I feel so inadequate with this name.

Therese Merkel [01:00:00]:
Stop. We get so much pushback for that name. This is very authentic. What?

James Kademan [01:00:03]:
Screw it, let’s do it. This is an amazing name.

Therese Merkel [01:00:06]:
Some people think it’s a little provocative.

James Kademan [01:00:07]:
Yeah, they’re wrong.

Therese Merkel [01:00:08]:
Yeah. I like. I’m like.

James Kademan [01:00:09]:
I mean, maybe that’s the goal. I don’t know.

Therese Merkel [01:00:11]:
Oh, we’re very clean cut, but great stories. And other than that, yeah, just follow along on Instagram.

James Kademan [01:00:16]:
All right. What’s the Instagram handle?

Therese Merkel [01:00:18]:
@Trickyfoods.

James Kademan [01:00:19]:
Gotcha. Is there a space or a no.

Therese Merkel [01:00:21]:
Space, no @trickyfoods https://trickyfoods.com if you want to submit an inquiry or get in contact with me directly. That’s everything.

James Kademan [01:00:28]:
Cool. I love it. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggles, the stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Oh, where are we at here? We’re locally new, written by the Bank of Sun Prairie. If you’re watching, viewing, listening to this on the web, if you don’t mind, give us a big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends and those friends that need a charcuterie board, which I’m gonna say, is everyone vegetarian or not. There’s probably options.

Therese Merkel [01:00:57]:
Yeah, there’s options.

James Kademan [01:00:58]:
We can go down that road next time. Yeah, we’re locally underwritten by the bank of San Prairie. I think I already said that, but I’ll say it again. We’d like to thank you Room one listeners as well as our guest, Therese Merkel of tricky foods website https://trickyfoods.com awesome. I love it when they’re easy.

Therese Merkel [01:01:13]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [01:01:14]:
Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link found@drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay. Awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business. And Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services, services for service businesses across the country on the web at https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur and all of us available wherever fine books are sold.