How Our Coffee Cart Exploded in 2025 – Valor Coffee Podcast Ep. 172

I'm not right. We never liked it. I was like, we're going live in five. Oh, four. Sorry. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another Sintilating Radio program called the Valor Coffee Podcast. I'm Ross Walters, co-founder of Valor Coffee. This is Ethan Rivers to my right, your left and to your right, my left is Joey Christopher Nellie, our longest tenured employee, and the catering director, your official title is catering ZAR. That's CZAR. Yes, it's true. It looks great. It looks great on a resume. Yeah, come on. Wait, you sending out resumes? Yeah, man. I'm sending out resumes, guys. If anybody's like, shout out to indeed.com. They're selling job listings. Welcome to your live exit interview, Joey. Yeah, this is it, man. This has been a great run, boys. Come on. We are here to navigate the nuance of coffee carts in 2026 on our YouTube channel. We have released, you know, probably under 10 videos about coffee carts, but they're always our most popular videos. Why? Because apparently there's a lot of people on YouTube and in the world that want to start a coffee cart. And so in our company, really the mantra of this YouTube channel is full transparency. When we were starting out, we were 19 years old, it was 2016. We didn't really have anyone to help us. A lot of times when we were asked people for help, they didn't understandably because you know, you got to give your time and all that sort of thing. But we are here wanting to give our time excited to bear all for people that not bear all in that way. That's for the country. I've been realizing it was that kind of five-year-old. For the country. But honestly, I think the more transparent we can be, the real win is convincing people not to start something that they're not supposed to start. Because then they don't take on unnecessary risk that they should have never taken on in the first place. There's a lot of people that listen to this that operate coffee shops that are considering adding coffee carts to their business as another vertical for their business. So we can talk about that. We started back in 2016, as I said, as a coffee cart. The coffee cart private event landscape was much different back then. And has, you know, 10 years later has significantly grown. It seems like you can't swing a cat and not hit somebody that's thought about starting a coffee cart. So we're going to share our numbers of our sales and our average booking and our pricing. We'll talk about some of the rough costs involved with operating in event, how to get leads. We're just going to try to cover it all. Yesterday, on my Instagram, I posted a prompt to ask questions about coffee carts. And we got 26 questions. So we're not going to have time to get to all those. But I've had my friend Claude rank all of them from like, you know, early stages kind of thinking about starting something all the way to like, actively operating a coffee cart. Are you guys ready? Did you give a bio for Joey? Why, you know, why see sitting at the table? Besides catering's are, I mean, while you're coming up on five years with valor, yeah, yeah, you had coffee experience before you were killing in the cafes. And then you've been running the catering arm catering department for. Year and a half year and a half. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So you got changed in that year and a half. And you got some experience on your belt now. Yeah. Yeah. So much has changed. But yet somehow, it's all still the same. You're still here, man. Just trying to deal with people and manage your intake as much as you can. Yeah. Early on, again, the title was catering's are, which is just an absolute generalist and any small business owner will be able to relate to that whenever you're scaling your business and you want to hand something off to someone, you kind of just have to give them like all of it and be like, yo, figure this out. Yeah. So I'm going to be on my yacht. I'm going to be on my yacht. Classic owner movement. Counting all of our profit from our coffee shops. Yeah. So much profit. Make it be 60s. Come on. And early on, it was like Joey, you're everything from booking the event and planning to staffing, not even staffing the event, like you're working the event. Yeah. Maintenance of the carts, inbox, everything. And we'll get into this a bit later. But there was this point where we just had to take the risk and jump off the cliff where we only had one event per week, like if that. But we were like, we know that if we can get someone focusing on this full time, it is going to grow. That is not the only reason we thought it would grow. But that was one of the main ones. So I want to start us off with a question that I think is very pertinent to a lot of people that are listening and was certainly pertinent to us. We got this on our on our Instagram. Is the coffee cart market getting over saturated? And how relevant is that to someone's decision in starting a coffee cart? Maybe a quick backup 10 years ago, I would say there was little to no coffee carts in our area. And there's probably many more. Now, I think you have that. Do you ever catch people like saying, I'm looking around at quotes? Oh, yeah, all the time. Okay. I think the answer is probably, yes, and no. There are a lot of coffee carts or a lot. There are more coffee carts than there ever have been. However, if you're able to have a brand and market yourself in a certain way, I think that it's not really going to matter. Also, it depends on your market, man. Like if you live like us here in Atlanta versus like LA. Two birds, one stone. Another question was, optimal market for a coffee cart can carts be profitable in towns under 80,000 people? I think so. At that point, you have to decide what your pricing structure is. If it's just like you and a homey or two, yeah, you can definitely be profitable. If you're trying to scale, you're going to inevitably have to think about a bigger market down the line. But that's not everybody's vision. You know, like I have homeies who have one cart and they want one cart. Then I have some friends who have 70 carts in seven states and they're doing it. You know, it's epic. It just depends on what you want. So, I mean, yeah, it kind of goes hand in hand with the first question of like, if you know yourself and you know your business and you have vision for this is what I wanted to look like. Not that that can't evolve later on, but start with that vision and have confidence in that vision. I think it'll work out regardless of market. Claire, find a question. We're talking about carts doing well, carts doing events. We're mostly speaking about like we're getting paid to go serve drinks. My thought would be, you know, small town. You'd probably be trying to look for like recurring places to go sell coffee. Yeah, that's true. But we never do that. Yeah, we do not do that. It's if you come to me and you want us to sell, it's an immediate no. We're just not interested. There's just not enough return, at least in my experience. I mean, maybe you get that one super hot event where you sell a bunch. But then I'd be like the farmer's markets, things like that. For every farmer's market, and again, Atlanta has a great farmer's market scene. I'm sure we could do some business there. But there are also at least two or three other coffee carts already there. Sure. So part of part of marketing is is zicking where everyone holds his eggs, right? Like you're trying to counter the market. And so that that feels a little redundant to me. And to me, whenever you sell coffee to someone, they're expecting a 12 ounce beverage. That is of coffee shop quality. Coffee carts just aren't set up to do that at scale at volume. And to me, I just think like if you were to take the average of average sales of coffee cart at farmer's market, it wouldn't be over a thousand dollars, even at a really busy one. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. But even if that is the case, like average, your profit model is is a fraction of what it is in private catering. So as always, on this podcast, we're only going to speak from our experience of what we have actually lived and share from that. If you want to dive deeper on this topic, I would highly recommend checking out the Flash Quotes podcast, which is a software that we use to structure our catering program, and we would be nothing without it. And they have a podcast that is completely geared towards people that are starting coffee carts. So definitely check that out. But moving on from that topic, maybe just before we keep going down questions, let's review some of our numbers of what our catering operation has done in the last year. So a little bit of context around it. Like I said, we started pretty early on, but then we just stopped doing coffee carts in general because we just were convinced that it was not a profitable business model. And we were convinced that we're not gonna get leads to even are these people. If someone's gonna focus on this side of the business, it's gonna be one of the three owners. We don't have time. - Well, in 2018, we used our cart to be a coffee shop. - Yeah. - So, and then we also didn't have like a, a bomb, a base of operations. - Correct. Yeah, so we just stopped doing it. And then we were like, you know what? Let's try again. And so we did a little bit of groundwork to get a build a new cart and get some systems in place. And then that's when you stepped into the role in March of 2025. - Yes. - Right? So, I stepped in technically, like halfway in in October of 24, 'cause I like was doing half and half. So I'd work some here. And then I was like one foot in at the cafe and just balancing it. And then eventually by March, then we shipped it over fully to cater. - That's when you went full time. - Yeah. - Okay. So from March of 2025 to March of 2026, can you run us through some of the numbers that? - Sure. - Sure. - We, our total revenue was $239,000, $477,000, that I sure probably saved the dollar for later on in that. But you get it. - So two, two, four, - 3K, pretty much. - Yeah, 240K, 158 bookings, average booking, about 1,500 and 94% paid in full. So we're still waiting on a couple homies. That's just, - She's on TV on us, that's discounts and refunds, blah, blah, blah. - Yeah. - It's how good? - Okay. So a metric that a lot of people want to know, and especially coffee shop owners that talk to me about starting a coffee catering branch, is how many bookings per week do you guys do? So as you've gone about this process, how has that evolved and grown? - Yeah. So, okay. March, in March of 25, we had three events. I'm looking at it right now. March of 26, we had 30 events. So things have changed a lot. - If 10X? - They have in fact 10X, great problem to have. Right? On average, I'd say we probably do about four to five events a week. Somewhere between like four and seven, just depending on the busyness. Obviously comes in waves, and I would say I'm still learning what those waves are. Like we kind of talked a little bit about this offline of how we haven't had necessarily a full year, like actual calendar year to learn how people respond. - Yeah, based on your clientele. - Yeah. - Yeah, if it's like a lot of corporate stuff, if there are the summers chill. - Yeah, and it has been. It's always, there's always something new every single month for the last year. There's been something new to my role or something different to my role. It is completely brand new every month, but it's been awesome. I mean, we've gotten to work with some really cool people, and I mean, 158 bookings, pretty sick. So I think we, the thing that I rest on a lot is that there's still a lot more room for growth. - Yeah, yeah. So if we are at 30 events a month, let's just say 25, 25 events per month, at an average booking of 1500. Anybody know what, 25 times 1500 is? That's 37, 5, and revenue per month. Times. - There's 12 months in here. - Times 12. - Yep. - That's happy. - Is 450,000. So what? - We're growing forward. - Don't you have a goal set and what is that? - Yeah. The main goal this year was 400K and revenue. That is ideally what we will hit. We're on track still. A little bit behind, but it's hard to really say that simply because we, like with the summer, things are a little bit chiller. You see a lot of corporate clients, they don't want to necessarily spend money for their offices because you have a bunch of employees traveling, yada, yada, yada. But something I'm learning is that every time I think it's gonna be a chill month, something happens and it's not gonna be a chill month. It's probably not a thing, there's no such thing as a chill month in catering. - Yeah, I was surprised with how last minute these bookings are. - Yeah. - I thought it would be way more months in advance, but that was because early on we really focused on weddings. - Yeah. - And people book those out in advance, whereas we've really pivoted to corporate. That's a lot more of like, hey, next month we have, or next week we have this employee appreciation thing we need to get a coffee cart stat. - Yeah, I mean, I was looking at July like a month ago and I was like, wow, there are like two events for July. What's going on? And then there's now like 12 events for July. - Great. - In like a two week turnaround, which is tough. You have to have a good team. You have to have people in place that you can trust and that are going to show up with excellence. I don't need perfection, I need excellence. Show up with your best self. And I think when you have a team that you can trust and a team that's willing to be flexible, 'cause that is just the nature of our game. Like a lot of our-- - That's good first week. - Yeah, a lot of our baristas come from cafes, right? And they are used to, I work Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays and I don't work for us the week. And in catering, you can't always get that. You have to be okay going this week. I'm working on Monday and a Wednesday and Thursday and the next week I'm working a Tuesday, Friday, Saturday. You just have to be okay with the flexibility. Now, all that being said, we love weekends and I wanna be able to give weekends to our team. But you still really have to be okay with just the waves of the business, right? - Yeah, so contextually you're pulling on two valor cafes for some peeps. - Yeah. - You're building a network of like Bruce's and we're operating on two carts right now? - Yeah, 2.5. - It's kind of a loaded question. So we have a three-headed monster, if you will, of our two cafes and then a team of specifically contracted baristas that we use. Those are almost equal now, which is great 'cause that's been part of the shift that we wanted to make. One of the goals this year was to create a sustainable team. And what's not sustainable is a bunch of baristas who are working full-time in cafes like helping out when they can, right? So that has been a really big part of our growth track. Developing team members, the way I've always looked at it in the cafe sense is that catering is kind of like the Avengers. We're gonna treat you really, really well and we're gonna know that you're gonna show up and you're gonna kill it. - You're gonna fight aliens. - And you're gonna fight aliens. And by aliens, we mean people who work in corporate spaces who are really sad and they just want a cappuccino really and some joy. And so yeah, I think that that is awesome. And some of those people have chosen to transition a little bit out of their roles more into the catering space. And then some of, like honestly, is just me talking to head coaches of our cafes and us kind of collaborating on like, hey, who can you get like who's kind of phasing out and phasing more into catering? Who do you need to kind of hold it down to the cafe deals? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we try and put together the best trade package possible. Lot of draft picks going out, but that's okay. - Any free agency? I guess that's kind of like our contract. - Our contract is free agents. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's free agent signings. And they're killing it right now. - So that's great. - Let's keep on these like early stage coffee cart questions. Okay, so this is really tactical. Is it worth investing in a branded cart versus DIY cheaper options? And I think this could be a good, a good talk about-- - Oh, we're all such a good question. - Good time to talk about simple carts. - Yeah. - Good time to talk about the demand or lack thereof for custom branded carts. And our evolution throughout the years of just like the cart in general. So what have we learned? - I would say if you're looking to get a custom branded cart, I would not do that. I think that there is-- - Can we define custom branded cart? - Yeah, by custom branded cart. I mean, a cart that has your logo on it permanently. - Like what you inherited. - I think that if you do that, like what I inherited, which by the way, with their rights. great love these guys. I'm talking two months. I was like we got to get this card out of here. It was giant and it was metal and it was we had to drive in a trailer. It was just that talk about not scalable. So I'm grateful for leaders who let me do what I needed to do and we sold it. And now we work with simple cart which is great. There are awesome. They've been a really really good product. They're a great tool for growth. If you're somebody like we I think where we would like to head is building fabricating our own. We're not there yet. That is a like mini goal this year. Hopefully we can create that but we're not there yet. Simple carts have been awesome for us last year. They are a great way to get into your market and into the game. Especially if you are in a market where there's not a lot of other options. Dude, it's easy. So highly recommend. But yeah, as far as branding goes, you are leaving a lot of money on the table if you get a cart with permanent branding that don't do that. Especially if you're trying to get into a corporate space. So many companies want their logo. They want their experience. My my side of the business, listen, Valor's brand is amazing. That is why we're able to do so many great things. In my side of the business, nobody cares. They want a coffee cart. They don't care who it is. Are you going to show up? Are you going to be excellent? Are you going to give them a great time? And are you going to be in their budget? That's what people care about. They don't they barely know how to talk about coffee. So that's not what I'm going to focus on with them. What they care about is client experience. They care about quite frankly, joy and a good deal. And so how are we going to be valor in a space that kind of doesn't care about us? But that's what makes it so fun and engaging is you're like, we're not the main character. Yeah, when we started the cafe, when we started, I've been there for a long time. I was in the beginning, but when when when you all started the cafe, we and we whatever, you know, there I remember working in the cafe and there being this joy of someone who had never heard about us before coming in and their mind being blown. They were like, whoa, coffee can be nice. This is sick. They're not going to judge me because I want a vanilla latte. Everybody wants a vanilla latte. This is not shocking. We should be kind to people regardless of whether or not they have the same preferences or depth of knowledge as us, right? So with the cart that I just get to do that all over again. It's a bunch of people who have never experienced valor. And so I yeah, I give you give them joy. Anyway, all that being said, we don't need to highlight our brand. What we need to do is make money quite frankly. Well, then we need to experience the brand because what is this? Where are you guys from? We need to get in the door. And when we're in the door, people are going to love us because of the people we hire and our culture and the way we show up and the way we care and the way we serve them. It's going to be the best coffee they've ever had. And it's in their office. Yeah. That's amazing, dude. So all that being said, our newest approach when it comes to custom carts is we use a cricket vinyl printer. It's pretty great. I like it. I mean, I'm going to be real with you. It's a hassle. It can be a lot. Some of your moments of frustration. I've witnessed are you trying to properly evenly put a vinyl on your cart? It is unforgiving. And let's put it that way. Unforgiving. But the results speak for themselves. The results do speak for themselves. People love it and it highlights their brand. Which that is the goal is client care. There's maybe there's a better way to do it. I don't know the better way yet. I'll keep you posted. Yeah. Highly hand painted. Highly recommend the cricket. It has been a really good tool for us. And the only the only other issue is when clients ask me to do gradient logos. There's nothing more frustrating on this planet to me than a gradient logo. I think. Yeah. It was Chet. Yeah. Chet. Clip that. Yeah. So when it comes to pricing, when it comes to what you were saying about brand, I think the key distinction is that coffee catering is a service business. Whereas cafes are retail business. And then our roasted coffee is a consumer package goods business. Right. So there's three different arenas we operate in specifically with catering. One of the reasons why you can charge the prices you charge is because it's a service business. Yeah. You're coming to them. And so that's, you know, it's just kind of further driving home the point of like you're starting a coffee catering company or you're starting a cart because it's a lower barrier of entry to have your own business and coffee. Don't go the route of farmers markets and think that you're going to make a living let alone have employees. I have a question for Joey on that. I remember when we were talking to people a while ago, sometimes when they're trying to like get pricing sorted, they would, and it's fine. They would use that model like, well, how many coffees are you going to make? And can we pay based off of that? Like, I think only, I think there's going to be 200 people, but I think only 50 people are going to get coffee. So how much would like you coming out and making 50 coffees costs? And it's like, well, honestly, whether we make like 50 or 250, that's not a huge swing on like the cost of this whole thing happening. The cost of this whole thing happening is your salary, the people setting it all up, the cart itself. And then it just moves like the needle moves a little bit based on your like cost of goods sold. Yeah. Do you have conversations like that? Oh, 100% all the time. Yeah. I think a lot of it is just a lot of it is probably just the people side like treating every, treating every quote that comes in across my desk, treating them all with the same level of like intention and humanity. That can be really tough, but I do think it's worth it. And like community yeah, everybody needs something different or want something different. And so yeah, if you're someone that comes us and you're like, Hey, we are having a 200 person event, only 50 people we think are going to drink coffee. I'm willing to talk to you like that. I'm just going to all shoot straight with you. I know our minimums. I know what we can provide. But if you, if you finalize 50 people, we're probably only going to bring materials for like 75 people. What I'm not going to do is if you submit a quote and then you book the quote for 50 people and then you have 250 people, that quote would have looked a lot different. And so I'm just not, I would rather not play that game. We had, when we started out, we had a lot of not a lot, but we had a few moments where like a client would book us for way less guests or way less time. And then we would get there and in the heat, they wanted more. And that's just that that it's terrible for our barista as it stresses everybody out. And my goal as a director is more care for team than it is anything else. It's like team client. Me, I guess sure. You know, love that Joey. Back to this. Well, go ahead. This might be really good for people that operate coffee cards. What do you do and someone asks you to stay longer? Um, I mean, again, it's contextual, man. Um, if it is a good situation and we have the materials and the baristas can with their schedule. Yeah, then we're, I give them the ability to say yes to that. They typically will text me and check in. I love that. And I'm, I always try and just affirm our team because I trust our team. Um, there have been situations where it was not. It was a little bit more aggressive and the client was, was not really kind. And at that point, we have a harassment policy in our contract. And so at that point, if it starts getting up to that line of, hey, our barista feels a little bit uncomfortable and maybe forced to do something. Uh, they know that they can talk to me. And I mean, I've had, I, there was one time I was like, Hey, just put me on the phone with them. And I, and I'll, I'll tell them off essentially, you know, it's like I will, I will put the foot down because I have no, that's my job. Mm hmm. My job is to handle the people that are, uh, upset sometimes. And very rare, but it does happen. Like, that's just life. So, um, out of those, out of those 158, what do you think? Uh, probably like five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not, it's not crazy. Most of the time, it's not crazy because if you show up as a real person, I think that that changes everything, right? If I'm able to get you on a phone call, and you just realize that I'm a guy, and I hopefully make you feel like you're just a guy, regardless of your status. We've gotten to work with some really cool companies, and we've also done a lot of baby showers. You know what I mean? It's like two very, very different environments. Yeah. The thing that connects us all is that we're people. And so if I can show up to every single person, and make them feel like a real person, that I think that that paves the way for our team to have a great experience, and then the client to have a great experience. Yeah, so what I'm hearing it, we don't have this like, yes, if you'd like to extend us for another hour, we'll charge you another invoice for $300. That does happen? Like I am going to charge you, probably. You know, I'll be straight up with them like, "Hey, we're going to. " Yeah, how much do we cost? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's sometimes if they need us for 15 more minutes, sure. There's just, there's a lot of flexibility with, with the cart. And that's like the beautiful thing about it is, yeah, if you need a little bit, I'm totally willing to flex. Yeah, totally depends. But I hope that kind of helps. Sure. Sure. I just, I feel like the, those are like the, what's going to happen, hypotheticals that I feel like a lot of people would consider. When they're having a cart, because it is like the service. And someone's like, "Can we have more service?" Yeah. And I'll say, scalability wise, me treating everybody like they're human is terrible. Like it's really hard now. Like I am, my job is constantly just responding. And even then, I'm not able to always get to everything. That is, that is probably the next step of scaling for us once we figure out the cart thing. My, my dear sweet friend Isaiah, who handles all of our barista comms. And he does essentially like concierge for post bookings. So I will talk to them, we'll set up a sale, they'll book with us. And then Isaiah kind of takes it from there. He takes the baton. And he talks through different details of their events. Make sure that our team is kind of prepped. He is unlocked so much for us. And given me the opportunity, yeah, shout out to Isaiah. It's good. He's unlocked. He's unlocked so much for our business because he's given me the opportunity to just honing on sales. But then yeah, the next step is, how do we split that up and have more sales? Like more sales people. So who knows what, 2027 holds? But that, that's probably where we're headed. That's a lot more carts, man. We gotta expand pretty fast. So on the note of carts and catering and coffee. Let's talk about espresso machines. Cool. We've always done Lamar Zoko GS3s. We have. And they are great performers. They are heavy. And so for our third cart, we're going to go with the Linnea Mini. We've seen people use, what is that? What is that machine called? The Luca. Luca A53. Yeah, yeah. Luca Magic. Yeah. And they, we had one in our space for a while because one of our, one of the people on our team started their own coffee cart and he had it for his cart, Aiden. Then once we found out, obviously we let him go. Yeah. That's crazy. No, I'm good. But apparently they work. They do. They're way cheaper. I say apparently they work because they're way cheaper. They're, it's, it's Lamar Zoko. Yeah, they're always on the two. We've got like $1,000. $2,000. I think it's like two. I don't know what that was. And then GS3 could be like, $84,000. Oh, it's beyond $8,400 now. Yeah, GS3 is at least $8,400. I don't have $8,400. Oh, that's real, dude. That's nuts. It's just, yeah. And it's $8,400 and it's so heavy. Yeah. Which the more events you do, most of the time they're going to be solo barista events. Okay. And so in our context, we have a lot of lovely ladies who work in our cafes and they work for me in catering. And I want to be clear. Okay. So no, come at me. They brought it up to me that it was heavy. Okay. I trust them and they are empowered. I love them. Those are my dogs. The catering baddies will live forever. All that being said, they brought it up and they were like, "Yo, this is fronty dang heavy dude." This thing's like 75 pounds, not filled. And so it was like, "Hey, I get that. I want to make this accessible to everybody." And we didn't necessarily talk about it, but I've been kind of jumping around it with symbol cards. Our biggest shift for growth was how do we put this whole kit, everything that you need into your car and not into a trailer that you then have to drive and we have to train someone. There are some companies that do the trailer guy meets barista guy. And for us, it just didn't make, I didn't like that approach, but just wasn't what I felt like. Work for us. So the goal was how can we put everything into your car? We fit stuff in a in a camera. That is a classic line that I say all the time. It's like, we want to get smaller, we want to get more efficient. I would love to get in a smart car. 27 is a great one. I want to figure out how to put our whole setup in a smart car. That would be so fun to me. There's no way dude. Dude, I don't know what to try. Try me. I think we could. I don't know how, but I'm willing to give him my best shot. That's what I'm here for. That's the tenancy willing. 100%. We'll get it done. Should put it on top. Yeah. Okay. It's stupid. Anyway, all that being said, that's why we are trying out something that is in a GS3 because the women were like, hey, would love something a little bit lighter. What are the concerns of a Lennie and Minnie? I mean, in theory isn't as fast as a GS3. That's what I've heard is that it is. Yeah, that's. But it doesn't have volumetrics, right? It just made it. No, it doesn't have volumetrics. That seems to be the only concern on my mind. Can you steer and pull at the same time? Yeah, yeah, you can. I had one friend who I asked about it. And he was like, it's a little slow. Yeah. And that's just where that's coming from. Tbh, it's a lot of people asking for it. If you're that friend. Comment below your Lennie and Minnie experience. The thing that changed for me is I worked an event with a friend on their cart because they had a Lennie and Minnie and I was like, let me see. And it was awesome. It was great. So that changed my mind completely. This is a little bit bigger picture. But you know, with the trend of coffee, don't you think people are just getting more ice drinks? So this idea of like steaming all the time is probably just like on this decline. Like people get less and less hot drinks. I don't think so. I'll be honest. Not in the event world. In the event world. In the cafe world probably. But not for most corporate people are drinking hot. Can I choose hot Americanos? You're probably like wazoo, bro. You're inside hot Americanos. Oh yeah. How do you do that? Well, with water. Okay, smarty pants. But you're you don't have like a hot water tower. Uh, yeah, we have a hot water tap. And then depending on the context of the event, we'll bring some like a kettle that we can heat up hot water in. Because most of the time, because you're not doing drip. We don't do drip anymore. That was another big change for us. When I started, we would show up early enough to brew like a few pots of drip, bring the cam bro just to dump out the old drip. Just to get rid of the. Nope. It's okay. It's espresso bar. It's okay. Yeah, it will be fine. They will survive without drip. So many people ask for drip and you go, "Americano, okay." And they go, "Yeah." And here's an idea. Make your Americano is good. And it's it's good. You don't have to like, you don't have to think about this if you have a good product. Sure. Yeah, but of course, of course someone who loves drip is going to be a little disappointed by an Americano. But they're going to be like, oh, well, this is a coffee cart in my office. This is cool. Yeah. And then you have to think about the broader perspective of the operation. It is a hassle to bring drip and it would get. We put it, yeah, the temperature is a concern. We try it for a while. A lot of times it would get order maybe twice. Maybe. Sometimes not at all. And we bring this big thing of, you know, big cam bro of coffee. So on the note of water, someone asked, "best water option if you can't afford filtration." And I think if you're running this coffee cart illegally out of your house, which a lot of people are, because they don't have a base of operations, "Hey, what's you going to do?" And we did that for a while. Oh, I did, Lee. People said we did it for a while. I would go, if you really want to be coffee excellent, I would go get reverse osmosis water from the grocery store and remineralize it with third wave water packets. - You have like five gallon friendly packets, right? - Yep. - Yep. - So one said, can I borrow $12,000? - All of this money goes to y'all, I don't know. - Right. - This is for your, this is the yacht fund. - Yeah, well that went out to come out of the yacht fund. - Yeah. - Someone also said, how fast did they go? (laughing) - I don't know, they make the cards. I mean, it depends. Is it like a flat surface? - It's like a flat surface. - If it's a hill, pretty fast. - Pretty fast. - Okay, some of them also said, health permits have slowed us down, advice on both permits and momentum. So I guess let's talk about permits first. In case you don't know, most health departments or department of ag requires you have a base of operations, which is a dedicated establishment. That's not your house, unless you live in some sort of small town and they have some sort of cottage license where you can do it out of your kitchen, but I think that's, I've never heard of that actually working. - Handing out. - In coffee carts. And of course, because so many people, including us in 2016, get into coffee carts 'cause it's a low barrier of entry, they're like, oh, all I need to do is, you know, put up 10, 15, 20 K for a cart, and then I'm off to the races, not realizing that you also need the base of operations. A few different options and you can weigh in on this too, if you've heard of other approaches, I've heard people renting time in commissary kitchens. We have a local wholesale partner here and now, I believe that's what they do, or they did that for a period of time, and they were able to get fully certified and licensed. We're in the position now where we have a warehouse, not primarily because of our catering, but because of our roasting and our headquarters in general. So we have the mop sink, we have the three comp sink, we have the hand sink, we have non-porous surfaces, shout out just the basics of the-- - Shout out all my non-porous surfaces. - Yeah, wherever you are, all across this world. - You know who you are. - Yeah, we have all those things. I have heard of people building out their garage to be certified and that works. - It's kind of awesome, but I would just call your local health authorities and say, "Hey, my friend is thinking about starting a coffee cart." - Not me. - Yeah, my friend. - What are my options? And another question got at this, but they were like, "When is the health department "going to start recognizing coffee carts as their own?" - Not hot dog carts. - I know. - 'Cause we're not a food truck. - Yeah. - And we're not any of these other things. In 2016, they had no idea what it was. 10 years later, they probably would have more of an idea. - They have more of an idea. One thing I was going to throw onto this fire is county by county loss. It can really change. - Oh yeah. - The only time we've ever gotten kicked out was an event in Gwinnett. And that county, they had specific laws about popping up. And they were like, "Get out of here, buddy." - I know. - I've never heard this story. - I mean, it wasn't really, I was hiding it from you. It just wasn't, it didn't really affect us too much. The cop was chillin'. He was like, "You can finish up serving these people." It was like most of the event was already done. So it didn't affect anything. - It was a catering event? - Yeah, it was just catering event. It was for an auto dealership. And most of the time, this is another, I guess add on to not selling your coffee. Most of the time, if you're selling your coffee, there are different laws in place than if you are giving away your coffee because someone else has purchased it. - Catering versus vending. - Yes. That is a big part of this too. So highly recommend at least considering that. Check into your local laws and that includes county. - You're telling me that police officers showed up to an auto dealership? - He was driving by, shout out to trip shot. Sophia, she was working this event. And she's so good under pressure. That girl is so, she's so rock solid. It was awesome. But he's driving by it. He just throws on the lights, pulls into the auto dealership. He was like, "You got permit?" She was like, "Uhhh, I don't know." We did not have a permit. We didn't know. - To cater. I don't know if you need a permit to cater in each separate county. I don't know the answer. - Well, when police officer is looking at you and going, "Do you have a permit?" You better hope you got a permit. - That's awesome. - That's crazy. From what I can gather, you adhere in Georgia. They tend to classify coffee carts now as food and beverage carts. And so they prefer you to have permanent. Like I know with Fulton, I've had to jump through some hoops before. Again, a lot of it depends on where you're popping up to. Like we had a, I was just emailing this person. They wanted us to pop up outside of the capital building for like some event and we're probably not gonna be able to do it because of permitting. They're just certain, like really specific ways that they want you to serve when you're at like a government building anyway. But we've served inside the capital before, multiple times. So, we have, yeah. - I got some stories, man. Before we wrap up, we do need a couple like where we been moments. - Sure. - Where we been. - But we're just getting started, man. - Come on, dog. - I want this to be concrete. - I can try and rapid fire more on my hands. - Come on, I'm long way. - Let's rapid fire some questions. - Come on, I got this. - Okay. - I'm locked in. - For I would just say, "Questies." - Dude, he me with some questies, boy. - How many menu items is manageable on a mobile setup? And what does a typical menu look like for your cart? - A whole menu, we have a big menu. We have chai, we have matcha, we have a tea suite. It's actually easy if you just have materials. - We have a good place to store these things. Black tea, green tea. - Oh, sweet if tea. - A sweet of tea. - A sweet of tea. - Not a SWE. - You heard a sweet tea. How about a suite of teas? Anyway, yeah, we do all of it. We do the whole nine yards. In fact, that is one of my biggest sales points to potential clients. It's like we are going to bring the full coffee shop to you. You don't have to pay extra for matcha if you choose to structure your payments like that. That's great. But we just say, "Hey, matcha's going to be there. Chai's going to be there, whatever you want." Because this kind of circles back around to the whole guest count thing. When we started and your approach has always been, "I'd love for it to be unlimited." And for us, with how many events we're doing, it was kind of like, "Well, that feels kind of impossible." So when it came to my sales strategy with clients, whether it was possible or not, because it is, in fact, possible, but it just became kind of a burden on our team. I swapped from saying unlimited service to highlighting all of the different options that our menus going to have. It just helped bring the conversation around to a more manageable point. So I don't know if that makes sense. But it has really helped in sales. But menus are going to happen most likely. Yeah. But let's hype up the variety over the quantity. Yes. Exactly. Let's talk more about variety, less about quantity. Most people, I mean, if it's a wedding, wedding context, they want unlimited. They love that verbiage. Corporate is a lot more like, "Oh, well, that person wants this and that person's going on." So they're just thinking more about variety. And they got to get back to their desk. So they have that time constraint, whereas a wedding is just like wide open, you know, that, that uncle's going to palisase. He's smoking. Harlow's wedding. Oh, Lord. Sorry. Shout out to the Harlow's. Let's go back to someone that also asked about pricing in like the different add-ons available. Yeah. Yeah, love it. That sort of thing. So how do we do that? We love add-ons. We have four major add-ons, I believe, custom cart, custom drink, which sometimes doubles as custom menu. If, again, depends on the client. If they're asking for like some really simple stuff, I'm down to be flexible with them. We have a latte art printer. That is really cool. Which one? Well, we have two. We have a ripple and we have the Evebot, which is essentially just like the China version. But we needed it in a pinch and Loki, it might be better. Wow. They're both China. I'm sorry, Ripple. I love you, Ripple. I love you, Ripple. Yes. Yes. I love the ripple. It's really great. It's a very, it's kind of like Apple Android vibes. Yeah. We're like, the Evebot dude, you just hit a button. I think it starts for it and you don't have to, you don't have to go through any of the design every time you never know it's going to put on there. It's just an anything. Anyway. How much do you charge? Yeah, lots of our printers awesome. How much do you charge for all those things? I know you're not done yet. Four thing is pastries. How much do I charge? It's changed over the year. Currently we charge $150 for a custom cart. We charge $250 for a lot of our printers. We charge. Oh gosh, I believe it's four dollars per pastry. We do a suite of mini pastries, not a SUIT. It's kind of sweet. It's sweets for days. Yeah, we do a bunch of mini pastries, our baking team, a shout out good neighbor market. They're great. They are really flexible and awesome and they love me and I love them. That's four bucks per pastry. Custom drink is I believe $3 per guest. So just depends on the situation. With custom drink, there's a lot more like creativity that can come with it and I really, that's part of the sale is, hey, whatever you want, you say jump, I say how high and we're going to try and accomplish this. I mean, dude, next week we're doing a cookie butter iced latte with cold foam and a biscoff crumble on top for a client. Very excited. It's going to be delicious. It's a company called Salt Box. Salt box? Salt box? This is the part. Good. Sorry. No, it's okay. We've just, they're they're returning customer. Also a really big thing about corporate. They'll use you again. You know who's not going to use you again? Hopefully that person that got married. Maybe for a baby shower. Yeah, I get. Yeah, baby shower. True waiting to baby show a pipeline waiting, waiting baby shower corporate. Yeah. It's all there. It's all there. It's all all right. I've done. Why for some salt box? Set it up. Yeah. Yeah. It's just the pipeline. Yeah. If you're getting any value out of this, subscribe. Thank you. Back to the show. Before we move on, we have another video here on our channel. You know, we actually have our our videographer and YouTube director, Dom in studio today. And we also have, you just planned for himself. I just want to like let the record show you. They're trying for each other. Our full-time editor. Can you trust him? At Undesclosed State other than Georgia. Grayson, thanks for being here, man. Guys, would you guys mind at this part of the video putting a little link to the video where I'm sitting at a desk talking about. Of course. Coffee cart course. Yes. How about a car? Of course. That one's good, guys. See that one's good. It's a little bit more highly tactical. Do this. Do this. Do this. So tactical, dude. And it. What's a coffee? But my words are cool. Joey's word is sweet. Okay. We have our words. We're going to use it. Mine's like, yeah, check out check out that video. It's going to go even deeper on these topics we're talking about. When it comes to cold brew concentrate versus espresso, let me talk about batch espresso a little bit. Yeah. We haven't tried that yet. I was going to ask. I want to try it. We haven't. But I'm very intrigued as to what that could unlock for us. But it does mean that you'd have to pay someone to stand there and like rip. And so I don't know if that is actually wise. But maybe that's the question is you have to pay someone to make the cold brew. So imagine a world where we make cold brew obsolete for our kegs. And we also make cold brew obsolete for our coffee carts. It does it equal out the prep time for batch espresso versus cold brew concentrate. I don't know. It's add and ever since. And then see how long it takes to break even on it. That's actually probably the way to go. Fair enough. Point is we use cold brew concentrate for our ice lattes and our cold brew. And that's awesome. We love on catering events on the cafes on catering events. And that that's really divided our team. I'll tell you that much. It's been just a point of contention. Some Reese's love it. Other Reese's hate it. I hate you. They can now that they just for whatever reason they think it's annoying to bring. And I'm like bro grow up. Yeah. So we set our foot down about a month ago. We had a catering. What did we call it? Okay. If I said this earlier, we call all of our catering baristas baddies because I why not? So we had a baddie bananza if you will. Was that what was also been called the catering all. So I was like, are you going to watch the staff tonight? And I was like the all staff? I didn't know what else to call it. I was like, when a specific department is meeting, I don't think you would call that an all staff. I'm like, it's the only staff that matters. I'm sorry, cafes. I don't I don't agree with what I just said. I remember where you can't track. I gotta I gotta go back to my roots, man. You've got a good book me. Let's go. Yeah. So we had a baddie bananza and we we set some some structure to what is and that structure is will we are bringing cold brew concentrate every day. It was hey guys, I know that this has been a question mark, but it's not one anymore. It's a period. I also we shifted to building your own bins, which was a huge shift for us. For a long time, Isaiah, the prep man would prep all of the bins for events. And now our breezes come in and they prep the event themselves. What's in the bin? What's in the bin? Cups, napkins, slid, trash cans, trash bags. It's getting really tactical. I don't use that word. There's a suite of things. There's a tactical item. There's so many tactical items. It's crazy. Yeah. What else? Yeah, all of our yeah, all of our materials, like all of our consumables, including like espresso, maja, certain benefit to the team doing it day versus prep man. The real benefit is workload. We've been trying to free up the Isaiah role, the concierge role to do more client care. And we just were at a point where this is not sustainable because it was either he or I coming in on the weekends and having to prep the bins for our team. And that it was just like dude, the weekends. I mean, I worked, I worked almost probably six to seven days. Don't do it. Don't hold. It's all you can do it. Hold off. That's unc. But no, I worked, I was working way too much. Right. And that was really unsustainable. That's why I got the sustainer. Yeah, that's why we're sustainable. Yes. Yes. And now it's successful. Do we have a cart sitting over there right now? That's like in its ground zero. It's primal face. Yeah. It's doing a stasis. Yeah, we should. I can go on at the end of this program if everybody makes it all the way to the end. I want to reward all of you by taking my iPhone and embedding some footage of a walkthrough of our little little operation. They're kissing. You know, back to like telling everyone what people wish that people would tell them. I want to walk through that. Just kind of like show the different things. What's in our bins. Yeah, dude. You know, so that'll be fun. We show our broken refrigerator. Yeah. And our new refrigerator. That's really nice and cool. We'll just walk through. Maybe me and you will just walk over there and show our what a base of operations looks like. You hang back there. I got to do so much to do. Holy cow. He's so underwatered up. We're going to crank through these questions here. How to find your niche and start booking events. That's how open ended. How to find your niche. Maybe do we have a niche? I mean, I would say that our niche is probably service. I think that when I think of a valour, I think of coffee less than I think of care. Like the offering is the experience. I was thinking the question was like clientele niche. Yeah. I mean, you're a customer. Yeah. Yeah. You're your avatar. There you go. Yeah. For us, it is corporate now. So, I mean, not to get crazy specific, but it typically is for a while, my thought was corporate business man, like in their 30s, like general dude, that is not true over time. It's actually the receptionist. So we actually want to market and talk to her because she is the one that's actually putting the boots to the ground and getting us in front of the right people to book. Well, and that's just going to make sure. That's going to make sure. And that's using empathy as a business mindset. Right. That's right. Okay. If someone's in charge of getting this event together, they probably, we are with just one piece of their event. So they're probably going to look up coffee, cart catering or coffee catering at Lanta. And we A from SEO standpoint, we want to be up there. And then once they to get to us, we want to make it pretty seamless for them to get a custom quote within seconds. Yeah, and if we're not accessible to them, if we're not speaking their language, then we're not going to accomplish the sale. You can't mansplain. Yeah, like, yeah, and I can't be here explaining, you know, what cool anaerobic natural coffees we have, like they don't care. You know, like, and by the way, I'm going to be bringing the linear. What is resonation you have? They care about do you have vanilla and caramel? You know, it's like, like they just want simple things. And in coffee, because it's such a big industry, we love to make it complex. And that's wonderful. But I think that if we can return to just good coffee, that typically is what the normal person wants. Or to get rid of the details. How to find bookings without spending thousands on SEO. Sorry. I'm sorry. That's going to be, that's going to have to be your approach. Our business has changed because of SEO. Cold calls would probably be your move. I'd go to Claude or I have a friend right now who's working on an app for coffee cards. I don't, he, I don't think he has a name yet. But essentially it would kind of like already source the, like the business high level, high ranking professionals for major businesses in your area. And it would give, kind of give you access to like their emails and their info. Which pretty cool. You can get Claude to kind of do something pretty similar. So I would probably do that and just start cold calling and get good at sales. To be honest with you. It is tough. But at the same time, it's really fun if you let it be fun and you treat people like their humans. Don't stick to a script. Have your points, have your talking points. But learn how to be comfortable. Just be authentically you. And you know, that kind of goes back to the, you know, what's my, what's my niche? You, you like, you know what I mean? Like your relationship. Yeah, your relationship with people, the way you care for folks, that's going to translate over time. So just keep showing up and keep trying to put your best foot forward. And then hopefully you can find a few thousand dollars to put SEO. There are some basic things you can do for SEO. Like literally just open chat, GBT or Claude and say, Hey, I'm trying to start a coffee cart. And these are my ideal customers. I'm in this city. And it's going to tell you your H1, your heading needs to be this or like just go, go to a competitor's website and just copy them. Like go to their websites, you know, look at their headings, all those things matter. We also have a free course on the Valor coffee community, which is the top link, top link in the description of this video. Find out for free there under courses. There's SEO 101. Kent from localized teaches a course for coffee carts on how to rank higher. So you can check that out completely for free. And then when you're at events, get reviews. That's a huge part too. We have a QR code, a little stand that says having a good time, question mark, leave a review. And so I think that's a huge unlock. If you can get everyone at the event, attending the event to leave a review that opens up hundreds more people to leave reviews as opposed to just the person that booked you. That's a good note. If you're launching a coffee cart, have an event at your home or to friends home and just be like, yo, people pull up and I will give you a drink if you leave us a review with a picture and a good description, not just love this place. Like actually give me something. That has been super helpful for us. We did a pop up early on at our Alferetta and Delaney locations and that really helped kind of kickstart our reviews. Where we looked like we had some experience. Nice. Let's jump into some pricing for coffee carts. Okay. So what is the minimum that we charge for an event and what does that event look like? 50 people or less for one hour of service would be $500 plus travel fee. That is our bare minimum. And what's the travel fee? I believe it's 75 cents a mile. 75 cents a mile. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Both ways one way. Both ways. Three ways. Well, we have to go back. I mean, yeah, what if? Well, that's four. So I don't really know why I forgot the spoons. Yeah. I don't know why I screwed. Sorry, I'm forgetting. Okay, so 500 is the minimum for a 50 person event for an hour of service to be typically going to be a personal event, a party, a baby shower, something like that. Yeah, something small. Yeah, our minimum is 500. That's just kind of how we look at it. Where we're located for Atlanta context. We're located like more in the suburbs. So I'm going to say it's like the real heart of the city, though. Ross, I don't think anyone's saying it. I never heard that. I don't think. Well, maybe like the cultural epicenter. I've heard that say before. Like the hospitality episode. It's fine. Whatever. Yeah, oh, it's because there's that summit coffee in Ross. You must have run in some different circles. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's good. Okay. But you saw our average book. Yes. Yes. It was $1,500. So what would we charge? What kind of event would necessitate a $1,500 price tag? Probably. Excuse me. Probably somewhere in the $150 to $200 guest range for two to three hours. That's our typical. That means two baristas are showing up. Yeah. How do you know when to schedule one barista versus two baristas? So our pricing structure. Let me see if I can find it just because it's kind of a cool little thing. Shout out to flash quotes. This is why one of the biggest reasons why I recommend them to people is that they put in a really, really nice pricing structure chart makes things super easy. So you don't have to stress out about it. Hey, while you're looking at that, I don't know. There's a good wholesale plug. I didn't know that Joey talks to people sometimes. And that's kind of like if you partner with Valor for your coffee needs, you not only get stuff like this, like everybody gets, but you get like kind of access to us in a sense, depending on the level of partnership. And so whether that's Ross having more of a one-on-one conversation with you or I know you were talking like Austin and Keaton about their account. They're communicating operation. Yeah, we'll have free coaching for coffee shops who are adding a coffee cart. The reason for that is coffee carts in general are very low cost of goods models, right? Which is good for you. But as your supplier, we're selling you less coffee and makes a little bit less sense for us to spend hours on the phone with you, which is why we do this content so that we can help a lot of different people. That's why you made an entire coffee cart course. And that's right. But if you're a coffee shop that's ordering 50 plus pounds a week, that's when more of that, like one-on-one coaching comes in. And I think I want to hit this as a main topic. I want to hear your perspective on Ethan later. But coffee shops that are adding a coffee cart, why do that? Is it a good idea to do that? Yeah. Okay. Well, so we were talking about pricing. Yeah. Back to this, I have our staffing model here. Essentially, our rules are from one to 60 guests. You're going to have one breeze to the entire time. They can handle that. And then the real thing is like, if you take your top line, your X axis, right? Oh, sure. Well, it's not really a chart like that. I don't know what they're called. Anyway. Top line is going to be like hours, like a number of hours serving, serving. And then down this way is going to be a number of guests. So like our, we have a portion of the structure from 151 to 200 guests. If it is for one to one and a half hours, that is pretty chaotic, right? So you're asking us to serve at least 150 people in an hour. It can get pretty crazy. And that's probably having more, more commonly than you think, right? Oh, yeah. Like we have this conference. There's going to be 200 people and they're going to be here. We need to get them all served in 30 to 40 minutes before they go in for the session. Yep. So you're going to have four baristas and two carts. If you want to accomplish that, that's what's going to have to happen. The power of the double cart. - And maybe the power of having friends, right? You know, we've leaned on other and coficators with their cards to be like, y'all wanna collab or take me right? - Well, as we are in the process of developing our own cart build, we are pulling on other homies who already have carts to kind of help supplement because again, simple carts are great, but they are expensive. And we would love to create a world where we don't have to rely on that. We would love to be sustaining in some capacity. So our friends at Patience Coffee, they lend their cart to our cause all the time. - Shout out Jason and Blake. And then our friend Aiden with his cart, he was lending his cart to us for a really long time as well. And he just moved to Phoenix, Arizona, from what I understand. And he's launching his cart out there. So whatever name it ends up being. I heard buff beans for a little bit. I don't know if that's true. But shout out to him. - He's pretty buff. - He is pretty out. So. - Shout out to you. - He's awesome, but we were using both of their cart as like supplemental equipment. - Yep. - We was awesome. And they were very, very helpful. We just paid them an extra fee. Really nice to be able to have that while we are tinkering around and figuring out how to make our buildouts sustainable so that we can scale and then take over the world. - Exactly. - Exactly. So if you're serving, if you're serving over 299 guests for clarity, that's like a four-car Aperista situation across the board. That's just a lot of people. We're not messing around. So. - Do you price weddings differently than corporate? - Maybe most of the time, no. Like I've said, a lot. And this is kind of annoying. Everybody's different. So if you have a conversation with someone and you're picking up on a vibe, that they have a budget that they're trying to stick in, I'm willing to work with you. That's my job. So, you know, there's a little bit of flexibility. But most of the time, it stays pretty consistent. If you want us to serve 150 people in two hours, it's probably gonna be in the $1,000 to $1,200 range, depending on different variables like travel, and if you're asking for anything specific, almost every time. - So what would you say to coffee shop owners that are thinking about adding a coffee cart to their business? - Boy, I think you're starting a second business. I was talking to somebody who was like, yeah, I want to start a coffee shop, and I guess I have to start a grocery too. And I was like, I mean, you totally can. I'm not trying to pitch you to use valor, but you're just starting two businesses at once. - Better very different. - That are extremely different. I think catering a little bit more similar, but I totally see the value in like, especially if you believe in who you are and like the sustenance of your brand. I love what you're talking about. When you're talking about, we just pick up the culture and uplift the experience of valor, and we just get to like drop it all over our city. - Yeah, that's awesome. - And it's usually the people that have no idea who we are. Even though we like low key have kind of a brand to some people, when you actually get down the world, you're like, no, no one knows who we are. - 100%. - Maybe in like a tiny circle, we're kind of known. But there's so many people, millions, millions, millions, millions of people in Atlanta. And so I think that's just fun. Like if you're a local coffee shop and you're like, I wanna like serve my greater community, doing that with a cart, I think A, you'd have to either have a lot of space in your cafe to have like maybe like 300 square feet dedicated to like a cart area, or you have like a warehouse space, kind of like the Mayday peeps do, where it's like, all right, we have like kind of a more industrial space to have a base of operations. 'Cause I still think you need something like that. And that kind of leans into the whole like second side of the business. And I feel like you did a great job, 'cause you're so awesome, of not only starting it, you know, but then because you operate in a company, like we do where we have awesome people, it's cool to give Joey this opportunity. I mean, we're not here to just wax eloquently about that, but you know, like you worked for a valid for a long time, you really laid your life on the line. And yet there wasn't this like natural progression for you of like, well, are you gonna, what are you gonna do, you know? - Oh yeah. - And then most people like come to valid, move on. But it's like, man, if we can create positions that have higher ceilings, it's so awesome and invite people into that. So, if you like, start killing it and have a coffee shop with a cart, that's a cool opportunity for someone on your team to like project, you know, run that project. Which is, I think it's pretty cool. - Yeah, and it can be a meaningful source of profit for your business. - Yeah. - Because, you know, 240K of revenue for a coffee shop is nothing for a year, whereas 240K for a catering operation is great because the profit is way higher. So, it can really help. And like you said, it can give opportunities for people in your company to move into more of a career role. - Yeah, yeah. And like just on the growth track point, like also for baristas, just generally, the way that we structure, like I said, Avengers mindset, the way that we structure is you're gonna get paid pretty significantly higher as a catering barista. We're gonna expect a lot out of you, but we trust you. And you've proven yourself to be a really solid. - Yeah, you're not just a cog. You're on the bar shift. We're like, I'm brewer for two hours. It's like, no, no, no, no, you're like, you've already been a leader in our cafes. And so now it's like, okay. - I would love to meet a world where you could be a career, a reset, like small reset, and they're actually the growth track, financially. - I remember the years where I was raised in, it was like, at each time of the kind of day with what in my community, in my city, I-- - Make, I loved where I was working. I didn't really wanna move on. Like I love coffee. I wanna eventually own my own space, but I didn't really feel like it was my time yet. And because of this role, I've been able to not only provide for my family and provide for myself and then have that growth track, but we've also been able to create opportunity for our other baristas to grow and level their skills up and level their leadership up, level their sales like ability up. You just are creating a more well-rounded individual. And so it's really awesome. I highly recommend if you are a cafe and you wanna start a cart, go for it, and think about it as its own business where you're able to give baristas the opportunity to grow as people. It's so worth it. So highly recommend. - Yeah, like anything else, it needs the proper time, energy, and resources to be a sustainable, healthy arm, like separate business. But if you just think you're gonna order a simple cart and then be like, yeah, well, the adventure's gonna start coming. - Yeah, we'll put up a poster in the cafe and then it'll just come in like gravy. It's like, oh. - The poster's not gonna do a lot, guys. - I know we only talked about speaking from experience, but I will say if you're trying to start a coffee shop in a town with less than 50K people in it, it's gonna be way harder. - Sure. - Like, and if you're trying to start a coffee shop or a coffee cart in like Dallas, Texas, or like some of these Texas cities, there are so many coffee carts there. And I talked to some of them, like, yeah, the competition is really fierce out here. That's 100% gonna play a role. Like, our philosophy with competition is like, we don't care, we're gonna stay on our stuff and do the best we can and let people decide what they wanna do. But with coffee carts, like, yeah, it's competitive, man, because people, you have to think about how clients are finding you. They are googling coffee cart, Dallas, Texas, coffee cart, Alpharetta, Georgia. And you're just literally put in a list next to people. And they are just objectively, subjectively, however they're deciding, like, just comparing all of you. So, competition plays a factor. The reason I say that, you know, less than 50k city, you're gonna have a harder time is to really like book events consistently that are paying you high enough to where this could be a job for you, 'cause that should be a viable business for you, is you need corporate clients. - Yeah. - Corporate is just like a constant engine of events that are happening where they are like, always gonna need a coffee cart. So, you can only do so many baby showers. There's not like a ton of those happening all the time. And they're just not gonna be high revenue enough for you. Any closing thoughts for you guys before I take us over to the cart setup? - One note on what you're saying. And you guys have already done this and made my life easier. But if you're starting a cart and it's in a situation like, especially like a Dallas thing, get on social media, dude. Like you need to be out there and you need to be. posting and be consistent with it as Lame is that might be to some of you and as lame as that is sometimes to me I just feel very uncomfortable posting on my personal Instagram a lot It has it has a huge effect on you so create like Yes coffee is huge and you want to have great coffee you want to have great materials But learning how to be authentic in your brand Learning to be just yourself and to be able to communicate that online That's going to really help you take off so for what it's worth I think that that's That's relevant so yeah, go get them Let's go check out the setup Well, go get them you want to come join sure That's where we record the podcast by the way And that's Riley So really with this setup what one of the main goals was Making it as lightweight as possible and having as few items as possible while still being able to accomplish Everything we wanted to serve you know the full menu excuse the full menu so Joey why don't you walk us through The setup hey everybody these are our cards. This is a simple card. It's a bunch of panels That means we can fit it into our cards. It's awesome We use a three-band system I don't think you're here to the right here These two there's the stainers They're stackable we're getting a third one for waste, but it's not here yet, which is just Rotate open up If you're wondering where all the stuff is we didn't plan for any of this and we just had a bunch of events So all of our stuff is on those flying racks over there. I'll go show you right now. Cool Yeah, we've got these these drying racks here That they're separated you know per-cart, but yeah all of these sort of wares milk pitchers ice scoops Shot catchers speed porers those sorts of things They get stored there and then their part of my team's role is is that is what he's Reached stocking when we talk about like resetting for our card um This down here is your waste Yum we have our fresh water They can see a lot and then this Let's try here is a simple hub Gonna be two things and a accumulator and a pump for your water um Very easy one of the nicest things about simple cart and simple hubs is it's all very clear your fresh water is gonna go in and You're it's gonna go through the the accumulator and then get pumped out To your water sources and it's really easy to just take a cap off And then plug your line in and then what you're done Click it back in super easy um These are GS3 There it is Um one of our one of our few It's great It's an espresso machine. I don't really know if you're watching this video. You probably know what that is Um, okay, so the cool thing about these is that when they're to the side They enter a lock so you don't have to worry about it like toppling over boom boom This is where we hold all of our like heavy duty equipment So we're gonna have like our grinder We're gonna have extension cord our power strip We uh have our water line Uh the pitcher rinsor that was over there goes in here stuff like that Is that back around also Here you're gonna have all your hardcore equipment Your time your whisk This is one of the new things that we've been doing to provide Kind of like an extra Just level of experience for our client Is we include a Insta printer for like a whole roi What we'll do is when we show up and get fully set up We'll take a picture like a selfie with our phone. They send it to me Which then hey let's me know that they got there on time and that everything looks good And then they that picture doubles as uh Apprented Well kind of like a almost like a aparting gift if you will we the barista will write a note for the client staple or pay the uh picture on and leave it with the client has just like a way for us to go Hey, we love being here. We love you guys. Hopefully it just adds an extra punch of Like care, you know because that's always the goal care for people So I got there all your like heavy duty equipment when it comes like assembly bolts for your bar Stuff like that. It's all right there Uh, we have a cooler. We use a Arctic Um, we'd just really like these if it's a smaller event We'll use the Yeti And uh, yeah, so when a barista gets here for their event They're gonna see the car Essentially set up Like this right here have everything Everything in here Everything just like this so They show up and their first step To their process is driving this bin And filling it With the materials that they're gonna need in it already you have your trash your trash can your trash bags you have a dust Pan a broom these are parts of the cart So just simple stuff think I'm over here to the wall And we're gonna get cups. We're gonna get lids Um, this is a tea tray. Let's see the Actually night like well designed from tray. This is kind of what our tea setup looks like With all of your teas some sugar some stevia we bring some cinnamon We have uh, this is our matcha container um, yeah, so there's that We have free throw we have decaf we use pre ground decaf we just date it and we don't we like we cycle through it pretty fast So uh, we do that Have chai we have uh extra tea we have extra matcha sidebar about this matcha. It's not that good. Wait. Oh, so I would not recommend you get this matcha. It's low quality matcha. We we tried it out bad idea so Uh, matcha update coming soon. Is the fridge? Oh Yeah, boom that's exciting. Yeah, we have it we we've used a lot of our milk stuff, but typically this is just full of milk Um, yeah That's our typical setup. We have an ice machine over there But we also have in case of emergency Nice there you go. That was coming yucky, but we don't use it so That's what that's what I get for showing you that um since us towels boom We were we were using our own towel system for a really long time um And like washing them and drying them here in myrosterie and that has proven to be kind of a Time waste So We don't do that anymore. We sent us very cool It's fine. Give it a good job then Um, yeah, I feel like that's kind of our whole setup. I don't think there's anything else Um, I hope all of that makes sense if it doesn't Uh, I don't know, leave a comment or something at all. Try and respond to it But yeah, that that's generally what you're gonna get from us If you're if you're getting indicator Let me know let's talk about it. It's pretty cool. Carts are awesome. Our life baby If you want to uh Watch our last podcast. I'm excited. You can go ahead and play correct you Love y'all and just kidding. All right, bye