TWINKIE BUSINESS

“Sometimes the most important life lessons are the ones we end up learning the hard way.” – Unknown

Being a business owner is an incredibly difficult task.

No matter what type of business you own, there is a lot of responsibility in making the day to day decisions that are required to run it successfully.

Though I have not been a “successful” owner myself, I did at one point in my life take over a small business. The experience was not at all what I expected, but the lessons I learned were invaluable.

DW Snacks. Everyone’s favorite fucking Twinkie delivery service.

It was a small business that my uncle and I purchased from some dude. Along with that, we had inherited the rights to provide Hostess products to all the convenient stores and markets in the local area that Hostess themselves didn’t do business with. It honestly had a lot of potential, but with two inexperienced business owners now at the helm I had no idea what was in store for me.

First day for delivery, I took the seats out of my mom’s Chevy Venture mini-van and stacked that fucker full of donuts, Twinkies, and shitty Snowballs. I was off to fill the stores with everyone’s favorite brand name snacks.

The guy whom we had purchased the business from mentioned that he had charged each store $1.06 per unit of product. He had also said he purchased each unit from Hostess for 66 cents per unit. A 40 cent profit on each unit sold seemed like a nice little margin. And it was…. until it wasn’t.

The first store I delivered to I sold six units at $1.06 apiece. Not great, but still had another 20 or so stores to hit. Game on.

After making my first sale, I got back to the custom Twinkie wagon and happened to look at the invoice from Hostess. Instead of charging me 66 cents per unit, they had charged me 72 cents per unit.

No problem. I’ll just bump up my price six cents, and get back to my 40 cent profit margin.

This, my friend, was not the right business move.

As I walked into the next store on my list, the cashier ripped my ass apart.

“Where in the fuck have you been?! I have a shelf full of expired Hostess products and no one has been here in months! ”Apparently, the guy who sold me the business hadn’t serviced this particular store in a while.

After assuring the cashier that we were going to take better care of him and his store, he settled down… until I brought him the invoice.

“$1.12 per unit?! Fuck you! Get the fuck out of my store! And don’t come back here again.” That obviously didn’t go over well.

About 10 minutes after being told by Mr. Cashier to get fucked, I get a phone call from the former owner of DW Snacks.

Unbeknownst to me, the gentleman who owned the store with the “friendly” cashier also happened to own the first store I had delivered product to.

Changing the price of my product at two different stores both owned by the same cat was a big no-no, and for obvious reasons, he no longer wanted me in any of his stores.

Just like that, within an hour of my first delivery, 10 of my 20 accounts were gone.

Nice work Cory.

Though this little business venture lasted about a year, I never made enough money to actually profit from slangin’ Cherry Pies.

And though many would consider it an absolute failure (including myself), it was one of the greatest experiences that I was ever blessed with.

I learned that going into a business without a game plan is not the intelligent move.

I learned that convenience store cashiers will fight you for every fucking penny.

But most importantly, I learned that gaining and developing trust with your customers is by far the most important component to business. If they don’t trust you, then you’re done.

As I venture into a new world of blogging and providing value to readers, I keep my past experiences close. I remind myself that this isn’t as much about me as it is about you - the consumer. Making sure that I am providing you with a product or service that is not only useful, but that makes your life better.

Also moving forward, I will never charge you six cents extra without charging everyone else the same price. ;)