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RE-CHARGING Your Business with Freeze-Drying - The Stensland Full Interview
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May 15, 2025
Get to know the new revolution in freeze-drying with Stensland Family Farms who recharged their homemade ice cream business into a new, innovative company through freeze-drying. Learn how they started their freeze-drying business, how they package freeze-dried products properly, how they produce them from beginning to end, social media strategies you can apply to your business, and, of course, a taste test to see if itβs all worth the hype. Timestamps: 0:24 - How it Started 7:39 - Packaging Freeze-Dried Products 14:07 - How to Produce Freeze-Dried Ice Cream 21:57 - Quick Pro Tip on Storing Freeze-Dried Products 23:19 - Selling Freeze-Dried Ice Cream on Social Media 30:08 - Taste Test! ------------------------------------------------------- Individual Videos of Interview ------------------------------------------------------- Watch Part 1 - https://youtu.be/ntv4vnJLtAo Watch Part 2 - https://youtu.be/t5a9suvb9IQ Watch Part 3 - https://youtu.be/8HVuWkHzrTw Watch Part 4 - https://youtu.be/b0fNKQr5OjU Watch Part 5 - https://youtu.be/855m0wmllkU Connect with Stensland Family Farms
View Video Transcript
0:00
what does a hot and humid place in Iowa have to do with freeze drying well I am
0:05
here in Larchwood Iowa at the stenland Family Farms visiting a brand new
0:11
product that they have released because they own an ice cream shop and an ice
0:16
cream manufacturing facility but they bought some freeze
0:23
dryers hey welcome back to the freeze dry business Channel my name is David and I am the host of the freeze dry
0:29
business Channel we're here today to focus on entrepreneurs in the freeze drying space and you're lucky because
0:35
we're going to be on site at one of the fastest growing Freez dried ice cream businesses in the entire country they're
0:41
booming on Tik Tok social media all over the place because they took their ice cream and made it into a freeze dried
0:48
product they've got a lot of different flavors they're going to share a lot of different pieces mistakes successes advice all along the way that you can
0:55
gather and be inspired to start your own freeze-dried business all right so
1:00
before this was all a freeze drying effort you sold ice cream but tell us about how the family actually started
1:05
freeze drying ice cream did you start off with actual ice cream or did you
1:11
actually have all the product and the cows what is this family farm all about well actually how we started freeze
1:17
dried was there was a uh local company that approached us and they brought it up to us and we didn't really know that
1:23
freeze dried was a thing until then and they kind of focused on the candy and we decided that maybe we should focus on
1:30
the ice cream and so we kind of ran with that idea and we just implemented what we were already good at and before you
1:35
know it started doing R&D and we had a lot of failures ice cream blew up in the machines a lot Vettes do not work the
1:41
greatest we figured that out too certain varet and what's a verette what does that mean a Vette would be like a raspberry swirl through it we would have
1:48
chocolate chocolate's always a bugger to cuz that swirl through too it doesn't freeze dry so we've noticed that gets ran it after about 6 months so we just
1:55
kept doing R&D and before you know it we kind of we we had three that worked really well so we just started pushing from those three ice cream so there's a
2:01
lot of R&D that went into this but you already had the product um and so it was kind of a you saw just an opportunity to
2:08
test something when did you actually know that this was going to be a whole secondary line of your family Farm's
2:14
product well we kind of noticed that the trend it's it's become more people are talking about freeze dried and so then
2:20
what we decided to do was kind of start introducing it to some of our partners and they took it and as in some of the
2:27
DSD guys we work with and they started and it's just selling so then we just kind of naturally started going and then
2:33
we took it on the uh online platforms started kind of introducing some of that and it's just been moving what we
2:39
noticed with ice cream instead of like candy candy seems like it just like blew up and it's kind of ice cream just seems
2:45
like it's more it's going to be more consistent we feel like it's more longevity so we're hoping that's not just a phase but I feel like it's just
2:51
going to hopefully be longterm and these two freeze dryers here that you have here what are these two machines for cuz
2:56
I know you have other ones as well these two really focus on the candy and Skittles so we do a line of Skittles but
3:02
this is kind of what these two do and if we have any RNG we'll kind of we be couple machines for R&D cuz that takes
3:09
time especially with ice cream yeah and then Skittles Jolly puffs or Jolly which the Jolly Ranchers we do those too
3:15
cookie do yeah tell us about the overall complexity and trying to create an actual freeze-dried product so if you
3:22
have you make your all on all do you make all of your ingredients on this family farm or do you Source it from
3:28
different places tell about how you actually make the ice cream to then freeze dry we do both so we do make
3:34
stuff on our own here with our on-site Bakery and then we also Source locally or even we go further out to but just
3:41
good sources of products that we have you got to use good ingredients when you're running through the freeze dryers if you're going to spend that much time
3:46
freezer in a product you want to make sure that the end result is good so that's what we really focus on is really
3:51
good quality ingredients any Bak good Concepts can be a little tricky sometimes it's just kind of like the the
3:57
ice cream part of it it you don't what it's going to end up like until you run it through the machine and it sometimes
4:04
just does and how long would you say it took to like actually refine your product let's timeline wise how long did
4:10
it take for you to to actually know your recipe and say we're running this every time and now now that you're like you
4:16
know really doing well in your sales but but just like how did you what was the timeline longer than you think I still
4:22
think we're still doing that I don't think it ever ends no because like we put our ice cream in a blast freezer it's at - 255 and if that thing is at 15
4:30
that affects the freeze dryers and we will have these things bubble up so we're still dealing with that we just got to everything has to be precise we
4:36
got to make sure these things are cooled all way down to -20 and stuff like that so I feel like we have lot we still have
4:41
some Human air in our situation but we're always still learning but I it took it takes forever it does be honest
4:48
I a couple of years just to dial in some of the certain kinds of flavors on the other side of it on our Frozen side it
4:54
took us how many years just to figure out our base concept and our ice cream about three years to figure that out
5:00
vanilla was the hardest one to figure out for us cuz that's your base for everything else vanilla ice cream was
5:05
the hardest for our family to figure out and we all did it together and we we got it figured out but it took us about 2
5:10
years before we started the creamery what are your thoughts on now cuz I sell a lot of fruit in my freeze drying
5:16
business of my own but a lot of people are are doing freeze-dried fruit have you thought about implementing freeze-dried fruit in the ice cream have
5:23
you experiments with powderize freeze-dried fruit and then mixing into naturally flavor anything like that so
5:29
we are daing and some purees and we'll do some fruits but you know we had a
5:34
hard enough time just getting strawberry ice cream to go and we still haven't figured out peach ice cream or any of
5:39
that yet cuz it's just it and our strawberry ice cream is just ice cream strawberries ground that's all it is so
5:46
kind of to your point is fruit is like and we notice that's the the easiest one here to work on a machine is our
5:51
strawberry ice cream that we don't ever have issues with it but um we're excited to start new and new flavors of ice
5:57
cream I think we're just going to focus really heavily on ice cream and ice cream flavors because that's what we're good at and that's what we enjoy and so
6:04
tell I'm going to move over here a little bit but like tell us a little about these machines you know there's a lot of different brands of freeze dryers
6:10
out here um I personally started with a Harvest Right like this I don't have an Excel but uh Harvest R has been a real
6:17
big Staple in freeze drying for almost over a decade as of this video but uh how do you choose to come to decide this
6:23
type of machine this brand uh first of all um it's everywhere out there like
6:29
you said yeah and then they slowly got bigger so this is just a six tray but we
6:34
everything else we have are seven trays and they work really well with the ice cream that for us but um we did go to a
6:41
big large commercial units that did not work for us in our ice cream so worked
6:46
on Candy worked on Candy just not ice cream so we struggled for a year trying to figure those out so we just went back
6:51
to harvest right until you grow to the next level get a big commercial I think they're a good stepping St honestly yeah
6:58
this works for us so that's a good point I've interviewed a lot of different freeze dry manufacturers and what and
7:04
I've also interviewed several experts in the industry that have dealt with vacuums that all that type of thing and
7:10
what we're all finding in this growing freeze drying space is every recipe is unique but once you find a freeze dryer
7:17
that meets that need to get that recipe uh coming out with that finished product it's like it's go time and you just run
7:23
with it so if you figure it out go time yeah takes a while to get there but you keep at it and you'll figure it out yeah
7:35
figure all right guys so let's talk about kind of some of the business things so what do you feel like has been
7:40
the most pivotal moment in the business so far when it come to releasing and
7:45
coming up with your freeze-dried product what created the aha moment that you were like we've really got a legit
7:51
product what made that success light bulb go off two things I guess I would I
7:57
would hit on is we sent a lot of samples out to people and we kept getting the same response and repeated repeated
8:05
response about how good it is where can they get it so then what we decided to
8:10
do is put some money into packaging and that has changed everything cuz now it's
8:15
a wow for it's showy it it's out there otherwi you're kind of hidden to the market as in the shelves so we spent
8:23
some uh time in house and we uh designed these bags to fit our product and we
8:32
want a color color we feel like color is important so that's what we did
8:37
awesome once we invested in the package yeah and I noticed the packaging too so a couple things one you went with
8:43
different colors for kind of the theme of the of the of the flavors maybe let's
8:48
go into that what type of flavors do you have for your freeze dried ice cream well we got the the mint chip which is
8:54
just a really uh it's Flor chocolate with mint based kind concept and then we
9:01
got the strawberry fields which is just your Good Old strawberry ice cream and you got the we call it Carnival trays
9:07
which is um cotton candy ice cream awesome so has that been like the
9:13
top sellers for ice cream in general when you're serving it at your retail stores or what how' you come up with
9:19
saying like these are going to be your focus honestly it goes back to those are the three that work in the machines right now cuz we've done a lot of Trials
9:26
and they don't work they just just can't cuz there's there's like homemade good like homemade stuff in it and it just
9:31
doesn't work in the machines so these are the three that work so far we are still doing a lot of R&D on some more
9:37
flavors so we can add more to the list but it just takes time okay but I would say when we first started which still
9:44
currently it probably still your Skittles are the most popular cuz people are aware of them a lot of people don't
9:50
know our ice cream yet so once we get more further out there we're just seeing it slowly just doing this and it's very
9:56
consistent so we feel like the Skittles are just Boop and then it's kind of coming down and then we see the ice
10:02
cream rting since we started online is we get repeat customers which is on the ice cream so which is a good thing for
10:09
us we really starting to realize people Skittles are maybe a one one hit wonder for us yeah they buy it iceam repeat
10:16
repeat the cookie dough is huge too one of our top ones too oh your free dry cookie dough now I haven't heard of this
10:22
what's that all about is that literally cookie dough freeze-dried it's cookie dough freeze-dried it's it's edible and
10:28
everything there's no eggs in it or nothing so yes we um figured out how to pre- cookie dough and it's a legit
10:33
cookie dough yes so talk a little bit about to I want to know kind of your evolution of the bag because I see down
10:40
here with your jolly worms you know this is kind of like still something you can see but it's kind of a a more of a
10:46
GL like kind of foggy look but then now you have it more clear other people are going with bags in their businesses that
10:53
don't have any windows so walk us through what you started with now what you're at and and why well we started by
11:01
actually with a clear Bay with stickers we hand stickered everything and they
11:07
were all over the place because obviously um when you have random people stickering you have random results this
11:14
was a mistake yeah this foggy one it was it's supposed to been clear but they ended up sending in 20,000 bags of this
11:21
and we're like well that's what we're going to do for a while and then we moov to the clear for ice cream we figured
11:26
out like ice cream just people are like what do you do with it so we wanted to show people the colors
11:32
and we haven't had any issues with sunlight on ice cream we do get issues with some candy with sunlight with clear
11:38
we have had that issue so we just kind of deal with it honestly going back to the Clear Window is ice cream has a bad
11:45
wrap for the last how many years about just look like it's it doesn't look good
11:51
sometimes so we decided to go with a clear like he said and just say hey this is what it looks like this is what
11:57
you're getting yeah and in the room too we we haven't even touched on the fact that your presentation of your freeze Dr
12:03
ice cream so you have these in squares versus on my product that I have with my own small business you know I hand scoop
12:11
uh tillamuk freeze dry and I freeze dry the tillamuk ice cream hard on the hand
12:17
uh I'm going to get authorized at some point if I keep it up but how did you how did you decide squares is where you
12:23
want to go the size and how did you say like that's where we're going to go the thickness all that so Trials of course
12:31
um the pans are so wide I can't remember how wide these pans we're using but we
12:36
figured it out is you can only have it so thick cuz if you get too thick it takes too long in the machine or it
12:41
actually bubbles in the center and they explode and then we cut the squares at a certain thing slend that way 1 by one in
12:47
1 by one in and then that gives it feels like it makes the pan breathe a little more and those you don't have the waste
12:53
or anything and we just we make the ice cream we lay it we we it's like a half gallon we put per tray is what we do and
12:59
we just spread it all out and we cut it up and that's what we do but the trick
13:04
to it is is when it comes out of the remember we manufacture ice cream so when it comes out of the machine when we
13:10
do this then it's got to go into 25 below zero for 18 to 24 hours that's where ice cream's made it's in the town
13:17
Crystal yeah it it changes the of the ice cream and most people uh you you
13:22
can't go mix ice cream throw it in the pan and think you're going to go freeze dry it right away you're going to make a
13:28
mess it that's not ice cream you got to make the ice cream through the freezing process yeah we stick them on trays
13:34
freeze them and then we bring them out cut them all up and then freeze them again then then freeze dry yeah it's
13:40
quite a process it's a it's a unique product I mean you have probably low competition just cuz somebody has to
13:46
have an ice cream buur plant yes or you're buying ice cream it doesn't negate people starting a freeze Dred ice
13:53
cream business but uh it goes to show like this is a niche that you've already
13:58
have a product and now you get to have another fun like product Evolution with it which is awesome all right let's go
14:04
into your production facility and let's take a look at how this is all
14:13
made this is our production facility to make ice cream we do our freeze-dried ice cream in here and also we do our
14:18
hard ice cream with these machines so what we do is we'll put all our our base
14:25
mix in here to make the ice cream we put all our ingredients in here also and then we let that freeze down 5 to 7
14:32
minutes and then once that's done we dispense it with lifting the lever up we'll put so much in the pan we smooth
14:38
it all out and we put them on our carts and then we'll wheel those carts
14:43
into blast freezer at - 25 to -30Β° for 18 to 24 hours now now do you do the
14:50
same ingredients like at the same time if you're going to do strawberry like you're going to do strawberry all four
14:56
of these machines at the same time or are you you doing them all at the same
15:01
time with different ingredients so that you can have all four flavors running in all the freeze dryers we usually do one
15:06
kind at a time cuz allergens is a big thing so we are a strawberry is the seed has is an allergen actually so we um we
15:14
pick strawberry for the day we'll do strawberry that when we run we run one flavor that way it's all dirty it's that
15:20
flavor then we're done then the next day we run a different flavor machine two machines doesn't matter just depends on
15:27
what we want to do for the day or how many people we got and just so everyone knows too um you know Harve actually
15:33
sells a big huge cooler that I went down to their headquarters and you can buy a deep freezing walk-in cooler that gets
15:40
temperatures down to 45Β° so if you're looking for something like that they've been doing ice cream for a long time so
15:46
they have a a huge walk-in freezer for all their ice cream but if you're looking to do this you know you can buy
15:52
def freezers but also the utility is also good for any type of product because the more you prefreeze something
15:58
the faster the cycle is going to be let's head into where all the freeze dryers are all right guys so what is
16:03
this because this looks like a lot of work how do you actually clean and air
16:09
dry and do all this do you have a machine that can do all this for you not yet we do everything by hand as of right
16:16
now so what we do is we actually stick them into this we put all our trays in
16:22
there we pre-rinse them cuz they're full of ice cream and we'll let them soak in this B here for now and then what we do
16:28
is we scrub them all by hand put them on this rack we got little slots here and
16:33
then they dry within about a day about 2 days they'll be drying it's hard to find a a a dishwasher commercially that can
16:41
clean hundreds of free dryer trays no matter what size you have for sure yeah
16:47
so if you're looking for an easy way to do this hey uh it's not going to be easy
16:53
right now but with the right team you can wash all this like they've got this big Basin they get all the tray
16:59
sanitized washed all of that and then put it up on a big huge rack like this so awesome all right so now here is
17:06
where they do all the freeze drying and so we saw a couple of the freeze dryers we they did for candy you also got D's
17:13
for your ice cream we just saw where the ice cream is poured onto the tray put it in the freezer once the freeze is done
17:21
then what happens how do you get it over here and you know you have to be quick about it or is temperature control this
17:28
place what's all basically we'll take those racks out of the uh freezer and we you have to move
17:33
very quickly they melt fast but you get you set your machines accordingly and you take these racks you roll them all
17:39
out here and you slide them in there when the machine is ready to go and you push your okay and you run 24 to 26
17:49
hours and then that's about the time that takes and they should be done as long as you did everything right it
17:55
should look really uniform and with car stri I mean it's you know I'm moning on a strain type of thing it's like very
18:02
easy to use these machines but uh like did what type of elements especially a
18:08
freeze dryed ice cream do you have to control and work with the recipe we kind of talked about that a little bit but
18:13
what things on the freeze dryer do you have to configure to make sure ice cream works well in a freeze dryer yeah we
18:20
took us a lot of Trials to figure out the right pressures in here and then like the temps we had to play with those
18:25
a while because you had overcook it not long enough and then we had to get these things down as cold as they could get I
18:30
think these are at 20 do that what helps us is we do it's not running right now
18:36
but it is nice and cool and dry so we have a we keep it as cool in here as we can these machines give off a lot of
18:42
heat that's what keeps our efficiency real down to that 22 to 24 hours per
18:48
batch um it's really nice so that's control environment so how' you like
18:54
come to learn that pressure might be a factor in the vacuum versus versus like
18:59
not KN that did you have somebody as an expert that you calls up and like how did you figure it out on your own how
19:06
did you know that the pressure was something that was going to be a factor we just kept trying and trying and we keep tweaking as we we as we went and we
19:14
we figure out right where we need to be it's like any freeze dryer you got to understand the machine the product and
19:22
it it you tweak it as you go and then one time you you change it you document you change you document then you're okay
19:28
this is where I feel like it's going to be efficient and it's just a different recipe for everybody basically now I see
19:34
three freeze dryers in here I know you got the candy all that type of thing but like so what's the vision of the company
19:41
like can you see this whole room being filled like what what does stenland look
19:47
like coming up in the next like year or 3 years like what can this video hope to
19:52
expect when someone searches like oh wow this is where they're at today I where we're at right now is pivot point in the
19:59
business and what why I say that is we feel like we can U get the right Partners to get us to the next level
20:06
where we see ourselves is getting ourselves to that 30 to 40 machines and
20:11
getting ourselves to uh where we can be easily accessible whether it's in the
20:16
gas stations or in in uh retail stores nationally so throughout the states and
20:21
that's what we want to do is be the ice cream freeze dried people um along with
20:27
the other stuff the last two weeks actually this room here can have about 14 machines in it so we're going to
20:32
double stack fill up so we have all the exal everything's ready to go there we
20:38
have everything cool in here so that's the plan and that's probably less than a 3 month coal 3 four month is the plan y
20:44
what's the feeling like with across this whole huge family that operates and helps out like what's the feeling now
20:51
you know you had this ice cream business and all you got this like new exciting new product like what's the overall all
20:58
feeling now versus maybe a couple years ago when you didn't have it so I would fun exciting because we us as the family
21:06
love ice cream like the hard cold dipped ice cream but we're always like how do you get it out there cuz it's so hard to
21:12
transport expensive very expensive so now we feel like we can get this everywhere in the states try our ice
21:19
cream and it's way easier to to ship the Shelf stable so that's that's what's
21:25
exciting I feel like for the families we finally get out there and it's affordable to ship cuz shipping ice cream is a kind of a nightmare that's
21:32
where I'm might that's where i' would say yeah you have to have the refrigerated a semi to come transport
21:38
all that stuff it has to be that temperature versus Freeze ice cream this is why freeze drwing is taking off you
21:44
can take an existing products that you have and say oh you know I now I can
21:49
ship more efficiently and I can also get the product in in a different way that's awesome
22:00
all right so one of the things that you're going to experience when you're starting a freeze drying business just like this family is is a way to store
22:07
your freeze-dried product you're going to experiment with different things personally what I use is I use some of
22:12
those food safe buckets 5 Gall 12 gallon and I use a gamma seal lid to make it
22:18
airtight they've chosen to use these plastic containers that you can find with any type of commercial type of
22:24
kitchen um or or restaurant supply type of business operation or restaurant shop
22:30
wholesaler but as you can see they've got this product in here they've also got just these clear containers and what
22:36
they've said is that this lasts about a week in here and then they have their packaging period where they have all
22:43
their team come in and start packaging up all the product now in Iowa it's very humid in boy Idaho it is not so in a
22:51
humid climate if you're in one of those you know you're going to experience various temperatures in your environment
22:56
and if they left this open they said probably in about 5 to 10 minutes you'll just start noticing that this uh ice
23:03
cream would kind of start becoming a little bit more sticky um it's going to have a little bit more moisture attached to it so that's why a temperature
23:10
controlled commercial kitchen just like they have is important but also even though you're in it you're going to have
23:16
to be quick with a delicate item like freeze-dried ice
23:24
cream all right let's move on to what we can learn about stenland Family Farms and their freeze-dried ice cream when it
23:31
comes to social media how do they grow their sales both online in retail and
23:36
distribution as well as shipping because as you grow your freeze drying business whether you're starting out small and
23:41
cottage food or growing commercial like they have and this is Kelton the social media Superstar of this great company he
23:48
also does all the Fulfillment shipping that you can see around here which is quite the big task so Kelton how do you
23:54
keep up with this how did you fall into this position and how do you keep yourself con constantly learning and
23:59
evolving so that you can keep up with this growth I love editing videos and I love seeing the progress on
24:05
the social media side of things so partnering with Affiliates on Tik Tok and seeing the sales come in through
24:10
Amazon Instagram Facebook uh through our Shopify site is kind of a rush I really enjoy that so I don't know it's
24:17
something that I enjoy I remember when I started my business and I was kind of a first mover in my local area in boy
24:23
Idaho and it was like when I saw the analytics come through on Shopify when I saw the Etsy orders comes in and it's
24:28
it's it's super satisfying and even today it's likeing and you hear that sound of cha-ching you know you made a
24:34
sale social media kind of intimidating for a lot of people because there's a lot of different platforms so I want to
24:40
ask you how did you choose the platform that was the right fit for this business how' you find the best Avenue to sell
24:47
the the product Oh I just started on Tik Tok shop uh that just seemed to be the best for us yeah I don't know they have
24:53
a great affiliate program so the affiliate de did an awesome job for us we had a couple affiliate it's hit some
24:59
million view videos and that launched our sales tremendously it is awesome what's an affiliate and what is an
25:06
affiliate on Tik Tok so the Affiliates on Tik Tok they we send them a free sample once they request it and they'll
25:12
make a video and earn commission on the sales that they make for us so for someone who's going to venture into Affiliates like is do they take a large
25:20
commission like that seems like you're kind of leaving it up to somebody else to sell your product but without like you being able to do anything or is that
25:27
scary for you or not no not really not only the commission side of things but also helps with brand awareness so I
25:34
think that helps us as well and so when did you start actually doing the Tik Tok shop this is so this is August 2024
25:41
right now like when did you start as of this time right now started in the beginning of June of this year 2024 wow
25:49
okay so very very beginning so are you experienced with Tik Tok enough to where you knew kind of what the strategy was
25:55
going to be with this affiliate strategy not really I dab in it a little bit my own just personal videos on my personal
26:01
page but uh moving into the business side of things I learned a lot through just YouTube videos and went from there
26:07
so it's totally doable with the right Partners yeah so two months two maybe 3
26:12
months long like can you give us a ballpark of like what type of success you've seen so far like how many actually shipped orders have you sent
26:19
out about 25,000 wow yeah that's impressive so that's the power of social media Y how
26:25
does someone get into making a Tik Tok video it seems kind of like it's over complicated because you got to you got
26:32
to have do you have to have the right equipment how do you make sure you're doing all the editing like how do you
26:37
make it easier for yourself uh you can just do it on your phone you don't need a camera I don't think so it's not until
26:43
you get further into it to get your higher quality videos but I don't know I think you just do it with your phone and
26:49
you can stick to using cap cut to editing your videos and just having content and the right Affiliates is huge
26:56
now do you know these Affiliates or do you just like don't know them personally
27:02
or are they just people on Tik Tok that sell the product just random people on Tik Tok yep I've never met them in my
27:09
life awesome you know it can be intimidating to do Tik Tok I have a Tik Tok account but you know I've D done
27:16
very little because it's just like man I'm not doing the right Cuts I'm not doing the right editing and maybe I'm not using the right tags so what's like
27:22
common mistakes that people make going into it they can overcome based on the advice that you've you're going to give
27:28
today uh just keep it simple don't over complicate it uh people love to watch
27:34
the flukes and the mess ups and just entertainment overall yeah so there's really not a mistake to be made on social media other than maybe giving
27:40
your Social Security yeah don't don't show any shipping labels with addresses or nothing that's a good yeah that's a
27:47
good one so don't show share any personal information but like really I follow an account on on YouTube and and
27:53
his whole catchphrase for his channel is you got to just press record you got to just sit there and and record yourself
28:00
packaging items making your product and you'll have a video and some people
28:05
watch it some people won't but you're never going to learn how to do this unless you start trying it all right let's talk about shipping and Logistics
28:12
because now that we have a Tik Tock order the Affiliates are selling for you you've got all these orders coming in
28:17
plus you have your wholesale how does someone figure out how to ship their product how do you know what type of
28:23
size boxes and how much product will put in it do you put uh different types of uh stuffing in there so that you know
28:30
it's not going to get because freeze dried product is delicate how do you make sure that things are are not going to be you know crunched up during
28:36
shipping so tell us a little bit about the shipping part of it how did you come up with shipping your product basically
28:42
what we decided to do is figure out how we want to sell it so are we going to present it as a sample uh a pack of
28:48
three are we going to do one single pack and then what we did is randomly grab boxes put them in these boxes and size
28:55
smaller the Box the better to keep it tight and our opinions just for shipping cost and everything and uh some of these
29:02
different uh versions of product that we'll uh put some packaging in there and uh we just kind of keep things nice and
29:09
tight in the boxes that's kind of the trick to it there on the direct side of it on the direct side when it's like one
29:15
or two five different items um you're basically putting kind of packaging in
29:20
there stuff to make it so it does jostle around and and and crunch up and break yep and then if we get somebody that
29:26
reaches out wants something different version we'll just take an existing box we have and we'll kind of put that
29:31
together just as need be so we kind of flip on a dime too now do you take the
29:36
the strategy that Amazon has where like you just have one single box like like
29:42
here and like this could be one one of your bags of free dried ice cream in here and it could also be 10 like what
29:48
do you what's your strategy on a size box yeah we we kind of get a box that's right in the right in the smack middle
29:55
of uh whether situ every little situation it'll fit the sample pack but it'll also do an individual inventory
30:02
cost a lot of money so what we got to do is try to keep uh the box Universal kind of like
30:13
Amazon this has been a really fun time so far going and touring all that
30:18
stenland Family Farms has to offer I don't know about you but man they've got a great story and their product I think
30:25
is really clean they got the great process and I hope that you feel inspired to figure out your recipe
30:31
figure out your process don't start off and then go Bonkers and then try to figure out things later you know start
30:37
small figure things out then scale because it's going to be more easier for you to figure out you know what your
30:43
growth plans and things but I wanted to do some taste testing because I haven't tasted all their different products so I
30:49
wanted to come out here and show you what this is all about all right we got three different flavors so what I'm
30:55
going to taste is each one now remember this company decided to go with more of
31:02
a kind of square brick for their ice cream um I personally in my freeze drin
31:07
business do scoop tillamuk ice cream so it's a little bit more labor intensive but these are the squares that they've
31:13
got and let's try the carnival craze they say it's like a cotton candy ice
31:24
cream oh that's good so that the the crunchiness very creamy the
31:31
aftertaste where you actually taste the cotton candy was about right when I got it all crunched and then my tongue was
31:37
able to like kind of melt all of the different flavor man that was really good so Carnival craze is the cotton
31:43
candy the difference with freeze drying ice cream is you want to freeze dry with quality ingredients if you ever tried
31:49
offbrand very like high numbers of ingredients in an ice cream you're going to notice that it's just not going to
31:55
hold up as well also this stinet ice cream is very similar to the tbun ice
32:01
cream that I always do which is it's got more of like a a creamy base to it which
32:06
means it holds up nicely and it also tastes like a milk like ice cream creamy
32:14
so wow this is strawberry that is delicious strawberry is one of my
32:19
favorite ice creams delicious here now let's try their mint now similar to the bags that I use in my business that you
32:26
can buy you can buy CRA myar bags you can craft buy bags that have Windows they've got a zip lock on it and they
32:32
also have this tear away so they're able to heat seal the top and then they have a secondary layer for protection with
32:39
the with the zip lock and then they've also in this bag down below they've got
32:45
oxygen absorbers and they've got desant packets so two things to help one is
32:50
oxygen two is any type of moisture it's very humid in here and with freeze
32:55
drying you're taking out all the moisture from the product but if any type of humidity hits this bag or is
33:01
inside here it could make these ice cream pieces a little bit more moist and kind of ruin the product in the shelf
33:07
life so they've decided to experiment with desicant and oxy absorbers in the bag and according to them they've tested
33:13
their product for over a year in these bags and nothing has been spoiled or gone bad so they've been able to do this
33:20
for a [Music] year R chocolate chip delicious it's
33:27
green other types of mint chocolate chip ice cream that I've seen have been white kind of and then the mint obviously with
33:34
the the mint chocolate the last thing they wanted me to try was not ice cream related but this is the freeze-dried
33:40
cookie dough bite I've never tried this you know you can freeze dry anything you want some work some don't but let's try
33:46
cookie dough
33:51
wow that tastes like a cookie but it's like in in Dough Bites
33:57
that was really delicious all right my taste test is done you got to buy some of this
34:03
freeze-dried ice cream and also they have affiliate opportunities on Tik Tok
34:10
so if you want to actually make money selling freeze-dried ice cream you can sell their freeze-dried ice cream on Tik
34:17
Tok using your own profile or your business so you could extend your product line with them and sell your
34:23
freeze-dried candy sell your freeze-dried fruit whatever you want and also attach the affiliate commissions
34:29
that you would get from them for selling their product so now you can have ice cream in your product lineup well we want to thank the stenland family for
34:36
showing us their business and their growth in this freeze drying space and it's truly possible for anybody to even
34:42
have an existing product like ice cream that's been a staple for your company or your business that you've had in the
34:48
family or with your friends or yourself for a long time and then you can Revitalize it and make a new product so
34:53
thanks a lot for showing us and best of luck in your business than thank you
#Small Business