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as a freeze dry business owner I'm just
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kind of very interested in the different
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types of array of products that you can
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do freeze drying really interested in
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the freeze-dried dog food type of Arena
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so I'm in Petco right now locally here
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in boisey Idaho and although this is a
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big chain I wanted to just kind of see
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what they had to offer so let's take a
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look at what products they have in the
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different types of brands that are doing
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freeze drying more on the larger
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now we're most accustomed to freeze
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drying you know human type of things
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with candy and ice cream and fruit
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vegetables meals things like that but a
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lot what's growing in popularity is
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other types of avenues that's what I
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want all of us to think about when we're
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looking at freeze drying is yes we have
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these machines and things might be going
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great in your freeze Dr candy business
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fruit that type of thing but if you want
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to start looking at diversifying there's
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so many different options that's why I
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feel also that this is just the
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beginning of a small business freeze
1:09
drying industry we've barely tapped the
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surface candies Going Bonkers and it's
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probably going to continue that way
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because everyone loves candy in America
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it's a huge billion dollar business Pet
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Food business is also huge and um I know
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that some of you probably even know
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about the freeze-dried pet maybe you
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even do freeze-dried pet food right now
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now but I'm not that familiar with it
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and if you're not familiar with it I
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just wanted to kind of do this Vlog
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because I was going to do some grocery
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shopping next door but I found Petco and
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I've seen freeze-dried food here so
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here's the first brand has a whole Shelf
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at Petco and it's called Stella and
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chewies I'm sure you're familiar with it
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if you have pets I personally don't even
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have a dog I don't have a cat or
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anything I've been holding off cuz I got
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two young kids and that's busy enough
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for me all right what I grabbed off the
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shelf right here is just something
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random this is the duck duck goose uh
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kibble and it's 95% poultry bone and
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organ and what this says on the back of
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Stella and chewy I'm just going to read
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this for you and I'll even show you put
2:14
of the website a little bit but it says
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when I rescued Chewy from an animal
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shelter he was very sick pup his
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veterinarian suggested I put him on a
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raw diet similar to what dogs eat in the
2:25
wild and chewy recovered and both he and
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his friend Stella thrive on this diet so
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chewy and Stella are dogs I didn't know
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that actually prior to recording this um
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now it says that basically they put
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together a bunch of different organic um
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products in here that are just regular
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food items and they combine it into
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these little uh kibble little things
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like this now the one thing that I have
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read about freeze-dried pet food is that
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you know we're taking out all the water
2:56
from all of this product right so I do
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know that you do want to
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reconstitute the freeze-dried pet food
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for your dog and have a little bit of
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that water come back um just because
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it's easier on their stomachs things
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like that here's a couple other
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freeze-dried Brands right here this is
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uh the origin I hope I'm pronouncing
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that right I'm not familiar with some of
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these Brands but this is another top
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National brand of freeze Dred pet food
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and then they've also got this uh aonia
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I think I'm pronouncing that probably
3:27
wrong uh but if you're familiar with
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with freeze rank pet food these are the
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big top brands that are probably making
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a lot of money being in Petco right now
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I'm going to head over to the grocery
3:37
store and get some other products and
3:38
see what type of specials they have for
3:40
fruit I've got an event coming up here
3:42
in the next couple days so I wanted to
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make sure that I had plenty of stock up
3:46
heading into the weekend let's head over
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to windco which is a local wholesale
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type of grocery store and uh I'll do
4:31
hey one of the fruits that I've been
4:32
interested in doing is the mango now if
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you have done mangoes before i' love to
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hear what you have been doing in the
4:40
comments of this video because I did buy
4:43
a mango slicer but I've been finding
4:46
that it actually still contains a lot of
4:50
the mango fruit on the skin even though
4:53
I slice it and I did do mangoes before
4:55
just on a test run and one of the things
4:58
that I found was that it was not I guess
5:02
very sweet anymore with the mangoes and
5:05
I didn't actually find that people
5:06
bought it so Bango have worked for you
5:08
and you've added something to it that
5:10
would be great to add in the comments I
5:11
think everyone would love that one of
5:12
the things that you should take note of
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it's the end of November right now as
5:16
I'm filming this and a lot of fruit it
5:19
is not in season so you're going to pay
5:22
a higher price for any type of fruit and
5:25
I've been very selective I've been
5:26
trying to find ways to consolidate and
5:29
get better prices but I just cannot find
5:31
it things that are kind of priced
5:33
decently right now are raspberries
5:36
there's also uh bananas that are priced
5:39
fine but the strawberries right now
5:41
they're limiting the price of $2.78 a
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pound for strawberries to just two
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cartons so you know it's not there's
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just not very good deals right now what
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I do in my freeze drying business is I
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just say that they're out stuck can't
5:55
find it don't list it for sale and I try
5:58
to focus on other things so so I
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obviously go for the raspberries I try
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to get more people active in doing
6:04
raspberries if you're wondering how to
6:06
store some of your freeze-dried fruit in
6:08
the cases like this right now you want
6:11
to use some air sealed type buckets
6:14
where you can get kind of a gamma seal
6:16
lid where it has a rubber gasket to the
6:19
lid type that way it kind of keeps it
6:21
airtight then what you're going to do is
6:22
you're going to put desant packets in
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that type of bucket so that it keeps it
6:27
dry now the moist moisture there
6:30
shouldn't really be any moisture from
6:31
your freeze dry fruit because you should
6:33
be drying it more than 8 hours on Final
6:35
dry and if you're interested in more my
6:37
freeze drying videos on how to freeze
6:39
dry fruit you can click on the links
6:41
Below in the video description as well
6:43
as you can take a look at other videos
6:44
that I suggest in this video the main
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point of all this is you have to be very
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meticulous on what you're going after at
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certain periods of the month as a freeze
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drying business especially when you're
6:56
small so you got to look at budgets you
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got to look look at your pricing and
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make sure that you're buying in season
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and then that you're storing all of the
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fruit that is in season so use those
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gamma seal buckets I've got links in the
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video description from Amazon of where I
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get the 12 gallon buckets that I store a
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lot of my fruit in as well as the
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smaller buckets that are more 5
7:24
gallon one of the things you should know
7:26
about freeze drying especially if you're
7:28
just starting out is you're going to
7:29
want to check with your cottage food
7:31
laws to make sure that if you're going
7:33
to do more of a cottage food homemade
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Goods type of business with your freeze
7:37
dryer some of the products are going to
7:39
be limited or restricted and what they
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call those Foods is TCS Foods non-tcs
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foods and non-tcs foods are ones that
7:48
doesn't require any type of temperature
7:50
control and usually that falls into the
7:52
cold side of ice cream as well as the
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heat side of anything that's already
7:56
been cooked or you have to cook it and
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then freeze dry it Health districts
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state-run type of agricultural
8:02
departments they're really kind of
8:03
unfamiliar with freeze drying in my
8:05
opinion it's very new a lot of people
8:08
are getting into it a lot of us are
8:09
applying for applications for it and so
8:12
the fact that it's kind of new and not
8:14
very well known about our process is why
8:17
they put a lot of these restrictions in
8:19
because nobody really knows what freeze
8:21
drying the process does so some states
8:24
are going to be more flexible than
8:26
others for example I was able to do
8:29
freeze-dried ice cream when I first
8:31
started in 2020 and even into
8:34
2021 now in 2022 kind of late 2022 they
8:38
changed the college food law in Idaho to
8:41
not allow you to do Freestar ice cream
8:43
you have to have a commercial kitchen
8:45
that's licensed and have that food
8:47
establishment permit to be able to do
8:49
ice cream so that's what I'm doing now I
8:51
rent a kitchen and I'm able to do freeze
8:54
dried ice cream so I'm going to head
8:55
down and get some ice cream I prefer a
8:58
certain brand which I'll show you and I
9:00
found it helds up the most it's high
9:02
quality and I'm sure if you've seen my
9:04
freeze dry videos on freeze dried ice
9:05
cream you know what I
9:41
all right I am done doing my grocery
9:43
shopping and also apparently looking at
9:46
freeze-dried pet food even though I
9:47
don't own a pet I hope you enjoyed that
9:49
you know one thing I wanted to tell you
9:50
about is this event that I'm doing
9:52
that's kind of my final event for the
9:54
Christmas and for 2023 is I'm kind of
9:57
nervous and I get nervous about live
10:00
events in person because I don't know
10:03
what to expect you know you spend all
10:05
this time prepping getting a lot of
10:07
different products and skews and you're
10:10
doing ice cream if you can you're doing
10:12
fruit you're doing different types of
10:13
candies and I just get nervous because I
10:17
don't know whether something's going to
10:18
sell out I would love to sell out of it
10:19
I don't know if I made too much too
10:21
little and so I just want you to know
10:24
that from someone who has this YouTube
10:26
channel who talks to you who seems to
10:28
know it all I still get nervous and I
10:30
still have kind of the Jitters about
10:33
doing Live Events because it's a lot of
10:35
unknown with Live Events there's no way
10:37
to predict what the attendance will be
10:39
and also what kind of the ratio of
10:41
people that are actually going to buy
10:42
your product now the event organizers is
10:45
going to say well we had 6 to 7,000
10:49
people show up last year well that's
10:51
great but you know this is a different
10:52
time interest rates have gone up the
10:54
last event that I did back in early
10:56
November it sucked I did not make great
11:00
money compared to last year in fact it
11:01
was down almost 40% of sales and um you
11:05
know some of that I think had to do with
11:07
the event organizer I just think they
11:09
could have done a little bit more
11:10
advertising so you are kind of left open
11:12
to that what I liked about this new
11:14
event that I'm doing that for the first
11:16
time this year is they offered a social
11:19
media boosting package which I bought
11:21
for like 65 bucks and they've really
11:24
boosted the post that they did about me
11:27
and my freeze drying business freeze dry
11:30
and so it's been really nice being able
11:31
to have someone who's going to put in
11:33
that effort to put a post out there and
11:35
promote me and use that budget to
11:37
promote the event so I'm hoping for the
11:40
best for this event but at the same time
11:43
I'm nervous because I don't really know
11:45
what to expect in fact this event used
11:48
to coincide with the boisey holiday
11:51
parade and the boisey holiday parade is
11:54
back as well as this event is back for
11:58
the first time since Co so since uh 2019
12:02
she has not had the same weekend
12:04
coincide so she's really hoping that
12:07
this uh event and this the attendance
12:09
will be much higher and I I am too if
12:11
you like this content of seeing what the
12:13
day in the life of a free St business
12:14
owner is like I've got a couple other
12:16
Vlog episodes that I've done featuring
12:18
my commercial kitchen to me doing
12:21
another grocery run and things like that
12:23
and as always do something great in your
12:24
community using your free drip business
12:25
we'll see you on the next video cheers
