Gearing Up for the 2nd Half of 2024

hey hey David is back with the freeze dry business Channel I am going

to talk with you about pretty much anything and everything right now when

it comes to uh gearing up for 2024 because I took a small

vacation and I uh I've just been taking a kind of a high is for a couple weeks

uh doing videos and what I wanted

to hang on I'm just trying to figure out okay I'm starting to see the chats last time when I did the live I uh for those

of you that are joining this live broadcast um I'm I'm I just came back

from a hus of vacation as I was just talking about and I wanted to get on here and update you kind of where what

I've been doing what I've been up to the title of this live stream is to talk

about how we can plan for success for the second half of 2024 because we're only a couple of days away from August

and this is this is kind of a clutch time you know this is the time where if you don't have a plan in place to

maximize the holidays coming up then this is the time to kind of get get kind of some time set aside for you to start

having success for Halloween um we've also got um all the different types of holiday events that are going to start

asking for applications for you to send out so we're going to talk a little bit about that I'm gonna make this about I

don't know I'm going to go live for maybe in the next like 45 minutes or so and feel free to ask questions I've got

the chat up here in my in my YouTube channel so I'm hopefully going to be able to see

everybody's messages feel free to uh to to chat with me and uh like I said at

the very beginning I took a Hiatus I went to cordelane Idaho with my wife it's our first big trip that we had uh

without my kids I've got two young boys so it's a it's a very busy time and so

we took a a trip by ourselves um up there uh for a conference actually that

for my wife's uh profession and so I got to do some golfing with some of the uh the husbands and and then you know she

got she had the rest of the day and then we all kind of did different stuff on the lake there if you're not familiar with northern Idaho um beautiful lakes

like pondere Ray we've also got uh Lake cordelane uh Idaho is a

great state if you don't have a chance to if you've never had a chance to come out here in Idaho uh beautiful uh we've

got everything on the Eastern Idaho from Yellowstone Island Park a lot of different great ski resorts over there

Grand targi we're close to Jackson Hall then you've got boisey the capital A lot of fun things happening there and then

we've also got things happening up north too so uh a lot of cool things so uh in

and out of the chat that I'm going to answer um here soon feel free to submit

your questions um I just wanted to kind of chat with you about what I'm doing in my

own freeze drying business I own a freeze drying business it's called freeze dry Depot you can look it up type

in freeze dried candy or freeze dried fruit in Idaho my website my business usually comes up

and what I usually am doing right now what I've already done is I've reconnected and made sure that all of my

previous wholesale clients um you know I'm trying to just

capture you know what are their planned orders because if they are serious about

the holidays they've already started to pre-plan and get POS and uh get kind of

big orders um set up so they know kind of what they're expecting to have in stock for the holiday I'm talking about

local boutiques I'm talking about large retailers any of those types of people are going to have already things in

place for them to um have a successful holiday season

on top of that if you haven't done any type of events um then you want to start

going on to Instagram going on to Facebook starting to direct message some of these event coordinators maybe you

finding events through the event side of Facebook and then you can take a look to

see hey this is something I might be interested in and so if you haven't started doing that if you haven't

started touching Basse with your previous events start doing that now because that'll be us make have a lot

more success coming up uh for their second half of

2024 uh thanks for joining me on this live stream this is the second live stream that I've that I've done um I'm

very new to this but I like connecting with all of you who are subscribers of the freeze Drive business Channel I hope

everything is going well for you for me I needed a break I uh you know I do

video content for this channel but I also have my freeze drying business it's been extremely hot in Boyce Idaho I

think we're g to be setting records for the number of 100 degree type weather

and I haven't been running my freeze dryers at all I've got four freeze dryers and I just don't run very much

other than candy when it's that hot um it just takes too much time the machines are really working a lot really hard um

and um you know believe it or not it makes me a little bit stressed out because I know that I've got upcoming

orders coming out um coming up here very soon in September for some of my wholesale people and so I've experienced

this already two years in a row so I'm not a rookie at this so I'm giving you advice that when if you're living in a

hot area this summertime it's going to be kind of a a volatile time for you

because it's it's hard to actually run freeze dryers if you're running it out of your home it's hard to run freeze

dryers if you have a commercial kitchen like I do and they just don't have very good air conditioning it's uh it's

difficult to run a business out of that especially with freeze drying so if you don't have a good air conditioned

climate controlled area facility it's tough to run those freeze dryers and then you're kind of telling people like

hey I don't have certain things in stock because I haven't been running my freeze dryers but if you have good relationships doesn't really matter

right um anyway let's take a look Julie um seeing that uh that you're you

commented here uh Julie said um I seem to have trouble selling from my Facebook

page but sell very well at events uh yeah you know that can be uh that can be

just your res ating more with your direct customers people who want to know who you are your brand um perfectly fine

if you want to do better with your Facebook page um you know something that you could start developing a skill in

Facebook actually has some courses and things like that where you can take classes on Facebook ads I'd start maybe

kind of developing a skill on how to get better at your Facebook page and also

your post my suggestion too is I haven't found much success with boosting post I

think what you want to do is you want to get better at running ads on Facebook

it's very much more targeted you're more in control of how much you're paying per click for your ads things like that and

boosting is really how Facebook makes most of their money because it's kind of a a default like no questions asked type

of thing so they kind of want you to do the boosting sometimes I've found success with it but most the time f

Facebook ads is where I get that and they do make it relatively easy to do that you just have to kind of uh dabble

in it a little bit maybe set your daily advertising to $5 a day something like that just kind of experiments with ads

so Julie that's what I would say to you uh Cheryl hey thanks for joining the live stream I'm looking at your question

I live on the Golf coast of Mississippi it's been

so incredibly hot all summer that I had to put a portable AC in the same unit as my freeze dryer yep yeah uh same spot

and I'm sure you have a very humid area in your area uh which you know we we

don't get much humidity here in Idaho it's very dry which makes it nice for freeze drying um but uh yeah humidity

would play a huge Factor so I don't know what it's like for you doing fruit or anything that has um a real big impact

to moisture but humidity definitely would be an impact and you know that's

just the kind of the the name of the game with freeze drying again if you've watched some of my videos you've got to

be doing a any type of business Beyond just a year um oh yeah cros Crosby Texas

okay yeah you're humid too um I was actually born in Arlington Texas so I'm

very close I've got relatives in Mansfield uh Texas as well uh but what I

was saying about uh the business side of things is if you you got to run a business for

multiple years because you need to be able to see the cyclical time frame of

what kind of happens when it's super hot you got to deal with the kind of the stress and know how to manage that and

see if you're up for the task um like I said I put a pause on my freeze drying

business and I don't run it as much in fact I usually just default to Candy um I don't run much of my fruit I don't run

much of my ice cream which is usually my top seller so I just I communicate that

to my customers I tend to just take a hit on that and that's just maybe the

luxury that I have of running more of a side business if you're a full-time business then probably you are either

should be or you already have a facility that has good AC um good climate control

things like that um you know the freeze dryers give off not too much heat but

you know you're running the pump pump close to it and then you also have uh the condenser running within the freeze

dryer so it does kind of create some warm air the best thing that I've seen people do is you know in our houses we

have return air vents right so it's kind of taking some of that that uh air and

returning it that's kind of what you need to be doing in your freeze dryer rooms is where your freeze dryer is if

you have a way to get return air to kind of suck out that warm air and then uh

constantly just blowing it out somewhere that's the key I've talked about different types of fans and things like

that to kind of push it out but uh fans aren't the the best Factor what you really need is either one that portable

AC or you do need um some type of way to kind of suck out the the warm air and

put it outside put it somewhere else um so that's that's my tip

there uh let's see Todd hey thanks for joining I live in northern Minnesota so humid in

the summer but not too hot I have a dehumidifier in the basement perfect uh currently freeze drying whole raw milk

uh getting about three to four gallons of milk each day wow awesome um so I'm

assuming that uh you are basically taking the freeze dry R and just pouring the milk directly on there I was curious

do you use any of the freeze drying supplies that I've mentioned freeze drying supplies.com where you uh you can

put different tray dividers so you can create little squares of freeze-dried milk or um are you just creating more of

a powder form uh I'm always kind of curious of that I've seen it kind of been used in both ways but yeah super

hot it's I think I feel like it's been a super hot summer across the board um two

years ago 2022 boisey actually hit a record for uh the most consecutive

100 Dee or more days so we hit nine days I think we actually broke that last week

and it had or 10 or 11 or something like that but then also in 2022 we had a

record of like 203 or 24 days of 100 degrees and we're going to smash that

record so yeah it's been it's been super hot um hey Todd yeah that's correct okay

pour on the trays freeze drying not using dividers with the moment okay yeah perfect perfect um would be kind of

curious you know uh you know if you haven't if you don't

have many many accessories with Harvest right if you have a fre Harvest Right freeze dryer machine they make those

silicone molds that have you know I would say 50 or so different individual molds I've done that with uh ice cream

I've done it also with yogurt that might be something for you to try reason being

is this kind of gets into something I wanted to talk about which is when you're looking at the amount of people

that are doing candy and you know I really hate the word saturation I don't think people know

what saturation means U when people say it's saturated they just mean it's more competitive

that's all it is right now with freeze-dried candy um and specifically by the way it's competitive with

freeze-dried Skittles um you know a lot of people are doing Skittles and believe it or not I

saw somebody on Tik Tok live and uh I pay attention to all these different accounts and if you're that person great

thanks for following me here but I saw someone who was like I'm selling 54 ounces of free stride Skittles for

$12.99 and I was like man they're selling at the exact cost that it cost

to get that tub at uh at w at wco or it cost me to get that tub at Costco by the

way I haven't able to find freeze drat Skittles at Costco or Sam's Club for almost three months now I don't know

what it's like for you leave me a message in the comments have you been able to find Skittles uh in the 54 ounce

tubs uh at Costco or Sam's Club in your area um I'm telling you I think Mars

Wrigley is having more trouble keeping up with demand of regular Skittles and they are trying to focus on creating

freeze dried Skittles so that's my opinion I think everyone's doing it

that's why it's competitive that's why people say it's saturated it's it's not saturated saturation means that there is

absolutely no more uh availability for people to even

like you know in into the market and and sell the product um so you know for

example yes there's sticky notes but I could go out there and make sticky notes

as well there's still people that are going to buy sticky notes there's still people that are going to is going to are

going to buy candy there's no saturation with candy it's just very competitive right now um yeah and I sorry I got off

on a tangent there but yeah I saw these I see a lot of Tik Tok live people selling for really cheap that's

perfectly fine they're probably making money on the the volume side of things and

also some of those people are pretty smart business savvy people as well so they're probably doing something in a

different type of product or they're capturing email list um or they're

capturing some type of other type of product uh down the line that they make

up on that um I did hear I don't know if anybody is on this stream that's doing Tik Tock live um or has done Tik Tok

shop but somebody somebody told me that uh Tik Tock shop removed the the free

shipping that they were were offering uh if you have a Tik Tok shop because I understand that they were offer I don't

do Tik Tok but I understand that they were offering like free shipping and

that was something that Tik Tok offered but now they're killing that so it's kind of dropped sales for people um so

if you're on if you're on Tik Tok I'd love for you to mention in the comments here and let me

know um thanks for joining me on this live stream if you're just joining I I'm

David I'm the the freeze-dried business I live in boy SE Idaho uh started this channel a couple years ago in fact

actually yesterday this is how far behind I am yesterday I think was my first

anniversary of my first video that I ever posted on this channel back in 2022 um I wanted to capture what it's

like to run a freeze drying business and um I've had a lot of fun with it I know everyone who's commented here uh people

are joining me live the subscribers all of you have made this a lot of fun for

me to document my journey but also find out a lot more information about the freeze drying industry so I wanted to do

these live streams because rather than try to figure out how to edit videos and and you know I've

got this camera that I do most of my videos on it's this webcam and um I'm I'm here in my office

in my home and you know it actually takes a lot of work to edit a video even

if you're not going to do too many edits it's kind of trying to find the right storyline and you know um I want all of

you to watch the the the video so it's hard to kind of capture all these different moments and I found that the

live streams are just a way for me to be a little bit more raw and talk to you and also give you a chance to to ask me

questions um let's see I want to go back to the to the live chat uh if anybody has any

questions if you're just joining it's an open dialogue right now to CH talk with me about anything freeze drying um I

took some vacation I haven't released a video yet um for a couple weeks just I I

took some vacation with my wife and really enjoyed that up in Idaho uh cordal Lane area northern Idaho Todd

thanks have to run thanks for what you're doing I'll keep you ey more up for these awesome yeah set the

notification Bell on your subscriber for the channel that'll actually ping a notification on your phone uh for when I

go live I I need to get better at scheduling these but sometimes I'm just like I just want to talk so that's why I

do these really randomly uh Trish awesome hey thanks so

much yeah uh I really appreciate everyone who you know is watching paying

attention uh leaving comments I try to answer the best I can I try to respond to

emails um if you haven't been paying attention I do have a video podcast kind

of series and I put put it in a playlist on the channel it's called the frozen assets podcast and the reason I made it

more of a podcast is because I've been interviewing all different types of people that I'm meeting and connecting

with in the freeze drying industry people that I had no idea existed um there's experts about freeze drying and

vacuum pumps um I've interviewed almost all of the freeze dryer manufacturers

except for stay fresh um I've interviewed entrepreneurs in the freeze drying space including fril y's uh Yo's

fro yo bites they he does uh yogurt bite swirls so he freeze dries uh froo yogurt

and then he and then he uh freeze dries it comes kind of a crunchy fruit uh

snack which is awesome and then I also interviewed sweet potato awesome looking for more um but yeah you know I'm I I

wanted this channel to be one talking about the business end of freeze drying but I also am finding that there's just

not a whole lot of people that are talking about other types of businesses and what people are innovating how you

can innovate what type of packaging is great for freeze drying um how to make your business grow social media

strategies all that type of stuff so that's what I want to do with this Channel and so uh Trish thanks for

commenting on that that's I that's that's my goal that's why I'm doing this um so I also wanted to you know one

of the things I wanted to address on this video was I I titled it you know

gearing up for the second half because it comes super quick I believe I made my

goals back in December of what I wanted to do my freeze drying business and I

was looking back at those goals and I hadn't yet met um several of them so a

couple of them was I wanted to do two additional holiday events this year and I haven't done a great job at finding

those so one of the ways that I'm doing this and you can mirror the same concept if you're not familiar with Facebook and

you're not familiar with Instagram especially on Facebook you can search for events in your local area and then

you can actually set the filter to date ranges so what I would look for is any

types of events that are popping up for you know a Facebook event from these

holiday bazaars um boutiques things like that they're going to create a Facebook event

because they want the attendees to know about the event not just the vendors

once those events are created they're cached into Facebook so you're going to be able to search for all these

different Saturday Sunday multi- weekend during the week type of events take a

look at those and then find the ones that you want to apply for the most maybe it's based on geography of where

you live maybe it's you know very much about that event and so you know that there's a lot of people that attend that

not all events are going to pertain to your business and your type of brand so

if you don't feel like it's your kind of repertoire and your type of audience

then don't apply for it also you know different events cost different types of money I've paid upwards of

$375 for a 8 by8 Booth but I've made 10x

that on my event I've also paid $75 for an event and although I made you know

like 15x that so you know a th000 bucks it was a two-day event and it just they

didn't advertise the event very much so nobody really came so you got gotta kind

of take it take it with a grain of salt of how much you're paying for the booth and also how much uh they're actually

doing to promote it I like personally events that they give they they actually

like promote a lot on Facebook and if they do that then I think that that's a

uh that that's a really good uh event to do because you want them to promote the

event so that more people attend not necessarily promoting your particular Booth but I like it when they're doing a

lot more promotions like Flyers radio ads uh Facebook ads all of that they're

actually doing different types of ads uh throughout the the ramp up to the to the

event all right getting back to some of the questions Trish I need help with the wholesale side and barcodes I downloaded

your template okay yeah so if you are uh speaking to the the template that Trisha

is mentioning there I do have a spreadsheet template for uh just a basic

Roi of here's the cost to to go and purchase the product like taffy or

Skittles here's how much the bags cost here's how much the labels cost and then giving you an actual profit uh

area um so if you are uh looking into

wholesale and you're looking at using my template the template is more so just to

give you an idea of what your profit would be I did exclude because I created

it just to be very simple I created it without factoring in like your facility

rental cost because if you're paying a monthly fee or if you're paying by the hour that's really just kind of more

subjective to you so when you use my template uh that you can find um I'll

link it in this uh live stream once I set it up after this stream um but you

can also go to my YouTube Channel's uh page links and I have that right there

it's the ROI spreadsheet um you'll submit your email to get the spreadsheet

I'll send you an automatic email there you'll have a link to the spreadsheet you can create a copy of it and it's

yours for completely free to use and you can input all your different products so

you can put in how much you're spending on Taffy or candy or fruit and then you can figure out what your Roi and your

your kind of cost would be uh and your pricing um so that's the download of the

pr template Trish to answer that question about the wholesale site and barcodes um I don't actually do barcodes

um most of the consignment stores and the wholesale they do their own

barcoding if the if the vendor that you're trying to talk with is wanting

barcodes um then you can use actually Avery uh labels if you avery.com um I

did a a video if you'd want to check that out about how to create your own labels and that actually um uh describes

what I do uh for creating labels in there they actually have a way for you to put barcodes into your label as well

so you can create separate barcodes I've done that before uh that's a great actual idea I'm gonna write that down

right now because I actually uh could create another tutorial about how to do barcodes for you and I'll put that on my

list right now barcode

tutorial yeah great so um I'll create that but in the meantime um you can go

to YouTube type in how to create barcodes for your product I'm sure there's a video out there that shows you

if you want to use Avery then go ahead and just type in how to use barcode how

to create barcodes using Avery labels and I'm sure there's a video already out

there but I'll do something myself as well pixel Panda shorts welcome you do

have a question live in the UK awesome uh yeah what's your question go ahead and type it into the uh the chat box

this is a live Q&A if you're just joining um I'm going to be live for the next probably 15 minutes or so just ask

me anything that you'd like I've been kind of absent of posting videos recently so I wanted to do this live to

just kind of give you all a chance to ask me any questions I've been lingering um I'm also going to be coming out with

a new video uh here very soon um to introduce you

to a very popular and multi-million dollar candy business I interviewed them

live in person uh actually back in March I've just been going through some more of some edits and things like that and

what a great interview you're going to really like the the the owners of this company it'll inspire you um to either

do candy just like them or do something different but they're making things happen and they all started just like

all of us with a small business so uh they're making things happen

uh live in the UK and I'm looking for good packaging and stickers okay um yeah

I've got some videos about packaging and stickers now when it comes to in in I'm

more familiar with using bags for packaging so craft bags myar bags things

like that um if you want to use something different I've seen people use um uh

actual like sealable plastic app I've seen people use containers that you can

seal um I've seen people use things like bobaa if you know what those are with the tapioca balls down at the bottom

they have like a plastic lid on the top of the of the cup um people have used

that so there's just different ways to package the things that's going to impact your freeze-dried candy fruit

things like that is sunlight moisture and oxygen so any way that you can kind

of limit those factors is going to make the shelf life longer for any type of product you put in there for candy

freeze-dried candy remember what you're doing Candy you're using the the vacuum

and the heat from the freeze dryer to make that candy pop certain candies do others do not and if you want to know

why certain candies pop and others don't actually watch my previous interview with suntor Jean ligman that interview

is actually um on my on my YouTube Channel right now and I've got a time

stamp where he talks about that he talks about like why certain candies pop and he talks about certain sugar molecules

and ingredients that they use in those candies and that's why they pop so um

but but getting back to to the packaging side in my experience candy doesn't need

any type of auction absorber or desicant packets it doesn't so when you're when

you're looking at starting a freeze drying business and you're like man do I need to use these no you don't uh again

and think of this too this is this whole freeze drying industry is very different

from what we're all accustomed to knowing about freeze-dried products um

some people are using for homesteading and for food preparation and also when

you think of MREs and mountainhouse like backpacking meals that's more for

long-term storage long-term meaning let's say it's longer than three years

really what everyone this the the the business industry of of what we're all a

part of right now it's for short-term consumption I mean if you're having your

your product on the Shelf longer than I would say six to 12 months I mean your

product just not moving very fast in that store it could still stay there um

I don't think you need to buy that product back I don't think your vendors who you have for wholesale need to do anything different um but in my opinion

it's so popular right now that people want to eat candy right now why do you buy candy or chocolate candy bars at the

grocery store or convenience store because you want to eat it right somebody B buys your bag of product of

candy fruit ice cream whatever you're selling pet food they're gonna give it to their pet they're going to eat it

right away so this type of Industry you need to think of it as shortterm

consumption don't worry about longevity unless you're try try to Market your

brand that way so if you have a recipe for some type of freeze-dried protein

bar or or whatever type of mixture and you want it to be more shelf stable for

the long term now uh Panda shorts you said also need a good reliable freeze

dryer for under 500 EUR um I'm G to look up 500 EUR to

Dollars $540 well uh in US you're not going to find a freeze dryer for

$540 um the cheapest freeze dryer you can buy is from Harvest R um the small I

think is yeah under 500 pounds well yeah let's check that out sorry I'm

in Google pound 500 pound dollar well

yeah it's that's still $641 um

pounds so $641 us or even 500 pounds

you're not going to be able to find a freeze dryer like that the only freeze dryer manufacturer that makes any type

of affordable freeze dryer is Harvest R and harvest R makes a small I believe

it's I we we could look it up on on harvest right right now Harvest Right

freeze dryer small you could probably look it up too but um

yeah 2200 bucks so you can buy a freeze dryer for $2,200 us and then I don't

know what their their international shipping is like but that's the cheapest freeze dryer you can buy um do not buy

freeze dryers that are advertised for less than that unless you can find

reputable I would say us-based type of uh companies now the UK has a lot of

freeze dry manufacturers but they don't have that for that price um so you're not you're just not going to be able to

find that I don't believe there's any manufacturers that are making uh freeze dryers for less than what Harvest Right

has yeah they're fake um don't yeah uh anything you're you're

finding in that's that's less than Harvest Right uh in terms of pricing is

is fake there's just not a a freeze dryer out there um so don't be very

cautious about that is what I'm saying Plan B Idaho locally in the

Treasure Valley what's up hey uh my freeze dver is located in my garage and

is um is in hiest mode for the summer excuse me yep just like me if

you're just joining Plan B that's uh what I talked about at the very beginning it's been a super hot summer

here in the treasur Valley um yeah uh looking at resuming it that's what I do

um you know I'm right now boisey like today and tomorrow supposed to be like

low 90s even like 89 degrees so I'm doing freeze dried ice cream right now

uh in my kitchen so I I'm like just pumping out as much ice cream as I can

because all of my local uh Boutique vendors are all asking for that so I

I've told them that with the hot uh summer heat I just can't do it so once it gets back up to 100 which is

unfortunately by by Friday for the next Friday through Wednesday uh starting

starting on Friday is going to be 100 degrees so I'm going to have to put another pause but I look for those windows of opportunity to do things that

uh are better at an ambient heat of lower temperature and that's what I

do yeah it's just been super hot

okay yeah still still too hot in the garage yeah yeah you know I've actually got a

personal freeze dryer uh in my garage I don't run it very much right now either

it's just super hot there's just no way to cool it off uh at all um Panda shorts

it has 4.7 star reviews again uh there's just there's just no

people can buy reviews by the way um again I've seen different types of

people see Chinese made type of freeze dryer shipping from China I just I don't

know if I can you'd you'd have to probably email me about some of these freeze dryers

that you're seeing for that that price again and I've talked about this uh in

in another video I I don't want to talk about uh and address you know and try to

compare all these different freeze dryer Brands and and like this one is way better than the other I'm all about

freeze drying as a business and right now Harvest Right has the best most

affordable freeze dryers to run a business they have the largest capacity freeze dryers for the most affordable

price I know that some of them have had issues they do have some failure rates

that um people have have talked about I've had some one of my freeze dryers

just be the the ugly the ugly stepchild of of my freeze dryer family um and and

unfortunately uh that's just that's just what you're going to have sometimes with these machines uh you have to take it

with the grain of salt in terms of what this freeze dry industry has become you

know do you think that Harvest Right ever thought that they're freeze

dryers back in let's say 20 18 2019 and now today will be ran

247 um and people buying 30 to 40 freeze dryers to run a business no they did not

anticipate that um now now they're recognizing that and I think a lot of the other freeze dryers manufacturers

are um but uh so a small freeze dryer you you just can't beat Harvest Right on

the price and it is a good freeze dryer it just is um but if you're looking for

something a larger than that then you can look at stay fresh you can look at Blue Alpine you can look at uh I don't

know about the cube I've heard I've heard good reviews about the Cube It's Made by prep for life and um I've heard

good things about it but it's kind of expensive for what you get relative to the amount of product that you can do um

inside that freeze dryer so I just don't know if it's it's not something I would recommend for a business side of things

so that's why I don't really explore it uh can you send the link here uh to

harvest right yeah let's see if we can I can get

you a harvest right link I'll I'll send you my my affiliate link to harvest right

and then you can go to uh any type of support basically these affiliate links that I have in my videos it just helps

support my channel so I can you know dedicate more time to this and things like that so you don't have to purchase

through my link but if you do purchase a a freeze dryer through my affiliate link to harvest right then it kind of gives

me a little push back uh commission Wise from that um so there's a link to harvest right you can go there it'll go

take you to the homepage and then you can go to the small a size see what that

can do for you uh the small size in my opinion is great for testing and then

you can ramp up to the XL or the HRC 100 um or you can look at some of the other

brands too uh if you want to uh let's see Plan B even though I am

not running a business I have learned much from your videos awesome thanks a

lot so I'm gonna give this five more minutes or so we're GNA go to about

let's see yeah about 10 minutes till uh I'm on mountain time so we'll do about

10 minutes to the hour here thanks for joining me if you have done the live stream if you want to put some chats in

again I'll resp respond up until that point or like put your questions in there and then I'll respond uh even if

it goes over a little bit but uh I will be coming out with some new videos um

coming out here soon I've got a great interview um that I did in person with

the freeze stride candy business multi-million dollars really exciting uh

thing that I did back in March I just take me a while to edit and just get it get it the right way so it's very

entertaining for you uh but it's going to be a great informational video for you to kind of

see the story of someone who's grown it from a side business just like all of us

with a couple freeze dryers and then now what they are today and what they're

planning on doing with their business then they actually give a lot of great tips as well um that you guys ask me as

well um this is coming straight from a multi-million dollar company how does fruit sell compared to Candy uh CR hey

thanks for joining the live stream great question um I will tell you for my business it actually sells more better

than my candy I've done multiple events I don't know why but every time I go I

use Square the payment uh operating system so when I create my my Square um

uh items and things before an event um so if in my event side of things when I do events uh I get to actually see what

the quantities of how it Compares and uh fruit ends up being 60%

of my sales compared to to candy and if you layer in my ice cream then it's

about 7030 I think just people have had ice cream uh sorry I think people have had a

lot of candy like the the what's great is the consumer now knows what freeze-dried candy is and tastes like

now they may not have tried all the different varieties that everyone freeze dries they may not have tried different

flavors things like that but I think it's really good that now you're not trying to convince someone that

freeze-dried candy is cool uh or tastes good now you have kind of established consumer base now they want to try other

things so I I've talked to freeze-dried candy businesses and they're like why the heck do you do fruit um it takes too

long it's just not as high of margins for me I'm small enough to where I do

have still some margins I still have a a higher price for my freeze-dried fruit

because I don't add anything I don't do anything different I hand cut everything I try to source as best I can from local

like Regional producers of fruit and I price it accordingly and so and I also

really I think people look for the healthy option while they're also buying something really sweet so that's why I

do fruit and I do candy the ice cream is also a really unique thing in Treasure

Valley um where I'm at I there's just not a whole lot of people that do ice cream because ice cream again is very

difficult just like fruit um I hand scoop everything I don't layer it down on a tray and then I cut it up it's just

hard it's it's a hard product to produce so I don't think a lot of people do it and I sell a lot of freeze-dried ice

cream um so I hope that answers your question and if you're looking for fruit options I do have a video um about how

to fre dry fruits and the fruits that I would suggest you can look it up it's um go to my videos and then you can look up

uh just type in the search bar fruit and I've got a beginner's guide to how to freeze dry fruit from strawberries

blueberries and apples and then I also have one about tropical fruits as

well thanks okay I'll finish up with the last couple questions I can't afford

$2,000 yeah not everybody can afford to buy a freeze dryer and uh

but you know if this is something you're passionate about I think you could easily pay back that freeze dryer um not

only with a business but you could pay it back uh with things that you can do for other people so for other people

that you want to freeze dry again I think $2,000 you could pay back very easily talk to anybody on Facebook

groups or people who are in this chat even in the comments they'll tell you that they've P back their freeze dryer

very quickly uh in terms of the cost um so it it just it's it's actually a

prettyy high return in terms of what you can make so I hope you do it uh Panda shorts

um okay Hayden I'll answer that hi just starting out I'm wondering what is a good number of different items to start

selling at markets great question I've got some videos about that on my channel

as well um I did some things about different events I've also got I think it's my second most popular video is the

top 20 items I would I sell for my freeze dring business you can check that

out it's one of my oldest videos but it's also one of my most popular because I think it resonates with a lot of

people trying to know you know what do you what do you start selling um for me

sell things that you see already being sold so if you're in a local area and there's just not a freeze drying person

uh around you then um sell things that are selling right now Skittle freeze dried Skittles are selling well uh

freeze-dried fruits selling well freeze-dried Taffy freeze dried uh nerd

clusters um all that type of stuff is selling really well so um there's a lot

of great candies that are that are out there so uh start that out plan B um trying to do ice cream

sandwiches that you had one of your videos first time and last was messy uh but you're not of business yeah um ice

cream's tough you have to have a process I've shown that in the videos it's a it's a pretty fast process and I've

gotten kind of my technique down to where it's not super messy again I don't

do ice cream and ice cream sandwiches um in this High type of heat because it

just it just quickly makes it uh melty

and the meltin if it's not hard and compact when it's on the freeze dryer tray and then actually when it starts

drying it'll start creating like bubbles and actually make it not uh attractive at all it'll just crumble up and create

a lot of air pockets and that's probably what you're seeing Nigel hey man what would be your

opinion on a free string business that only operates online um well a lot of people operate

online a lot of Tik Tok shop selling on freeze drying um you don't have to have a storefront these days um so uh you

know find the find a find a cool product experiment um take some ideas from my

YouTube channel take some ideas from if you follow a YouTube channels called Space Age snacks that guy does a lot of

shorts uh he has great editing it's more for entertainment purposes but I think

he inspires a lot of really cool aspects of how to use freeze drying to to like

with with uh recipes and and cooking it's kind of cool so Space Age snacks

check that uh he's got almost 4 million subscribers and I've been following him since he had like 300,000

uh he's really taken off that's where kind of I like seeing just like what he does and it kind of inspires to be like

oh you know oh I could freeze dry this candy make it into a powder then coat it

to something else that people didn't think would taste very good um that's what I would do and then then you can

just use your online marketing like Tik Tok Tik Tok Instagram Facebook things like that to Market uh what you've just

created that's what I would create an online business all right thanks a lot for

joining me on this live stream um I will be coming out with the video this coming Sunday getting my normal routine of

releasing a long form video um uh on every weekend so I'll get back to that

in the meantime take care um I hope your business is doing well this summer and

hey it's the second half of 2024 so best of luck uh planning out if you haven't

done any type of planning yet for your upcoming events do it right now just

take the initiative take the take a couple days search on Facebook for the events start writing down what you're

going to sell who you're going to talk to and let's let's crush it I mean there's still so much opportunity for

2024 so all right until next time cheers