How Herbert's Jam Reached $10K in Sales and Why Nathan Made No Offer

So we're back here in Austin, Texas at Ghost Line Kitchens meeting a very early stage founder. He's got a jam company, literally a can thing of jam under $10,000 of sales.

More often than not, you'll find me at a farmer's market.

Are you all in on this today?

So I'm not all in on this today. I would love to be.

The biggest question is, is this company at a stage where my capital can help him grow faster? If you really believe in this, you need to free up more of your time to go figure out marketing advertising. You need to take less personal trainer clients. Fair point. Yeah. No. So why haven't you done that? Just because I haven't. If the founder doesn't have a clear way where I can put money in the company to help it scale, like, I'm useless. Do you have a concrete ass?

Hey. I'm Nathan. Hey, Mitch. Mitch, good to meet you, man. This is your your jam brand up here. Yes. So tell us about Herbert.

So all of this started, if you're familiar, there's a cookie that's eaten on a Jewish holiday called Purim. The the cookie's a hamantaschen. Okay. It's jam filled, triangular shortbread, and my wife and friends were saying that I should be making hamantaschen. I went to culinary school, really enjoyed pastry. I said, sure, but I'm gonna do unique flavors. I want something that's not just strawberry, not just raspberry. So I came up with some weirder flavors, including actually

one of the... My favorites is strawberry, black pepper, lavender. Mhmm. But then I thought, wait. Why only do cookies? We don't have to limit it to that. Let's just work on the jam itself, refine that, and then give people other options, other ideas. The strawberry, black pepper, and lavender is fantastic for a salad dressing. You could even use it to make cocktails.

Give me the timeline here. So when did you... What year did you first start tinkering around with this? 2020. Were you giving up a big corporate job to jump into this, or how'd you get started? What were you leaving?

I wanted to create new flavors, just learn new stuff. I was working in a restaurant, so I had some ideas. But then one So you were...

That's where you moved from. You were working in a restaurant before 2020?

Yes. But even when I started this,

I was still in that. How did you make the decision on when to officially quit the restaurant and go all in on this? Are you all in on this today?

So I'm not all in on this today. I would love to be.

Okay. So why not why not quit and go all in?

Because at the moment, it's not cost effective.

Like, you're not... You're just not making enough money on this yet to support your living expenses? Yes. How much money would you need to make on the jam business in order to quit

your full time gig? Even taking home 50,000 net, I'd still be wanting for more. I'd still be interested in growing even further. You know, my wife also works full time. She's the the bread... I'm the bread maker. She's the breadwinner. Yeah. And now, you know, we have a 13 soon to be 14 old son. So...

Is his name Herbert?

No. That's my middle name.

Okay. Got it.

Oh, yeah.

So you're basically saying in order to quit and go all out on the jam business, you need to be at $50,000 per year net. Yes. Okay. How close are you to that today?

Oh. It it it would take a lot. Production, it's just me. This is Ghost Line Kitchen. It is a shared kitchen space. This is just kind of my area where I can make the biggest mess that I want.

So what does this run each month?

Just renting the space is gonna be about $125. Okay. An hour? That'll be for for a five hour window.

Okay. $125 for five hours seems cheap.

Yes. Until it adds up. Plus another $200 just for storage. Okay. You know? And then before you know it, that that gets... That that number just goes through the roof.

In terms of your cost, your monthly cost today, is this your biggest expense? My biggest cost would would likely be produce. Produce.

Just the the fruit. Because whenever I do make the jam, it's just fruit, sugar, and a pinch of salt. I'm not adding pectin. I'm not adding anything else. So you're getting a really concentrated flavor. So the yield is lower, but the flavor is really what stands out. So I find myself at H E B or ordering from US Foods several times a week.

But where are you today? Like, in last year, what would you... What were total sales? Were you talking like 10 or $5 or where were you?

Last year, closer to 10. So break down the margins for us.

When you sell $10,000 in a year, how many of these is that? So each one

of those jars online $14. It's gonna be about $4 roughly per jar. That's just your cost.

Yes. Does that include the activate The lid and the jar.

And the custom label and everything? The ingredients?

Yes. So all in.

All in per jar. $4. $4. Yeah.

Okay. So $14 minus 4 means you have $10 left to mess with. Where do you put the rest of the

$10? So that goes to this. Yep. That goes to travel expenses, gas. That goes to maintenance and vendor fees for markets. Thousand of them would be 14,000.

So you did a little... So call you did, like, 650 jars, something like that Roughly. Roughly last year. Yeah. Mitchell, why don't you take us into making a batch? How many do you get out of batch? How does it start? So this process you're about to start, how many individual cans will this make? Usually, a batch will get me about 12.

So this is the cranberry, orange, and five spice. Okay. So the first thing, the cranberries. If you

look here, we have about two quarts. It's a little light,

so I'm not going to use an entire quart of sugar. Appropriate ratio is two parts fruit to one part sugar. This is the classic Chinese five spice. If you're gonna... Let's say you go to a Chinese restaurant, you go to a char siu or anything like that, that is the spice blend that you will often find with it. And then we're going to use, for these oranges, juice and zest. One three pound bag of oranges for

one batch. Get this all juiced. It's gonna sit there for a minute. We're gonna let the sugar and the cranberries macerate Okay. For a little while. The other thing that

I always make sure I add is salt.

This is all gonna go in a pot over to the range. I crank it all the way up. It's not something that you can just set and forget. You definitely want it boiling, but if I let it sit for too long, it's going to burn. And how long does this typically take this process? Could be an hour.

Takes up the most of your time than it's sitting here stirring it slowly for an hour.

We're gonna go this way. So

jam's all ready. One jar here, and we just pump it until that line right there.

Okay? So YouTube, I imagine you're sitting home hearing about this recipe. You have a custom thing, you build at home, you made a recipe, you're going, man, can I turn this into a business? Can I throw up a Shopify website? Can I get $10,000 of sales? I'm curious if any of you are doing that at home. Maybe we'll visit you next time. Go ahead and leave a comment below.

How do you label them? So I will hold it here. Often I'll be sitting at my desk when I do this,

and then we'll get it on here to one side and the other.

There you go. How does somebody buy that?

So I... More often than not, you'll find me at a farmer's market, otherwise promoting online.

How much of your sales comes from the website versus other channels? Could be 10%. Okay. So like last month you sold what maybe like $10.20 dollars to the website?

Roughly that some gift cards as well.

Okay. Yeah. Can... If someone in California, we're sitting in Austin buys these on your website, can you ship to California? 100. Okay. Do your do your margins drop significantly? Not so much.

We've established a specific, flat rate for shipping, and then it's also unit specific. Do

you require a minimum order amount if you're shipping it to California? So someone could buy one jar and ship to California. How do you make money on that? I don't get it.

Well, if I'm charging... It's a $9 flat rate for shipping. Oh, they pay the they pay the shipping. Okay.

Yeah. This year, what percent of your total sales will come from hot sauces?

From these two bottles alone, maybe five to 10%. How how many sales? Like, what's the best seller? Another sauce that I make called. Currently, it's only available if you come find me at the Farmer's market. On a slow day at the market, I'll sell 10 jars of varieties of jams, so just... But 10 in total. I'll sell 10 scrub. What do you sell these for? $12. And what are your total costs of goods sold? 2 or $2.50.

Okay. So better margin than the jam. The jam was $4 of cost on $14 of total revenue. Yes. So better margin. Interesting. And so the growth plans going forward here in 2025 and 2026, is it just focused more on the jams, the hot sauce, or something else? I kinda had the idea of turning Herbert's

not just into a jam and hot sauce business, but more of the the appetizers, the accessories. If you were to go into a liquor store and they have all the fine foods, that kind of stuff.

The more product lines. Yes. Mitchell, you're scaring me. YouTube, you know this. The founders, we always have new ideas. It's like a new product every two weeks. But how do we get just the jams to a million of sales before we go do seven other things?

I think that comes down to marketing. Get those ads on Instagram and Reddit.

And do you not like marketing? That's why sales are so low.

It's not that I don't like it. It's that by the time I'm done making jam, I don't have the time to do anything else.

Talk to me more about how you wanna grow the business. Right? Today, you're doing... It sounds like last year, somewhere around 10,000 of sales. How do we get to 50,000 and then a 100,000 and then a million?

Everybody that I speak to who's tasted it can't get enough, but not everybody knows about it.

So who's gonna help you market and advertise if you've already told me, you're like, you're a one man shop, you're tired after you making a batch, marketing takes a second seat to making the product. Who's gonna do that?

I'll have to find somebody. Somebody who knows what they're doing.

Do you have any marketing or sales ideas where my capital plus that idea would help you grow faster?

The ground force. That's, you know, I'm able to make everything. I can go do a market, but I can only do one market per day. Mhmm. If I can be at two or three or four markets on Saturday and on Sunday Mhmm. Then I'm increasing that local exposure.

Mhmm. Well, how the hell do we do that? Human cloning is not an option yet. It's not cheap.

So so the next thing would be find people who are willing to, you know, wake up early on a Saturday or a Sunday, and load up their car with a tent and a table and a k... You know, a crate full of jam.

Do you have folks lined up for this? Like, not yet. Okay. So why haven't you pulled the trigger on that if you think that's what's gonna grow the business? It's

just because I haven't.

I don't wanna make the wrong move. You know?

And sometimes you have to take that risk,

but it's also for me understanding when is the right time for that risk.

Yeah. I like folks that hate wasting time. They're impatient. They wanna grow fast, like Right. Do whatever it takes to scale. Like, now, you sort of have a nice, maybe it's not cushy, you have a full time job covering your expenses. You've got a little one. Mhmm. So you have to mitigate your risk a little bit. I get that. But like at some point, gotta be like, I'm doing this thing. I'm all in. Yeah. I'm burning the boats. I'm going for it. Sure. Like what needs to happen for you to make that kind of statement?

Once the demand is there that whatever I'm working with isn't enough, then I need to make those changes. Because once I'm there, then the fun starts to happen. Then we're getting into the fermentables. Then we're expanding the brand. Then we're creating so much more.

You can't afford to do something new though if your current product is not selling like aggressively. You're just not selling enough of the jams and the hot sauce to give you the freedom to be creative on new product lines. Yeah. It's sort of like putting

the cart before the horse. Right? If I was to get my into HEB and have that on the shelves, boom. It's gonna go like crazy. The jam, people are going to be much slower to buy it. Also, the price point that it's at, it might not be the best fit for HEB. Are they perishable? Oh, after about a year. Okay.

So shelf life is not an issue. Right. Okay. So why are you not an HEB yet? Stocking costs.

It could be 800 or $1,000 per SKU.

I'm sort of hunting for, is there a way I can put capital in the business to help you grow faster, but I feel like I'm sort of having to really tug to figure out a way to put some capital to Do their you wanna... Do you have an ask or do have a... You wanna pitch me on something specific? Hiring somebody to do

the advertisement to get the brand recognition out there so that people know the name. But the other big thing is getting into... Getting my product on, store shelves.

You're the one though that's gonna have to do or do that. I mean, you guys you guys maybe saw the whims episode. I mean, you guys remember how hard Jesse and Leanne had to hustle, you know, to get into all these locations. No one's gonna be able

to sell better than you are. Right.

Right? Like, so, like, you could say, Nathan, I need go hire someone for $5 a month to go sell, but no one's gonna sell like you sell. For sure. Right? So I'm still trying to figure out, like, what the capital ask is. Is it Nathan, I'd like, you know, a thousand bucks to go test on Facebook ads to, you know, see if there's a good click through rate there. You know, is it something else? I don't

love hiring people because you don't wanna build your fixed cost base before you have more sales. Yeah. We do this show because we love supporting small businesses. Right? That... That's all the way down to the... A first sale happening into a kitchen to someone like Mitchell that has a little bit of scale. Now here at Ghostline, you know, $10,000 of sales. But ultimately, the founder doesn't have a clear way where I can put money in the

company to help it scale, like, I'm useless, both my expertise and my capital. So the pressure's on Mitchell here. Right? Do you have a concrete ask or is it a no deal today and we come back later when you've scaled?

If you were in my shoes, what would you ask? What do you see from an outside perspective coming into this? The first thing I do is

say is can I buy myself get this thing to x amount of sales? Okay. Because if I can't sell it, nobody can. Right? I mean, you are the story. Right. And so I'd say, Nathan, I'm gonna give myself six months to do whatever, $50,000 of sales. And if I can't do that, I'm gonna stop and just be happy with the corporate gig for a while. If I crush it with the urgency, then I'd go build faster.

I'm gonna do it a little bit differently. Simply because the...

I don't wanna give up on this. And it's not it's not a a matter of being stubborn, but it's just considering the amount of time, the energy. I have one gig that I do on Mondays and Tuesdays, but then as a personal trainer, I'm contract, you know, I do more, individual clients here and there sporadically, which gives me more time to do this stuff. Mhmm. I just... I can't see myself giving up on it. It's just a matter of moving the chess pieces in the right order, knowing when to make that move.

If you really believe in this, you need to free up more of your time to go figure out marketing advertising. You need to take less personal trainer clients Yeah. To free up your time to go figure this stuff out. Sure. Like you haven't given me any idea... Things that you've tested or said that you've tested. What I've heard is I'm so busy. I haven't even done testing. I want someone's sort of capital. There's come some like figured out for me. Fair point. Yeah. Yeah. So why haven't you done that?

Because I'm very good at finding an excuse. Okay. There's always the end, this is way it goes, but there's always something to derail whatever it is that you're working on.

Well, look, I... We love obviously what you've built. It's great, you know, putting putting a spotlight on it here. I hope Herbert's grows into a massive brand and we come back in a year and you say, okay, Nathan, now we're at a million of sales. You missed out, you know, nine months ago when you came along. But I think I think for today, because you're not all in on the idea and because I don't see a clear way to write a check to help you grow faster, I'm not gonna make an offer today, but I'll send you one email per week saying, have you started investing more in marketing and sales yet? Fair. It'll be in your inbox every Monday at 8AM.

I actually... I would appreciate that.

Alright. Fair enough. Hey. It was really great

to meet you, Mitchell. Congratulations. Thank you. Yep.

If you guys like that deal, remember, new episodes drop every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe so you don't miss out. Also, wanna see more deals like this one? Click here to see the next deal immediately.