July 28, 2020 • 34 mins
FYI!!! Carla Marie is no longer the host of a morning show in Seattle but she is still supporting small businesses in every way possible. She’s even started her own small business with her radio cohost and best friend, Anthony. All of the links below will help you stay up to date!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Side Hustlers podcast. I'm your host, Carla Murray.
In each week of Side Hustlers, I talked to someone
different following a passion outside of their day job, and
often I tell you that this very podcast has become
my own side hustle. But for the first time ever,
this is now my main job. As of Friday July,
(00:23):
my co host Anthony and I got let go of
our jobs hosting the Carla, Marie and Anthony Show on
one oh six point one Kiss FM in Seattle. This
did come as a shock to us. Any of this
you can learn on any of our social media accounts.
All the links are below. We even got to go
live on our Twitch stream to talk about what happened.
You can find all of that below. Because that's not
(00:45):
why you came here. You came here to hear the
story of someone following their passion, and I just wanted
to give you that quick little update. But I will
say that this podcast has helped me through this, and
it's only been a few days because I have learned
from so many both who have been fired from their
jobs or left their jobs, or whatever it may be,
who have taught me that in these moments. It's when
(01:07):
you learn your real passions and you get creative and
you move on to something bigger and better. So to them,
to every one of my previous guests, I am so
incredibly grateful for you and your words and your support.
Thank you because you're all getting me through this, and
thank you for supporting this podcast for listening every week.
(01:28):
I appreciate you for being here, thanks for reaching out
to me. You can always find me on Instagram at
the Carla Murray. It's all below, but in this week's episode,
I talk to Chris and his fiance Marissa. I've known
Chris since he was a little kid. We grew up
in the same hometown. And now Chris's side hustle to
being a stay at home dad, is owning his own
(01:51):
meal prep company called Real Foods. His fiance, Marissa, you're
also going to hear on the podcast. She's a full
time accountant and this is also her side hustle. They
do this together, but it's incredible the passion that they
have for food and how it changed their life. On
top of that, they've also started selling honey because they
have their own bees. They are beekeepers. You're gonna learn
(02:12):
all about it in this episode of Side Hustlers for
a lot of people. You know, why are you? What?
Do you know? What you want to do? And this
is something you want to do. You're talking about and
do it. I'm a hustles side side hustle. Do it.
I'm a hustle hut do it. I'm a hustle side hustlove.
Come on, ask about me yo yo. It's the side
(02:33):
Hustless podcast we call The Root. So this is a
side Hustlers. First, I am joined by someone from my hometown, Chris. Hi.
Chris and his fiance Marissa. Hi, Marissa, and it's so
nice to meet you over zoom. I've I've known Chris
and she was a kid running around causing havoc, which
I'm sure he still does. But it's nice to meet you.
(02:55):
I see the face, so so yeah, that happens. So
I'm excited about this episode be because it's something that
hits home for me in the world of food, because
once I moved out to Seattle, I started focusing on
my health and diving deep into what the food world
was and how it really affects your life. And I
know you did that and you've turned that into a business,
(03:15):
So let's get started with real Foods, which it's I
Want Real Foods dot com. People can check it out.
It's a meal prep service. So like, what made you
say I want to start my own meal prep company?
So it kind of fell into my lap. So it
was in culinary school and I was posting on my
social media on my Snapchat and Instagram, like all of
(03:35):
pictures of the food I'm making, and then one of
my friends was like, hey, and this is before meal
preps kind of blew up. They were like, hey, I'll
pay you to make me food, and then it just
evolved into what it is today. And we have some
customers that we've had from day one for four years,
where we're word of mouth for three years and then
we started online on our website in January. Yeah, kind
(03:59):
of just fell into my lot. It just came to me.
It's funny that you say a friend was like, can
you just make food for me? Because I feel like
I do that all the time to friends like can
you just cook for me? Or can you just And
you actually ran with that and you were in school
for it, So what was your original plan when you
went into culinary school? So I went into culinary school
because I was just I mean, I come from a
family where food is kind of like the heart of conversation.
(04:21):
You come from an Italian family and Jersey of course,
of course, exactly exactly, so I kind of honestly didn't
have a full plan. Remember in the beginning, we wanted
to do like healthy fast food. Oh my god, please
still do that. I say that all the time. I'm
always like, I need a salad. It's going to take
seven years to get one, right now? Can I just
go through a drive through? Exactly? And people who were
(04:44):
like work late. That was my big thing because I
was like, because I at the time when I started this,
I was also working at the Empire State Building at St. Barnbrow.
I remember getting out of work would be like twelve
three a night and I would be like, I'm starving,
and like whatsover McDonald's or whatever. I was like, you
know what, this will be cool? And then company, No,
but that's amazing. It's crazy to me when I talked
(05:04):
about when I was reading your website and the things
that you do, I don't really think of someone from
North Arlington, New Jersey focusing on healthy, sustainable food. It's
just it's not it's not a thing that comes from
that area. And I talked about it all the time.
How I didn't learn about that until I moved across
the freaking country. And I want to get more into
how that happened for you, but I wanted to talk
(05:24):
about how your side hustle. This is a sign hustle
to you being now a stay at home dad, which
you and I talked about, which I've never really had
a stay at home dad. I don't think on the podcast.
And Marissa, you have a full time job and you
run this business as well. So what is your full
time job. I'm gonna count a car dealership and caucus,
So I guess that you do the a lot of
the business side of real foods. Yeah, all the administration
(05:47):
and the website and customer service I do. Just yeah,
that works though. I mean, you guys have two different
skill sets, and when you put it together, you've got
an awesome business. So you have a four year old daughter, correct,
and you've got another on the way, So it's about
to get even crazier. Do you have a schedule that
(06:07):
you work around with one another or is it just
as things happen? We kind of roll with the punches
as they go. She tries to like pre plan everything,
and I'm kind of, you know, it'll always be. Like
our conversation on the way home from work today, I
was like, all right, so what do you want to
do when I get home? Like what's the plan? And
he's like, I don't know, Like we're just gonna figure
it out, and I'm like, and that's why. And it's
(06:30):
weirdly works though, Like also have a rule like when
we're in the because she comes into the kitchen she'll
do like justizing organizing. Yeah, and our rule is we
keep business, stays with business, and then we come home
and we're fiances or whatever you wanna call a scarpet.
But that's smart that it's super smart to do that
one year in the kitchen and then come home and
(06:51):
it's like, oh friends, Okay, that's at least it's not
the other way around. That's probably the best way for
it to be sometimes when when you say, in the kitchen,
do you have us space now? Yeah? So it like
worked out again. This is another thing worked out perfectly.
Fell into my lab at this local restaurant and Nutley,
there was a hair salon that was next door to
his restaurant that he gutted and turned into a catering kitchen,
(07:15):
and like uses it like sometimes like a little bit
out of it, but it just worked out. When I
go to the website, it looks awesome, like you guys, really,
you've done it so well, and me like in my
mind like you're still a little kid you' And I'm like,
he's got a legit website and a great company. Like
this is crazy to me. It means I'm old at
this point. I am someone who is gluten free, dairy free,
(07:37):
peanut free. It's awful. So and sometimes it's like I
don't even know what to cook. I wish that I
could have you ship me food all the way out
to Seattle. So where did it company? Maybe work something out? Yeah,
we've been looking into it for a while. So that
stuff by something that's going to be coming soon. So
keep your eye out. I'll gladly be the test on me.
That's why I am too. So I have a bunch
of stomach issues. I try to stay gluten free. I don't.
(08:00):
I can have mouths, fortunately for me, but I try
to say gluten free, dairy free. I'm not big on me,
you know, and that's kind of why this worked out
so well. And the crazy part about it all is
we did zero marketing, zero sells, zero anything, and we
use word of mouth for three years, which causes to
have such a strong base of our customers and clients.
(08:20):
But that's so that's so smart to have that customer
service with them. And food is such a personal thing
for people. I mean, it's a part of our everyday lives.
And if you can get into someone's everyday life, you're
set as a business. And it's incredible what you guys
have done. There are obviously a few companies that have
done that, but I feel like in I mean even here,
I've tried to find it. I've tried and there's nothing
(08:41):
that works great. And price wise, there's nothing that makes
sense price wise, Like you guys are very affordable. Where
do you come up with that? For? Is because we
make everything from scraped. In the food industry, the more
that you have done to the food, so the more
cuts you have. If you buy the sauce pre made,
it's more expensive. Right. We have a lower partis one
because we make everything ourselves to like her name, like
(09:06):
real foods that goes back to kind of like the
health part of it too, where like we're making everything
from scratch, so you know, it's not like filled with
preservatives and high for dress corny stuff that's not good
for you. And and turn it also makes it more
affordable because it's just real ingredients, you know what I mean.
Ents Well, you mentioned word of mouth, and how I
(09:28):
originally found out you were doing this was because my
sister Ashley Marie had posted about I believe one of
the meals she had from you, and I was like,
where did you get that? Because I have been so
interested in the meal prep service, and she was like
it's Chris, and I'm like, wait what. And then we
kind of started talking. It's been a while and we
started talking about this, and I was like, you need
to ship it out to me. I need to do this.
I need to have some So word of mouth really
(09:50):
does work. It really is the best form of marketing
since the beginning of time. Obviously, have you guys ventured
out into any other type of marketing at all. So
we had social media throughout the whole process. Kind of
we didn't really take advantage of it, but we just
started doing like big promotions on Instagram. Instagram is where
we do our marketing now and we do text campaigns,
(10:10):
email campaigns. But previous literally zero besides word of mouth,
zero for three years, no marketing, no sales, no nothing.
We just every week it was like and we did
it through text message. That's crazy their orders. Yet we
would make it pdf file of the menu and we
had a whole list of people we would send it
(10:32):
to through tax message and it was like fifty customers
route send the Oh my god, that sounds big Excel spreadsheet.
Oh my god, it was customers name and each So
we did the customers on side, the meals on the top,
and we would hand put one too. So what do
(10:52):
you do now? So through the website someone orders and
then what we exported through Excel, and um, we have
a whole I have my old spreadsheet from that calculates
everything that we need for shopping and how much meet
meed to get and cook and everything, and then it's
all portioned out exactly. So through the Excel it just
calculates for us. But the website does all the work,
(11:13):
hard work, right, I'm sure you save so much time
and then you can have family time, personal time, even
time to work on the business in different ways, because
that's a lot of extra work that you had to
be doing well. For the first almost year, I did
in a notebook. I it was only for a couple
of weeks because I was like it was for a while,
(11:33):
not a year. I'm exaggerating, but I did. If I
could still have a notebook, I would. I just that's
how I am. You know, I'm very I'm not anti
social media because it is the way of the future,
but I didn't want it to blow up. But I
kind of kicked myself. If I would have back then
took advantage of like the whole social media thing, that
would be huge because we started. I don't know, if
(11:54):
you're familiar, there's a couple of other male companies are
huge right now in New Jersey. When we started, they
had just started to like it was a new thing.
So I could have Yeah, but that doesn't mean that
doesn't mean adult like you still can and like we're
still you know, but I mean I think about like
hello fresh, Yeah, but that's completely different than what you do. Yeah,
(12:14):
but it could have been, you know, evolve something. Don't
say it could have been because it still can be
and that's what's so so important. I mean, look at
these businesses. I mean, look at Amazon. It was a
crappy little bookstore for the longest time. And that's something
you have to keep in mind. I know you didn't
come here to get my advice, but I've talked to
a billion people about their freaking small businesses, and there's
(12:36):
just so much to learn. When you start a small business,
and you, guys, you've only been on it for a
few years. You have so much more to learn. It's
changed so much already. Like think about you said it
was the notebook and the Excel spreadsheet, and now it's
a full blown business, not running itself, but you've got
the website. It's still just the two of you. At
some point, there's gonna be more people cooking for you
and delivering and doing all of that. Absolutely, that's another thing.
(12:59):
As we have employees, and I'm like, this happened from
my one friend, you know, because I kind of look
at the timeline of it, and like, my one friend
asked me to make her food, and now it's like
employees and I'm training people and all this. The really
awesome thing about it is, since it's not an everyday thing.
Right now, I raise Riley as my full time job,
our Order Riley, and then I get to work as well.
(13:22):
So it is. I love it. I'm super super grateful
for it. When you say it's not every day, then
what is the schedule? What is the how does that
work for you? Guys? When it comes to people and
putting their orders are DeLine is Friday right now? Pick
up and deliveries Sunday, So basically people order up until
Friday Friday night. Then we run the report Saturday, we
do our shopping. Uh sometimes, I mean I would realistically
(13:45):
love to do more prep on Saturday, but we do
our cooking on Sunday basically, so they're getting their food
cooked and delivered all in one day, and so it's
at the most fresh the food can possibly be. On
our containers. We have like obviously all the macros, the ingredients,
you know, heating instructions are low. Well, when you were
(14:05):
in culinary school then, and I mentioned this earlier about
how I don't picture people from North Ormington, New Jersey
caring about health food at all? What got you into
this world? We've been And that's so funny that you
say that because we've been told so like through probably
since we're eighteen nineteen years old, like you don't belong
like you belong over there, like well, thank you, well,
(14:27):
thank you. We've been very health conscious and like always
been about sustainability. I mean I was always into like
living like off the grid kind of type when I
was younger. Yeah, it's just been something I've we've always
been passionate about. Like we've always just really health conscious. Yeah,
basically because it makes us feel good too. When you
(14:48):
got me all that's healthy and like you know what
is in it and you know that it's all good stuff,
like you feel you don't feel like yeah, right, so
it gives you energy. It does what food is supposed
to do. Food is not supposed to make you feel
like you want to curl into a ball and die.
Supposed to give you all this energy. And Chris, when
you really started focusing on this, you lost a ton
(15:10):
of weight, right, And I have I don't know, I
mean I've gotten testing and stuff done. I mean I
just have like something is a little messed up. But um, yeah,
if I didn't eat how I eat right now, Like
if I didn't eat this healthy, I would be That
was another thing I want to touch on. We have
a couple of customers who are diabetic. They take less
pills now their levels are all back. And then so
(15:31):
end with Marissa too. I don't know if we can
touch on this, but so she actually just beat cancer
last year, which by the way, is amazing, So congratulations,
non hops foma. Obviously she went through chemotherapy, but we
use food as our second that's a big supplement. She
(15:51):
beat it fast, she hadn't. It was aggressive and in
June June of last year, I was stage three boot
borderline before and then by August that was my first
PET scan. I was completely inactis. And it's wild what
food can do. I mean, there's so many Netflix documentaries
right and I would force my parents and like go
watch this, like please just get brainwashed to realize what
(16:15):
food can do for you. Because if we went back
in time to Caveman dates and and even sooner than that,
more recent than that, we realized they used food for
everything because they didn't have any other options. And I
often think about that. I try to go, Okay, well,
what food can I start eating before I start taking
this pill or this vitamin? What is it? And you Marissa,
are living proof that it really can make a difference.
(16:39):
And you mentioned customers with diabetes. So my mom has
had diabetes for seventeen years at this point or around there.
In September of last year, I made her go to
my natural path here in Seattle. I had her visit
and she did of all the tests everything, and had
a conversation with her and my mom started a keto
diet because that's great for people with diabetes. My mom
(16:59):
must take and awful almost all of her diabetes medicine,
no insulin, none of that. And then she got open
heart surgery. This year. She has like recovered so fast
from this open heart surgery. She looks amazing. I know
it's she would not have been able to do that
to the gym now, yeah, she wasn't doing that before it,
and it is crazy. And I keep telling her, I'm like,
(17:20):
you went into this surgery so healthy because of what
you did. And and I'm glad that you guys are
being that voice in an area where people do not understand,
and and keep doing what you're doing, keep fighting the
good fight, because out here it is the polar opposite.
We we get it and we eat the foods that
we know are healthy most people here. And you mentioned
(17:42):
about going to the doctor and finding out what's wrong.
Even right there, there's already discrepancy between New Jersey and Washington.
And Washington natural paths can practice as doctors, they can
write prescriptions. Is that a natural path is ancy and
that right there, it's like, wait, well, I don't know
what a natural path is. So natural paths in New
Jersey don't even have to be certified, which is scary,
(18:03):
but you can find a certified one. A natural path
is a doctor who will look for a holistic approach
before they do write you a prescription. So my doctor
sat down with me and we did an allergy test
and an intolerance test. I was thirty one years old
when I found out everything I was allergic to my
entire life. She then also looked at my twenty three
and me results like the back end of them, not
(18:23):
just what they tell you. She was able to look
at my jeans found out that I do not absorb
vitamin D the way I'm supposed to, so any vitamin
D pill I take is doing nothing. So I'm on
liquid vitamin D because half of my vitamin D passageways
are blocked or whatever it is, and she's able to
tell me all this stuff. My body doesn't properly do
something with stress, so sometimes I can be super excited
(18:45):
and then I'll drop dramatically my mental like my emotions.
And I learned all of that through a natural path.
So after this, I'll get I'll get you guys connected,
and it's amazing. And and she's like, if you eat
these darkly fee green more than you have been, it'll
occur this or X y Z and it's all this stuff.
So I do all of that before I resort to medication.
(19:08):
And that's kind of what you guys are really doing
here with your business. It's and I never even knew
this that you were that much into, Like I've obviously
known that you were like health conscious and stuff, but
and that really is food is fuel, Food is medicine.
And that's kind of why I mean, our our name
is real food. It's like it's to keep food real
because another issue too that we're having as a society
(19:30):
is overly processed. I am allergic to peanuts. I don't
stop breathing when I have them. I didn't know it
is allergic to peanuts. I always ate peanut butter, but
I haven't had peanuts really in over a year. I
had pad tie last night, which has peanuts in it,
and normally I'm fine if I it's not it's a
little bit. I have been like sick for twenty four hours, dizzy,
almost passed out, and it's like, you don't realize what
(19:53):
could be happening to your body every day. You could
be somewhat used to feeling like crap, and it's not
until you get into this healthy life style that you
realize all this bad stuff you've been putting in your body.
And you, guys know this. I'm not preaching to YouTube.
I'm preaching to the people listening who need to hear
this and understand that there are these amazing businesses like
yours out there that can help people get down this path.
(20:15):
You're not just feeding people, You're changing lives, which is
crazy to think about, but you are you. That's crazy
to hear it too. I like, I don't think of
it like that, even though I kind of like I
want that to be. It is credit to like that's
just a human thing. But it sounds great to hear
you say that, and it feels really good. It feels
(20:35):
really good. And there's people I've had not to throw
some of my customers under the bus. I have some
customers who like cannot cook, like cannot at all. I
can't even cook like ground turkey. We have some older
single men. Well, we serve like a lot of them,
you know, compromised families, and we have a family with
(20:56):
children are disabled. Yes, yeah, and then speaking speaking up
a child, but yeah, but it's truely, think about you've
set yourself up where your business is a few days,
where you can be a stay at home dad. Now
there are some people who can't do that. How do
they have the time to cook a healthy meal for
their family? They don't. Another like option we offer is
(21:17):
bulk options, so so you don't want to order, you know,
like individual meals you can't order for your family. Can
get pounds and you can get pounds of vegetables. You
guys thought about all of it. So it's I want
real foods dot Com for people. I want real food stock. Okay,
And you also have Instagram? Who runs in Marissa? Do
you do all of the pretty stuff on Instagram? Yeah?
It does. It looks great. We did have help on
(21:38):
our website from Christmas. But I've been maintaining it since.
It's not it's not an easy thing to do, but
you taught yourself how to use the website. I'm kind
of a perfectionist, So I built the website up through
the past four years, built it up, deleted it, built
it up, deleted it didn't like the domain name. Then
I had my brother Anthony had recently finished college, finish football, everything,
(22:03):
and we kind of just sat down were like, let's
just learn how to do this. It can't be two
which it was kind of hard, but it can't be
too hard. So we taught. We taught ourselves, you know,
how to do everything back end of the front end
of it, you know. We use a little bit of WordPress.
And then we were like looking at uh, squares squares space,
squares space and like uh and ended up like coming
(22:24):
together pretty well. Like I really like it's on the background,
it's use there's a lot of different options for like
email campaigns and marketing. Yeah, it's awesome, it looks great
and it's cool that you've done it yourself. I mean
it's also a lot of money that you've saved there
as well. Well. The whole business we have had literally
just us and we're I was two when we start.
When I started it, well I'm twenty six. Think about
(22:49):
what's gonna happen when you're in like ten years, Like
it's there's so much more to grow and branch off.
You guys I saw are sold at King's Court and
for people who aren't from North Jersey, King's Court is
like this huge gym, sports facility, health fitness center. So
how did you get that deal and what exactly does
that entail? I kind of was pondering the idea of
(23:10):
like going to a gym, and like I was like, oh,
you know, it would be cool. Like obviously people walking
into the gym are hungry every time. I'm like I'm starving.
I wish there was food right here. So it's like, oh,
you know what, I'm a member at Kings Court, so
it's like, let me talk the managers and let me
like see if I can yeah my way in there.
But one of the assistant manager is actually one of
(23:33):
our customers as Yeah, we put like a limited menu
in Kings Court. We stock it every week fresh you know,
on Sunday night, and we made a name for ourselves
there too, because we would have a bunch of events,
so like they would be Christmas or we would offer
you know, like male tasting. We have a whole table,
(23:55):
little sam bowles and discounts and everything. So how has
the pandemic affected the business? We unfortunately have really not been.
The only hit that we really took was a couple
of weeks we couldn't run the business because there was
no meat anyway. Yes, yes, everyone should have just gone vegan.
You could have done vegan milk. Yeah, literally, Well that's
(24:16):
the funny thing is if you went to the supermarkets
around here, the vegan sections, like even even just the produce,
it was full, but like every single thing all the time.
I had problems signing produce like weeks. So it was
crazy and we felt so horrible because we were like
these people already ordered and we but there we really
(24:36):
couldn't find the amount of meat and protests that we needed.
And sometimes they were out of chicken, out of steak,
like we didn't have. We had to really work. We
were going to the frost stores broccoli. Our farmers market
are lyned to get into the farmer's market that we
we used to go to this little tiny hole in
the wall farmers market then no one really knew about.
(24:58):
And then when the pandemic happened, the line was like
a six hour wait, like you're waiting online, you can't
do that. But otherwise, you know, it makes people are
more focus on healthy food now because they want to
build up their immune system. So it works well for
us because that's you know that, that's really cool. That's well,
that's great news then, And I'm sure you've learned things
(25:19):
while this has all been going on, how you can
adjust and pivot the business and if it hits again,
what are you gonna do and there's no meat, you
need to you know, come up with plans and at list.
We all come out of this with a little bit
of a learning experience. It'll be good. Okay the moment,
I've been waiting for the bees. So what I told
my sister I was going to be talking to you.
She was like, oh, and the bees. And I was
(25:41):
like what and she's like, yeah, he has bees. I'm like,
what do you mean he has bees? And she's like,
so I've recently learned the importance of bees and how
there are less bees in the world. And I don't
think I've dove into it as much as you have, Chris.
But let's talk about the bees. And you have bees
and you're making honey. What the hell is going on?
This kind of all still goes back to your first thing.
(26:01):
How you know we're from this area where like you know,
like we're a little bit different. I've been like this forever.
Like I didn't watch cartoons as a kid. I watched
antal Planet National Geographic, like that's who I am. We
had chickens for three years in Lyndhurst, like we had
hit them from everyone or neighbors were cool with it.
So with the bees. So these are um, I believe
(26:23):
it's sevent of our all of our produced are vegetables
and fruit and stuff are because of beach basically collination.
All that honey also is you know, one of the
one of it's a supers it's craziness. You really like
food anti biotics and it plant you can treat allergies
(26:44):
with it, Yeah, like if you honestly so, my brother,
not to get off topic a little bit, but the
last batch of honey that we had, my brother Michael
had gets like really really bad his allergies induced as
one just really bad allergies. I was like, okay, listen,
you live in my only way. If me beast travel
a five mile radius, take some of this honey. He
took it and the next day crusty like he felt good,
(27:08):
so you could use it and then then it's amazing.
It's it's amazing the psychology of the colony as well,
like if you really get too deep into it, if
he into they communicate, the communicate with where the sun
is they find it's it's pretty crazy. There's have you
seen the episode of the series on Netflix Um with
Zac Efron Down to Earth. Yes, there's a whole episode
(27:30):
about bees. And there's a hotel in New York City
that has like a home for bees and they fly
and they do their thing in Central Park and then
they come back and I'm like, what do you mean
they come back? What? Like it's crazy. So but Chris,
what made you like figure this out about bees? Trying
to think back? So this is my second year of
having beans. Where are they by the way there in
(27:52):
my backyard? Okay? And you could watch them go back
and forth and they don't sting. They literally if you
say in my backyard, I sit there so times like
a freak and you see them. They go and they
love like the Danny lions, Like you see them, take
the Dandy lions. They go back in. But if you
walk out of our back door into her backyard, you
would never guess we had bees because you don't see
them ever unless you're like right next to the hive,
(28:14):
which is we have dogs and our dogs. And then Marissa,
when your fiance says, so I'm going to get bees,
what do you say to that, Well, it's just another thing,
like he's he was into snakes for a while. We
had like an alligator, so it's just like kind of
like the next thing. Well, at least this will produce something. Yeah, yeah, literally,
(28:38):
I mean we had chickens to I kind of that's
why we work. Well. So she never had like pets
or anything like growing up like she is very yeah,
like like we we got the beach, Like, oh that's awesome,
like honey school, we got the chickens. She's like, oh,
we love eggs, you know, so, but yeah, literally, probably
(28:59):
back into chickens. I want to get to oyster farming. Honestly,
you want to know what's next. Working into oyster farming,
which you know oyster reefs. They used to be around
back in you know, the beginning of America, and they're
like really really crazy with filtration of the water. So
I was actually looking to like get into oyster farming.
(29:20):
So I mean, do it. It's cool. Okay, So you're
gonna get honey from the bees, and within the next
few months you're going to start selling the honey. So
for people who don't live in New Jersey, this is
a part of your company they can support, which is
really cool. I'm excited to order honey. So you'll be
able to order fresh New Jersey made honey, which is
really cool. But I gotta you even get honey. I
don't know. Have you done this process? Yes, So there's
(29:42):
a couple of ways. We do it by hand. We
have three boxes. There's a little slit on the bottom
of the hive that the bees go in, and then
in each box there's ten frames they're called so each
frame you can get like a spinner and like it.
But how I do it is I literally take and
do it by hand, so you get you're getting even
more because you're getting some of the wax in there.
(30:03):
I strained it obviously, so it's just the honey. Yes,
So every fall in spring, you can have a harvest
this hive that I have now, I didn't do in
the spring, so that it's gonna be we're gonna get
a lot for the fall. And basically I put it
on my website. We had our first our first year,
we had sixty pounds of honey. So you have I
thought this was brand new. No yeah, no, so we
(30:25):
didn't know. So we sold it out of our website.
And if you if you scroll down in our in
our order now section, there's the local raw honey. You
put updates every month of what the bees are doing.
It like, this is the cutest listen to this. So
when are we put our honey up? I felt like
Kylie Jenner. It literally sold the honey sold out in
(30:50):
thirteen minutes, No way, pounds of honey thirteen minutes. My
friends and family that were like I wanted some. I
was like, I don't know why. I didn't think it
was gonna happen like that. Sots just like that. I
was like, oh my gosh, you better save that. Everyone says,
I have like probably like thirty people that we're going
(31:10):
to have a lot creat about these beasts. Two we're
right next to gut Mountain, which is you know, a
whole reservation. So the bees are getting which is great.
Urban bee keeping is one of the coolest things the
world because so many different people have you know, different
flowers and like different things where so it's like you're
not getting one, You're not just getting clover, You're not
just getting you know, you're getting so money. Okay, I
(31:33):
think I need to do this. You need to help
after this. We set it up because my neighborhood is
basically a giant garden. Like everyone in this neighborhood has
just an overgrown flowers and we grow like the craziest
flowers out here, like people grow lavender on their front lawns.
It's bizarre. So you're gonna have to help me with this. Yes,
I've gotten what is it, two or three people and
(31:53):
two bees. That's cool. You should run a course. Yeah. Yeah,
well that's the thing. I just send them, needbevideos to
send them. Linking by every kind of Amazon. You get
the best ship to you. You get a box of bees. Yeah,
it's really something everyone can do. It's like even if
you live in an apartment, if you can talk to
like you know, you're the manager at the apartment. If
(32:14):
you do something on the roof, it's great for the environment,
it's great for you. It's cool. Okay, So I need
to know that very first friend who said, hey, Chris,
can you cook for me? Does she get free meals
for life all the time? And I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I owe you, and she's like, yeah, I know,
I started it. I want temp percund like jokingly, you know,
(32:35):
I know, Daniel Rio, that's hilarious. That's so cool. It's
amazing seeing what you've done, what you've created. And I'm
not trash talking our hometown at all, but it's a
very small town. People are not really open minded to
anything then what they've been spoon fend their whole lives.
(32:57):
So it's really cool seeing like you've really it's not
that you've risen from the ashes, because I'm making it
sound like we we lived in the like the middle
of nowhere. It's not like that at all, right, But
I mean, actually, you're right. Our town had more dead
people than alive for most of our lives because the
cemetery was so big. So it's cool to see what
you've done and what you've created. When it wasn't something
(33:19):
you were taught growing up. You've you've you're self taught,
and the two of you together use each of your
skill set to create something amazing. So I'm excited to
see where you guys go from here where And you're
already at this part. So it's I want Real Foods
dot com. Even if you don't live in New Jersey,
follow support Chris and Marissa and get ready for that
honey and reach out to them if you want to
(33:41):
learn about honeymaking and beat keeping and urban bee farming
and all of that. Guys, thank you so much for
being here so much. Thank you again for listening to
side hustlers, for supporting small businesses, for supporting me. I
cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. But go
ahead below so sport Chris and Marissa and Real Foods.
(34:02):
All the links are down there, and I've also included
all the links with all the different ways you can
find me. My twitch stream with my co host Anthony,
our podcast together are Instagram's, all the things are YouTube.
Just go there. It's all below. Thank you for being
here and thank you for joining me on this wild journey.
I can't wait to see what's next. I hope you're
(34:22):
excited too. This podcast has been produced by Houston Tilly.
Thank you so much. Keep hustling and be a good
human
This is the Side Hustlers podcast. I'm your host, Carla Murray.
In each week of Side Hustlers, I talked to someone
different following a passion outside of their day job, and
often I tell you that this very podcast has become
my own side hustle. But for the first time ever,
this is now my main job. As of Friday July,
(00:23):
my co host Anthony and I got let go of
our jobs hosting the Carla, Marie and Anthony Show on
one oh six point one Kiss FM in Seattle. This
did come as a shock to us. Any of this
you can learn on any of our social media accounts.
All the links are below. We even got to go
live on our Twitch stream to talk about what happened.
You can find all of that below. Because that's not
(00:45):
why you came here. You came here to hear the
story of someone following their passion, and I just wanted
to give you that quick little update. But I will
say that this podcast has helped me through this, and
it's only been a few days because I have learned
from so many both who have been fired from their
jobs or left their jobs, or whatever it may be,
who have taught me that in these moments. It's when
(01:07):
you learn your real passions and you get creative and
you move on to something bigger and better. So to them,
to every one of my previous guests, I am so
incredibly grateful for you and your words and your support.
Thank you because you're all getting me through this, and
thank you for supporting this podcast for listening every week.
(01:28):
I appreciate you for being here, thanks for reaching out
to me. You can always find me on Instagram at
the Carla Murray. It's all below, but in this week's episode,
I talk to Chris and his fiance Marissa. I've known
Chris since he was a little kid. We grew up
in the same hometown. And now Chris's side hustle to
being a stay at home dad, is owning his own
(01:51):
meal prep company called Real Foods. His fiance, Marissa, you're
also going to hear on the podcast. She's a full
time accountant and this is also her side hustle. They
do this together, but it's incredible the passion that they
have for food and how it changed their life. On
top of that, they've also started selling honey because they
have their own bees. They are beekeepers. You're gonna learn
(02:12):
all about it in this episode of Side Hustlers for
a lot of people. You know, why are you? What?
Do you know? What you want to do? And this
is something you want to do. You're talking about and
do it. I'm a hustles side side hustle. Do it.
I'm a hustle hut do it. I'm a hustle side hustlove.
Come on, ask about me yo yo. It's the side
(02:33):
Hustless podcast we call The Root. So this is a
side Hustlers. First, I am joined by someone from my hometown, Chris. Hi.
Chris and his fiance Marissa. Hi, Marissa, and it's so
nice to meet you over zoom. I've I've known Chris
and she was a kid running around causing havoc, which
I'm sure he still does. But it's nice to meet you.
(02:55):
I see the face, so so yeah, that happens. So
I'm excited about this episode be because it's something that
hits home for me in the world of food, because
once I moved out to Seattle, I started focusing on
my health and diving deep into what the food world
was and how it really affects your life. And I
know you did that and you've turned that into a business,
(03:15):
So let's get started with real Foods, which it's I
Want Real Foods dot com. People can check it out.
It's a meal prep service. So like, what made you
say I want to start my own meal prep company?
So it kind of fell into my lap. So it
was in culinary school and I was posting on my
social media on my Snapchat and Instagram, like all of
(03:35):
pictures of the food I'm making, and then one of
my friends was like, hey, and this is before meal
preps kind of blew up. They were like, hey, I'll
pay you to make me food, and then it just
evolved into what it is today. And we have some
customers that we've had from day one for four years,
where we're word of mouth for three years and then
we started online on our website in January. Yeah, kind
(03:59):
of just fell into my lot. It just came to me.
It's funny that you say a friend was like, can
you just make food for me? Because I feel like
I do that all the time to friends like can
you just cook for me? Or can you just And
you actually ran with that and you were in school
for it, So what was your original plan when you
went into culinary school? So I went into culinary school
because I was just I mean, I come from a
family where food is kind of like the heart of conversation.
(04:21):
You come from an Italian family and Jersey of course,
of course, exactly exactly, so I kind of honestly didn't
have a full plan. Remember in the beginning, we wanted
to do like healthy fast food. Oh my god, please
still do that. I say that all the time. I'm
always like, I need a salad. It's going to take
seven years to get one, right now? Can I just
go through a drive through? Exactly? And people who were
(04:44):
like work late. That was my big thing because I
was like, because I at the time when I started this,
I was also working at the Empire State Building at St. Barnbrow.
I remember getting out of work would be like twelve
three a night and I would be like, I'm starving,
and like whatsover McDonald's or whatever. I was like, you
know what, this will be cool? And then company, No,
but that's amazing. It's crazy to me when I talked
(05:04):
about when I was reading your website and the things
that you do, I don't really think of someone from
North Arlington, New Jersey focusing on healthy, sustainable food. It's
just it's not it's not a thing that comes from
that area. And I talked about it all the time.
How I didn't learn about that until I moved across
the freaking country. And I want to get more into
how that happened for you, but I wanted to talk
(05:24):
about how your side hustle. This is a sign hustle
to you being now a stay at home dad, which
you and I talked about, which I've never really had
a stay at home dad. I don't think on the podcast.
And Marissa, you have a full time job and you
run this business as well. So what is your full
time job. I'm gonna count a car dealership and caucus,
So I guess that you do the a lot of
the business side of real foods. Yeah, all the administration
(05:47):
and the website and customer service I do. Just yeah,
that works though. I mean, you guys have two different
skill sets, and when you put it together, you've got
an awesome business. So you have a four year old daughter, correct,
and you've got another on the way, So it's about
to get even crazier. Do you have a schedule that
(06:07):
you work around with one another or is it just
as things happen? We kind of roll with the punches
as they go. She tries to like pre plan everything,
and I'm kind of, you know, it'll always be. Like
our conversation on the way home from work today, I
was like, all right, so what do you want to
do when I get home? Like what's the plan? And
he's like, I don't know, Like we're just gonna figure
it out, and I'm like, and that's why. And it's
(06:30):
weirdly works though, Like also have a rule like when
we're in the because she comes into the kitchen she'll
do like justizing organizing. Yeah, and our rule is we
keep business, stays with business, and then we come home
and we're fiances or whatever you wanna call a scarpet.
But that's smart that it's super smart to do that
one year in the kitchen and then come home and
(06:51):
it's like, oh friends, Okay, that's at least it's not
the other way around. That's probably the best way for
it to be sometimes when when you say, in the kitchen,
do you have us space now? Yeah? So it like
worked out again. This is another thing worked out perfectly.
Fell into my lab at this local restaurant and Nutley,
there was a hair salon that was next door to
his restaurant that he gutted and turned into a catering kitchen,
(07:15):
and like uses it like sometimes like a little bit
out of it, but it just worked out. When I
go to the website, it looks awesome, like you guys, really,
you've done it so well, and me like in my
mind like you're still a little kid you' And I'm like,
he's got a legit website and a great company. Like
this is crazy to me. It means I'm old at
this point. I am someone who is gluten free, dairy free,
(07:37):
peanut free. It's awful. So and sometimes it's like I
don't even know what to cook. I wish that I
could have you ship me food all the way out
to Seattle. So where did it company? Maybe work something out? Yeah,
we've been looking into it for a while. So that
stuff by something that's going to be coming soon. So
keep your eye out. I'll gladly be the test on me.
That's why I am too. So I have a bunch
of stomach issues. I try to stay gluten free. I don't.
(08:00):
I can have mouths, fortunately for me, but I try
to say gluten free, dairy free. I'm not big on me,
you know, and that's kind of why this worked out
so well. And the crazy part about it all is
we did zero marketing, zero sells, zero anything, and we
use word of mouth for three years, which causes to
have such a strong base of our customers and clients.
(08:20):
But that's so that's so smart to have that customer
service with them. And food is such a personal thing
for people. I mean, it's a part of our everyday lives.
And if you can get into someone's everyday life, you're
set as a business. And it's incredible what you guys
have done. There are obviously a few companies that have
done that, but I feel like in I mean even here,
I've tried to find it. I've tried and there's nothing
(08:41):
that works great. And price wise, there's nothing that makes
sense price wise, Like you guys are very affordable. Where
do you come up with that? For? Is because we
make everything from scraped. In the food industry, the more
that you have done to the food, so the more
cuts you have. If you buy the sauce pre made,
it's more expensive. Right. We have a lower partis one
because we make everything ourselves to like her name, like
(09:06):
real foods that goes back to kind of like the
health part of it too, where like we're making everything
from scratch, so you know, it's not like filled with
preservatives and high for dress corny stuff that's not good
for you. And and turn it also makes it more
affordable because it's just real ingredients, you know what I mean.
Ents Well, you mentioned word of mouth, and how I
(09:28):
originally found out you were doing this was because my
sister Ashley Marie had posted about I believe one of
the meals she had from you, and I was like,
where did you get that? Because I have been so
interested in the meal prep service, and she was like
it's Chris, and I'm like, wait what. And then we
kind of started talking. It's been a while and we
started talking about this, and I was like, you need
to ship it out to me. I need to do this.
I need to have some So word of mouth really
(09:50):
does work. It really is the best form of marketing
since the beginning of time. Obviously, have you guys ventured
out into any other type of marketing at all. So
we had social media throughout the whole process. Kind of
we didn't really take advantage of it, but we just
started doing like big promotions on Instagram. Instagram is where
we do our marketing now and we do text campaigns,
(10:10):
email campaigns. But previous literally zero besides word of mouth,
zero for three years, no marketing, no sales, no nothing.
We just every week it was like and we did
it through text message. That's crazy their orders. Yet we
would make it pdf file of the menu and we
had a whole list of people we would send it
(10:32):
to through tax message and it was like fifty customers
route send the Oh my god, that sounds big Excel spreadsheet.
Oh my god, it was customers name and each So
we did the customers on side, the meals on the top,
and we would hand put one too. So what do
(10:52):
you do now? So through the website someone orders and
then what we exported through Excel, and um, we have
a whole I have my old spreadsheet from that calculates
everything that we need for shopping and how much meet
meed to get and cook and everything, and then it's
all portioned out exactly. So through the Excel it just
calculates for us. But the website does all the work,
(11:13):
hard work, right, I'm sure you save so much time
and then you can have family time, personal time, even
time to work on the business in different ways, because
that's a lot of extra work that you had to
be doing well. For the first almost year, I did
in a notebook. I it was only for a couple
of weeks because I was like it was for a while,
(11:33):
not a year. I'm exaggerating, but I did. If I
could still have a notebook, I would. I just that's
how I am. You know, I'm very I'm not anti
social media because it is the way of the future,
but I didn't want it to blow up. But I
kind of kicked myself. If I would have back then
took advantage of like the whole social media thing, that
would be huge because we started. I don't know, if
(11:54):
you're familiar, there's a couple of other male companies are
huge right now in New Jersey. When we started, they
had just started to like it was a new thing.
So I could have Yeah, but that doesn't mean that
doesn't mean adult like you still can and like we're
still you know, but I mean I think about like
hello fresh, Yeah, but that's completely different than what you do. Yeah,
(12:14):
but it could have been, you know, evolve something. Don't
say it could have been because it still can be
and that's what's so so important. I mean, look at
these businesses. I mean, look at Amazon. It was a
crappy little bookstore for the longest time. And that's something
you have to keep in mind. I know you didn't
come here to get my advice, but I've talked to
a billion people about their freaking small businesses, and there's
(12:36):
just so much to learn. When you start a small business,
and you, guys, you've only been on it for a
few years. You have so much more to learn. It's
changed so much already. Like think about you said it
was the notebook and the Excel spreadsheet, and now it's
a full blown business, not running itself, but you've got
the website. It's still just the two of you. At
some point, there's gonna be more people cooking for you
and delivering and doing all of that. Absolutely, that's another thing.
(12:59):
As we have employees, and I'm like, this happened from
my one friend, you know, because I kind of look
at the timeline of it, and like, my one friend
asked me to make her food, and now it's like
employees and I'm training people and all this. The really
awesome thing about it is, since it's not an everyday thing.
Right now, I raise Riley as my full time job,
our Order Riley, and then I get to work as well.
(13:22):
So it is. I love it. I'm super super grateful
for it. When you say it's not every day, then
what is the schedule? What is the how does that
work for you? Guys? When it comes to people and
putting their orders are DeLine is Friday right now? Pick
up and deliveries Sunday, So basically people order up until
Friday Friday night. Then we run the report Saturday, we
do our shopping. Uh sometimes, I mean I would realistically
(13:45):
love to do more prep on Saturday, but we do
our cooking on Sunday basically, so they're getting their food
cooked and delivered all in one day, and so it's
at the most fresh the food can possibly be. On
our containers. We have like obviously all the macros, the ingredients,
you know, heating instructions are low. Well, when you were
(14:05):
in culinary school then, and I mentioned this earlier about
how I don't picture people from North Ormington, New Jersey
caring about health food at all? What got you into
this world? We've been And that's so funny that you
say that because we've been told so like through probably
since we're eighteen nineteen years old, like you don't belong
like you belong over there, like well, thank you, well,
(14:27):
thank you. We've been very health conscious and like always
been about sustainability. I mean I was always into like
living like off the grid kind of type when I
was younger. Yeah, it's just been something I've we've always
been passionate about. Like we've always just really health conscious. Yeah,
basically because it makes us feel good too. When you
(14:48):
got me all that's healthy and like you know what
is in it and you know that it's all good stuff,
like you feel you don't feel like yeah, right, so
it gives you energy. It does what food is supposed
to do. Food is not supposed to make you feel
like you want to curl into a ball and die.
Supposed to give you all this energy. And Chris, when
you really started focusing on this, you lost a ton
(15:10):
of weight, right, And I have I don't know, I
mean I've gotten testing and stuff done. I mean I
just have like something is a little messed up. But um, yeah,
if I didn't eat how I eat right now, Like
if I didn't eat this healthy, I would be That
was another thing I want to touch on. We have
a couple of customers who are diabetic. They take less
pills now their levels are all back. And then so
(15:31):
end with Marissa too. I don't know if we can
touch on this, but so she actually just beat cancer
last year, which by the way, is amazing, So congratulations,
non hops foma. Obviously she went through chemotherapy, but we
use food as our second that's a big supplement. She
(15:51):
beat it fast, she hadn't. It was aggressive and in
June June of last year, I was stage three boot
borderline before and then by August that was my first
PET scan. I was completely inactis. And it's wild what
food can do. I mean, there's so many Netflix documentaries
right and I would force my parents and like go
watch this, like please just get brainwashed to realize what
(16:15):
food can do for you. Because if we went back
in time to Caveman dates and and even sooner than that,
more recent than that, we realized they used food for
everything because they didn't have any other options. And I
often think about that. I try to go, Okay, well,
what food can I start eating before I start taking
this pill or this vitamin? What is it? And you Marissa,
are living proof that it really can make a difference.
(16:39):
And you mentioned customers with diabetes. So my mom has
had diabetes for seventeen years at this point or around there.
In September of last year, I made her go to
my natural path here in Seattle. I had her visit
and she did of all the tests everything, and had
a conversation with her and my mom started a keto
diet because that's great for people with diabetes. My mom
(16:59):
must take and awful almost all of her diabetes medicine,
no insulin, none of that. And then she got open
heart surgery. This year. She has like recovered so fast
from this open heart surgery. She looks amazing. I know
it's she would not have been able to do that
to the gym now, yeah, she wasn't doing that before it,
and it is crazy. And I keep telling her, I'm like,
(17:20):
you went into this surgery so healthy because of what
you did. And and I'm glad that you guys are
being that voice in an area where people do not understand,
and and keep doing what you're doing, keep fighting the
good fight, because out here it is the polar opposite.
We we get it and we eat the foods that
we know are healthy most people here. And you mentioned
(17:42):
about going to the doctor and finding out what's wrong.
Even right there, there's already discrepancy between New Jersey and Washington.
And Washington natural paths can practice as doctors, they can
write prescriptions. Is that a natural path is ancy and
that right there, it's like, wait, well, I don't know
what a natural path is. So natural paths in New
Jersey don't even have to be certified, which is scary,
(18:03):
but you can find a certified one. A natural path
is a doctor who will look for a holistic approach
before they do write you a prescription. So my doctor
sat down with me and we did an allergy test
and an intolerance test. I was thirty one years old
when I found out everything I was allergic to my
entire life. She then also looked at my twenty three
and me results like the back end of them, not
(18:23):
just what they tell you. She was able to look
at my jeans found out that I do not absorb
vitamin D the way I'm supposed to, so any vitamin
D pill I take is doing nothing. So I'm on
liquid vitamin D because half of my vitamin D passageways
are blocked or whatever it is, and she's able to
tell me all this stuff. My body doesn't properly do
something with stress, so sometimes I can be super excited
(18:45):
and then I'll drop dramatically my mental like my emotions.
And I learned all of that through a natural path.
So after this, I'll get I'll get you guys connected,
and it's amazing. And and she's like, if you eat
these darkly fee green more than you have been, it'll
occur this or X y Z and it's all this stuff.
So I do all of that before I resort to medication.
(19:08):
And that's kind of what you guys are really doing
here with your business. It's and I never even knew
this that you were that much into, Like I've obviously
known that you were like health conscious and stuff, but
and that really is food is fuel, Food is medicine.
And that's kind of why I mean, our our name
is real food. It's like it's to keep food real
because another issue too that we're having as a society
(19:30):
is overly processed. I am allergic to peanuts. I don't
stop breathing when I have them. I didn't know it
is allergic to peanuts. I always ate peanut butter, but
I haven't had peanuts really in over a year. I
had pad tie last night, which has peanuts in it,
and normally I'm fine if I it's not it's a
little bit. I have been like sick for twenty four hours, dizzy,
almost passed out, and it's like, you don't realize what
(19:53):
could be happening to your body every day. You could
be somewhat used to feeling like crap, and it's not
until you get into this healthy life style that you
realize all this bad stuff you've been putting in your body.
And you, guys know this. I'm not preaching to YouTube.
I'm preaching to the people listening who need to hear
this and understand that there are these amazing businesses like
yours out there that can help people get down this path.
(20:15):
You're not just feeding people, You're changing lives, which is
crazy to think about, but you are you. That's crazy
to hear it too. I like, I don't think of
it like that, even though I kind of like I
want that to be. It is credit to like that's
just a human thing. But it sounds great to hear
you say that, and it feels really good. It feels
(20:35):
really good. And there's people I've had not to throw
some of my customers under the bus. I have some
customers who like cannot cook, like cannot at all. I
can't even cook like ground turkey. We have some older
single men. Well, we serve like a lot of them,
you know, compromised families, and we have a family with
(20:56):
children are disabled. Yes, yeah, and then speaking speaking up
a child, but yeah, but it's truely, think about you've
set yourself up where your business is a few days,
where you can be a stay at home dad. Now
there are some people who can't do that. How do
they have the time to cook a healthy meal for
their family? They don't. Another like option we offer is
(21:17):
bulk options, so so you don't want to order, you know,
like individual meals you can't order for your family. Can
get pounds and you can get pounds of vegetables. You
guys thought about all of it. So it's I want
real foods dot Com for people. I want real food stock. Okay,
And you also have Instagram? Who runs in Marissa? Do
you do all of the pretty stuff on Instagram? Yeah?
It does. It looks great. We did have help on
(21:38):
our website from Christmas. But I've been maintaining it since.
It's not it's not an easy thing to do, but
you taught yourself how to use the website. I'm kind
of a perfectionist, So I built the website up through
the past four years, built it up, deleted it, built
it up, deleted it didn't like the domain name. Then
I had my brother Anthony had recently finished college, finish football, everything,
(22:03):
and we kind of just sat down were like, let's
just learn how to do this. It can't be two
which it was kind of hard, but it can't be
too hard. So we taught. We taught ourselves, you know,
how to do everything back end of the front end
of it, you know. We use a little bit of WordPress.
And then we were like looking at uh, squares squares space,
squares space and like uh and ended up like coming
(22:24):
together pretty well. Like I really like it's on the background,
it's use there's a lot of different options for like
email campaigns and marketing. Yeah, it's awesome, it looks great
and it's cool that you've done it yourself. I mean
it's also a lot of money that you've saved there
as well. Well. The whole business we have had literally
just us and we're I was two when we start.
When I started it, well I'm twenty six. Think about
(22:49):
what's gonna happen when you're in like ten years, Like
it's there's so much more to grow and branch off.
You guys I saw are sold at King's Court and
for people who aren't from North Jersey, King's Court is
like this huge gym, sports facility, health fitness center. So
how did you get that deal and what exactly does
that entail? I kind of was pondering the idea of
(23:10):
like going to a gym, and like I was like, oh,
you know, it would be cool. Like obviously people walking
into the gym are hungry every time. I'm like I'm starving.
I wish there was food right here. So it's like, oh,
you know what, I'm a member at Kings Court, so
it's like, let me talk the managers and let me
like see if I can yeah my way in there.
But one of the assistant manager is actually one of
(23:33):
our customers as Yeah, we put like a limited menu
in Kings Court. We stock it every week fresh you know,
on Sunday night, and we made a name for ourselves
there too, because we would have a bunch of events,
so like they would be Christmas or we would offer
you know, like male tasting. We have a whole table,
(23:55):
little sam bowles and discounts and everything. So how has
the pandemic affected the business? We unfortunately have really not been.
The only hit that we really took was a couple
of weeks we couldn't run the business because there was
no meat anyway. Yes, yes, everyone should have just gone vegan.
You could have done vegan milk. Yeah, literally, Well that's
(24:16):
the funny thing is if you went to the supermarkets
around here, the vegan sections, like even even just the produce,
it was full, but like every single thing all the time.
I had problems signing produce like weeks. So it was
crazy and we felt so horrible because we were like
these people already ordered and we but there we really
(24:36):
couldn't find the amount of meat and protests that we needed.
And sometimes they were out of chicken, out of steak,
like we didn't have. We had to really work. We
were going to the frost stores broccoli. Our farmers market
are lyned to get into the farmer's market that we
we used to go to this little tiny hole in
the wall farmers market then no one really knew about.
(24:58):
And then when the pandemic happened, the line was like
a six hour wait, like you're waiting online, you can't
do that. But otherwise, you know, it makes people are
more focus on healthy food now because they want to
build up their immune system. So it works well for
us because that's you know that, that's really cool. That's well,
that's great news then, And I'm sure you've learned things
(25:19):
while this has all been going on, how you can
adjust and pivot the business and if it hits again,
what are you gonna do and there's no meat, you
need to you know, come up with plans and at list.
We all come out of this with a little bit
of a learning experience. It'll be good. Okay the moment,
I've been waiting for the bees. So what I told
my sister I was going to be talking to you.
She was like, oh, and the bees. And I was
(25:41):
like what and she's like, yeah, he has bees. I'm like,
what do you mean he has bees? And she's like,
so I've recently learned the importance of bees and how
there are less bees in the world. And I don't
think I've dove into it as much as you have, Chris.
But let's talk about the bees. And you have bees
and you're making honey. What the hell is going on?
This kind of all still goes back to your first thing.
(26:01):
How you know we're from this area where like you know,
like we're a little bit different. I've been like this forever.
Like I didn't watch cartoons as a kid. I watched
antal Planet National Geographic, like that's who I am. We
had chickens for three years in Lyndhurst, like we had
hit them from everyone or neighbors were cool with it.
So with the bees. So these are um, I believe
(26:23):
it's sevent of our all of our produced are vegetables
and fruit and stuff are because of beach basically collination.
All that honey also is you know, one of the
one of it's a supers it's craziness. You really like
food anti biotics and it plant you can treat allergies
(26:44):
with it, Yeah, like if you honestly so, my brother,
not to get off topic a little bit, but the
last batch of honey that we had, my brother Michael
had gets like really really bad his allergies induced as
one just really bad allergies. I was like, okay, listen,
you live in my only way. If me beast travel
a five mile radius, take some of this honey. He
took it and the next day crusty like he felt good,
(27:08):
so you could use it and then then it's amazing.
It's it's amazing the psychology of the colony as well,
like if you really get too deep into it, if
he into they communicate, the communicate with where the sun
is they find it's it's pretty crazy. There's have you
seen the episode of the series on Netflix Um with
Zac Efron Down to Earth. Yes, there's a whole episode
(27:30):
about bees. And there's a hotel in New York City
that has like a home for bees and they fly
and they do their thing in Central Park and then
they come back and I'm like, what do you mean
they come back? What? Like it's crazy. So but Chris,
what made you like figure this out about bees? Trying
to think back? So this is my second year of
having beans. Where are they by the way there in
(27:52):
my backyard? Okay? And you could watch them go back
and forth and they don't sting. They literally if you
say in my backyard, I sit there so times like
a freak and you see them. They go and they
love like the Danny lions, Like you see them, take
the Dandy lions. They go back in. But if you
walk out of our back door into her backyard, you
would never guess we had bees because you don't see
them ever unless you're like right next to the hive,
(28:14):
which is we have dogs and our dogs. And then Marissa,
when your fiance says, so I'm going to get bees,
what do you say to that, Well, it's just another thing,
like he's he was into snakes for a while. We
had like an alligator, so it's just like kind of
like the next thing. Well, at least this will produce something. Yeah, yeah, literally,
(28:38):
I mean we had chickens to I kind of that's
why we work. Well. So she never had like pets
or anything like growing up like she is very yeah,
like like we we got the beach, Like, oh that's awesome,
like honey school, we got the chickens. She's like, oh,
we love eggs, you know, so, but yeah, literally, probably
(28:59):
back into chickens. I want to get to oyster farming. Honestly,
you want to know what's next. Working into oyster farming,
which you know oyster reefs. They used to be around
back in you know, the beginning of America, and they're
like really really crazy with filtration of the water. So
I was actually looking to like get into oyster farming.
(29:20):
So I mean, do it. It's cool. Okay, So you're
gonna get honey from the bees, and within the next
few months you're going to start selling the honey. So
for people who don't live in New Jersey, this is
a part of your company they can support, which is
really cool. I'm excited to order honey. So you'll be
able to order fresh New Jersey made honey, which is
really cool. But I gotta you even get honey. I
don't know. Have you done this process? Yes, So there's
(29:42):
a couple of ways. We do it by hand. We
have three boxes. There's a little slit on the bottom
of the hive that the bees go in, and then
in each box there's ten frames they're called so each
frame you can get like a spinner and like it.
But how I do it is I literally take and
do it by hand, so you get you're getting even
more because you're getting some of the wax in there.
(30:03):
I strained it obviously, so it's just the honey. Yes,
So every fall in spring, you can have a harvest
this hive that I have now, I didn't do in
the spring, so that it's gonna be we're gonna get
a lot for the fall. And basically I put it
on my website. We had our first our first year,
we had sixty pounds of honey. So you have I
thought this was brand new. No yeah, no, so we
(30:25):
didn't know. So we sold it out of our website.
And if you if you scroll down in our in
our order now section, there's the local raw honey. You
put updates every month of what the bees are doing.
It like, this is the cutest listen to this. So
when are we put our honey up? I felt like
Kylie Jenner. It literally sold the honey sold out in
(30:50):
thirteen minutes, No way, pounds of honey thirteen minutes. My
friends and family that were like I wanted some. I
was like, I don't know why. I didn't think it
was gonna happen like that. Sots just like that. I
was like, oh my gosh, you better save that. Everyone says,
I have like probably like thirty people that we're going
(31:10):
to have a lot creat about these beasts. Two we're
right next to gut Mountain, which is you know, a
whole reservation. So the bees are getting which is great.
Urban bee keeping is one of the coolest things the
world because so many different people have you know, different
flowers and like different things where so it's like you're
not getting one, You're not just getting clover, You're not
just getting you know, you're getting so money. Okay, I
(31:33):
think I need to do this. You need to help
after this. We set it up because my neighborhood is
basically a giant garden. Like everyone in this neighborhood has
just an overgrown flowers and we grow like the craziest
flowers out here, like people grow lavender on their front lawns.
It's bizarre. So you're gonna have to help me with this. Yes,
I've gotten what is it, two or three people and
(31:53):
two bees. That's cool. You should run a course. Yeah. Yeah,
well that's the thing. I just send them, needbevideos to
send them. Linking by every kind of Amazon. You get
the best ship to you. You get a box of bees. Yeah,
it's really something everyone can do. It's like even if
you live in an apartment, if you can talk to
like you know, you're the manager at the apartment. If
(32:14):
you do something on the roof, it's great for the environment,
it's great for you. It's cool. Okay, So I need
to know that very first friend who said, hey, Chris,
can you cook for me? Does she get free meals
for life all the time? And I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I owe you, and she's like, yeah, I know,
I started it. I want temp percund like jokingly, you know,
(32:35):
I know, Daniel Rio, that's hilarious. That's so cool. It's
amazing seeing what you've done, what you've created. And I'm
not trash talking our hometown at all, but it's a
very small town. People are not really open minded to
anything then what they've been spoon fend their whole lives.
(32:57):
So it's really cool seeing like you've really it's not
that you've risen from the ashes, because I'm making it
sound like we we lived in the like the middle
of nowhere. It's not like that at all, right, But
I mean, actually, you're right. Our town had more dead
people than alive for most of our lives because the
cemetery was so big. So it's cool to see what
you've done and what you've created. When it wasn't something
(33:19):
you were taught growing up. You've you've you're self taught,
and the two of you together use each of your
skill set to create something amazing. So I'm excited to
see where you guys go from here where And you're
already at this part. So it's I want Real Foods
dot com. Even if you don't live in New Jersey,
follow support Chris and Marissa and get ready for that
honey and reach out to them if you want to
(33:41):
learn about honeymaking and beat keeping and urban bee farming
and all of that. Guys, thank you so much for
being here so much. Thank you again for listening to
side hustlers, for supporting small businesses, for supporting me. I
cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. But go
ahead below so sport Chris and Marissa and Real Foods.
(34:02):
All the links are down there, and I've also included
all the links with all the different ways you can
find me. My twitch stream with my co host Anthony,
our podcast together are Instagram's, all the things are YouTube.
Just go there. It's all below. Thank you for being
here and thank you for joining me on this wild journey.
I can't wait to see what's next. I hope you're
(34:22):
excited too. This podcast has been produced by Houston Tilly.
Thank you so much. Keep hustling and be a good
human
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