We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jacob Boehm. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jacob below.
Alright, Jacob thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
I started Snap Pea completely by accident. The seed was a class I took at Stanford called Food & Performance in the Theater Department. For the final project, I created a concept meal for class and the professor was really take. So taken, that she asked me to do another meal for some of her friends in San Francisco. From there, friends started asked if I could do a dinner for their friends, each one leading to other dinners. I was more & more private dinners, all the while working other jobs as I tried to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Eventually I decided to do a public, ticketed pop-up dinner as I’d seen other chefs that I admired do – for the first few, I was begging people to come, charging a measly $45 for 9+ course meals.
Even as the pop-ups became increasingly popular, I remained reluctant – I resisted investing in tools that would have been helpful and hiring help to keep my costs down, and delayed legitimizing the business via governmental registration to remain uncommitted. Only as each hurdle became unavoidable, did I take the next step – when I’d booked a wedding at a venue that required proof of health inspection, I rented a kitchen and registered the business with the health department. And only after I’d spend thousands on U-Haul vans in a single season, did I decide to purchase a catering van.
The downside to growing Snap Pea in this was that I was less organized and strategic in my growth. But on the other hand, it was very low risk – no expensive downtown rent or salaried employees to create pressure for income. And this ultimately, was what allowed Snap Pea to organically grow into what it has become.
Jacob, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Snap Pea is a small food business that creates magical dining experience in central North Carolina. We host conceptual pop-up dinners in secret locations – think a 9 course dinner in the full-dome theater of a planetarium with a menu based around the intergalactic journey projected on the screen. Or a 200 foot long table set inside a butterfly house. Each dinner’s location, theme & menu is a surprise to ticket holders.
Additionally, we offer creative & delicious catering for private events – weddings, university & corporate events, and social events. The menu for each event is completely custom, based on the tastes of the clients and specifics of the event.
No matter what we are doing, we remain deeply rooted in our values: local sourcing (over 90% of ingredient costs go back to local food systems), community investment (we donate 5% of our total sales to mission aligned community organizations), supporting our staff (we proudly pay at least $25/hr to all employees), and minimizing waste (we divert approximately 10,000lbs of waste diverted from landfill to compost each year).
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
The best source of new clients for us is unquestionably word of mouth, which follows from providing remarkable experiences. As a result, we have never had to do any paid advertising, and in fact, because word of mouth has created so much demand, we are lucky that we can actually be selective about the clients we work with to ensure that the clients and event are a good fit for us, instead of having to take all the business that comes our way. As an extension of this, building good relationships with colleagues in the industry has been an invaluable source referrals.
Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?
It became clear early on how beneficial it was to have 2 complementary sides of the business: the pop-ups and catering. Most catering companies are beholden to what leads presented to them – if there aren’t leads, there isn’t business. As a result, most end up having to do paid advertising to attract enough business.
As we were initially building a name for ourselves, we didn’t have catering bookings every week, but instead of doing paid advertising or sitting idle, we filled those holes in our calendar with pop-up dinners. At the same time, we had neither the following to sell out, nor the creative bandwidth to produce multiple pop-up dinners per month. But we didn’t have to because the catering bookings filled most of the other weekends.
Lastly, each side of the business fueled the other side – people who attended catered events could easily enjoy another Snap Pea experience on their own, and captivated pop-up attendees could hire us to cater private events.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.snappeanc.com
- Instagram: @snappeanc
- Facebook: @snappeanc
Image Credits
Tim Lytvinenko Anna Routh