We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexander Ortiz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alexander, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?
Our first was actually done on the side of the road mid quarantine! When I made the first batch of pickles I immediately had no idea how one sells pickles and I refused to sell to any of my friends for the first batch made! So I then proceeded to sit on the batch for almost a month. One day while going on a hike down in the springs I noticed on my drive there was a small family selling honey on the side of the road and I thought to myself “Damn, I could just do that” So the next weekend me and my friends packed up and found a spot on the side of The Sgt. Sean Renfro Memorial Highway (Rt. 285). We set up a table with a crappy display and a bed sheet as our table cloth and within in 20 minutes we had already sold 5 jars. Within the next 3 hours we had sold out of jars and walked away with 500 dollars. From then on I did that weekly on Saturday mornings for the whole year until October!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
People always ask me, Why Pickles? And the answer is for sure simple but there are so many reasons that I chose to do pickles. When COVID-19 took over our world my life in the culinary industry was met with a very quick stop along with a fear that my career was something that would never be plausible in the post COVID-19 world. Because of that I looked for other options that I could see myself doing then and in the future. Sticking with my passion for the culinary arts my mind went straight to shelf stable food with a high price margin. Going over each category sauces, drinks, salsa and finally I came across the idea of pickles. Pickles are an item that once made, you don’t have to refrigerate along with very long shelf lives that make pickles the perfect product to store and sell as the company were to grow. Soon after I did all the research needed to make sure I could do everything legally I made my first batch and ended up selling on the side of 285 for another 6 months after that! One thing that was very important to me when creating Three Dogs Pickles was making a product that was not like any other pickle on the market. In order to get past that I decided from the start of the company that we would flavor by the jar and not the brine. When I say that you may think that most pickles are like that, but however most pickle companies flavor the brine in order to save money on raw seasonings and ingredients. Because we want the full flavor in each jar for you I choose to put and equal amount of ingredients in each jar. That means when you buy a garlic pickle you are for sure getting at least 50 grams of garlic per jar, Asian will always have 30 grams of ginger and 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds. Those are just examples of the way that we are giving you the most flavor possible!
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
While I love online sales most of our customers actually come locally through farmers markets on a weekly basis! We generally have about 10 returning customers per market with another 50 new at the same one! Our love for our community is unmatched and we cant thank the locals of Denver enough for their amazing support! The more we have been getting into this season I would just like to take this platform to thank our lovely customers because without them I wouldn’t be living the dream I currently am living! Since our season has started we have been having record numbers and I have never been more excited to wake up early on a Saturday morning! I cant thank any of our customers enough for the love and support they have given us!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Since starting the company I have dealt with a constant state of growth. A lot of this just comes from the basic background things that most don’t think about when starting their own business. From shipping, marketing, sourcing, pricing and just everything under the sun that involves again “the basics” With all of this I have chosen to make and manufacture every single jar on my own. Though I have occasional help I still have yet to meet someone who can keep up with me four nights in a row on a single hour of sleep a night. And I definitely don’t blame them. From the beginning of the company I have been making each batch by hand through the night. All of this knowledge was learned through hard work and determination that comes with wanting to be your own boss! Yes some days it gets hard but we over come a different issue on a daily basis and have never been more proud of where we are at today!
Contact Info:
- Website: ThreeDogsPickles.com
- Instagram: @Three_Dogs_Pickles
- Facebook: Facebook.com/ThreeDogsPickles