We were lucky to catch up with Darius Martin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Darius, thanks for joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?

I certainly wish I started on the path of entrepreneurship alot sooner than I did. I always loved cooking but didn’t know it was a passion that I could build on and turn into a career until my mid 20s . I often look back at the experiences and relationships that could have been learned and built on over the years. I was fresh out of a relationship needing something productive to occupy my time and energy into. The more I focused on my skills and drive to get better the more I realized I wanted to cook everyday and share it with others. Around 2018 I decided officially that I wanted to make a business of it.
Scottsdale, AZ, one of the favorite experiences to date. After that I told myself if I work in another kitchen, it’s going to be my own. Fast forward a few years I move back to Georgia and really started putting in some real legwork and putting the building blocks together. It started with meal prepping for Elijah ‘Dizzy’ Watts, a prominent masseuse and personal trainer in the Atlanta-Miami areas. A friend I’ve known since middle school years. That turned into meal prepping for a supervisor at work and then selling plates to coworkers and customers locally. Known around here as Sins of the South Saturdays, has been going on for over 3 years now, adding Fresh Squeezed Lemonades, Custom Orders including Desserts and even Sushi, and small private catering as well!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For those who dont know me or are reading about me for the first time, my name is Darius Martin. I am an awkward introvert who’s as random as the dishes I tend to cook. I was born in Tacoma, Wa and moved around before settling in Atlanta middle and high school. I moved to Arizona for almost 10 years after high school where SOTS really started coming together. My initial experience and inspiration came from Food Network. Emeril Lagasse, Giada, Alton Brown, Paula Dean. Every 30 minutes something completely new and different. I moved around alot so the concept of constant change and flexibility pushed me deeper into the kitchen. I took that and went from cooking dinner for my brother and I to the entire Thanksgiving meal. My only ‘Professional’ experience is working for my a very good friend’s parent’s in their restaurant, Tia Shortys. An authentic Mexican restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ, one of the favorite experiences to dste. After that I told myself if I work in another kitchen, it’s going to be my own. Fast forward a few years I move back to Georgia and really started putting in some real legwork and putting the building blocks together. It started with meal prepping for Dizzy Watts, a prominent masseuse and personal trainer, a friend I’ve known since middle school years. That turned into meal prepping for a supervisor and then selling plates to coworkers and customers locally. Known around here as Sins of the South Saturdays, has been going on for a few years now, including fresh squeezed Lemonades, customer orders including desserts and even sushi!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

One thing about social media, people love scrolling and seeing food! Good, bad, weird for dinner inspiration and everything in between. On my personal page you’ll find very few selfie type pictures, it’s 85% food and that honestly might be too low lol. Trying to post the perfect shot of every plate to my story before taking a bite, albeit half cold sometimes lol. So I just turned that process into making a business page on Facebook and Instagram specifically for Sins of the South and post my plates. Also claimed the Gmail, Tiktok, Twitter and YouTube handles also. My biggest piece of advice, one I still struggle with myself is consistency. Especially with food, it’s a saturated market, getting new views and followers and engaging them in a way to keep them and bring them back you have stay in the feeds. So keeping your content at a some what frequent basis and still engaging and keep it consistent to the brand is my biggest piece of advice. Don’t tease them, social media can make your life so much easier and expand your brands reach, for free.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I’ve only had the experience of selling on my own site, which is through Square. Being a mobile food business I didn’t see the benefit of something like Amazon or Etsy. Etsy maybe, but with Square it my card processor as well and has alot of other benefits. Customers can place orders though the site for shippable items like cakes or pies or frozen meal preps, to custom SOTS pressed clothing items and accessories. And I think that is the best benefit of Square is the added benefits not just the payment processor for cards and online payments, the website generator is a great free tool. You can build your own custom site for no extra charge, you have full customization to your liking, even support to help you. Post your products, pictures and descriptions, inputs the shipping options you’d like down to your taxes. On top of that the invoice app and reporting aspect is huge when it comes to tax time. Which is why eventually I’d like to get away from taking cash app payments and cash. Being able to download your yearly reports or even uploading directly into your tax preparer of your revenue saves time and money come tax season!

Contact Info:

• Website: Linktr.ee/SOTSGA
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/invites/contact/?i=y2uf6gb4v8dc&utm_content=wx5qxk
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sinsofthesouth/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCgH_Jiq3yOsFWrHhs94wzCw
• Other: http://tiktok.com/@sinsofthesouth

Image Credits
Amber Steven’s photography