We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Cunningham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.

A year ago I made a commitment to grow my business through giving. As a result, I partnered with Dailykarma’s Shop For Good app and embedded opportunities for customers to round up purchases and donate at checkout to various organizations. Additionally, I’ve partnered with several organizations to host special sales periods where I donate a percentage of all sales during that timeframe to the partnering organization. It provides a great opportunity for us to cross promote and gain traction with each others audiences. I can honestly say each month and after each campaign It feels really good to be sharing profits and success with these nonprofits that make such a huge impact in the world.

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?

In 2003, I graduated from Florida A&M University’s School of Business and Industry with an MBA concentrating in marketing. After some years of working in product/brand management and quality improvement, In 2010, I experienced a layoff from my corporate employer. During my tenure with them I was fortunate enough to attend culinary school. Instead of searching for another corporate opportunity, I decided to pursue my culinary interest and opened Caribreoso Catering & Culinary Services. I quickly grew from private catering to a lunch delivery service. This was before UberEats and the likes so it was relatively unchartered territory. Things were going well but I needed to up the gain. I needed to be where the people were when they were hungry instead of relying on pre-orders. For that reason, I bought a food truck and became the first food truck in Seattle, WA selling traditional Caribbean fare. The Jerk Station, my food truck, specialized in scratch made Jamaican patties and other traditional staples. I also had a number of creative sandwiches and food offerings for the public. After 3 years of growing success, I decided to close the business when my wife and I welcomed our first child. The grueling schedule just didn’t align with the type of father I wanted to be.

After several years of being a stay at home dad, adding to the family and moving to a couple of different cities, I revived the Caribreoso brand in 2017 when my family and I settled in Austin, TX. Austin is a city that loves and supports local businesses. It is one of the best cities for starting and growing a CPG brand in the country. I knew I didnt have the bandwidth to go back into the kitchen . I took all the recipes for seasonings, rubs and sauces that I created and packaged those for the experienced or novice home cook to enjoy. As a small batch producer I wanted to focus on quality ingredients and freshness. This decision lead me to using USDA certified organic herbs and spices for all of my seasonings. This focus on organic ingredients was one of the best decisions I made early in the relaunch of the brand. In May of 2017 Caribreoso Flavour Boutique was born.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to interact face to face with thousands of customers and see first hand the reaction people have to the products I make. These interactions are priceless for me as a maker. Caribreoso products are specifically designed for people who believe what goes on their food is as important as what goes in it. With a lineup of over 20 seasonings, I have something for all diets and uses, sodium free, seasoning salts, all purpose seasonings and specialty seasonings.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

The best and most reliable place to purchase Caribreoso products is from my website, www.caribreoso.us. I decided to create my own ecommerce site because I wanted to create a direct and unincumbered connection between me and customers. The website is an online extension of how I was accustomed to selling products, pop up markets, flea markets and farmers markets. The biggest pro to developing your own ecommerece site is the level of control and creative freedom you have to present your product to the general public. All of the information collected and commerce statistics belong to you and can be analyzed then leveraged to grow your impact in the marketplace. This direct relationship allows me to offer products at the best prices and be responsive to sudden changes in the market.

Unfortunately, the biggest pros of control and creative freedom are also the biggest cons. Developing your own ecommerce site automatically makes you technical support. Between product images, content layout and onboarding apps/add-ons you’ll spend a significant amount of time working on this portion of your business. You’ll likely have to learn more about web trends and traffic than you thought. In the months and moments when you lose focus your website will become stale as a result. The solution is to develop a schedule of updates and changes months or a year in advance.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

I’ve found that markets and specialty pop up events have been really great for introducing my brand to new clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.caribreoso.us
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/caribreoso
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/caribreosoflavourboutique
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/caribreoso
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYhUOkvbqq_7gczfFkbk-bw

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