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

Nick, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Family is a foundational cornerstone to my business. It began in my childhood, gaining a love of baking by watching my grandmother in the kitchen. My siblings and I loved to experiment and try new recipes as teenagers, each of us exploring the joy of cooking in our own way. Throughout my career in the Army, I loved hosting events and feeding my military brothers and sisters as well. When I met my wife, cooking and innovation were subjects we connected deeply on. We always felt there was a way to combine innovation while honoring the ways of the past that had such love and passion built into their processes. We vowed to remember our past by sharing those skills with our children. Baking and canning were two skills that deeply resonated with us and our children, a passion that eventually led to the creation of Villainous Biscuits, combining my love of baking with my wife’s love of canning and jamming. Now as our daughters are growing into young women, we are able to share that joy even more profoundly by having them join the business. The key has been to let them explore the business aspects in their own way rather than forcing them down a path. Zion, our 19-year old is an aspiring graphic designer who has taken to logo design and digital marketing, helping us to keep those costs in-house while also building her portfolio. Sumiya, our 16-year old is very fond of baking and innovating with gluten-free concepts, which has helped us to expand our menus. So, what are my thoughts on a family business? When done right and with love, there’s nothing more rewarding.

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Villainous Biscuits is a veteran-owned food truck and catering service based out of Annapolis, Maryland. Our business started as a hobby, baking our infamous biscuits for family and friends. but evolved into something else entirely. While our core recipe is based on a family recipe handed down, our flavors and offerings have grown to include a variety of savory and sweet biscuit, jam, and gravy flavors-as well as our kolaches, biscuit rolls stuffed with sausage and cheese. Every flavor of Villainous Biscuits is tied to our combined love of movies, humor, and facial hair, as an homage to the often overlooked demographic of bearded movie villains.

We are very proud to be a veteran business that is part of the CHOW Corp nonprofit team, a veteran charity that helps veterans and their families explore and develop business ideas within the food industry. Additionally, we are a very proud family business spanning three generations. We provide catering and pop-up services that are tailored to our client needs and we also have a food truck supporting events from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Word of mouth from satisfied customers and networking have been the most effective strategies for us to date. Our networking through related businesses provided us with improved knowledge and insight into the industry and customer needs, as well as multiple opportunities shared by partner businesses. Satisfied customers shared our offerings with their friends, leading to other events and even partnerships with local breweries. Treat everyone as an important piece of your business, because they are!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In the beginning, our idea was just to offer basic biscuit and gravy flavors. We had some success with this model, but soon realized that we were missing out on more substantial events due to our limited offerings. We began tailoring our menus to the events we were invited to either by theme, ingredients, or flavors, and realized much more success by doing so. This allows us to be much more creative and to leverage seasonal ingredients in a way that has been very well received by our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.villainousbiscuits.com
• Instagram: @villainous.biscuits
• Facebook: villainous.biscuits

Image Credits
Ally Ramsey