We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zack Stephenson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Zack thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.
I rent out machines for all sorts of events all the time – from house parties to large corporate events and festivals. However, recently I had a call for a machine for an event I had never done before – a celebration of life. A customer called me short notice asking if they could rent out one of my soft serve machines. Tragically a friend of hers had unexpectedly passed, and he loved pineapple flavored Dole Whip soft serve like they sell at Disney World. We were able to rush order the mix online and deliver the machine to her venue. I got to meet many great people there who were all glad they could honor their friend’s memory with his favorite food. It felt really great to make the event special for them.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Zack I run Slush Plus – a frozen drink and soft serve machine rental company. We rent out equipment for parties, events, weddings, and more to make frozen cocktails, slushies, soft serve ice cream, and other frozen treats. I have a background in repair and maintenance of industrial equipment, so during 2020 I was buying and flipping used restaurant equipment on the side. Times were tough during the COVID pandemic and my wife was also battling cancer so the bills were piling up. The extra side cash was a great way to supplement our income. I came across a broken slushy machine that I purchased and refurbished. Before selling it I decided to try renting it out since I had not really seen alot of them being rented before. I got a couple first rentals and decided to amp things up – long story short by the beginning of this year I have 11 machines with more on the way! We are also planning on opening up our own concession stand serving snow cones, slushies, and soft serve ice cream in the next few years. Things have been great and are only getting busier!
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
So far we have had the best luck with word of mouth referrals and Google AdWords. AdWords is great for local businesses that do not sell or market nationally or are solely online. We are easily able to rank highly for local “near me” searches for fairly cheap per click rates. Most of our customers now say they found us on Google!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
There are several other local companies that do what we do, but none of them have as professional or large an online presence as we do. We spent a lot of time and effort in building a beautiful and easy to use website. We also spend time curating Google reviews from our existing and previous customers to build trust for new customers online. Google reviews, in my opinion, are the most important thing to get early on when trying to build a local brand. Often times if you have no or poor Google reviews, new customers will instantly start searching elsewhere.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.slushplus.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slush_plus_fl/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SlushPlus