We're in the 6-figure-per-month club!
by Sam EatonWe made over $110k in February! Crave has been seeing growth every month, except for a large dip last November when we were moving to a larger kitchen. I expect that we would have passed 85k this month had the virus not cause a quarantine.
Ready For The Quarantine
We were a delivery-only business from day one. We never relied on a physical location, so naturally we had everything in place once the quarantine hit.
Using Our Own Software for Deliveries
We've never used a 3rd party delivery service like Doordash. Our volume is high enough that it would be very difficult to manage the Doordash drivers coming into our warehouse for a single order. Instead, we are able to send our own drivers out with several orders so the cost is shared across a handful of customers, meaning the customer doesn't have to pay such a high delivery fee like with Doordash.
Our software for managing deliveries is completely custom and we've been improving over time.
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Really impressive growth! Just curious, what are your overall margins?
Something I'm learning from reading your posts is the importance of not being in saturated markets. I think being in the Fresno area really set you apart as it's less served compared to say the bay area. What do you think?
Do you get a lot of repeat customers or is it mostly new ones?
How have you managed to grow the business? Purely social media? Ads? Word of mouth?All the best!
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Margins are about 40-45%. We have a physical product so our biggest costs are paying employees and for the ingredients. That's with only one kitchen though so as we expand and multiplying our revenue that margin will look really good and probably get better with economies of scale.
The location might play a part because people in Fresno take more pride in supporting local than in the bay area. But I'm not exaggerating when I say these are the best cookies I've ever had. We focus on making sure they are always delivered warm so really its a high quality product. About 60% of our sales are repeat customers. I'm pretty sure we would do well in most areas. I actually don't live in Fresno, thats where the kitchen (and other co-founder) is.
Growth is mostly word of mouth with "reminders" we send to instagram followers. No other marketing except for being on a few local news stations.
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Amazing! Keep going and all the best!
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