Brian: 0:11

All right. Well, welcome back to the Vero Beach podcast. I'm Brian.

Shawna: 0:14

And I'm Shauna.

Brian: 0:15

And today we are sitting across the table here with Josh from Sunshine Pickles, correct? Correct. Sunshine Pickle Co. I know we're going to get into this throughout the episode, but he also brought us some gifts here. So, Shauna, you want to talk about some of the stuff that he has brought?

Shawna: 0:30

Yes, we've got three different varieties of pickles here. We've got classic dill, hot horseradish dill, and sweet hot. Now I've already tasted classic dill, delicious, crunchy. And then we've got pickled cabbage. I'm very excited about that. I like to like put together bowls, you know, with like different components. And I always like adding something pickled to it. That's gonna be delicious. We've got a couple seasonings. Can't wait to try this. This is um smoke and chipotle. And then another product I tasted today is dill pickle premium brisket beef jerky.

Brian: 1:02

Yeah, that is delicious.

Shawna: 1:04

Delicious.

Brian: 1:05

Thank you.

Shawna: 1:05

I will be ordering more of that. Post haste.

Brian: 1:08

Yes, yes. Thank you so much for bringing us. Thanks for having me, guys. Well, Josh, we're glad that you're here. So why don't you take about 30 seconds?

Josh: 1:14

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, my name's Josh, obviously. Um, we live here in Vero Beach. I'm married. I have uh a wife and two beautiful children, Cannon and Copper. They um we homeschool. We moved here to Vero Beach from Cleveland, Ohio, about three years ago. I was a chef and I ran nightclubs and I ran bars and I opened restaurants and I started a pickle company uh somehow along the way. And there's several couple factors happened, you know, over the course of several years to where it led us down here to Florida.

Brian: 1:45

So your journey with pickles started in Cleveland?

Josh: 1:49

Yes. Okay, tell us a little bit about that. I guess backing up even before like the pickles came along is I started cooking and I realized that I wasn't really good at anything else. So I went to college and got you know my degree in hospitality management, and then I started working in various restaurants and I got a job working in Cleveland at a restaurant. And you know, we always had kind of an entrepreneurial kind of bug at us. My my father was an entrepreneur, he ran a successful entertainment weekly up in Cleveland. So, you know, working for working for the man was just never something that I wanted to do, but you know, I always had a great work ethic. So anywhere I did work, I always ascended pretty quickly and you know became a uh integral part of the team anywhere I worked. So I did that, and eventually I got a lucky break with one of my friends where we ended up we were able to buy a nightclub. Did that for about five years, and then we were able to sell that business. I had an opportunity to buy a um a bar on the west side of Cleveland. I was operating um this really cool restaurant. We were making scratch made food and I was taking my fine dining skills that I learned along the way. But after a few years of not only the nightclub, but then running this smaller bar, the the lifestyle, you know, as a young man, it starts to wear on you a little bit. And that's where I eventually hired my what would become my wife as a bartender. And she started, you know, she worked with me for a long time, and we decided, you know, once it got a little more serious and we started this life together, we're like, you know, the bar business is not the where we want to go. And we're like, we're gonna open up this gourmet sandwich shop and we're gonna take all the things that we were doing at this gastro pub, or we're gonna do it in downtown Cleveland at this over-the-counter setting. So, what do we call this gourmet sandwich shop that we're gonna do? And we thought about it eventually. Some people are like, we're gonna call it the pickle, the Cleveland pickle. So we opened uh in that would have been in 2012. We opened up Cleveland pickle on the corner ninth in Euclid, and right in the middle of downtown Cleveland. There's tumbleweeds blowing down the street though at the time in downtown. So it was a little bit of a struggle at first, but you know, it caught on and we became very popular very quickly. So we're like, okay, we so we gotta make some pickles with these sandwiches that were that were given out. So the skills, my pickling skills that I learned along the way of working over a guy named Michael Simon. Like, all right, I'm gonna take these recipes that I learned and we're gonna start making these just one flavor of pickles and we're gonna start giving them away for free with on the sides of our sandwiches. Eventually, we we became very popular at the sandwich shop. We were winning, you know, best sandwich shop in Cleveland and winning all these awards. And where I really saw, you know, people were loving our the sandwiches that we were that we were making, but where I really saw people's eyes lighting up. And as this is where as an entrepreneur, I kind of saw an opportunity come, were these pickles that I was giving away on the sides. I was like, wow, like people were coming in and they were wanting to order larger quantities of these pickles. I was like, wow, like not only do I have this love for pickles, but it seems like a lot of other people do too. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna create a couple more flavors and I'm gonna go hit some farmers markets in the area. People start tasting them and we're sampling them, and I'm just basically scooping them out of buckets into like plastic containers and selling them for at the time for five bucks. Before I know it, I have these lines of people and then people are like trying to reach their way around other people to get the samples. And I was like, I'll I started calling it the pickle riot because people were literally like there were fights happening with people trying to make their way to our table to get these samples. I was like, holy shit, this is cool. But I'm working these farmers markets in our first shop, it was only 750 square feet. A good day was maybe 1500 bucks in sales. We were open from 11 to 4. It was five hours of hustle to make that 1500. Going to these farmers markets, and I'm, you know, I think I made four or five different flavors, and the farmer's market would start at 8 a.m. I was selling out and we were done at noon. At the end of the day, I had $1,500. I was like, wait a minute. Just made I just made the same amount of money working outside, talking to people and you know, having a good time. So we got the retail jars. We had a beautiful grocery store in Cleveland and throughout the state called Hynan, and they're very supportive of local businesses. And we happen to have one right across the street. So I walked over one day with my jar of pickles and I went and talked to Jeff Hynan, who was one of the owners. I was like, hey Jeff, we're now making pickles over at Cleveland Pickle. And I was like, Would you like to carry them here at Heynans? He looks at me and he looks at them and he tastes them and he pauses a minute and he nods his head and he goes, I'll take a hundred cases. Whoa. Oh, that's kind of cool. So 100 cases, you know, it's like that's 1200 jars. I made the delivery and they got on the shelves. And a couple weeks later, I got a check for $5,000. We are five years in and the pickle business was growing and things were going good. And so I'll never forget our lease was coming up. Two people called off at the shop, and I'm working the line, and it's the end of the day, and I'm scrubbing, you know, a cooler and I'm on the floor. And I was like, you know what? We have a way out. I'm gonna close them all. We're gonna take Cleveland pickle and we're gonna we're gonna pivot and we're gonna become a brand. And we hopped in the car and we drove to Florida and we came down and visited my my in-laws at the time were down here. And then, you know, after a month we went back home and we reappeared and we did a big social media push and like, hey, here we are. We are now Cleveland Pickle, the pickle company.

Brian: 6:57

I want to ask you when it came to from the entrepreneurship side, was it challenging for you to come to the point to decide we're gonna close the doors? Because I mean, I liked what you said. You saw there was a progression here, but did it initially come off as a progression, like the business was progressing into something else? Was it hard to step away from the restaurants because that's where it started? Did you feel like you're walking away from something, giving up on something?

Josh: 7:22

As much as I would normally be normally saying yes, I it really wasn't because of our just where we were mentally. More than my wife, I would say I could move on easier from something. Well, I really learned it at the bar. It was called Redstone, where you know, I mean my partners were were clashing. I opened it, but I brought in some partners. And when when I was like, All right, it's you know, we're it's time to move on. She's like, we cannot let these guys get our place. This is our place. But then I was, but what I had to explain to her is like it's just a bar. It's just, you know, even though this is our world, let's just let's just move on to the next thing. I I was ready to to move on at the time.

Brian: 8:02

I love that you shared that because I feel like I know there's been times for me as an entrepreneur that's been hard to walk away from something like this is the way we've always done things, or and and it can be a challenge, but I can also see that probably becomes more of like it's a challenge because it becomes more of your identity and you're willing to walk away from it because you're like, hey, like you said, this is just a business, like this is this is just one model of it, and now it's shifting and changing. So I love that. I think that's really cool. It's inspiring.

Shawna: 8:25

I think it was smart too that you took a month to come to Florida because Florida, even when we lived in Ohio, was where we came to like recover as well. Like whenever things would happen, we'd come to Florida. It's just a good place to like just kind of put yourself back together, like this is where we're going forward, you know?

Brian: 8:41

Yeah, there's there's an optimism in the air. Another question I have for you, Josh, is making this transition into pickles. I mean, you saw that the people in the area love the pickles, like so you knew there was something there. Did you ever get any like feedback from people like really pickles? Like there's so much competition in pickles, I would think, but I don't know.

Josh: 8:58

Yeah, well, at the time, there like there was the artisan quote unquote pickle was not really a thing. There were a few brands kind of coming up, but like you had your commodity brands, your classics and your clauses that you see in the store. But what was kind of starting to to establish itself was that artisan gourmet pickle. And I'll quote McClure's pickle out of Detroit. Um, they were kind of the first ones that kind of said, okay, we're gonna charge $10 for for this, and you're and people are gonna pay it, and it's gonna be delicious, and people are gonna like it.

Shawna: 9:29

Okay, so you were saying that when you were selling in retail at that point, was that glass jars?

Josh: 9:34

That was glass uh shelf shelf stable glass jar.

Shawna: 9:36

Okay, that's what I thought. So, you know, one of the things I noticed when I tasted these, your sunshine pickles, is the wonderful crunchiness of them. Can you get that texture from a jarred like shelf stable pickle?

Josh: 9:48

The shelf stable pickle is a whole different experience. All right, so now you're the sunshine pickle. Once we became just the pickle company, you know, even though the profit wasn't there, the the revenue was there. So we lost the revenue. So that was a very difficult first couple of years. So I rented a kitchen and I was literally out during the week. I was out hustling our retail stuff, and then I would go into the kitchen at five o'clock at night and I would work pro usually till five o'clock in the morning, you know, making making the week's products for the farmers markets and then and the shelf stable stuff. So it was it was I'll never forget that I get emotional.

Shawna: 12:23

That's okay. Take the time. Yeah.

Josh: 12:26

Thinking about it. Um I always do this. I get choked up right at this right at this spot. Uh leaving at my daughter was just born. Damn. Oh, you're fine. Um, and I remember like I had this newborn baby, and then I I would always have to leave for dinner every day and go make pickles, and I would leave, and I would just I would sob because of just the emotions. I I was so run down and so tired and having to leave my my newborn baby and going in and just working my ass off. And then it was just it was a really hard time and thinking about those emotion. That's what it brings it back to me. And that whenever it's funny when that when that part of the story comes up, I was telling that story to the wall to our Walmart buyer, and the same thing happened. I start I start getting choked up and tearing up, and that passion and that emotion is what got us into our first Walmart account. So it's always so fun. Whenever I whenever I say it, it's I can't help it because those emotions just come back to you. Yeah. And so, you know, a couple years into it, I was like, okay, what we can really scale this thing. Let's let's go out and find some money. Very serendipitously. My a friend, a high school friend of mine was cutting some guy's hair, and uh, she's talking to some guy in the food business, and uh, she's like, Wow, you would really get along with my friend Josh, and you should meet him. So I met this guy who introduced us to another guy, who in turn introduced us to another guy. And before we know it, we're talking to this very wealthy, very well-established, not in the food business, just group of business investors. They were shrewd businessmen to say the least. They knew what they were doing and they had an opportunity to buy another bigger pickle company. But then here comes our little hundred thousand dollar a year pickle company at the time coming along, and they saw some wide-eyed, hungry kids um who needed the money. They saw an opportunity to get in cheap. So I made a deal with these guys, and it was a bad deal. But what I was really interested in was these guys helping me scale. And because they were they were winning these, what was called the Weatherhead Awards, where you were the fastest growing business in Ohio at the time, um, and they their whole wall was filled with these Weatherhead awards, and they were they were pointing to this wall, like, that's what we're gonna do with your company. So we made the deal and we signed the papers and we got the money. And as most relationships, they start great, and you're on this honeymoon, and everything's cookies and butterflies and rainbows, and um, but then after a while, I was just doing a lot of the same stuff that I was doing. And even though you know the money was there and I had the money to, you know, create, we created a couple other brands. I saw an opportunity in the fresh space where I was going into the center store where our pickle jars were, and it was completely crowded with all these different brands. But then I was walking over to the refrigerated section, I was saying, wow, there's only two or three brands on these pickle sections. So I was like, we're gonna launch a new brand and we're gonna call it the pickle co very generic, and we're gonna launch this fret and we're gonna launch into the fresh pickle world. So the money's coming in. I had the freedom to launch these new brands, but these guys had no idea what they were doing within the food business. I, you know, I was doing what I was doing, but my intentions were to I wanted you guys to come in and tell me how to scale and tell me how to become, you know, go from a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand to a million to five million. And that's that's was the value I saw in this part in this partnership. But they wanted me to basically just do what I want to do. And I was like, that's not the deal I made. I was becoming disenchanted with it because I wasn't the owner of my company anymore. I wasn't gonna see any profit based on the deal I made. I was getting, you know, a salary, but it was you know, it was great at the time, but it was a measly salary, and I was like, just isn't working. And you know, head started butting, and you know, we had these three different brands, and publics came calling to us, and we had all these meetings scheduled, and things were going good, but I was like, this just isn't isn't working, and it went south as a lot of these partnerships do. It got it got to the point where my wife and I are like, all right, we can take this as a very valuable learning lesson. And again, this is where my compartmentalized kind of mentality comes in, and we were like, you know what, let's let's just walk and let's sell our assets. I had a couple rental properties, let me think that was in January, it would have been right around you know, the end of 2021, and we drove down two cars with a U-Haul trailer and our two dogs and our two kids. And because I was self-employed, they didn't, you know, getting a loan was a little more difficult. So we were literally we didn't know if we were gonna be able to close on our loan. We were driving to Florida, knowing we had a house that we put an offer in and the offer was accepted. We went in and out of qualification because of the whole self-employment thing. You know, eventually it all worked out. Found some uh a manufacturer down here to help us with. We moved in June and we launched Sunshine Pickle. Our first farmer's market was at the Fort Pierce Farmers Market on Christmas Eve of 2022, it was our actual launch date. So we're coming up on three years here in a couple months of our launch.

Brian: 17:26

Yeah, congrats. Yeah, this has been an incredible story. Like I'm excited to learn more about the pickle process. As we get ready to wrap up this episode here, Josh, I want to ask you, you've gone through a lot. I was gonna ask you what's been your biggest lesson, but there's a lot of lessons you've already shared. So, what I would like to ask you wrapping up this episode is what is one piece of advice you would give to someone who might be listening and be like, Man, I know, like I'm going through hard times right now. I don't know what to do. Like as an entrepreneur, what would you say to them?

Josh: 17:53

Don't like shut down, get out, and get different perspective. I think is important, but I think the most important thing, and I'm even going through this right now because you just gotta believe, man, whatever it is you want to do, you got just go out and do it. Be the best pickle company you can be and just go all in. That's what we're doing.

Brian: 18:11

That's awesome. That's what we're doing. Hey, well, I'm excited to get into part two where we're gonna talk about the pickle process. I'm curious about this. Uh, and I've I still haven't tasted the pickle, so I'm gonna have to try one because it's so they're very crispy. During the case, no, I think I gotta crunch it right in the microphone. People can hear how crispy it is. Okay. Yeah, we'll see.

Josh: 18:28

And they they crunch while in a mic.

Brian: 18:30

Yeah, so yeah, so we'll we'll try it. So if you're looking for the crunch, you better wait for the second part. But hey, if you guys have enjoyed this episode so far, make sure you click subscribe loose review.

Shawna: 18:39

And with that, catch you next time, neighbor.