Brian: 0:12

All right. Welcome back to the Vero Beach podcast. This is part three of our conversation here with Josh from Sunshine Pickle Co. We were super excited when you reached out. I was like, wow, Pickle Company here and Vero. I can't wait to meet him and get to know him. What do you love most about Vero Beach?

Josh: 0:27

Um, well, I mean, it's a common answer, but just a small town feel is what we really love about it. Quiet, small town. For me, um, I think the fact that, you know, the carpets kind of roll up uh pretty early here, as as they say, um, you know, there's no trouble to find. But and that's kind of that's kind of the fun thing about it is you gotta really search to look for, you know, that kind of for that that hidden place that's not being taken over by tourists and stuff like that. Or if you want to find that, you can find it. You can find that part of your beach where the busy part where those people where the people are, but for the most part, it's it's gonna be quiet, you know, in a lot of the places. So I love that kind of contrast uh into the rest of the places you go in Florida, is what I really like. The dirt roads and I call it beach country where you know you you can be standing as uh you know in a cow pasture and then 10 minutes drive to the east and you're at this beautiful beach. It's I think it's so unique and such a cool like kind of area. And you know, I become a country fan, and um, we love going to Felsmere and Willie's and the honky tonks.

Shawna: 1:31

So have you discovered Jake Owen's music yet?

Josh: 1:33

Yeah, so ironically, actually, we are in conversations with um Jake Owen for his flamingo that comes in November where you're you're gonna see Sunshine Pickle with a big presence at all the flamingo events. So yeah, we're having really good conversations with them right now.

Shawna: 1:49

You should develop a pickle cocktail of some kind. I was gonna say that earlier, but for stuff like that, like a VIP one, you know.

Josh: 1:56

Absolutely.

Brian: 1:56

So, Josh, I'm curious, how did you find Vero Beach?

Josh: 2:00

So we um we are my in-laws lived in Delray Beach, and then they moved they moved to Boynton. So we would go down and visit them there, and I want to be close to them to where we know they can still see us and see the kids, but I don't want any drop-ins every day or anything like that. Although that's changed that view has changed in the last couple of years. But originally, I was like, let's be far enough away where it's still not too far of a drive to get to them, but where it's not so close, where it's not, you know, every weekend. I started talking to some friends and they're like, okay, you can they mention Ormond Beach, they mention Coco, they mentioned Melbourne. Let's go up to Melbourne and let's go start, let's make an appointment with some real estate agents and let's go start looking around there. And um, I was like, this is not gonna work. I wanted to find that like quaint downtown old Florida town. So we hopped on A1A and we're like, let's just start driving south. And then eventually, after a little while on A1A, we get to the Sebastian Inlet and we're like, ooh, this is kind of cool. We saw we saw the Cove Beach, and I was like, This is really beautiful. So we um we stopped in Sebastian. Sebastian was nice, but again, it didn't have that like kind of like concentrated downtown area. It finally got to this little town called Vero Beach that we saw on maps, and I think we may have talked about it a couple times, and we stopped um and we had lunch at the fish shack. Oh, and uh, we're having lunch at the fish shack, and we're talking to the bartender, and they're like, So, so how do you love Vero Beach? And she's like, I hate it here. It's there's nothing to do, and it's just so quiet. And we're like, This is perfect. So we're like, let's, you know, we have no connection here whatsoever. It's checking many of the boxes. So we we just moved to Vero Beach and we're going on three years, and it's been just unbelievable. And we've met such a great group of friends, and you know, we have the business, and it's been just really good experience.

Shawna: 3:46

Isn't it fun too that it almost feels like there's like three downtowns? It took us forever to even figure out what was actual downtown. Yeah, yeah, because like Beachside feels like kind of like a little downtown, then there's 14th, and then actually even like kind of Miracle Mile in certain ways.

Josh: 4:01

Like, you know, it's like yeah, it's a very big, like it's a big, small town. One disclaimer that I do want to add so I I don't get my balls busted too much, is my in-laws ended up moving to Sebastian recently, so they're much closer, and it's actually been great.

Brian: 4:16

What are some of your favorite places in beer? Like, do you have any favorite spots? Well, you mentioned the fish shack. We've not been to fish.

Josh: 4:22

Fish shack is awesome. Um, we're we're big fans of date night, happy hour always starts at Ocean Grill. We love Costa and we love going to Waldos and Driftwood over there. So we have a couple different like beach experiences that we look for. When we want to feel like we're on vacation, we'll go set up in front of Driftwood and kind of like just be tourists and go to the up to the bar and get food over there. When we want kind of quietness and we want to feel like we're almost an outer banks kind of deal, we'll go down to South South Beach. If we don't want to bring lunch with us, we'll go to Wabaso Beach, um, where there's beach bites who also carry our products now. Oh, really? Yeah, you so you can get sunshine pickle there. Yeah, so that's what's time with our beach. So you got Rosies and you know, all the places where like the locals hang out. We have a very eclectic group of friends, and you know, we can go blend in with pretty much any walk of life, is kind of what what our assets are um from a social standpoint.

Brian: 5:17

So I love it. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about in this episode or two about collabs. Like, you know, one of the things I love is learning about how businesses are coming together. I see that more and more here in Vero, where they're coming together to help each other, support each other. Uh, do you have any collaborations in the works?

Josh: 6:12

Yeah, well, we're actually working with 21st Amendment, as a matter of fact. We're gonna be doing something with them. They they're very limited on space right now. We were working with pepper and salt a little bit. Okay, yeah. Um, and you know, we're I'm always looking to do collaborations with uh any businesses out there. Nice.

Brian: 6:26

Is the best way for like a local business to reach out to you? Would that be through your socials?

Josh: 6:30

Or you can just message us or you know, all of our contact info is out there. Awesome, awesome.

Shawna: 6:35

What like what are some things that people have told you that they pair your pickles with that would be like unusual?

Josh: 6:41

Because we have like a thicker, a thicker chip that's like easily, it's a great mechanism and a great vehicle for like a for dipping and stuff. So people use them instead of like using chips and crackers and stuff. And so when you're talking about collaborations, is we like to team up with like fish dip companies, which is popular down here. So instead of putting the fish dip on a cracker, you just put it right on the pickle and then top it with like a pickled onion. You can do that. So stuff like that.

Brian: 7:07

So another thing I remember when we first sat down, you mentioned about you just met Dana from Vino Vero. Uh and you said you're talking about you guys are working out some kind of collab there. What is that?

Josh: 7:17

Because I never imagined pickles and wine, but I'm like, Yeah, well, you know, with the wine and cheese boards or the meat and cheese boards, we're a great compliment on that kind of stuff. So um, you know, we just kind of briefly discussed it when we met when I was picking up this the the famous surfboard down there. Um but hopefully we'll be, you know, working with them. I'm just trying to figure out I gotta wrap this up because I need to go eat some pickles.

Brian: 7:37

Okay. I gotta get pickles in here and yes. But uh as we wrap up, I would love to know what so what's your hope or plans for the future?

Josh: 7:45

Well, like I said, like this isn't this is not a side gig. We're earing for just national distribution and we want to spread, I call it spread in the sunshine, you know, from coast to coast. So uh, you know, we're working on really locking down Florida and we want to encapsulate what Florida is through our branding and through our messaging.

Brian: 8:01

Awesome. Oh, I love it. Well, thanks again, Josh. It's been great having you on. Thank you for having me. If you guys have enjoyed this episode, make sure if you and if you if you're wanting to try some pickles, really good pickles, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes so you can click there, go check it out. But with that, if you guys have enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review.

Shawna: 8:17

Thanks for listening, neighbor.