754: He Sold $3M in Coffee From a Bike

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Nice to meet you, Nick, and thank you so much for having me.

You bet. Stick around. We're covering how this business works, the most profitable events to sell out, and how you might start something similar in your own area. So Vlad, my understanding is you like coffee, you like the margins in selling coffee. You don't like the overhead and commitment in opening a retail space, your own coffee shop type of thing. So you decide to go mobile, which is really unique. But the first version of the mobile coffee business doesn't really work, does it?

Well, to be frankly honest with you, I didn't even drink coffee when I was just, uh, coming up with an idea.

[laughs]

For me, I'm, I'm, like, very mathematical mindset. I just calculated the margins on the coffee. I was like, "Okay, back in the time, the retail price is five dollars. It costs me around one dollar for the ingredients." And the mobility part of it, as you mentioned, it kind of deducts most of the overhead. So my profit margin as a solo operator would be in, like, seventy to eighty percent, uh, range, which is crazy if you would compare it to, like, you know, ten, fifteen at the best twenty percent at the retail, but majority of them being in the five to ten range, to be honest, based on my research and having quite a lot of fellows. So yeah, the first cart, I actually ordered some-something from overseas, and, uh, I didn't have too much knowledge. I just did in the coffee margins, and then the overall look of it was attractive to me. I received the concept, uh, the cart, which was absolutely not-- non-compatible with local regulations, which of course, I haven't researched as a