
Growing a Fruit Snack Business for a Good Cause - patwalls
https://www.starterstory.com/stories/peaceful-fruits
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gdhbcc
30 employees and 15000 dollars of revenue per month?

500 dollars worth of revenue per employee per month? This is not a viable
business.

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patwalls
The employees are not full time and work very minimal hours. Check out a bit
later in the interview he talks about it more.

The founder also addressed more on this in this reddit post:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/9pbf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/9pbf6i/15kmonth_selling_fruit_snacks_shark_tank_profit/)

~~~
gdhbcc
That doesn't really address the issue as much as it acknowledges it.

It's like someone is pointing out a hole in the bottom of the boat, and the
captain looks at it and says "yes, there's a hole in the bottom". A good thing
to be sure, but not one that actually fixes the issue,...

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philipodonnell
It used to be that this model was common for charity startups and I was sort
of ok with that. Uninspired... but ok. Its a bit of wealth transfer
capitalism-style, and at least then the profits do to go to help someone in
need, maybe by donating back to the people with disabilities, or building
infrastructure in the Amazon. But this is just nah we'll keep 100% of the
profits ourselves instead! Innovation!

\- Find a packaged product with raw material sourced from an "on-trend"
country (founder's words), buy at market prices, claim to be "creating
opportunities" there in a vague way.

\- Find laborers subsidized by grants to do the packaging, use this to apply
for your own grants. Enjoy "the incredible feel-good aspects of providing
jobs" (founder's words) with subsidized labor costs. Also enjoying
"effectively ... zero-interest loans" is a nice benefit as well. PROTIP - If
you automate away those same workers once you have used them to bootstrap the
business you can still use the pictures in your origin story PR pieces.

\- Target "higher-income consumers with the values and means to vote with
their dollars - whether that’s in support of high-quality food, progressive
community development, or both." (founder's words) to avoid having to justify
a premium-priced but ultimately commoditized product.

\- Do a kickstarter, not because its necessary to get product validation, just
because "the most concrete, useful lesson is definitely that nearly anyone has
a $10,000 crowdfunding campaign in them."

------
coin
What's with the silly and dishonest non-GMO label? It doesn't bode well for
the credibility of this product.

