Brandon Weimer | The Evolution of a Sweet Legacy from the Founder of Brandini Toffee
This episode of Big Conversations, Little Bar hosted by Patrick Evans and Randy Florence centers on the remarkable journey of Brandon Weimer, the founder of Brandini Toffee, who shares the story of how a school project evolved into a thriving business. Initially conceived to fund a school trip to Italy, Brandini Toffee has blossomed into a beloved confectionery brand within the Coachella Valley and beyond. Throughout the episode, Wiemer elaborates on various aspects of his entrepreneurial experience, including the challenges of maintaining product quality, navigating seasonal demand fluctuations, and the strategic partnership with Costco, which has significantly contributed to the brand's growth. The discussion also touches upon the importance of innovation, as Weimer reveals exciting new product developments, including toffee popcorn and potential coffee-infused offerings. This episode not only highlights the evolution of a small business but also provides insights into the resilience and dedication required to succeed in the competitive food industry.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
Takeaways:
- Patrick Evans and Randy Florence engage in a discussion with guest Brandon Weimer, the founder of Brandini Toffee, about the origins and evolution of his successful business.
- A significant highlight of the podcast is the exploration of Brandini Toffee's journey from a simple school project to a thriving enterprise with recognition in the specialty food industry.
- Brandon shares insights into the challenges of scaling production and the complexities of managing seasonal demand in the confectionery business.
- The conversation also touches on the impact of Costco on Brandini Toffee's distribution and the unique challenges related to maintaining product quality for retail.
- Listeners gain valuable lessons about entrepreneurship, including cash flow management and the importance of adapting to market demands in a competitive landscape.
#BigConversationsLittleBarPodcast #PatrickEvans #RandyFlorence #MutualBroadcastingSystem #BrandonWeimer #CoachellaValley #BrandiniToffee #SmallBusinessSuccess #ToffeeRecipe #Entrepreneurship #LocalBusinessStories #McCallumTheater #SkipsLittleBar #FoodIndustryInsights #FundraisingIdeas #CulinaryInnovation #CommunitySupport #FamilyBusiness #ProductDevelopment #StreetFairSales #SeasonalBusinessChallenges #IceCreamBars #ToffeePopcorn #SmallBatchProduction
Transcript
In the desert oasis where stories ignite Skip's little bar, a beacon of light from the Coachella Valley stars to cool everyday joes. Join Patrick and Randy. Let the stories flow that big conversations little bar the magic spreads near and far backed by the McCallum Theater's Grace.
Celebrate the voices that shape this place.
Howard Hoffman, Announcer:From the coveted corner booth in a little bar at the center of the Coachella Valley universe. Welcome to another big conversation with Patrick Evans and Randy Florence. Presented by the McCallum Theatre.
-: John McMullen, Producer:Well, thank you, Howard. Yes, we are back here at Skip Page's little bar at the coveted corner booth. My name is Patrick Evans.
Randy Florence, Host:Still.
Patrick Evans, Host:What?
Randy Florence, Host:You're still Patrick Evans, as far as I know. Okay.
Patrick Evans, Host:I checked my real ID today.
Randy Florence, Host:Did you get one of those?
Patrick Evans, Host:Yeah, I've had one for a couple of years.
Randy Florence, Host:I guess I gotta get one.
Patrick Evans, Host:No, you don't go anywhere.
Randy Florence, Host:Well, that's true. I'd have to get on a plane to need one.
Patrick Evans, Host:You don't go anywhere. So why do you need. That is the voice of my co host and dear friend and the greatest sidekick in the history of podcasting, Mr. Randy Florence.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:How are you?
Randy Florence, Host:Thank you, I'm doing great, thank you.
Patrick Evans, Host:But you don't have a real id, so we might have to ask you.
Randy Florence, Host:This may be my last episode.
Patrick Evans, Host:It could be, yes. IDs are required.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:A fake real ID.
Randy Florence, Host:A fake real ID.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Fake real ID.
Patrick Evans, Host:Do not say this around my soon to be 20 year old daughter. So far I know she does not have a fake ID. I'm worried about the 16 year old. I think she might.
That is the voice of Brandon Weimer who is our guest today and we are so delighted to have you. The owner and founder of Brandini Toffee.
Randy Florence, Host:Yay.
Patrick Evans, Host:One of the greatest homegrown products since dates. Since the Coachella Valley invented dates.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:A commodity.
Patrick Evans, Host:Next best thing is Brandini Toffee.
Randy Florence, Host:My wife, this is as excited as she's been for one of my podcasts.
Patrick Evans, Host:Whoa! In two years?
Randy Florence, Host:Yeah, I thought he wants to stop.
John McMullen, Producer:I thought Patrick was gonna say Fulvio's.
Patrick Evans, Host:Since we folded the company and closed that, it's really hard to compare it. We didn't have quite the runaway success that Brandini Toffee.
John McMullen, Producer:Well, you should have tried to go to Italy with kids.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Hang around for another 18 years. It's nothing. Nothing moves fast.
Randy Florence, Host:There's that voice.
Patrick Evans, Host:Hey, welcome to the program. Thanks for being here.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Thanks for having me.
Randy Florence, Host:Really good.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's surreal.
Randy Florence, Host:It's cool.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:This is my first podcast in life.
Randy Florence, Host:Really?
Patrick Evans, Host:Is it really?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, we've ruined you podcast around here. This is awesome.
Patrick Evans, Host:I would think. I'm really surprised that. Because the story behind Brandini Toffee is. I mean, it's the sort of thing. It's a Coachella Valley legend now.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Thank you. I don't know if there's more in town, but if there are more in town. But I know I've done a couple online that are.
I can never tell if it's really spammy or not. Like these companies that are paying somebody to go do interviews and stuff. And I don't know if they're real podcast. I don't listen to those.
So if I do an interview on those, it doesn't feel as legitimate as showing up here and seeing a face.
Randy Florence, Host:Make sure he wasn't expecting a check.
Patrick Evans, Host:Nothing is more legitimate.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:On the contrary, I showed up with Toffee. So that's your.
Randy Florence, Host:There you go.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:My wife happy. I'm sure that was the question.
Randy Florence, Host:Too bad you didn't get any for yours.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Well, it's a full bag.
Patrick Evans, Host:Well, then that wraps it up nice. All right. For those people who don't know, walk us through the origin story of it.
You guys did this basically as a school project to fund a school trip?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. Yep. Student trip to Italy, sophomore year, high school, La Quinta High. I made toffee as a hobby. Childhood friend and I had an opportunity to study.
Not study is the wrong term. It was a vacation for a week over spring break with a class trip. And so I made toffee as a hobby.
And our parents pretty quickly said you should do something to help fundraise for that. They really weren't in the position anyways to go spend a couple thousand dollars to send us on a week vacation. And so my dad was.
Has an entrepreneurial heart. He was in hotel management. But he said, you should sell that product you've been making. And a family friend had taught me how to make it.
So I was pretty good at making it. I made it quite often and was really passionate about but four simple ingredients.
I thought it's pretty crazy that you could just take butter and sugar and sit over a stove for 45 minutes to an hour and then put chocolate almonds on it. And it literally converted those ingredients into chemical reaction of turning into hard crack candy.
And that was a family friend who taught me how to make it in middle school. So yeah, I became very kind of nerdy with that recipe. And we started with the website. That friend of mine, her dad was a web designer.
,:But that was kind of the big break of showing up. And you do this interview in front of, I don't know who it was, city council or who it was. And you're trying to claim why you deserve to be there.
And when they gave us that approval was kind of off to the races because every Thursday you could go and kind of guarantee 500 a week of, you know, sales, which is nice.
Patrick Evans, Host:Yeah, that's great.
Randy Florence, Host:Now a friend in middle school taught you how to make this.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It was, it was our family friends. As a gentleman, it wasn't, you know, wasn't a nine year old was another child who's. Yeah. Cooking up toffee in the alleys.
But no, he was, he was a, he was an older gentleman that would stay at our house from Phoenix because he did some business out here and he made it at a family gathering just like, hey, I'm going to make this for this get together. And I hung around enough for him to teach me.
And then he and I were somewhat in competition early on where I would send him different updates I was doing with the recipe of changing whether it's chocolate or almonds or after starting the company, we changed the cooking temp, which is a really important factor. And we give a lot of that credit to why it doesn't stick to your teeth nearly as much. That's important, we think is our big. Yeah. Our big plus.
I mean, besides other components.
But yeah, we're really obsessed about four ingredients and how to not just have the best ingredients, but how to process those and then distribute it once it turns into toffee, how to distribute it meticulously so that it's the same quality when it's now in your fridge or showing up at, you know, a dinner table or something like that.
Randy Florence, Host:Did this become your hobby of choice at about that point or what? What else did you like to do?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:I wasn't, I was extremely little person as a child, so I don't give any credit to sports. That's, you know, I think everybody, most of us question, you know, what sports did you play? And we all live that life, right? You play sports?
I didn't really. I did the debate team in high School, that's it. I'll tell you who I, you know, what kind of student I was. There's Skip, there's right there, ladies.
Patrick Evans, Host:They just walked into the bar.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. Debate. Debate team for me was something I dabbled with and I definitely enjoyed cooking.
I don't know if I would have been, you know, gone towards culinary or not, but. Yeah, I don't know. Tinkering with stuff, I suppose.
Had a garden that I did for a family or a student project that made my own garden at the house and I don't know, building stuff and tinkering, I think has kind of been my thing forever. And if anyone knows me nowadays, it's, you know, 100x that on the building side of just.
And it's at home or work or whatever, just like kind of hands on stuff.
Randy Florence, Host:And you said dad was kind of an entrepreneur.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:He's had little smaller side businesses, but then managed a hotel here in town. And that's how he made a living for the family for my whole childhood, for over 20 years.
But he, you know, I wouldn't ever say that I've got the entrepreneurial heart.
It's like, oh, I'm out there, you know, I literally, I think he did this slanging gummy bears in middle school kind of thing, which is, I think, you know, the cliche, what you're doing when you're younger is like, can I get, you know, firecrackers from a cousin coming down from Nebraska or something? I think that's literally what he did. And, and I give him all that credit of having that risk tolerance. Again, it can happen at an early age for me.
I definitely, I like innovation, but I don't have a high risk tolerance.
So it's been really great from day one between him and having the adults in the room quite literally there to give a little bit of a, you know, some bumpers to it. But, but the, the, you know, impetus of Brandini is just a fundraiser for $2,000.
So it's kind of like we always say it's the glorified lemonade stand. It's like if you told anybody you've got, you know, four, six months, whatever it was, to fundraise for $2,000.
You know, you can go out, wash cars, you do all sorts of stuff to get there. And yeah, so that, that's how it felt.
Patrick Evans, Host:You funded the trip pretty quickly.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. Especially a few months. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:I mean, like, so being, you know, which is very cool. But at what point did this transition to a bit where you looked at it and said, ah, you know, this is more than a hobby now. Maybe I can.
Maybe I can do this. Because this is. I mean, this is your job. Like, this is your.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, in high school. Yeah. Senior year. So that was sophomore year. Junior year, end of sophomore year.
e been kind of a gray area of:And so they would allow us, you're familiar, Indian Wells Resort, and we would make or have toffee made there after school, essentially, I'd go down there and make toffee and then we'd sell it at these events and I'd have eventually a couple friends that would help make product and sell product. And we're getting. I mean, shoot. Being on the news with you back in that day, it was a huge deal. Right. You go on and eye of the desert.
And then Gino Lamont there at Channel 6 would have us go down, like, quite often to give updates on things. So it felt like, okay, we're done fundraising. The parents were heavily involved and obviously it was kind of had enough momentum.
So you're not going to be like, all right, mission accomplice. We shut this thing down, kind of just said, we'll see what happens.
retty big inflection point in:They were taking on higher levels of risk with home equity line of credits and some things that would give it some basis. We were getting around that time we got kicked out of the kitchen we were in because we were taking up too much space.
So we had to then find a kitchen, which was just a kind of more of temporary spot in La Quinta, but having to put on our big boy pants for a few things.
Randy Florence, Host:Did you understand kind of the risk your parents were taking at the time?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Totally. Oh, yeah.
Randy Florence, Host:Was there a little bit of pressure? But I was going to say you're.
Patrick Evans, Host:Kind of risk averse.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. That age, I mean, I just wouldn't have. I mean, obviously at that age, you just don't even know the lay of the land when it comes to a lot of things.
But I was aware, being informed about, you know, we were selecting to be an S corporation and how we were making that decision and. Or really the parents were and the process within that. And so, yeah, so that. That. But on top of that, separate of the business side was we were.
We then were getting some awards in the industry. So we had Specialty Food Association. We won the Gold Sophie Award.
We're the first business, first toffee business in like, 50 years to win the outstanding chocolate category, which is a huge deal in that industry. It's. I don't know how many hundreds or maybe even thousands of applicants will apply for each category.
And so that was pretty big validation because you're in the chocolate. We're not chocolate tours chocolatiers. We don't even know how to temper chocolate. We don't do it. It's not something you do on toffee.
So it's funny to go into a category where people are just going to school on this stuff and we're just blindly seeing. Submitting a recipe that, like, we know is great, but again, it's almost hilarious.
We think about the chocolate category because that is a really prestigious category. So anyways, we won that that year. That's a big deal.
Randy Florence, Host:And did you get how big it was?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're the first people under 17 in its history to receive the awards. I was gonna ask how old you were when you got under 18. We were 17.
So, yeah. Jacques Pepin, the French chef or something, I think he used to be a big chef. Maybe he still is, but he still is.
Patrick Evans, Host:He's all over sudden. He showed up on my social media was really. Oh, yeah.
Randy Florence, Host:Well, you mentioned crazy Brandini top.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Quite old now, I would assume. I mean, he was elderly at that time, I think. So he was the one who presented the award. So we got to meet him. And that's amazing at the presentation.
And, yeah, family was there and everything. Yeah, there was a big deal. And then we did the Martha Stewart show that year, which was another trip that was also New York.
And we did, you know, got invited. There's a lot of people. There's a handful of experiences that people say, how the heck did that happen?
And it's literally like Palm Springs Village Fest.
Like some producer for Martha Stewart show is here for, I think, a wedding and came across Brandini and said, oh, we need to have you on the show talk about that call. I wasn't me. I don't know. I think he was potentially one of the moms. We say, I think it was one of the moms that had the call.
I don't remember which of us even met her. But, yeah, that was a surreal time where you're like, oh, that's Sounds like a huge deal. This is after prison. That's also the popular question mark.
Stewart's kind of recently fresh out, starting her show back up and, you know. Yeah. Very much a popular show at the time. It seemed pre Snoop. Yeah. Yeah.
Randy Florence, Host:But they would have wanted a lot more talking.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Cool. If Snoop was still involved. Yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:That's how you could make a shiv out of top.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. That's a weird question.
Randy Florence, Host:I don't know how, but you could before prison.
Patrick Evans, Host:I don't think she would ask that.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:So you're 17, 18 years old, and this is. This is happening.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:And obviously you said your parents were pretty involved.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Parents were super involved. Yeah. Yeah. Quite literally their business. Yeah. But. But from.
Yeah, I mean, it was still going into getting out of fundraising, going into we want to kind of fundraise for college. That didn't happen. But it wasn't. It wasn't like it's instant. It was instantly profitable.
And quite frankly, it hasn't been vastly profitable at all. I mean, welcome to business. It's never. No matter how much it grows, it just doesn't get to. You need to keep getting. You're always chasing scale.
Patrick Evans, Host:So food product is. The margins are notoriously small.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. After all the overhead, especially if you're manufacturing it. Yeah.
Randy Florence, Host:So to that point at the beginning, what were some of the most important lessons that you learned about? Let's not do that again.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Oh, God. I think it's probably over the past. The first decade, I'd say. I can't remember the early years exactly, but I mean, a lot of it's just cash is king.
You know, we're in a seasonal valley that. We're in a seasonal industry. So we do 50% of our revenue in three months. So we do, you know, quite a concentration there.
And then we do 75% of our revenue in six months. And that's no matter what, no matter how much we grow. We're growing, you know, 10 times over in a decade or whatever. And it's.
It still is that proportion. So there's always this. This kind of feast or famine mentality where you're in season. Season's very short. You're catching up on a lot of things. You.
You feel. You feel a relief for a moment, and then you get to the summertime and there's 90 days.
We literally should just shut the facility down now for 90 days.
So that balance of cash management, while you're trying to reinvest and trying to figure out, okay, are we actually making any money or are we just, you know, leveraging debt and leveraging debt improperly? Because we use, I mean, we use. SBA's been the biggest investor in Brandy Neitafe is the Small Business Administration.
And we've used their products since quite early on. And so. And we've been somewhat of a poster child with them as well. And they've just been awesome. And this is before.
I don't think people even knew what the SB SBA was before COVID ppp. But they will. They'll give you some money when no one else will. Right.
Randy Florence, Host:And they loved you guys.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah.
And so they, you know, for many different finance options early on, as we were buying equipment and then renovating our facility and then trying to buy a building that we now operate and some really big projects that could have just killed us if we didn't move properly. And honestly, we got pretty close to that too. But yeah, at least it was an option. And those were those been the finance.
Running on fumes, Growing on fumes is really hard. And that's been the kind of the nature of our business for 18 years.
Patrick Evans, Host:It's the nature of a lot of small.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Growing on fumes. Yeah.
Again, it's not, I mean, yeah, it's not all roses from the behind the scenes, but fortunately we've had a product and a brand that resonates and seems to be. Continues to build momentum. It's not, you know, we've always kind of played the long game of we're not here to be a fad or not here to here.
Do I really think our category can be enduring, you know, for many generations? And so that's why it's, it's not rushed in that sense.
Randy Florence, Host:Got it.
Patrick Evans, Host:All right, I got a cryptic note for my producer and I'm just going to tell. Ask you to tell me what you.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Want me to ask.
John McMullen, Producer:Oh, I was just going to say tell us about the Costco deal. When that first came together, that had.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:To be the word you wrote.
Patrick Evans, Host:That's Costco.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Costco. We had somebody that was trying to help us with outside sales that was a friend and I think maybe she had a contact and the local store somehow.
I don't know. I've heard two stories. I've heard that story and then I've also heard the buyer of Costco for this region, which each.
There's, I think there's maybe eight regions in the U.S. each buyer has their own. Their own jurisdiction essentially, and they buy very independently of each other and very little overlap.
And so that buyer for this region, which is 50, I don't know at the time, but now it's maybe 50 or 55 clubs within Southern California. She claims her husband got it I think as a gift and brought it home. Was like, you guys need to carry this. And so this is super early on.
al shoppers. But this is like:Within our first two years they would have us come in and do Roadshow, which is now. You know, if people see Costco Randini at Costco, they're usually seeing a shovel out samples to the masses.
At Roadshow, which is just consignment sales, they say, you can show up, we'll approve you for these couple items, show up and whatever you, whatever you sell is yours, obviously with the within some shared margin there. And so that was an opportunity for us to have somewhat of a pop up shop and build a little relevance here at the two clubs here in town.
And then they eventually let us have an inline item which means it's just there.
At that time it was seasonally say, all right, the one pound box of toffee is going to be here for holiday and eventually you prove yourself enough through sales to be there, you know, Q4 and Q1. And then eventually we've closed that gap and we're year round. And then eventually we had popcorn, toffee popcorn come in the mix.
And that's year round as well. But that's local and seasonal.
So a lot of people, I mean Costco, their brand is obviously phenomenal and you know, I get way more props for being in Costco than a wholesaler that's mad that they're having to compete with Costco seasonally or something. And I just say that's accretive to the brands for people to find our products in areas that you normally wouldn't see it.
I mean, when we do holiday rotations, we'll have £15,000 of toffee go throughout Southern California in front of a lot of faces that have never seen it. And popcorn's the same and it might only be there for a little.
We haven't earned our spot year round at those clubs and honestly, we never even earn it guaranteed for season, every season. We've had some years be much better than others, but it's been a huge part of our business and kind of how we've been able to grow in sync with them.
We have that same transparency with them on how we know we're not going to be a national Costco product overnight. But if you look at our numbers locally, we are a multiple of their baseline.
We're kind of in the unicorn phase here where we'll sell sometimes more 1 pound boxes through the two local stores than we do as a company, you know, anywhere else, you know, and so kind of create a beast there where they might, you know, move quite a bit.
Patrick Evans, Host:Did it create a manufacturing issue for you? I mean like keeping up with Costco.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Demand, that's like a surge. Yeah.
So I mean a lot of similar to the working capital side, if we talk business, some of the kind of second order effect of that is the surge of demand. So you have a surge of kind of leveraging money to get through summer and then get ready for season.
Because right after the, you know, when you're at the last lap of summer, which is summer business here, you then just get blindsided with holiday season again where we do most of our business. So you don't, you need to stock up for that. Which we now started doing much more disciplined.
We created a, built about a:Last year, love, love the Costco buyers, but last year they're a little late with it and so we sprinted. We took on quite a bit of overtime and that kind of compresses us. Yeah.
When we have to put out, I think we put out three or four 53 foot semis in a month, maybe or two or three weeks.
Randy Florence, Host:Yeah.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:We're all sudden you're going from mild walk to a semi truck every, I don't know, maybe it's every like four days or five days. Yeah. So yeah, we've had that two years ago. We had an awesome year with them where they gave us an opportunity that was across multiple regions.
So we had eight semi trucks. So that was. Or that was 240 pallets that went across to Mexico and several states. And.
But that's, that was a flash in the pan that wasn't expected to resonate much longer than that.
Patrick Evans, Host:It was a cool opportunity as a business when you're, when you're scaling up production. Yeah, that's got to be difficult because all the, that's huge.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:You got to get your procurement, you got to have enough time. It always starts with packaging. You have to have enough time. So we do all custom packaging.
So you say, all right, I need to have enough time to order packaging, to receive it in time.
And then you kind of back schedule from there and go, okay, well, if I can get it by this day, obviously, how many ingredients do I need by that point? And then you typically convert it to batches. You say, all right, I need to produce 500 batches of product for this type of fulfillment.
And we then also need to shut off the rest of the business.
Usually if it's going with short notice, which we've done a few times, you go, all right, we need to have everything else ready because nothing else can go toward. It's all is going to that for as short of a period as you can make it. And then. Yeah, and then you need to have the labor to help.
So we're very handmade. So, yeah, we'll typically have to expedite our hiring for season, which we do anyways.
But sometimes that kind of, you know, is the tail that wags the dog of season, or kick starts it, at least. Yeah. Then after that, season flows and we put out, you know, quite a bit within a short period of time.
Well, you know, three or four thousand pounds a day will be our flow for maybe 60 days straight. Yeah. So it gets it all. Yeah, it kind of blindsides you.
Patrick Evans, Host:I mean, I don't know. I mean, it all depends on. I mean, everybody cuts their own deal. But I would assume that with a.
With a big distributor like a Costco, you negotiate margin differently than maybe some of the other places where you can sell.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:They have their own structure. I mean, Costco, Costco doesn't. Yeah, they're so different than any retailer. Costco makes most of their money or all their money on memberships.
So people want to assume that, you know, why is it something more cost effective when you go to Costco and you go, well, they've literally used volume pricing to their advantage and decided to not make money on the product, which every other retailer does, and said, we'll just make money on the 50 or 100 bucks you give us a year to have access to that. And so their markup's like, I don't know, like 17% sometimes. I mean, it's very slim. That's really small, 50 to 100% elsewhere. So, yeah, it's.
You're really. They're working with very slim margins. And then. And then they have a different model where you're allocating.
You're allocating a percentage towards demo support. So obviously you have a percentage for us, it's. It's pretty standard to be 10%, which is the upper limit.
But we find with a great product, people should try it, right? If you have no clue what it is, you know, we used to do a lot of home shopping at work, or I did, and I would just pitch candy on tv.
There's no smell of television still. So you'd be there, like selling candy to some lady at 2am in Florida and you're like, I can't tell you.
I can tell you how great this is, but you won't know until you try it.
Patrick Evans, Host:Just have to eat it.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:And the barrier of entry there is purchasing it. Whereas at Costco, you can pass out a lot of product and people get introduced, which if you know us locally, it's. We do it in store.
It started at street fair. Go to street fair, you pass out samples and you hope to create conversion. You go, all right, well, we open a store, we're going to do the same thing.
And then we have kiosk program with stores that resell it and we'll still put it prepackaged samples in our kiosks because we want people to try it. And we think that's the best return on promotion, investment or whatever that's going to do way more than any Billboard ever will.
Patrick Evans, Host:100%. 100%.
We have to take a quick break to acknowledge our presenting sponsor, the McCallum Theater season is in full swing and you can go to mccallumtheater.org to find out all the latest shows that they've added. That is the heart of entertainment in the Coachella Valley. The McCallum Theatre. Your theater, your entertainment. The McCallum.
John McMullen, Producer: The McCallum Theater's:Tickets are on sale now at the McCallum Theatre's box office by phone or online at mccallumtheater.org Tickets sell quickly, so order yours today. It's an exciting season only at the MacCallum. Your entertainment, Your McCallum Theater.
Patrick Evans, Host:And we are back. Thank you MacCallum Theater for being an ardent and wonderful sponsor of big conversations. Little bar. We appreciate it.
We're here with Brandon Weimer of Brandini toffee. It was a little project that he started to pay for a school trip and now he is a captain of industry here in the Coachella.
What's the company structure like? Your parents still heavily involved?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest: e and I went off to school in: quit her job, I think, around:I mean, whatever that financially ended up being. I don't think a lot, but they put a lot of time towards it.
You know, the moms would be out there running, traveling, doing road shows and harvest festivals and stuff. And then, yeah, Leah had just went and got a career, started a career elsewhere, did her own thing. It was, you know, not.
It wasn't obvious at that time that, oh, this is where, you know, this is where the money's at. I'm gonna go move. You know, for me, it was literally move in with my parents. I got a degree.
I went to University of Arizona and got the piece of paper and all that, and then said, all right, without really using that. I'm just gonna go home, live with my parents, and see if we can make a living doing this. And so. And I was in the.
Yeah, a great position to kind of have very little downside to it. Again, my cost, my burn for life was extremely low. And so that, you know, took a lot longer than I would have hoped.
But I came on full time immediately and picked up a broom and kind of got. We, at that time, we were renting a different kitchen here in Rancho Mirage, which is kind of near where our main facility's at.
And so that was kind of quite a. Quite a reset for the business where. Yeah, I mean, at this point, flash forward, by now, it's the.
The ownership structure is me, my parents, and Maggie and Justin, and we all have equal part, but I kind of. Yeah, I mean, I lead most of it.
Patrick Evans, Host:Because then you're the face of Brandy.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. And then I get. I get the fun job of being the face of it. And funny, you know, we took our logos off the packaging years ago.
But, yeah, still, I mean, luckily, it's cool locally. It's. Obviously, it's super rewarding that locally it has some prominence.
But then I also love that you can go, like 30 miles out of town and nobody knows who the hell it is. So it's like.
Patrick Evans, Host:It's like.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's great. And so. So it's cool. I mean, it's just kicking you. No, it's good kicking Brandon into the tip. Don't mind me. Deserve it. It's you. This town's so great.
I mean, we give so much credit to the valley. Like, I don't know how we would have started in a different market where it's just giant. There's a lot of competition.
I mean, Toffee doesn't have a lot of competition, per se. I mean, it's not. It's such a small industry nationwide.
I mean, we're one of the probably bigger Toffee, exclusive toffee manufacturers in the country, and we're tiny, so it's like. It's not like we're worried about that side of it, but just the nature of this valley and the nurture that this community we have.
You know, so such affluence and appreciation for small business and appreciation for good product. And so you kind of get the synergy of those two of just people that have really.
One, people that buy the product and just passionately buy it and distribute it because of, you know, all these other reasons. And then you have people that provide just help and give advice and give their time and just. Yeah, it's a small, big town, as we all know. Right.
Randy Florence, Host:When you came back from that Italy trip, had you developed a reputation at school as this guy who was. Paid some money?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, I mean, yeah, both of us. Both. Both kids at the time. We both, you know, we get. Just getting to be on the news as a kid. Right. I just.
I do remember us, like, going to a news station early morning, as, you know, it's your lifestyle, but really early.
And then you go to school after, and they're like, you know, people like, oh, my parents and I were watching you like an hour or two ago, and it's just a weird balance to go to school after that. And, yeah, you know, that was certainly. I think it was definitely an oddball thing. I don't. I don't feel like as a kid, it was.
Made me the cool kid or something.
Just something we did, you know, I remember being on the Martha Stewart show and after that had like a speaker call or whatever you would call it, with my whole Spanish class. Right. So the teacher wanted us.
It was, you know, in this world, would have been a zoom call, but it was just, you know, speakerphone chatting to the whole class. Like a little Q and A. That was super cool to have that support. But, yeah. And even in college, it was kind of an oddball thing to do.
Like, you know, I think Brandon's got a candy company or whatever, and obviously it's, you know, much more than me, but that Was what would be identified as. But it's taken quite a while for that to maybe gain some more respect, I suppose. And when you went to school in.
Randy Florence, Host:Arizona, what was your degree?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Communications. Minored in business. Started in business and realized it was taking an extra year and I'm like, I can't do five years. So I switched to comm.
And yeah, grateful I did it, got a great time. My best of friends still in life came from that experience and but was super eager to get back, you know. Right.
And you know, flash forward to 34 years old. I would love to be living the simple life over there right now, but I was eager to get back and somehow you know, dive into the adult world.
But the daycare for kids over there in college, it's pretty nice daycare for adults.
Patrick Evans, Host:I suppose when you sue you got a taste of was it the entrepreneurial side or was it just the dedication to the product because you love the product so much, what made you decide to come back? And like I'm going to do this and this is, I'm going to see if I can make this my full time job.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:My dad's always been super optimistic about, I mean he's an optimistic guy when it comes to things he thinks will work it seems. I think he's just pumped it. Hey Skip. He pumps it full of hope. I really think he did a great job with that early on.
And so for me I did feel somewhat invincible of having it, you know, self efficacy of like I could figure it out. I don't know. I don't know business, I don't. I took accounting classes. I hate it. But like I'll figure it out.
And like I think I'm decent at it now but, but that part of it. And then also I just really love the product.
And so I mean as cheesy as it is, I'm like, you watch enough people eat it and like give you rave results like this can't just be, you know, go to zero and it can't just be on autopilot. I had no interest in going to get a real job, I suppose but so yeah, so like I don't know, it's like it seemed like the perfect idea.
I didn't question.
I give a grandparent a hard time because one of my grandparents is like, well you're supposed to go like get your master's and then go work for somebody. Was the expectation. Right. I'm like that I took offense to.
Randy Florence, Host:A couple of hundred thousand dollars.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yes. And who cares about that, you know That's. That's not. Everyone's got their own journey.
And so anyways, yeah, after college, I mean, it was, you know, and it was quite blindsiding to drive it. That was the first year we stopped growing. We've had with positive growth for five, six years, whatever. That was five years straight.
And then all of a sudden you get out, you're like, oh, this is the first year. It's just not. There's no wind at its back. And it's not like there's a ton of wind at its back, but it's just negative.
And that felt scary because again, like, I felt the fire. Just knowing our parents had risk to this, that was huge incentive. Wasn't like, oh, I need to go make a bunch of money or something, but. And then.
gs store or downtown store in:Yeah, that was because that was one of my first big projects being full time back or my mom and dad actually were doing a staycation in Palm Springs and stumbled across, you know, that's our spot in front of the Plaza Theater and said, this is awesome. And we were already thinking about a spot in Paul Strange. It was like, that felt serendipitous.
And we opened in like August:But yeah, I mean, and that was a lot of trying to do both sides of like, run the operations side.
And I remember I definitely took a few naps in my office kind of thing and like trying to do, okay, I'm running, trying to do a production, run that side of the business, figure that out, and then dive into managing the retail store and eventually got some management. That has helped a lot and figuring that out and that's, you know, that store's. We've been huge, huge for our brand and the business.
I mean, a lot of people only know us from that store.
Patrick Evans, Host:Well, I mean, it's in such an incredible location.
Randy Florence, Host:It really is.
Patrick Evans, Host:Traffic is amazing. So you get a lot of. So are you now more. I mean, I know you're the face and you get to do fun things like podcasts.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:This is cool.
Patrick Evans, Host:Are you. Do you lean in more into the operations side and the manufacturing, or do you lean more into the retail management side?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:My dad's come on full time five. Five years ago and he's helped me a lot on the human resources side and some of the operations. So he and I have. We share.
We have two offices but we have a little pocket door between them. And we have just. We've really found our niche where there's certain things that people know that he's there to help with.
All stuff I was very involved in and I'm still aware of but at least don't need to be the point of contact. We have great. And so that includes typically store management but we have great store managers and we have three stores now.
Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs and Desert Hills Cabazon. And so those don't require. Those aren't high touch.
I mean I'm there doing stuff for those stores from a computer of updating their pricing and running one of their. We're in promo periods. I'll be doing the communications to those stores.
And production side I'm very much into like the engineering side of our business. So I do. Which kind of started with making the recipe obviously. Right.
So when it's the manufacturing processes and equipment when we're bringing in new equipment, equipment and fine tuning that really just fine tuning the process. Like we're. I mean it's been. I think we've been leveling toffee on a big cooling table now for over a decade.
And I still go in there and we're trying to find ways to do that better.
Like it's like it's the same process but we're just tweaking out on the tiniest of things and it continues to make a better product, more consistent product. And then when you need to scale or bring a new production capacity then I'll. I do a lot of that as well. We have a consultation.
We actually have a guy that used to be the retired like four years ago as the chief engineer for See's Candies and he lives here and so he's a friend of a friend and he consults with us and will help me make some really cool. We don't buy a lot of equipment but when we do he's really a phenomenal resource.
Patrick Evans, Host:Is that the. The hardest part of the product itself.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Is the consistency takes quite a bit especially after you produce it. It making it consistently has become quite easy.
You know when we go through seasonal surges and we have a lot of new team members and stuff that takes a lot of hand holding but. But when we're in.
When we're distributing it and you're selling it at places and you're saying, okay, I'm trying to find a way, like we're trying to make lemonade with the lemons of toffee, being that toffee normally is sold at room temperature. And that's kind of just the, the worst thing you can do right off the bat because it has a terrible crunch. It has that grit to it. It's butter based.
It just does not, it doesn't have a good feel. And technically it will have a good shelf life because toffee has no water content. It's boiled out. So you have butter, sugar, chocolate and almonds.
But then from a quality perspective, it should be refrigerated and that gives it the best crunch. So you've basically just shut off 90% of retail buyers and stuff who are like, I'm not going to refrigerate candy. It just makes no sense.
And they don't have real state for it anyways.
Patrick Evans, Host:No room in the fridge.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, there's no, like, we don't have a spot for that, but we've really tried to invert that.
And like we put, you'll see here in town, like we put our refrigerator, we call it the kiosk, but we have a fridge that we'll put in and we, we deploy the fixture. It's about a thousand dollar investment. And we put it in.
As long as they give us the space for it, which is 4 square feet, we think it's the best investment we can make. And so we have about a hundred of those locations now. And they're throughout, I mean definitely throughout some California.
We have some with one in Alaska and just have one shipping tomorrow to Oklahoma. And we got them throughout. Right. They're kind of all around, but not with density.
But that's hard to do where you say, okay, now we have all these places that are like little micro stores. It's just a fridge, but you want to make sure the product they're buying there is great. And so a lot of that is with inventory turn.
And I don't have sales reps out there. So it's really just touching base via email. So I do a lot of that hand holding with our accounts. I'd go sales.
Patrick Evans, Host:Tomorrow.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:That's right.
Randy Florence, Host:That's that ocean side.
Patrick Evans, Host:Your, your, your four square foot fridge.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:That you provide. Make sure that your, your branding is correct.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's great. Yeah, it's kind of a.
You guys know that perfect bar that like, it's literally called the perfect bar, but it's that like health Nutrition bar or something. They.
They, I think, really crack the code on this where if you go to, or at least in my opinion, they did, if you go to, like, a grocery store, go to sprouts or something and look at the health food bar section and there's like 200 items. Right. Or something. It's just, like, overwhelming. And their.
Their pitch, and I don't know if it was by necessity or not, but their pitch was, no, sorry, we need to be refrigerated. So they got their entire own little section. They're, like, up on their own throne.
And funny enough, now a bunch of people have created problems that need to be right next to them, obviously, because they're like, nope, we need the quality or shelf life's extended, whatever it is. And so I really think there's a good tactic there where you're not stooping down to.
You know, buyers can always want the longest shelf life possible, you know, nine, 12 months, whatever, at ambient temperatures. And you go, well, we can get the shelf life. It just needs to be cold. And they'll say, well, technically I'm selling other toffee at room temp.
And I said, well, that's because it's inferior toffee, so you should just sell it refrigerated. And that guaranteed, will help.
And then obviously, we will take some pride in how we make our product and the ingredients and all that, but really, it should just be kept cold. There's certain products, they're just better refrigerated. It has a better crunch.
Randy Florence, Host:How close are you to the original recipe?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Oh, phenomenally close. Yeah, I kind of touched on it earlier, but the only change we did after we started the business was besides a bigger batch.
So we make the original batch, like £2, and now it's £100. We do it in three, three kettles at a time. So we have a fire mixer that has an agitator, and you guys should definitely come down and see it.
But it cooks and then it's a little more. Not automated, but just a little more. Less manual. But we had some. A friend of a friend essentially, that knew Don Callender for Marie Callenders.
Right. It was a big, big name, or was a big name here and has since passed.
And he tried our product and gave feedback to that person, said, just tell them to cook it four more degrees, and so that will give it a better crunch. And so we did that. And we're very strict about that temperature.
Randy Florence, Host:Was he right?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Totally. It helped, yeah. And so that was the biggest update we've did we've ever done. And we give all the credit to him on that.
After that, it's just scaling the. Scaling the batch. You know, I've updated, you know, the exact amount of chocolate to put on it so that it's weighed, not just eyeballed.
So we know exactly how much to distribute on a batch. And then almonds, same thing. But if it's a roasted almond, you chop it and it's the same. It's better quality butter.
I think we bought Kirkland butter early on. We used challenge butter, just I think the best you could buy. And CNH sugar. So same sugar. Yeah.
Guitar chocolate that we kind of stumbled into their options early on because they distribute through Cisco, which is who we ordered from. Or like I don't know who they are. They're like the biggest chocolate wholesaler on the west coast and they do phenomenal chocolate.
I mean, See's candy, for example, doesn't make chocolate. They melt guitar chocolate and then they put it on their products. So it's very uncommon to be the bean to bar.
You know, movement right now is not what toffee manufacturers are planning on doing. I don't think is making their own chocolate. You know, I'm not going to start a dairy farm and start churning butter either. So it just doesn't.
Randy Florence, Host:It's no breaking news.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Our goal. Yeah, our goal is to. We did. We used to have the math though of how many. Again, we're not, we're small.
But it was still fun to do the math on how many dairy cows it would take to maintain our volume. It was like a whole pasture or something. It was quite impressive.
Patrick Evans, Host:Well, if you could get.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's kind of fun.
Patrick Evans, Host:The Brandy logo on the side of the cow.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:I mean, big brands. Yeah. Giant. I'm sure they'll love it.
Randy Florence, Host:A Brandini.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Big brand.
Patrick Evans, Host:I'm not talking about a brand. I think, I mean maybe like spray paint.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:I don't want to hurt the cow haircut. We'll find a groomer.
Randy Florence, Host:It's much better to spray paint them.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yes. I'm sure there'll be some stem cell technology soon that could just grow that.
Patrick Evans, Host:On the side of them.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Just grows right in there.
Randy Florence, Host:So do you have anything that you'd like to make? Do you have new products coming out?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, I mean, so we stumbled into popcorn. Now, it's been a long time, but some guy at a street fair said, and this was direct to me was like, take your toffee and coat it over popcorn.
I know I'm not Answering your question entirely. But he's avoiding it.
Randy Florence, Host:No, but I like thinking about the popcorn.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:The soft. No, but. No, no. There are a lot of ideas. But. But, yeah, but. So popcorn is the only other time we really innovated.
And like, funny enough, that's half our volume now. We produced 130,000 pounds of popcorn last year, I think. And that's just toffee popcorn.
It's the same toffee coat over popcorn, which is really quite a bit to figure out how to do because it's toffee so viscous. When it's, when it's cooked before it solidifies, it's still liquid, but it's not, it's not your normal liquid.
It's, it's, you know, somewhere between honey and peanut butter perhaps. And so to get that to coat over, it takes, it takes some unique. Yeah. Engineering. But.
Howard Hoffman, Announcer:And I must ate like a quarter of that. Oh last year.
Patrick Evans, Host:Well, you do a lot of.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:We have some, some here.
Patrick Evans, Host:You do a lot of donating to charities. Because I've gone to a number of events. They didn't see the number of events.
And I come home with a, with these small packets of brandini, 50 or 60 small bags.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:I steal them from other people.
Patrick Evans, Host:Are you kidding me?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's like a pinata.
Patrick Evans, Host:Most people don't leave that. They'll walk out, remove it from their person.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Well, yeah. You attend more events than anybody I know. You do give a lot of your time to those same causes, which is. I know they're forever grateful for.
Patrick Evans, Host:Well, I've eaten a lot of Brandini toffee this year because of that. The popcorn has been fantastic.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Thank you.
Patrick Evans, Host:Yeah. You know, what's the next product we can look for?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah. So we are back to the product question. There are some things we have like kind of on the back burner that I have a lot of.
I mean, we got 10 other items that would be really cool, but it's will it. You know, toffee and popcorn is quite a high volume for us.
And so to be large enough to be significant is really hard to do and still have some mass appeal. So for example, we do toffee pretzels in our stores and we put them in gift baskets. They're really hard to make and they're not that shelf stable.
And so it's just kind of a dead end product. You're like, it's a great product, just a dead end.
Right now we're super excited because in our stores we do toffee ice cream bars, cups and milkshakes. And so I actually brought two of them, unfortunately. Sorry. We can make a detail. But I brought. We're starting to prepackage them.
And so I have actually Jensen's here and the Palm Springs airport port starting like last week or the first place is selling it. So we're doing the kiosk program freezer edition where it's a frozen kiosk and it has the bars on display.
And then that's kind of inspired a whole different chocolate dipping sauce that I think. I think is.
I'm on to something with it where I'm doing a kind of toffee chocolate sauce that once melted and you put on ice cream or like people family I'm giving out to you is putting on banana and fruit and whatever turns this really nice toffee shell. And so I'd like to offer that I think probably in store for our products for ice creams, but also just a prepackaged.
We want to have the chocolate we do on our ice cream available for taking home. And I think it could actually be something that could be more mass market.
We're not, you know, this isn't going to be a blowout thing, but if it can be at some specialty retailers would be nice.
Patrick Evans, Host:You're also working on a Brandini Teeny as.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, it's like you. You knew too much before we started this conversation. But. Or it's just. Yeah. The universe telling me that we should find a way to do it. But yeah, we.
It'd be fun to have locations in town that, you know, back. Back, way, way back when we started we had. I think it was the Cliff House did do a Brandini Teeny.
And I don't know what the recipe was, was a dessert martini. And obviously as we. I don't know if it's always been the way. But an espresso martini is all the rave at this point in life.
Patrick Evans, Host:Oh my gosh.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:And so to have something that's a spin on it, obviously with the brand to it, this isn't going to be the, you know, get rich quick scheme or something.
But we just think it's a really cool way to connect with the community and find, you know, something like a little bar here that we're at now and some craft. Craft drinking spots that can create their twist on a beverage.
And so coming out with something that can actually bring the toffee flavor I've been working on, it's just a really fun evening project at home.
Patrick Evans, Host:Do you just go home and experiment with different ways?
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Honestly, Never. And then the past month I've been invigorated. You should.
I mean, if you were my family right now, you'd see that I'm rolling into work with like a goodie bag of whatever the heck I'm concocting. And that hasn't normally been the case. There's pretty much. Yeah.
I mean we have a list of things, of ideas, of products and they've all been like, would be awesome to do but aren't really going to move the needle on our business anytime soon. But some of these are kind of just passion projects. Like I think this would.
We want to get into espresso in our stores doing espresso based beverages starting in our Palm Spring store exclusive. The Plaza theater's going to be opening renovated this fall. So we know we're going to have to position ourselves better there.
And honestly, our logo looks like coffee. And so about 50 people a day walk in asking for coffee and you're like, we should probably just sell coffee.
Patrick Evans, Host:Sell some coffee and meet the demand.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:To do that, we would like to have a specialty beverage. Doesn't even need all of it, but that has a toffee hint to it.
And so I'm trying to create basically a simple syrup that's made out of our product that can go the liquor route or could go the, the coffee route. And again, it doesn't need to be. I mean, if you want to buy it, probably we could sell it prepackaged.
But it's kind of just fun to learn the limitations of our product because it's not kind of joke. We're like, you know, like a Mexican food restaurant. We have like 10 ingredients, not even that much actually.
And we're just trying to remix those in many different ways.
Patrick Evans, Host:Right.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:And, but it really can create something so unique. You know, we, we procure like literally butter, sugar, chocolate, almonds, pretzel rods, cashews, raw popcorn kernels.
We pop our own corn and I think that's it. And dipping chocolate. We blend ourselves. So coconut oil is brand at the Aqua.
Randy Florence, Host:Sure.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:We have product there. Yeah, yeah, we're in the, we're in the stores. Yeah.
Patrick Evans, Host:This is why the sausage company did not make it, because no one wanted a sausage martini. No one was putting in their coffee.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:You know what?
Randy Florence, Host:Seriously?
Patrick Evans, Host:Yeah, it's, it's disappointing even in this town.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yeah, it's. Well, regardless, I mean, don't even go there.
Patrick Evans, Host:Might have needed to change the branding a little bit. Brandon, thank you so much.
Randy Florence, Host:This has been really, really cool.
Patrick Evans, Host:Appreciate the conversation and it's almost like a little small business primer, I think. People listen, get a slice of how a small business went from.
From this interesting hobby for kids to get their ticket to Italy to now employing your family and working on this. This really cool concept based on a really tremendous problem.
Randy Florence, Host:And my wife gonna think I'm cooler just because I was sitting here talking to you.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Oh, I mean, with the microphones off. Come by, bring her by and we'll take a tour and she can check it out. Super proud of the products and I'm proud of what we've done.
It's not easy, but, yeah, people like you that are super passionate about it are just in support. I feel like the, you know, hometown kid that people really are holding her hand and. And that's.
It makes some of the pain stuff, painful stuff, easier. Well, you know, people are. It's not all roses. It's. Yeah, it's a grind and just. It's very volatile and it's still not as far as we've gone. It's still.
Patrick Evans, Host:Yeah, yeah, I know it's got to be tough because, you know, a lot of your product is, you know, it's commodity based and you got to. You're dependent upon the price of butter and the price of.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's always moving, so. But yeah, I enjoy it. Wouldn't trade for anything else. Love being with my family, seeing them at work and. And so on. We'll see where it goes.
Randy Florence, Host:So congratulations on what you put together here.
Patrick Evans, Host:It's a beloved product because it's a great product. That's.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Thank you.
Patrick Evans, Host:And so we wish you tons of success in the future with whatever you, whatever the next iteration is.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:We'll see.
Patrick Evans, Host:And keep that wonderful original product going.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Yep. Keep the quality.
Patrick Evans, Host:My thanks to John McMullen, our producer, our guest, Brandon Weimer from Brandini Toffee. And go check out the stores. They have three different store locations here in the Valley Springs, the outlet malls and Rancho Mirage.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:It's a factory store. You can see the production through the window. So go check it out.
Patrick Evans, Host:Randy, Florence, always a pleasure.
Randy Florence, Host:I'm going to go to Brandini.
Patrick Evans, Host:You know, this is the first time we've had a product or guest that's sweeter than you.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:Brandini. The bar is high.
Randy Florence, Host:You waited 200 or 100 episodes to say that.
Patrick Evans, Host:Five episodes, ladies and gentlemen.
Randy Florence, Host:I'll come back.
Brandon Wiemer, Guest:I'm going to make everyone who else has been on the show, I think the bar is pretty high.
Patrick Evans, Host:I'm going to make John edit that out. Thank you. Very much for tuning into this edition of Big Conversations Little Bar. Remember to subscribe so you never, never miss a conversation.
Our thanks to the McCallum Theater. Our thanks to Skip Page and Little Bar and the entire team here. I'm Patrick Evans. Listen every week.
Howard Hoffman, Announcer:Thanks for joining us on this episode of Big Conversations Little Bar, recorded on location at Skip Page's Little Bar in Palm Desert, California and presented by the McCallum Theater online at mccallumtheater.org this program is a production of the Mutual Broadcasting System. All episodes are available from bigconversationslittlebar.com and most major podcast portals.
Big Conversations Band:Meet your neighbors Fascinating and grand, each conversation a wave on the sand. Raise your glass and join the ride where stories and dreams fully collide at Big Conversations Little Bar, brought to you by McAllen.
Our guiding stars from movies, stage and TVs delight join us for a captivating morning, noon or night. So gather around as Skip's Little Bar, where stories travel from near and far.
Big Conversations where they unfold with Patrick and Randy tales retold.
