Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] All right, today's episode, we are going to talk about a ramen noodle plant that set up shop in our town.
[00:00:08] We're going to discuss how I came to sell the ramen noodles in my store. That again, not a grocery store. And how that shook out.
[00:00:18] All right, I'm so glad you guys could join me today. And just an update. We are going to be having a season break after this episode, so we'll be off for two weeks.
[00:00:29] So just if you could catch up on the back catalog and make sure you share with some friends so that we'll be back for season two right after this episode. And again, thanks for joining me. Thanks for liking me. Thanks for rating me. I appreciate you.
[00:00:53] Welcome. Welcome to the Small Business Hustle. And hello. Hello. I'm Molly B. Your host and owner of MJ's Market, a small general store in South Dakota. This is a weekly podcast where we discuss operating a small business.
[00:01:17] All right, so our town had a ramen noodle plant. And so today's episode is going to talk about me carrying that in my business.
[00:01:27] And so to jump right in, we are going to start with a quote. We're going, what would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
[00:01:35] Vincent van Gogh. I think it would be pretty miserable life. Like, I feel that life would not be very entertaining if we did not attempt anything. And again, it talks about courage. So that's really another piece of that. Love that quote. This kind of goes along with new beginnings and this crazy story I have about ramen noodles.
[00:01:57] So. So first, I want to tell you a little bit about our store.
[00:02:01] I sell a lot of different products. Actually, our top categories are things like toys and cbd.
[00:02:08] We also sell a lot of skin care products. Stationery is in the top five.
[00:02:13] We have quite a variety of products, but one of the things we don't do is a lot of food. We have a few food, like snacks and candy and stuff, but it's really like a supplement to other things that people are grabbing. So it's really not like the core of what we do.
[00:02:28] All right, so we are invited out to the ramen noodle plant for lunch. And do you want to guess what they were going to feed us for lunch? Oh, yeah, that's right. Ramen noodles.
[00:02:40] So in this, we can basically go out, have a lunch, learn about selling the new ramen noodles that are being manufactured right in our town. We can learn about selling those in our store.
[00:02:52] So before we go into all the details, I've broken this up a little Bit. And so we're going to talk about.
[00:02:59] So the concerns we, before we even get to the meeting, about how are we going to sell a pallet of ramen and how can we get rid of all this ramen, like, sales wise, before it outdates? So that's obviously a huge question. Like, I just, I don't know how fast I can sell ramen. When I told you, like, my top category is toys and cbd, like, it's not food. Food is not in the top close to five at all, let alone, you know, just ramen noodles. Okay. So, so we kind of discuss it as a couple, my husband and I. And then we get out to the location where they have their kind of temporary office, and they show us the flavors. There's five total. So they have three American standard flavors, which is chicken, beef, and shrimp.
[00:03:52] And then they have two that they show us that are technically Canadian flavors. And they let us know that we can sell them. Like, they're perfectly fine to sell here, but that they don't make them in the American packaging. And those two flavors are hot and spicy chicken and veggie.
[00:04:10] Okay. So of course I want to try them all. I hate hot and spicy stuff. Like, that is not my. My thing. But I also feel it's important that I try it because, like, I don't even want to pay the, like, 50 cents for a cup to get the hot and spicy, because I just don't like it. But I wanted to try it so that I would have an understanding of what it was like, so that I could be able to share that message with my customers.
[00:04:34] Okay. So I do try all of them. I learned the details about the products, so I had a lot of questions, you know, about, like, how does the ramen get from here to there? Like, that's a big question for me because it's not like I'm ordering this from a distributor and they're gonna, you know, throw it on a ltl load and I'm gonna get that pallet at the back door. Like, this is literally across town. Like, I'm. I'm like, maybe seven minute drive from this plant. And so I have questions about, like, how does it get from here to there? And then what are the minimum orders? And one of my biggest questions is, can we split flavors on this palette? Because, you know, if I really am being honest, I am worried about selling a palette, let alone, like, I can't take a palette of each flavor I want. And I kind of also want to know, like, how much does a Palette cost, Because I'm thinking, like, some of my more expensive products, you know, like a really small palette of, you know, stationary style products, be like 500.
[00:05:33] A really full palette of stationery type stuff would be like 2000.
[00:05:38] I've had some, you know, 1500, $2000 palettes come in, and they're all like mixed merchandise, but they usually have some higher dollar value items. And when this is like an entire palette of just ramen, I'm kind of, you know, gauging that it can't really be too expensive. Like, you know, it's. It's going to be under a thousand bucks. I just don't really have any kind of idea how much ramen will fit on a palette and how many cases is a palette. Like, I just don't know. So we go over all those details and we figure that out.
[00:06:10] So before I tell you whether or not we. What we decide to do with that, we're gonna go backwards a little bit and we're gonna tell the story about the ramen noodle plant in the way that it came to belle fourche. So not. Not a huge backstory because I don't want to bore you to death, but so we're gonna talk about the story as far as.
[00:06:31] So Belle fourche has a really strong history of railroad shipping, tons of history as far as cattle being shipped out of belle fourche in the past. And so.
[00:06:45] So we already have a strong presence with a railroad in our town. And then not that long back, some significant improvements were made that allowed business investment to be more favorable for our town because of the investment we had in our rail park.
[00:07:02] So we had a mayor that was very forward thinking and realized the value that railroad could have for some industries. And so as a way to help our community, he decided to expand some railroad opportunities in our town. And that made it more favorable for some businesses. We did have some businesses come in, although a lot of them. Well, there were some tied to the oil industry. And so that kind of caused some fluctuations. And so there was a warehouse and land that was available for sale.
[00:07:37] So a company, Albany farms, decided that that would be an ideal location for the ramen noodle plant. It had plenty of room for them to expand their operations on the land that was available.
[00:07:50] And it had this initial warehouse where they could start operations and get moving while they went through the different processes and completed these different goals. In order to get the.
[00:08:02] The larger setup going, they came in with a plan to develop. They even plan to put in, like, their own flour mill. There so that they can process their own wheat. Because it has to be done a specific way for ramen noodles. The consistency of the wheat needs to be different.
[00:08:18] So they even have a plan to do that. But in the meantime, they remodeled the current warehouse and they begin operating from day one of purchasing, you know, the land and the warehouse to having a cup of noodles that can be sold is a long ways. Like that's a long journey. You know, you've got an empty warehouse and that's it, you know, so, so what they've got to do, they purchase a property. They announced that they're going to do this. They're going to have to do updates and construction on their property. And then they have, they have to get equipment manufactured. Like, I'm pretty sure you can't just jump on the Internet and type in ramen noodle manufacturing equipment and ship it tomorrow.
[00:09:01] And then there was a lot, I remember them announcing that they had some shipping delays because a lot of these, these equipment manufacturers are overseas. And so there was a lot of weird shipping stuff still lagging from COVID and from, you know, channels being blocked. Just different, different things that were causing an impact worldwide on, on shipping routes.
[00:09:24] And then they also need a staff.
[00:09:26] They have to train that staff. Like, I don't, I don't know how to make a cup of ramen noodles. Like, I don't, I don't know how a, you know, a plant works. So they've gotta, they've gotta train people. And then, you know, they've also got to get like all the raw materials. And we're not just talking about like the flour and the ingredients that make the actual ramen, but we're talking about all the other pieces. So we've gotta have cups, we've gotta have shrink wrap, you know, the lids, I'm sure the lids is like a scientific, you know, specific thing that you have to have, you know, so it's kind of interesting. There was a lot of gossip and hearsay, but I kind of just knew this is going to be a long term situation. And going back to our lunch, so right before we get to our lunch, we decide on the way over, like, yeah, we are going to buy a pallet of ramen because people are really curious about this product that's being made in our town. And we, like, people are, people are wanting to know about it, like because of all this hearsay and because of all this talk, like, we, we want to be able to have a physical product that people can buy and see. Like this Is the result of all of this talk over the last, like, I don't know, it was like a year, a year and a half. I don't even remember how long it was.
[00:10:34] So we decided we're gonna buy it because I kind of estimated how much I thought it would cost. And I knew it wouldn't be. You know, it wouldn't break us. It wouldn't. It wouldn't be great if we couldn't sell it, but we would figure it out.
[00:10:46] We go to the meeting, we talk, talk it over, and we're like, you know, we don't have a pickup that we can haul this with right now. Like, I don't. I don't know how to get it to my store. So they offered to this time to just take it to us, which was really great.
[00:10:59] And so we get. Get it the evening of the meeting, which was a Monday.
[00:11:03] And so we announced it. We sold some that night. Obviously not a ton, but because we had literally just gotten it in the afternoon, late evening, I'm not sure exactly.
[00:11:13] And then the next day. So we start selling like over 200 cups a day. And then it dropped a little bit to like around 150 cups a day. But if you can do the math, there were over 1400 cups on a pallet. So it was 120 cases.
[00:11:29] And so 1400. Over 1400 cups. And if we're selling around 200 a day, that's not going to last us more than a week, you know, so not very, very much day supply. So we end up ordering another pallet the next week. Like, I need to pause here for a second because when I talk about this now, I make it seem a little bit more nonchalant. But, like, had you told me before I went to the meeting, you're going to buy two pallets within this first, like, week of this?
[00:11:58] I would have said, no. No, I'm not. This is not. No.
[00:12:02] Like, there's no way I'm going to be able to sell that many cups of ramen. But sure enough, I did. And then. So this is in November, like mid to late November. I think that second palette might have been the week of Thanksgiving. Like, it was pretty. Pretty super close to that.
[00:12:17] It was. It was really interesting. A lot of people were buying it because they were going to be seeing family that are not normally from around the area. And so they really wanted to buy some to share with their family that was from Belle Fourche. But don't already have this ramen, you know, in their grocery stores, because I mean, really, this company is just barely shipping out their first pallets this month. We did slow down a little bit in December, but we still were selling the ramen pretty, pretty consistently. And so we did buy another palette right in January, like right after the first of the year. It was kind of like we were dealing with a holiday and waiting to get that palette ordered, that next palette, because we were really low and we were out of several flavors.
[00:13:01] And then we've bought, I believe, at least two more palettes since then, I know for sure. One in February and then I think one in April, something like that. So that's kind of where the story of the ramen is.
[00:13:14] But what else can we learn about this? And this is what I find fascinating is the marketing lessons that I learned from these little cups of ramen. It was so fascinating.
[00:13:23] We're going to talk about the packaging and the marketing message there. And so if you are thinking about the packaging of a product and does it matter? How much does it matter?
[00:13:35] It kind of depends on the product and how long people are going to take to make that buying decision.
[00:13:41] So what do you think the buying decision on ramen is? I mean, it's got to be pretty small, right? Like, you're. You're not paying very much for ramen. So it's like, you know, probably a few seconds, you're like, am I going to buy the ramen or not? Maybe you came in already with that buying decision made. Now you just have to pick your flavors. So I think if the buying decision is longer, it's possible that the packaging doesn't play as much of a role as key information about the product is. But in this particular instance, very, very short decision time frame for the ramen.
[00:14:11] So the Canadian ramen package, it had some Asian style fonts on it. So the word ramen was kind of looked more like it was a herb or, I mean, excuse me, an Asian style font.
[00:14:25] And then it had kind of like a. Also mixed with a graffiti font. So kind of. I mean, it definitely kind of looks like spray paint. It's.
[00:14:34] It's made with the. The word chicken or the word beef is more in this, like, I would call it a graffiti font. And also it's an urban setting and it's. So it's a really busy package, I guess. It's. They have like a picture with the ramen. They have like kind of a skyline of a city, and it's just a lot to look at.
[00:14:54] Okay, so then we go back to the American package, and it's really simple package.
[00:15:01] It's just a very clean package. We. We take away that city. Look, the fonts. I believe so. The fonts. I. I don't know. I call it.
[00:15:09] I've dubbed this font the ramen font. It's that kind of bubble style font. It really mimics that top brand already in the US So it's very similar to that. Both packaging, American and Canadian, follow that kind of similar color scheme of the orange on one, the pink on one, and the red on the other. And so just quick quiz. Orange stands for which flavor chicken. Pink stands for shrimp, and red stands for beef. That's kind of a gist about the packaging. And then so the question is, why, like, why are these packages so different for Canadians versus Americans? Is it that Americans just, like, they can't handle the busy packaging? They're just too absorbed in life that they can't handle? Like, looking at this other stuff and figuring out that they. This is ramen. We just need things to be simple. Do we just like them to be simple? Like, maybe we just don't like all this clutter. I had a lot of questions about that. And like, why, why does the Canadian package have like this really fun, like, just fun vibe to the package and Americans is just like, very boring.
[00:16:20] So right at the beginning, we had, we had a lot of traffic for the ramen, Like a legit lot of traffic. And so what we did is we set up a table up kind of by the front, and we just sat cases of ramen up there at the front of the store because people were just coming in. Like, I mean, this, the traffic jump was. Was huge. Just people coming in to get this ramen.
[00:16:39] And so I would watch people walk in right up to the table, and they would immediately reach for the American, American package. And I mean, we're talking within about a 2 to 3 second time frame.
[00:16:50] It's like they weren't even thinking. It was like they were on this automatic grab path. And I realized in this observation that Americans recognize this package as ramen noodles. It's not about whether we like the package. We don't like the package.
[00:17:08] We know this is ramen noodles. This is what they look like. This is the kind of package they're in. The other one, we don't. We just don't know what it is. It might not even be ramen. It could be a different product. Like, I realize it's in the cup, but it might be something weird or something funky. And I just want, like, I just want ramen noodles. And so it was really fascinating to see that kind of shift in my mindset to realize that the reason why the packaging really has to be so consistent is because we don't want to go on an education campaign and say, these are also ramen noodles. They're just a fun package. No, they. They just need at the margins that ramen makes, which, if you've ever bought ramen, it is very inexpensive. There isn't a lot of money there to go out on an education thing and say, we have a cooler cup. Our package looks cooler. Like, at what point is that going to sell the noodles better? You know? And I think the answer is, it's. It's not. People are not going to go, oh, well, this one has a fun package. But the question is, is, well, are the noodles different? I mean, and yes, there are some variations of the noodles. But the main point I'm trying to make here is that the package isn't going to improve the buyer's relationship with that. It actually, in this situation, could show how it's a deterrent. So now I want to talk about the flavors, which I think is really interesting. So the Canadian packaging has no shrimp, and the American packaging has no veggie flavor. So it's because these are not common flavors culturally for those two groups.
[00:18:42] You know, they make adjustments to the flavors that consumers are familiar with, and therefore they want to see.
[00:18:49] Now, we do have curious customers. We carried all the flavors, all five of them, even though some of them are in the Canadian packaging, just because, again, it's in our hometown. Like, this is ramen being made in our hometown. And so we felt like our customers are going to want to be curious about this and try this. Not everyone, but some people are. We've had curious customers try the flavors that they weren't familiar with, and they have really enjoyed them.
[00:19:14] But then there's other people who just. I mean, if you're not talking to them or educating them, which obviously is not the case most of the time, but there are times where we have good conversation with our customers, and we kind of, you know, they'll be curious about the story.
[00:19:27] In those situations, we tell them about, you know, the story with it, and they'll try the veggie, and they'll be like, oh, my gosh, it's really good. You know, I like it.
[00:19:36] The other thing that has come out that I have learned about ramen noodles from this experience, and it's just kind of baffling and really funny to me is that there's a difference in ramen based on how thick the noodle is made.
[00:19:51] And so obviously, there's some detail into this and when they make it and how they, you know, stick together and stay in their ramen noodle form. But the thicker noodle is a huge impact to the flavor, because the thicker the noodle, the more it's able to absorb the juices and the flavoring from the actual water. And that, as my little brother used to call it, dirt that you put in the ramen.
[00:20:16] So the difference there is that thicker noodle is able to absorb more of those flavors, and it makes it more flavorful.
[00:20:25] Most people like that. Most people think that's good and they enjoy that flavor, but other people are freaked out because they just want the same thing they've always had, and they don't want to mess around with different kinds of ramen. So it's really interesting the different preferences that people have, and I really enjoyed that.
[00:20:42] Okay, so finally, my favorite takeaway, this is my absolute favorite takeaway, is that people bought ramen for stocking stuffers.
[00:20:52] They bought ramen to mail to their family that are from here, but that haven't been able to get the ramen yet. And I found that absolutely fascinating. Like, I still kind of want to know how much does it cost to mail ramen?
[00:21:06] And, like, what. What is the.
[00:21:10] You know, there's just so much I can unpack from that. And I just feel like ramen, to me, is not a normal stocking stuffer. But I just. I loved it because it is such a different thing. It says Belle Fourche on it, so people thought that was cool. And so, yeah, it was a stocking stuffer, and it was mailed to people, and I just still. The expense of that, it's just amazing to me. And it was really. I enjoyed it a lot. It was my favorite takeaway.
[00:21:36] All right, thank you so much for joining me today. And again, it'll be about two weeks before you hear from us again. I'm going to take some time to really get some deep diving into some episodes that have been doing well and doing a few things to get ready for promotion. So I'm not always chasing my tail. And so I appreciate you sharing this with anybody who you think might be interested in my podcast so that it will take a little less marketing effort on my time, and then I can spend more time working on content and interesting episodes for you. All right, have a great day and spread some positivity.
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