Commercial Kitchen is Done.

Some of us do and many of us wish we could have the best of two worlds living on a small farm or homestead and being able to earn a decent living from our efforts and labors on that land. I have been lucky enough to do just that for the last 24 years and going on 20 years with the Thunder 5 Ranch actually being a business. It is not easy, not everyone is cut out for it and far more fail when trying it than succeed. But there at least for me has been no greater sense of freedom than being a small farmer that direct markets the fruits of my labor to the end consumer.

24 years ago when I bought my first little homestead of 6 acres and a falling down barn. It was to be my fortress of solitude and I had every intention of producing to provide for my family and selling my surplus at a local farmers market or a roadside stand. That was working pretty well the first four years but every year more and more people were calling or showing up at the homestead asking if I had whatever a butcher hog or a bushel of green beans etc. So I slowly slipped into raising more hogs, cattle, chickens, eggs, vegetables and seemed like I was chained to the oven baking apple and cherry pies.

So much for my antisocial self being a unknown hermit in the middle of nowhere I had outgrown that first 6 acres so in 2008 I sold it to a developer that really wanted it as it was only 7 miles from Downtown of the State capitol. I got a lot of money for that 6 acres that I had only paid $400 per acre for back in 1987 while I was all over the world in the army, it was much farther out of town when I bought it and it was the place I was going to hide out at and live when I decided to stop reenlisting, which I did. What was $400 per acre turned into $42,000 per acre, I turned all of that money around and bought the land here in the middle of nowhere or 35-40 miles from every place (Depending on how you look at it) home of the Thunder 5 Ranch in Southern IL. And the business just kept on growing and amazingly people like my gruff, anti social, introvert, tell it how I see it with straight honesty personality and the business grew even more, until I was one of the power houses in the regional food system. Between the T5R, owning 3 farmers markets (Soon to be 4 in 2019) I gave up a lot of what I initially wanted....... To be an obscure and largely under the radar gray man type. It became crystal clear early on that if you market your farm products, you lose your obscurity, and some if not all of your opsec. More so if you become popular and word of mouth spreads all over about you. Of course that is why I started the Farmers Markets where there were none before. I located in locations central to bulk of the customers that had been coming out to the farm. Over the last 5 years the visitors to the farm has dropped to a trickle, while the market traffic has continued to increase. So I have much of my personal space back.

So the last 3-4 years the market has been getting tighter and more and more people are selling pasture pork and poultry some selling absolute crap at 3X higher than premium prices and others pretty much giving their products away at break even pricing......... Either way the market has been flooded for 2 years solid and getting worse by the day. Add into that equation that less and less people are buying raw products and cooking at the same time and it compounds the market problem making it even tighter. And finally toss the Sepsis and me being at deaths door most of 2016 and learning of all my new physical limitations in 2017. I needed to take things in a different direction and jump well ahead of everyone else in the market place. LOL Yeah I admit I have gotten used to being one of the big dogs in the market place and earn a better than average living from doing what I love doing. And I love to cook and create new dishes or put a new twist on a old dish. So last year I started dumping money into a project that everyone said "I Can't Do" Be Farmer, Packer, Warehouse, Distributor and Restaurant. And I admit from a regulatory stand point is is almost impossible to wear all of those hats under the same roof..................Almost.

Last night the commercial kitchen on the farm was finished and this morning its final inspection by the Health Department was Finished with a 100% Score. In the last 6 weeks the frozen warehouse was inspected by the IDOA and USDA and approved and licensed, The Packing facility, GAP and HACCP plan for it and transportation of food was approved and licensed by the FDA and Health Department for the fruits and vegetables. And a years worth of hard work, construction, gutting old buildings and completely remodeling them is done and I CAN WEAR ALL OF THOSE HATS AND I CAN DO IT It cost a hair North of $340,000 but the Thunder 5 Ranch Kitchen is open and the Thunder 5 Ranch Chuck Wagon rolls out to markets slinging hash and talking trash on Wednesday. I have 14,000 pounds of pork, 8,000 pounds of chicken and 7,500 pounds of beef in the warehouse freezers and the produce walk in coolers are filling up with the veggies.

One of the inspectors told me "Everyone in the business is watching what I am doing like a hawk, because no one has ever really tried to do what I am doing in recent memory at the smaller scale local and regional level." LOL he is right........ No sane person would jump through all of the Government and regulatory hoops, I have had to jump through to get here. There are very large regulatory and financial barriers that simply keep most folks from doing more than one or two of the areas. The new FDA/FSMA regulation are a even bigger deterrent for most folks. I figured up my cost of compliance with all of the Federal, State, County and City Government regulations and it is going to run around $23,000 per year with around 18-22 inspections per year. At present on over the last 10 years I have managed to average $80,360 per year in Net Profit running 42% profit margins if my estimates are correct or at least in the general neighborhood that should jump to $135,000-$145,000 per year on average over the next 5 years and I am just calling it a $40,000 increase in net profits, putting all of the new profits back into my investments I took the $340,000 out of it will take 8.5 years to recover my investment in this and hit the break even point. I don't do debt PERIOD I was raised that if you can't pay cash for it........ then you don't need it and can't afford it. I have been around long enough and seen hundreds of small farms and homesteads start up on borrowed money and notice about their bankruptcy and foreclosure sale in the local papers to know there is a lot of truth to never borrowing money. IMO there is no such thing as good debt as it all has a degree of risk and leaving you worse off than you were with no money. If my investment falls through I lost my money and owe no one anything and am not going to be hounded by debt collectors for years. I also learned you NEVER invest more than you can afford to lose. I put 25% of my retirement investments into this project, if it all falls through I still have 75% and am young enough that I can recover from it but old enough that this is going to be my last big investment with risk

It is damn hard getting started and finding real success in todays local food market. The cost of decent land alone will make you crap yellow for a year all on its own in many areas. Not knowing that you are going to be a slave to your land and work 16-18 hours per day and if lucky be able to break even the first 1-3 years. If you go the debt route..... the bank doesn't care if your crops failed or no one would buy your products...... they still want that mortgage payment and will be happy to foreclose on you and sell your farm to the next start up that will fail and repeat over and over (The banks make a killing in all these new farm and homestead start ups in collecting mortgage payments until they can foreclose and sell it to the next one. We have one 4.2 acre farm that has changed hands 5 times in the last 9 years and all 5 times has had a foreclosure notice on the gate. Believe it or not us ignorant old people that have been around for a while, have been around awhile because we know what works and what doesn't Most of us started out very small and grew with our markets instead of this modern nonsense of starting big and demanding that the market grow with us............ The best one I have heard is "People should buy my stuff because I produced a lot of it and I deserve to earn a living wage!" (He went bankrupt 3 years ago after two years of spending a fortune to produce a bunch crap no one locally was interested in eating........... )

Yeah I know I give too much information about myself but I can't see where it really matters. Much of it is available in public record searches that most of my competitors have already searched out. And well I am just not a good mark for a con or scam. Hard to bullshit a man that has a turd in every pocket Also no one learns anything by half examples or only knowing half the story. Anyway I write this here because I know many folks would love to one day buy a small farm or homestead and leave the wage slave rat race. Maybe I have contributed something that will help those folks along their path to that end.

And here are some pictures of the kitchen this morning, does not look all that spectacular but it was no small amount of work or investment Also a pic of what the inside looked like when I bought the portable building back in 2012. Hehe and Picture of one of my dogs (Dukey) that is more than happy that I have time to play with him again!)

 

Good deal, I'm glad I stayed below most of the radar.

 

T5R, Congratulations! It sounds like you have an unusually sound business mind, most people don't. And, when tied together will you ability to perform the hard brow and body sweat - well - I have no doubt your latest venture will be a success.

I am going to be shamefully bold enough to ask your opinion about something. It is an idea that I have had now for a few years that I have been trying to knock holes in but no matter what angle I look at it the idea is still sound but I really need an outside source in the food industry that could give me a no BS answer so... I will PM you in a moment.

 

Reminds me of the CCC Chuck-wagon Dinners in Tucson. Now out of business owing to the owner passing, it was a money maker.

Triple C Chuckwagon — 8900 W. Bopp Road

I met Charlie Camp while attending college classes, spent many a weekend helping him build the place. As he put it, this place was a permit to mint $ - IOW, very profitable.

Best of luck on your new Chuckwagon venture.

 

I must have missed the CCC, that was way outta town when I was growing up.

 

Thanks for your post. My experience has been earned raising hogs, rabbits, chickens, goats, and beef as home use animals with minimal outside sales.

My goals towards reaching markets are pretty vague right now beyond eggs (to co-workers) and rabbits (already secured both an asian and a Mexican market).

Those are small change compared to success. Please keep posting!

 

I look at success this way...... it is not a volume of $$$ it is the % of dollars not in the red! Told a young couple starting out a few years back......... Start with 2 dozen chickens or two dozen tomato plants. If you run in the black with that add some more and grow as your market grows or stay small and have some spare change in your pocket. Either way you are better off than you were yesterday. If you lose money with that small amount, it is not going to bankrupt you and you have really lost little to nothing. If you can't make money with 2 dozen chickens you are not going to do any better with 5,000 chickens

Can't have it on when the Health Inspector comes.......... Don't ask me why, it is one of those "Because I said so deals" That obvious dent on the edge is from me pushing the cans to far and one falling on the freezer last night. TG the can was OK and didn't dent LOL

Cutting back on the livestock and huge gardens seems like the best route heading into the last years before the 60s and with the health issues that just won't let me pull 18 hour days anymore. Doing this is a lot less intense physical labor and I still get a good workout every day doing 1.5 acres of produce, the chickens and eggs and 200 head of pasture hogs. Have a half dozen partner farms that were eager to supply me with what I need but don't produce anymore at a fair wholesale price. We will see what happens when I roll the Chuck Wagon out to Market on Wednesday for my first show in it.

 

I have been posting the menu on the Thunder 5 Ranch Chuck Wagon FB page as I cooked things for just to take pics today. The chicken has been the most popular, although folks keep telling me I am too low priced at $6.50 per plate with a drink. Seems fair to me and has a 52% profit margin, guess I should go for triple digit profit margins (Not)

 

Looks like gorgeous plat of food and gratz on the change over. Love your posts!