Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Where we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

Barely Legal Margaritas

The Margarita Man… Let me start by saying I wouldn’t recommend this business. Sure, it could be done but SHOULD it be done? That’s a whole other question. So what it is?

Let’s set the stage. It’s a hot summer day, it’s Friday evening, the kids are out, your calendar is empty. What’s that sound? Could it be? The ice cream man, I haven’t heard that jingle since I was a wee lad. But it’s not.

It’s the margarita man! Homeboy is making margs to go in his truck, it’s too good to be true. And depending on your state, might be too illegal to be true.

But let’s say we’re on the right side of the law. Slangin margs curbside is legal in GhostLand. So what would we do to build out this margarita business and how much would it cost us? (minus any legal fees)

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Tequila… Where do we start? A used food truck will cost $10k-$30k, too much for an MVP. You could set up a booth somewhere but would probably need a business license and liquor permit. OH I GOT IT!

Door to door margarita sales 🍸

Okay this is how we start:

1. Buy a battery powered blender: $22

2. Get 2 fifths of tequila, one bottom shelf & one classy: $70

3. 4 bottles of margarita mix: $36

4. Back up batter pack: $89

5. Backpack cooler with ice: $50

6. 50pk of red solo cups: $12

7. Making grandma smile from her porch: Priceless

You’ve only spent $279

Now for the good stuff, income 💰

Let’s say we charge $5 a cup for bottom shelf tequila and $7 for the better stuff. To break this down:

• You can squeeze about 15 shots (15 drinks) out of each bottle

• 15 drinks of bottom shelf is $75

• 15 drinks of quality tequila is $105

• $180 in total

This is less than your upfront costs, but your on going costs are only $118. So you should still be making at least $60 per outing. Not great.

Could we go legit and scale this business to make some serious cash?

(Side Note: if you’re likin what I’m typin, please kindly tap the subscribe button at your earliest convenience. It gets you more of this goodness and gets me closer to my goal of writing full time 😍)

Scaling Up

Going legit… The MVP numbers aren’t great. But it does answer a few questions:

1. Can you get a simple side hustle up and running with minimal upfront costs?

2. Do you enjoy this customer facing role and process of making margs for boozy neighbors?

3. Is there a market in your neighborhood to sell this type of beverage door to door?

These questions are important to test and answer before putting in significant investment into your idea/side hustle.

Let’s assume you were able to answer “yes” to all of these questions, now it’s time to go legit.

Going legit, you’ll need to get a few more house keeping items to stay compliant:

1. Business license ($200)

2. Liquor permit ($100-$1,000) (depending on the event)

3. Some sort of stand to operate out of ($1,000 - $20,000 (depending on the scale of your set up)

At this stage, here are the possible revenue streams:

• Weddings

• Fund raisers

• Upscale house parties

• 5ks our outdoor events

• Small markets

• Bachelor/bachelorette parties

Your essentially a mobile bar at this time and slowly building out your offering. These typically work with having ~5 fixed menu mixed drink options and a couple of beers and wine options as well.

You get paid a flat fee to show up at the event (try to have this cover your staffing wages) and keep any profit per drink sold.

The End Goal

Bar service… The final product could ultimately be a brick & mortar bar and/or a handful of mobile bars around the city. Using the brand name and recognition around town for the smaller events would be great to drive traffic to your bar or pop-up events.

If you become the go-to margarita person, then you could offer a HUGE range of tequilas for people to purchase, possibly becoming a tequila distributor.

At this point you could have 4 income streams:

• pop-ups

• mobile bars for events

• Brink and mortar bar

• Tequila distributor

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Salty rims… Having been in the bar/service industry, this is a GRIND. After running the numbers, doing this as a side hustle would be very difficult. But this can be built into a big brand with multiple income streams.

Ultimately, for this, you have to be a people person (and also like tequila), but as you build this you can easily hire out help and be the life of the party at every event.

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋