Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your weekly Tuesday email, where we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

Financial Freedom Fries

Would you like fries with that… This is an idea that’s been brewing since I had a waffle stand, you can read about it here. The waffle business was started because I grew up in Belgium. There were waffle stands everywhere.

But you know what else there was? French Fry stands!

French fries make more sense than waffles:

✅ Simpler ingredients (1 or 2 types of potatoes)

✅ Low startup cost

✅ Add variation simply through different sauces

✅ Can serve year round

✅ Quick turnaround for orders

I can smell it from here 🍟 

Let’s see what it would take to be a fry guy and how much we could rake in.

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

Paint me like your french fry… Fries are already a proven concept. People love em’. But finding where to set up shop is the tough part. You can either set up a fry stand or start selling through online orders.

Online orders are a great (and cheap) way to test demand. People do it all the time. This is just one page of 69 (at least).

But you can also ask whatever friends, church, parent, or party group you’re in to test out the demand for your fries.

You can also test out different types of tots (I vote sweet potatoes). Then test different seasonings, oils and sauces.

Once you have a recipe nailed down, it’s time to hit the streets!

So far how much has this cost to set up?

• Ingredients (totes, seasoning, oil and sauces): $50

Getting Your Next 100 Customers

Order up… Now your fries have crossed their eyes, it’s time to set up shop. But start small. Farmers markets are for the big boys, but you know where people always want fries? Breweries 🍻 

Drunk food + drunk people = $$ (I’ve done the math)

This is one of the ways I got started, but at coffee shops with waffles.

Quick tip: This is one of those “don’t get high on your own supply” type of deals. Unlimited fries will hurt the waist line and its hard to serve customers when your shotgunning fries at your own stand.

The numbers don’t look bad!

A serving of fries is about 2 russet potatoes or $1. These can sell for about $5 for a small and $7 for a large. (this is a little trick, making people feel like it’s a no brainer to shell out a couple bucks to encourage them getting the large 😜)

Seasoning, sauces and utensils will add about another $1. So all in you’re spending $2 (small) or $3 (large). Making $3 to $4 in profit respectively.

You can easily sell between 50 and 200 orders on a given day. With the average profit per order being $2.5, that could be $125-$500 per day!

How bout them fries?? 😎 

You can make more selling:

1. With a scoop of ice cream

2. Having a sauce “flight”

3. Pricing higher for “fancier” tots (once again sweet potatoes)

Viability:

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

With a side of fries… I may be biased but this is SUPER do-able! If you can make a bowl of cereal, you can make fries.

The downside is the food industry is TOUGH. You have to be able to cook, clean, manage a business and talk to folks. I personally struggle with just one of those.

(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 👋