Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Austin.
Hi Joel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Two Men and a Garden started in 2006 when two St. Louis neighbors merged their backyard gardens. Soon they had more produce than they could give to family and friends, so they perfected some excellent salsa and pickle recipes. They sold their first jar of salsa to a local store in the summer of 2010. Tens of thousands of jars later, Two Men and a Garden have outgrown the backyard garden, but they have teamed up with several local farmers and distributors to supply them with top-quality, fresh produce. It’s much more work than Two Men can handle, so they have compiled a fun and talented team that promise to make every batch of their wholesome salsa and pickles with love! An insistence on making small batches with seasonally available, locally grown ingredients and organic tomatoes make Two Men and Garden products unique and delicious. No two jars are quite alike – “Every Jar’s a Star!” Recently we have developed an incubator for new food brands in St. Louis. We call it the Kitchen Hub by Two Men and a Garden. We currently have 23 companies that belong, and it’s an awesomely fun experience coming in every day and smelling really good things! We’ve learned so much over the past 13 years – good lessons and bad! So we are very interested in helping other brands learn lessons the easy way.
You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
Most of the early struggles were learning how to comply with all the FDA regulations. Learning the retail world of margins, distributions, and supply acquisition is another struggle. Currently, we have faced supply and shipping issues and extreme price increases. Mentoring our members in the Kitchen Hub allows them to avoid the obstacles we have faced, focus on their brand and positive growth, and remove the risk of backlash.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might need to become more familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
From my early paperboy days to college, I’ve always loved being an entrepreneur; where I owned a carpet cleaning business called SteaMagic Carpet Care. However, after college, I entered the corporate world at AT&T and spent over 30 years in IT—most of that time in the Data Warehouse world. After retirement, my gardening hobby became an incredible small business, where we now have products Nationwide in over 500 locations. The lessons I learned from the corporate world and the data mining aspects of my previous job have positioned me to make Two Men and a Garden a very solid company with continued growth opportunity. We have 20 wonderful and talented partners (most people call them employees) that make the day a real joy. We have super-talented people who have also had success doing something completely different. We like to hire the ‘best athlete available,’ as they say in the NFL Draft lingo. We have an ex-dietician doing our QuickBooks. A factory manager is doing our packaging. A Rock and Roll guitarist is our kitchen manager. Everyone is bought in on producing a top-quality product and everyone is very proud of what we do.
Do you have any advice for those just starting?
My first answer to people trying to take their food idea to launch into retail is STOP. Turn around. It’s more challenging than you might think, lol. But then they see the passion in my voice and the excitement of taking this idea and making it a reality. But they need to be persistent, passionate, and willing to learn.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.twomenandagarden.com
- Instagram: @2mensalsa
- Facebook: Two Men and a Garden
- Text: 314-277-4229
- Linkedin: Joel Austin
- Twitter: @2mensalsa
