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Mobile Bev. Pros Podcast
The #1 place to get advice and information on owning and operating a successful mobile beverage business.
Mobile Bev. Pros Podcast
E21 - Executing Festivals with Bobby Greenawalt with B&B Beverage Management
In this episode of the Mobile Bev. Pros podcast I'm chatting with Bobby Greenawalt from B&B Beverage Management, an industry-leading mobile bar company in Alabama and beyond. Bobby is the CEO of a $4M beverage management company and has been in the industry since 2008. Bobby and I discuss what it looks like to be one of the leading bar vendors for festivals and all that comes with it. If you've ever considered adding festivals to your event lineup, this is the episode for you!
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Hi friends, welcome to the mobile Bev Pros podcast, a podcast dedicated to providing mobile bar professionals with the information they need to succeed. I'm your host and fellow mobile bar owner Sarah Murphy. Each episode, I'll be bringing you interviews, knowledge, anecdotes, or opinions with the goal of assisting you and believe profitable, sustainable and scalable mobile bar business that will support the lifestyle you dream. I'm excited for today's episode. So let's get started. Today on the podcast, I'm here with Bobby Greenwald with B&B beverage management located in Alabama. But you're not just any beverage catering company, you are one of the largest beverage catering companies in the world are in the country, at least. Yes, yeah.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah. So we operate in Alabama as where our bread and butter is, is where a lot of our business comes from. We also have partnerships with other companies where we will provide our services in different states specifically like with a sporting company, like a tailgate company, where we'll provide those services for tailgates or whether it be Barstool Sports calls us and says, Hey, I want to do a tour across seven different sites for football games. And we need to go from LA to New York or the this past year, we got we had a two day lead time it was a lot of fun. We had a two day lead time to put together the best of the best beverage experience at the World Series for the Braves. And we had two days to pull it off. So I flew in people from LA New York, Chicago and Austin for that. And that was a that was a whole lot of fun.
Sarah Murphy:Oh my gosh. But okay, so let's backward engineer this a little bit. When you didn't start there. So how, how long ago? Was it that you started b&b? And was it just a beverage catering? Same? Like bartenders slinging drinks at weddings? How did they How did you start?
Bobby Greenawalt:Sure, so in 2008, I got out of the Navy and went to Auburn University to finish school there. And while I was there and new jobs, so I went to a quick little ABC bartending school and started working at a local bar. Once, Christmas time came, all the kids left to go home, I wasn't making any money because nobody was at the bar. So I started calling around to different catering companies and seeing if anybody needed help, I got hung up on a lot and got a lot of those. And then I had one lady said, Well, I don't need one bartender, I need eight. And so it just clicked in my head. Well, I know eight people who bartender so let's see what we can do from there. So we coined the name b&b, bartending. And it was not, not not my best name, it was when I was 21, created the name of a company. And off we go. And I learned the hard way on how not to do every single thing in business. So that's how we got started. We were just a bartending company, we eventually started learning, hey, we can buy things and rent them and have rentals with it too. And then we really saw the feature where if we provide the product itself, then that's where we can make most of our money. That's where the money is because most people don't want to buy the product, and then let you serve it. Most people want you to take care of everything from a hospitality standpoint. So we went through the licensing process on that every state's different, I could talk about the difference of that for hours. And I'm sure we'll do that at a later time off off the record. But there's there's so many different ways to license in each state. And even in one state, there may be five different ways to license but you got to do it the right way. So we legitimize ourselves and make sure that we could provide those services. And now we we provide beverage services and even food consultation and food management services for some of the bigger events as well.
Sarah Murphy:Now, when you when you feel that your podcast form, one of the questions is, what are you so well informed on that you consider yourself an expert and that you could offer insight to the mobile VR community and you wrote a paragraph. So I'm we, we don't have the time to go through everything today. So I went through all of the list of things. And many, many of them are directly applicable to the industry that we're in including your recent launch of like your cocktail Boxes, boxes in your subscription boxes, which is fantastic. And I know that there are a lot of individuals and businesses that pivoted a little bit to that during COVID. I will reiterate for anybody who hasn't followed my advice. If you are in the first two years of your business, I do not recommend adding an additional revenue stream, such as subscription boxes, because you're still perfecting your main line of business, which is mobile bartending. But if you are beyond that point, then that is always a industry adjacent product line that you can get into. But today I've chosen the topic of festivals, which I'm really excited about. We've never had anyone on the podcast or anybody actually within the MVP ecosystem speaks specifically on this though we do have a number of members of the community that do execute festivals. What I oftentimes get are people who scheduled discovery calls, they're just getting started out. A lot of them are in maybe California or Texas, and they get their mobile bar specifically for the larger one like an Airstream for example, and they want to get into weddings and festivals. And I always tell them in the discovery calls that those are Are two vastly different beasts. And my recommendation is to choose one before you move on to the second, and you could do either weddings or festivals. But today we're gonna talk a little bit about the beast of festivals. And so if I was a mobile bar, and I wanted to get into festivals, where would I start,
Bobby Greenawalt:The first thing you would start with is finding those festivals, finding those concerts, and I'll use large concerts and festivals hand in hand, because it may be a festival, typically multiple artists, but you're gonna have a single act that is the same operational and logistical and planning phase as what a full on festival would be. So find them, right find them. And then once you find them, you have to find the ones that are not already tied to a brick and mortar type facility, like an arena, or a raceway or whatever it may be, because those typically have some sort of institutional caterer that have signed on for 10 year type lease with them. And they get all these millions of dollars, like your Sodexo air marks and legends, the big boys, right. So with that, once you find the ones that you could potentially do, then you have to attempt to reach out to the right person, you go to the website, you're going to see like info at Welcome to rockville.com. Right, so he, you can go fill out the food vendor application, and it's gonna be kicked back cuz they don't know what you're talking about. And then you can go to the info site. So once you find the right people to talk to, typically there's already a beverage company in place. And so if there is you can talk to them about potentially working alongside them, whether it be just providing staff or providing additional points of service throughout the facility that they may not be able to accommodate. And even some festivals will have certain types of premium mixology areas that they may not want to deal with. Because they're their beer singers, they're good at the logistics are good at putting drinks in people's hands. And they may want to bring in somebody else to help with the VIP areas. So that's that's your first approach. But if you want to do the whole thing, which is something that we really liked doing this was doing the entire beverage program, and even food for some of those is that you just got to find the people in charge, you got to find out when the current company that is there in their contract is leaving and expiring or coming up for bid again. And then you have to put everything on the table and figuring out how much money you want to give them. And we're talking about a festival, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars, you'd be giving up to be a player in the game. And it's a, it's a scary, scary moment, like bidding is my least favorite thing to do. But it's also something that we have to do so bidding on the best possible scenario for a concert organizer who's going to look at you and say, but everyone that give us X percent gross or net or whatever it may be. And some people may say, I'll give you 70% of sales net. Well, 70% net is a completely different story of like a 30%, or even a 40% Gross. So those numbers probably in most instances equal out to be around the same. So it's really just your pitch your angle. And then if your pitch is too good, then they may also look at you and question well, why? Why is it so good that they really know what they're talking about. And they want to see your history and your track record and see if you can handle it. So there's a lot that goes into it. And that's before we even start talking about the planning, licensing, the logistics, the partner brands and staffing, which is obviously the biggest problem of all events,
Sarah Murphy:Right. Like if you're not already getting hives as a mobile bar owner listening to all of that... So on a whim, shortly after I got a partner with a liquor license, when I had my mobile bar, I reached out to the one company that I had a direct contact straight to the CEO and said, Hey, we are liquor license now to do catering events. And I would love to kind of discuss what it would look like for my bar company to be involved in because they don't do just do one festival. They do a number of them all within the Tennessee and Kentucky area. And I immediately was like absolutely, because we had worked with him as a donated events when we were first getting started. Absolutely. We require 80% of net sales. And I was like I'm sorry, what? What's an I was blown away by this because I didn't realize like I was just the market because that's not how it works in the private side of things. Right? And I was like this can't be like a standard operating procedure. But sure enough, sure enough, it is.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah, it absolutely is. We outside of festivals, we have hundreds of partnerships with venues and and other event goers or event planners and and you always want to have your skin in the game but you always got to give them something and our typical model is to go on a gross percentage basis but then we have others that want to do that and that is honestly the safest bet especially if you're a new mobile bar you're wanting to go in that because you at the very least your costs are covered. But you get really competitive when you start going into the end a percentage of gross and it's really attractive to them because these people are doing absolutely nothing. They're covered by your liquor liability insurance they know that there's their guests are enjoying a good experience legally safely and and overall good service while sitting back and clicking check. So it's really a great advantage for them but you also have to compete with yourself. So it's fun now
Sarah Murphy:I've never been able to Ask anybody who knows enough about the laws to answer this question, but you do. So I'm going to ask it in Tennessee, I know that it is against the alcohol Board's policy to split revenue. So I can't, you know, say I'll give you 10% of the sale of alcohol, because that would be considered almost like them profiting off the sale of alcohol without a liquor license. However, that's 100%. How festivals do it. So how does that work? Is there like a subset to the code or something that makes that an exception?
Bobby Greenawalt:So it's all about words, learned that a long time legal laws in the alcohol community are there to be interpreted in most instances, they are vague for reasons that the local ABC boards can then interpret them the way and make rules and regulations based off those big rules that's in the best interest for the for the state. And the reason being is because most of these laws were passed in the directly after Prohibition, right. So they needed to make those laws ambiguous enough to last 100 years, if not longer. And if they become outdated, that's when you go back and change them. So going back to your original question, yes, the the wording is where it all comes in. So in some states, you can apply for a third party facilitator license to where like, somebody like what Uber Eats, or DoorDash, that was going to deliver alcohol with get so that way, they can be paid for a percentage of what they're doing to deliver the alcohol, even though they are not actually processing the sale of the alcohol. So that is a similar situation where in states that allow it, you could do a third party facilitator type license. But also, it's more than just a commission of revenue, right? So you can outline in your contract, that you are going to give them a marketing fee of X dollars, or there's different ways to do it's very similar to how I don't know if you know much about the tide house laws federally with with the TTB out and as you push cannot come in and say I want you to sell nothing but Anheuser Busch at this festival, and you say okay, that's fine, and they put it in the contract. Now, that will never happen, because it is against federal law. And there'll be millions of dollars in fines. But what they can say is I'm going to market and I'm going to sponsor this festival, and I'm going to be your headliner, I'm going to be the banner across the stage. And for that, I'd really appreciate it if you started all of our products and use the products I'd like to serve. And then it's on the festival to say yeah, sure, I'll do that. But they always have the right to serve cars as they want to. So it's really just a play on words, and how do you make that situation best for you, while also being in the confines of the law?
Sarah Murphy:That was That was beautiful. And you're right. I mean, I'm married to an attorney. It's all all about the words, or as they say, it's about the spirits. So my next question, which I know that the listeners are really going to benefit greatly from when I'm planning a wedding, it's an open bar most cases. And so I have an industry standard calculation as to how much alcohol I should bring based on a number of variables. When it's a festival type situation, that's all out the door doesn't work. So what is that? What is it? How do you how do you calculate how much alcohol to bring? Based on projected head count? You're never quite sure. And then how much do people actually drink in festival situation?
Bobby Greenawalt:That is an ongoing myth and mystery, something I've been trying to find out for years, and you just start to learn to gauge and the first thing that's going to come down to is your audience, right? If you are with a group of 18 to 25 year olds, you're going to sell more water than you're going to sell beer, just because some of those concert goers may be doing other extracurriculars besides drinking. So when it comes to a country crowd, your country crowd you are going to sell a ton of beer, a ton of beer is going to be domestic semi light beers. When we Michelob Ultra, that's when the Coors Light, and they're going to drink as fast and as much as they can it with a cowboy hat on and boots and ready to go. Now if it's a rock concert, it'll be a little different, it'll be you'll see a little bit more liquor. So it really just depends on your audience a bit depends on your location of different parts of the country, different parts of the world are going to drink and act differently. And then it also depends on the time of year we did. We did a music festival festival, a big country concert in Mobile, Alabama, this past year and November, and it was cold. And we sold a lot of beer. But we sold hardly any water, which is a little scary from the responsibility standpoint. And then we do a large Music Festival in August and sold almost more water than we did beer. So it really just depends on the climate. So you take those three factors into consideration. Now, each one of those three factors has its own scenario of how much do you buy? How much do you order? And how do you figure it out? I always like to look at it and say, Alright, if I'm at a concert for eight hours, how many beers and what I have, and I would like to say that I'm a average maybe slightly above average drinker. So I would think I would want to have anywhere from six to probably 10 drinks over an eight to 10 Our period right now that's sounds like a lot of drinks. But it's almost one an hour, when you look at Mass standpoint, you will have some that will go above that you'll have some that go below that, yes. And that won't drink at all. So if you use that as a base, then that really helps you. But when you're talking about a festival, it's not like they just say, Alright, you've got the job, go out and have fun. Like you are talking to sponsors, you're talking to distributors, you're talking to the manufacturers. And they're all telling you all right, I want you to, I want you to sell my product. I want you to do this. Can you offer it here? Can we do a specialty cocktail at this bar, and you really have to hone it in my first year doing doing a large festival. I was like, Yeah, sure, I'll do all those things. Cool. All of a sudden, now we're selling 20 sk use and we can can barely keep up with the volume of line because we have a cocktails we have to make we're selling six beers and 14 sodas, so it really just ended up being more than what we should have done. So now we very, very much so limited to where from a non alcoholic standpoint, we limit them to four SK use including water, so they get three service. From a standpoint on alcohol beer, you get four SK use, if it's liquor, each liquor can have one cocktail, like each presenting sponsor, right, so the audio comes in, they have crown and Captain Morgan and all these other brands. So they pick one of those brands and one of those brands can have a menu item. Now, those activations, which is a whole different thing we can talk about a little bit if you want to. But each festival if you have a big contributing sponsor is also gonna have an activation. And in those activations, they're gonna want everything under the sun. And we have to compromise on that. You have to you have to give them what they want on those activations. But going back to I guess your answer your original question, I kind of went off on a tangent there, there's just a lot. But you have to work with the distributors to get their opinion, because this may be in an area that you're not familiar with, find out what the best sellers are more times than not, they're going to be 100% accurate. And you tell them alright, based off this, I want to bring in this many pallets of this, this many pallets of this, so on and so forth. And then they bring the trucks in there. And you have to then work on your logistics of moving those pallets around, get them to the right bars. And making sure that to make this complication, make it more complicated. Whatever it is, then you have to then figure out, I just ordered all this beer now which bars do I put them at? Because in the middle of the show when there's 30,000 people here, I can't get a forklift or law to go through the middle of this place with a pallet to drop off more beer. So then there's just a larger, larger mix to it from there.
Sarah Murphy:Okay, how many years were you in business before you're like, Okay, I'm ready for my first festival.
Bobby Greenawalt:I did my first large concert. I did a Kenny Chesney concert in Auburn outside of Jordan hare stadium, I was five years into the business. And I learned a lot. I was one of three vendors that sold beer at that show a Sodexo on the liquor license, we worked as a vendor of Sodexo. So that was the first one, I did not learn a ton of things there I bought, I took every little bit of money that we made from that and purchased all of our own equipment to continue doing it. And from there. A year later, we were in business for six years before we got our actual full festival to ourselves. And it was it was a whirlwind. I mean, looking back on it. I don't know how I did that, you know, now we have all these checks and balances in place to make sure we're not screwing ourselves over. And and then we probably did it 100% The wrong way. But that's that's how business works, especially when you're in a kind of a pioneer of an agency or they have a different industry, like like a mobile bar industry. That's, there's not a roadmap to tell you how to do it. And you have to you have to do it the wrong way before you can learn how to do it the right way, which is why I try to help out as much as I can on on your Facebook page too, because you want to guide people in the right direction.
Sarah Murphy:Yeah, I mean that the Facebook page is really made by the OGS that are willing to kind of share the harder knowledge that they've gained throughout their experience. So thank you for being one of those truly valuable contributors. If someone was to come to you and say that they wanted or they had a festival that they would like BMB to do the bar service for what is your ideal timeline for that? That's is it? Is it like, You got to give me at least two weeks, you got to give me at least two months, what does that look for? Like for you?
Bobby Greenawalt:Is a great question. And if you'll allow me a little latitude on it, I want to explain two separate scenarios there. So you said when somebody reaches out about a festival, and it's very rare that somebody's going to reach out to me about a festival, it's typically the other way around, I typically go after the big ones. And then the small ones usually reach out to me it was there's nothing wrong with the small ones, but you have to be careful, the small ones will bite you in the butt more times and they then they'll then they'll be good for you. But the small ones will say hey, we got this festival we're expecting three to 5000 people. We want to get a percentage of sales, can you in licensing, we have this sponsor, they're donating all the stuff and then alcohol donation laws is a whole different topic. We'll do a whole nother episode on that if you want but then we get into they say alright, we want to do this many bars gonna do this one didn't say say all these grand things. Well, you've already done a big festival you understand how that stuff works and you can do literally anything they want. But it's got to be worth your time, right? You've got to kind of get an idea and gauge what is the maximum or at least the minimum amount of revenue I can do at this event. And then it kind of gauge your cost that point and see where you're gonna end up. We've done several what you would call festivals or small concerts that have promised to be 10,000 people and 1800 people show up. And so we staffed for it appropriately and ends up not being worth our time and we lose most of our money on staff because the product is the product is a product, you know, you lose someone the product, then you can get rid of it in other places, dependent upon that state's laws. So you have to be careful, it'd be very careful with that. Typically, for the smaller ones, if you have to obtain the special event license, you want at least 45 days, for a big concert, like all of our big concerts, we usually have 90 to 160 days. So you know, three to three to five months, sometimes even longer. There's one that we are in a contract with for a multi year contract beyond and we start, it's in August, we start working on it in January, this just because there's so many steps involved in marketing and sponsorship sales, because when you do this, you're not just doing it, you're not just out there selling to the masses, you're also selling to everybody that gets a private tint, you're, you're working on all the artists riders, so this kid rock comes to a concert and he wants 40 cases of whatever, you've got to get it for him, it's got to be the right thing. And some of those things may be difficult things to find. So you have to plan ahead and figure out what you need to do with that. So planning, depending on the size can be anywhere from 45 days as a best case scenario for a small show, and then up to six months or even longer for big ones.
Sarah Murphy:That makes total sense. Your company is got a number of different revenue streams. And so tell me a little bit about the mix that goes into your business or you 50% festivals, like weddings, private events, are those entirely different kind of operational arms for you? What does that look like if I was to peek behind kind of the org chart for you guys?
Bobby Greenawalt:Sure. So we have three different brands, right, we have our events brand, which is which is what everybody calls BMB beverage management. Then we have ampro, which stands for American promotional marketing. It's our brand ambassador platform where we provide brand ambassadors for liquor brands, beer brands across the southeast. And then we have boxhill, which is what you briefly mentioned on which is our COVID answer to stay in business. It's a non alcoholic product that isn't enough for people to use for their alcohol, they have 100, we ship those worldwide. And so those are our three original revenue streams. Now, if you peel back the event side, there's so many different types of events that we do, if we're looking at a quantity type basis, we do around 1800 events a year. So from a quantity standpoint, we do more weddings than we do anything else. Then after weddings, it would then go into tailgates and then into sporting events, concerts being last in that if we're looking at a revenue standpoint, concerts are number one by far probably close to 50 to 55, maybe even 60% With den sporting events, and then weddings coming in. So it's the exact opposite. It's more quantity, smaller revenue with weddings, but that's that's your bread and butter. That's what your that's what you start doing. And that's what you continue doing because it's such a great level of service. And then the other thing is if you get the opportunity to do that as a free, you get the opportunity to get a contract with the university or with a large sports organization, and go for it because those will be highly high revenue streams, you're going to pay more in commission, but the high revenue streams allows you to to do less for more and work harder than you ever have in your life.
Sarah Murphy:Yes, absolutely. Would you say your margins on your weddings are better than your margins on your events, you're larger than not not total dollar wise, percentage wise,
Bobby Greenawalt:Percentage wise, I would say that the margins are better with the tailgating side of things, actually, because it's more of a service coming to you. So the margins are typically typically at the very least around 100%, sometimes a little bit better than that. Weddings we can get in the 30 to sometimes 40% profit margins depends on quality of service and what the customer is asking for. And then with festivals, festivals are high but if you include the Commission's then it ends up being right around your 18 to 20% with 18 to 20% of a million dollar event is a great margin.
Sarah Murphy:Absolutely, absolutely. You touched on this a couple times. And I know that even as small business owners, we are finding it tough to find good quality staff at the moment for events now, at my largest I had a roster of about a dozen people who would pick up regularly and consistently so I didn't really need a large 3040 person roster because the 12 that I had wanted to be as full time as possible. Having said that, my baby business is nowhere near what your business is. And so how do you find the staff that you need to do what you need to do to support all of these contracts?
Bobby Greenawalt:So that's a good question. So our every day small, small our everyday sports contracts our everyday weddings and and our venue partnerships where we are obligated to do most of these quantity of events. We find those people just through your usual strands of doing your Facebook marketing and Instagram going through indeed sometimes indeed not the best, but I will say that the applications process on Facebook is not my favorite. I've gone through a lot of different application places and just for them to have the ability to say apply, and then all of a sudden they've applied without answering a single question is not my favorite, because it makes it more difficult for us to see if they're actually interested. So we have this whole online form of ours, our websites, very intuitive where we can have conditional logic and our forms and whatnot. So if somebody says they want to work with us, and they go and put out their availability, if they don't select at least two of the three available sections on from Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, that's not going to let them apply, it will push them to another application that says, Would you like to be a contractor for us, and this kind of touches back on a previous episode you had about labor laws and employees versus 1099. So we got dinged on that pretty big, we actually faced around $25,000 of fines for having contractors versus employees. So now all of our bartenders are employees. And then we do have bonafide bartender contractors from time to time for these larger shows. And they add, they're required to have business licensing, insurance, all that stuff. And once we asked them, if they can help us with something, then they would agree to do that. And you're very limited on what you can tell them to do and what not to do, what to wear, so on and so forth, all that fun stuff. But if they don't meet those qualifications of what we set as our standard for them to work, you know, Thursday, Friday or Saturday be available, at least they don't have to work those days, they just have to be available for us to schedule, and then we push them over to be part of the contractor. So finding those people, for everyday type things is just those through those normal channels. And then from a larger standpoint, we have to get very strategic, we've done this the wrong way. 20 times and I think we finally figured it out last year. And the way we do it is we split up our entire staff into three different sources. So for a large festival, we typically need anywhere from 120 to 140 bucks. And so our full time staff is all hands on deck, we have around 25 full time staff that we that we bring in better salary employees, then we can bring in all of the available part time staff that we have that aren't working other events, for other obligations. Because while a vessel is going on, we still have weddings and other things going on too. So then we bring those people in, and then we put in a big push and a big marketing campaign online to ask for volunteers. And those volunteers will go through a similar types, necessarily interview process with more of an application process. And we will over staff each section by about 40%. Because of that, we usually end up being right. But that usually means you have a 40% amount of people that don't show up. And we learned that the hard way. So we have the volunteers and we have our our staff, which is our staff has a small mix in it. And then we usually reached out to several nonprofit organizations and see if they have a crew that they want to bring in and all the tips that they make during that than they are able to keep for the organization. And we typically pitch in a few $1,000 Extra to help with their cause. And sometimes the concert does as well, because the concert also has been a factors that they like to contribute to. And then lastly is the expensive part, which is a staffing agency. So you reach out to several staffing agencies in that area. And they say I can get 14 people I can get 30 people and then you have the big overzealous ones to say they can get 100 people in their lives you so don't listen to him, but you let them kind of split up between them. And then they that you negotiate the rates with them. And it'd be anywhere from 14 to $20 an hour or sometimes more in different states and and you pay it and you pay it but they have somebody on site that's there, make sure people show up. And then then you hopefully are staffed by being 40% over staffed. You typically are just about staff where you need to be for the big shows, but just a nightmare, a headache and terrifying all at the same time.
Sarah Murphy:That's mind blowing. I would never have guessed 40% No Show, right. That's Wow, I've heartburn just thinking about 40% of my staff not showing up at a given event. Which it makes a ton of sense, given your experiences over the past 1415 years. As to why you have recently started thinking about expanding your network of mobile bars that you can tap into for events and contracts that you you get around the country. So if you wouldn't mind talking for a moment on what what that network looks like what it is how it operates.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah, absolutely. So we have a contract with a Telia company. They're a nationwide cellular company, they were founded in Alabama actually, believe it or not. And then now they are in over I think over 50 different schools. They were had a big equity injection, and then were actually acquired by that equity firm. And they are a massive company. We partnered with them young and we help them with all their tailgating, several SEC schools and other schools around the country. And 2019 is when that large expansion of that partnership happened. We then expanded the 13 states got liquor licensing and all the states hire staff and all the states acquired buildings brick and mortar equipment, huge investment for us. And then 2020 happened. So it was I mean, the pandemic just about put us out of business and if it wasn't for this box to plan then it definitely would have kept us afloat during the year and then then along with some government assistance too, but we had to figure out, alright, coming in 2021, we can't do that, again, that was not an equitable model, it was not something that we can survive on. So we started thinking, why, why should we go and insert ourselves into a market that there's already so many other people there, there's already people that have catering licenses or have just mobile staff or have the means to, to have their own equipment in places. So that way, I'm not having to ship equipment across the country to do a 75 person tailgate, why don't I just work with a local partner. And if we need to send equipment there, we send it to them, they use our equipment at the events. And then then when they're not, then they store it, and then we come pick it up in season, so on and so forth. So we find it to be a really good model where we find a group of mobile bar companies that we're willing to work with. And once they meet our expectations and agree to go through all the paperwork that comes with it afterwards, then we we get the events, we sent it to them, they agreed to do them, they go out they do the events, there's some reporting on the back end, they have to take pictures, make sure that they're there is very similar to other processes, just because some clients I say you're there, some clients may say you're not. You got you got to check yourself and say no, actually, here's, here's the picture. They were there. So that's how our partner network works. And it will be expanded upon because we are getting several inquiries. Now in different states to do small festivals, we actually got to inquiry yesterday to do a small festival about a 10,000 person festival in Arkansas that we had to turn down because it's on April 9, and we're fully booked on April 9, it's right around the corner. I don't think there's enough time to even get licensing for that. But we're having to turn down events because these areas so we're building this network up so we can hopefully get more and more depth with that. And we've we've named it the our ABC networks, the alliance of beverage caterers and so anybody on here that would be interested in that, I'd be happy to give you the link to our site. So you can possibly be a part of that, investigate it. See if there's nothing you want to do. You obviously, it's not a franchisee type situation, you're not trying, I'm not trying to take a percentage of every bit of sales you do. I just have a large amount of events that I need to get fulfilled. And they help us do this.
Sarah Murphy:Yeah, I'll absolutely stick a link to that in the show notes for anybody who might be interested in reaching out to you and your team to be a part of your ABC network. That's awesome. So if you could tell somebody getting you the festivals, one thing or two things that you wish someone had told you, what would that be?
Bobby Greenawalt:My first thing would be is, are you serious, because if you're serious, then you've got a lot of work to do a lot of work and and it's not something to take on for the mild heart, this is something that you are going to spend three to six months of your life on. And then the second is over, there's mountains and mountains of paperwork and reporting to do the physical aspect of it. For our biggest show that we do, we spend nine days building it and three days tearing it down, that's just the beverage portion. There's a lot that goes to it. We have 15 people out there working day in and day out for those nine days. And and it's it's a lot of heavy machinery work, it's talking with people that are driving tractor trailers is coordinating is there's there's so much operational to do so make sure you're serious about it. And if you are serious about it, make sure you have the means to do it. A lot of these companies are going to require a check up front before you get the beer, and some may cash in some may not. And then others are going to and other situations, you're gonna have to provide your own equipment. And some places rarely, you'll be able to use equipment that maybe the distributor has. But you've also got to put on a good image for the festival that you're doing. So they're going to want to see nice faces that are going to go on the front sides of the tents that are going to be these nice menu style things that protect the bar and stuff like that. So there's a lot, a lot to go into. So if you're serious, get into it, put your money into it. And I say the reason I say if you're serious is because you don't want to. You don't want to go by all these things. Do a festival and realize this isn't for me because unfortunately festival equipment is not wedding equipment, you can kind of mask it some, but it's two completely different types of equipment, festivals and concerts are about speed quality service. Weddings are about mostly quality of service, less speed. So there's a complete polar opposite. So if you're serious, do it if you're not serious, then just just pass it up. It's a great idea. It sounds great. If you want to be a part of one then great but if you want to do an entire festival or entire concert yourself then standby it's gonna be fun.
Sarah Murphy:I'm a an equipment junkie and you mentioned some festival equipment versus what I have favorite equipment I have favorite equipment. Do you have a favorite piece of equipment that you utilize in festivals? Maybe it was life changing when you got it or it was just like a game changer? And if so what what is it?
Bobby Greenawalt:So that is a loaded question but it changes every year because there's new ways of doing things. When it comes to a festival you're talking purely speed horse troughs are going to be the fastest thing you can use the giant 250 300 gallon for straws, you can dump the 40 cases of Bud Light 16 ounce cans in there stays ice cold. If you're smart. You'll put in a drain system into it otherwise you're gonna have 250 gallons of water you got to dump and not just 250 gallons you if you have Have one of those if you have a. Here's as an example, one bar may have 120 linear feet of bar space that you've got to figure out. So you may have 60 to 70 of those horse troughs there. If you don't want to do horse troughs, you can do igloos, 150 court igloo coolers that you stack on top of each other, the first benefit of stacking them on top of each other is you don't have to bend down to pick up every single beer which you've been down 600 times in a day, it's gonna start hurting. But the second benefit is you have your double stacking your igloo. So the top igloo has all the beers you're using, when that's empty, then your barbacks Pull it off, and then put a new one underneath and the one that's below comes up and you start from now and so it's a quick rotation system for you there. And then if we're talking and it really depends on where the concert is, right, if we're in the middle of field, those two first scenarios, great if you are if you have any opportunity to be on any sort of asphalt or concrete and if you are then Bravo, you're lucky because most of the big concerts we do in the medical field, mud and dirt and all kinds of fun stuff. But the other half opportunity to be on asphalt or concrete than all the IRP products are fantastic, the Artix and the super Artix that can hold a ton of equipment or a ton of product, keep things chilled in a nice manner. Those are just great. If you do get the opportunity to have a reefer there, if you can talk to your distributor and they do have a reefer truck to keep all the beer cold. That helps and it helps the amount of ice you're gonna go through to
Sarah Murphy:I would never have all the things that I thought you were gonna say. I definitely didn't think of course drugs and igloo coolers we're going to be? Have you ever heard? And you probably have? That's a silly question. You've heard of it? Have your feet utilized? And what are your thoughts on the bottoms up system,
Bobby Greenawalt:Talking about the draft system? I like it, it's great if I was facilitating something at the, at the Titan stadium, right, and I could have something that's more stationary and conserve people to an absolutely fantastic system, putting it in the middle of a field and servicing 180 linear feet with it is a little bit more difficult. It could work, you're also talking about moving all this equipment around and moving the kegs. I try and stay away from draught beer as much as possible these shows really are not you would think that you would want to save draft beer. But anytime you put draft beer in the middle of field, and it's been moving around, there's always gonna be problems. And we'll do it. But I don't want to do it to the masses. I'd much rather hand somebody a beer with this. And I can then opposed to doing a draught beer. But the bottom zone system is great. It's really cool technology. It really does significantly reduce the foam and allows you to have less waste to the customer expensive. But that's just the nature of the system.
Sarah Murphy:Yeah, yeah, the cups are expensive. But because the little magnets at the bottom are customizable, you could almost get sponsors to like pay for the cups, I would think Yeah, I saw it at a Beer Fest here in Nashville a number of years ago, I geeked out so hard over it. Like I couldn't think of a reason for a mobile bar to need one because we don't serve enough beer to make it worthwhile. But I was like, yeah, if I was doing festival, this might be a really good technology, not really thinking about the fact that Yeah, I mean, it's so much easier to do 120 feet of bar if you just have a bunch of coolers than to have like multiple systems set up throughout the bars. That makes sense. Yeah.
Bobby Greenawalt:And also the cost behind it to those those bottoms of systems are not cheap. They're great. But like I said, if you're selling to a stadium or an arena, it's fantastic product. Absolutely. Well, this was fun. Is there anything else that you that you want to share with our listeners in regards to festivals, I mean, obviously, we'll have you back. And we'll talk about additional topics. Sure, the something that is important is money management on this, right. So you for a large 30,000 person show that you may do two or three days on, or even even a one day show, you're going to need to have anywhere from 80 to 100 $120,000 and change alone for this thing. So this huge investment, there is risk associated with cash being that shows. So we have like this, this command center we bought last year, and I got a great deal on it. And we had to fix up some but we put a safe on the inside of it. So we're able to it's like a giant gun safe that we keep all the money in. And we have money counters on there. And we bring in bank staff from the local community to help count those things on site, and so on and so forth. But there's a huge aspect of that, that is money management, not only just counting the money, right, but making sure that each bar has enough money, making sure that your managers of each bar have a backpack on and that backpack has X number of 1000s of dollars for change. And also to take deposits because those registers are going to fill up so fast that you do not want that money, you don't want the 20 and hundreds section to be above where the breath of the tray is. So you've got to be diligent about that. And then when those come out, you obviously need to do money tracking. So you need to then have a Sharpie that goes into a Ziploc bag or some sort of like cigar bag or something like that, where you can write which POS it came from and keep up with all of it. So the money management system alone is a whole logistical process in itself.
Sarah Murphy:Yeah, you know, coming from the open bar. So I mean, I do cash bars a couple times a year, but they're usually two or three bars not a big deal, right? I haven't even considered what it would look like to have $100,000 worth of cash floating around. And that's an addition to the POS systems. I'm assuming what POS system do you use and do you like Get.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah, we thought we found most of our success was where we were with them since 2008, which I don't think they were a big thing in 2008. I think we started using them, maybe in 2010, that anyway, we started buying their products, we own 40 of those units alone. But then when we have our big shows, we rent them through a company that software licenses. And they make, they make it fairly simple. You pay about anywhere from 70 to $90. For this for the software system, each one and they ship it to you, they come in nice boxes, and you repackage them in there keeps everything safe. But then there's a we have an IT department that we have to bring on site that makes sure that all the devices are logged in the correct location that all the menus are correct. And that that you all everything's connected to Wi Fi and that the Wi Fi system that is with the festival doesn't interact with the emergency management system to kind of that happened before where there's an emergency management message that goes out and kills all Wi Fi. It's designed to do that by nature, it's supposed to do that. But if you're in the middle show and emergency management message goes out, you lose sales for five minutes while the system reboots. And I mean, five minutes, you talking about$15,000.05 minutes, five to 10 minutes while it's rebooting. So it's a, you got a lot of factors technologically wise that you've got to make sure that you're covered on the square POS system has been great to us and the ability to rent them and not have to purchase all of them. I know there's several others out there like best ring and some others that we've used. But I think we've been happiest with Square, just easy ease of use and being able to everybody knows that they're kind of the pioneer in their industry and and they've done a good job of updating their systems as time goes on.
Sarah Murphy:Thank you for making sure that we got that in there. No small point. Festival management. Well, this has just been so awesome.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah, and thank you for having me. And one last thing I'd like to touch on just as like our staff, right, I can only do so much. But we have a dedicated team of 20 plus full time salaried employees that pour their heart and soul into this thing. And it is nothing without them. And if you guys have the opportunity to hire full time staff, then please do so because you will be able to grow so fast once you take that leap. And that's a big leap of faith yes to take. But once you do take that leap, then you will realize that your abilities to do things are kind of endless at that point. So our team is fantastic. Each person has their role, their responsibility, they work great together, there's bickering, it's a family, right. We're big family, and you have to treat it as such. But it's it, we'd be nothing without them. So that was my last last point on that.
Sarah Murphy:I love that. Thank you.
Bobby Greenawalt:Yeah.
Sarah Murphy:And that wraps up today's episode. I hope it was valuable. I would love to hear from you what you thought you can drop me a line at Hello@Mobilebevpros.com or find me on Instagram at Mobile Bev pros. If you're looking for more valuable mobile bar related content, we have a website full of it. You can find us at www dot mobile bez proz.com. And I'd love to see you in our Facebook community. Also by the name of you guessed it, mobile def pros. Thank you for joining me today. And until next time, cheers