All Over Albany

Six quick clips from six follow-ups

Last week during AOA's summer break we had a series of follow-up interviews with a bunch of small businesses we've covered over the last few years. This is the second year we've done this sort of series, and it's become one of our favorite things because 1) it's good to hear about some of the successes at these places and 2) people have been refreshingly open about some of the challenges and frustrations they've faced.

So, we encourage you to have a look at the interviews. And to get you started, here are quick clips -- one from each small business...

Jessie Cramer of Nibble Inc

On what she's learned since opening the donut shop in downtown Troy:

I've learned that sometimes you just have to be confident in your own knowledge. Everybody wants to change something. I had no idea when I opened this that I would have 50 people telling me what I should do different. Sometimes it's helpful; other times you just end up getting frustrated because there are so many different voices. Although, my donuts are so much different than a lot of doughnuts. There is a huge market for our donuts, and the people that like them like them because they are different. So if I conformed and made them more like a normal donut, I would lose a little of the respect, I guess. That was a big thing.

I didn't know that I was going to bring it home with me every day. You never stop thinking about it; it's always on your mind. It's part of who you are.

(Oh, and Nibble is moving to a new spot in the Quackenbush Building.)

Silvia Lilly of Lark + Lily

On dealing with some of the city of Albany paperwork related to her restaurant on Lark Street:

Some of the bureaucratic stuff has been hard. The cafe permit stuff in Albany is ridiculous. Each year when you apply it's as if you have never applied before. It takes them weeks and weeks to process the permit and they didn't make their own deadline. I don't know if it's because I'm a new business owner and I don't get it, but I don't understand why people don't try to change these systems or figure out a work around. People just say that is the way government is. Five or six different agencies have to review your application and it's the same one as last year.

Heidi Benjamin and Frank Sicari of Takk House

On what they've learned operating the downtown Troy event space as a team of (only) two people:

Benjamin: There are some things that we can't say that we've learned. Although I kinda want to say them anyway.

I think, like, we've just learned that it's a lot of work, I mean we knew it was going to be a lot of work, but it's a lot of work. We've learned that we basically have to be OK with waking up at 6 am in the morning and not going to bed until 3 am. That needs to be a thing that's OK when we have events. We've also learned that exposure is not real money.

Sicari: We wanted to be this place where people come in and do whatever they wanted.

Benjamin: For everyone. But we've also learned that we need to stay alive, and that sometimes we have to turn away things because, you know...

Sicari: We have bills to pay. We can't just be everything for everybody.

Benjamin: I think the biggest thing is, like, we fell into that exposure thing a couple of times -- "Yeah, totally, we'll all work together, we get that you have no money," and then it's just not worth it at all.

Alejandro del Peral of Nine Pin Cider Works

On some of the competition they've faced since starting the cidery in Albany:

We had like a boom when we first started out. And what happened was, you know, in the alcohol world it's very competitive. And we had a number of different companies come in with different distributors to what I consider our home here and really pull some pretty aggressive/almost like unkosher business maneuvers to try to essentially take market share from us and also, you know, stomp us out as far as competition goes. We're talking people that had way bigger operations, way more money behind it, salesforce, all that kind of stuff. And we've had moments of like, damn, this is going to show up here and, you know, it's cheaper and it's decent quality. And we just watched companies come in like that, invest tons of money to try to take the Capital Region cider market and epically fail because people want the neighborhood cider makers.

We had that happen a couple of times. And the first one was by far the most disturbing to me because we found out after the fact that they brought their whole salesforce from every single state that they distribute to, we're talking probably 15-20 people, and they specifically targeted Nine Pin draft accounts and they were trained how to sell against it. And they didn't get anywhere, which was really cool to see. It shows that this town's got some heart, that there's real loyalty to us, which was, again, humbling. And I was super stoked about it.

Jeff McCauley of Dutch Udder Craft Ice Cream

On the challenge of forecasting demand for the ice cream company he's started with Kehmally Karl:

Vendors' fees are a challenge. For Tulip Fest and festivals the fees are about $500, so you have to figure what our profit really is going to be for an event. Then there is insurance and workers comp. All these things add up. We've had complaints about our ice cream being too expensive at $3 a scoop. Then we go other places and they think it's a bargain at $4. It's hard to predict.

Having enough product is a problem sometimes. We want to give customers an experience they have never had before, so we are still in a research and development phase. Some are winners and some are losers -- but even the losers use up product. We were challenged to do a Black Forest ice cream cake. Kem's challenge has been cherries. They are tough to work with. It cost us $150 for all that went into it and we ended up selling the cake for $20. But it was delicious, so it was worth it because it was R&D.

She has officially conquered the cherry, so it was well worth the $150 investment.

We were at the Adirondack Wine Festival last weekend and she sold through nine gallons of strawberry sorbet in one day. How do you know how much product to bring to an event the first time? It's so difficult to say. And weather plays a factor. What if it was 50 degrees or thunderstorms? That could change everything.

Colie Collen of Flower Scout

On adjusting her plan for the garden lot she has in South Troy -- she had been planning to use the $1,500 from here AOA Startup Grant win to fund a hoop house at the site:

But once I got into the garden I learned that you really should dig a hole in the garden you might want to buy before you buy it. I don't regret buying it, but six inches down is just bricks and rock and pieces of old iron and barbed wire and weird stuff. So when we put the fence in, my dad and I started digging post holes and realized we couldn't -- we just couldn't do it. So we had to rent a jack hammer and get a bunch of people and spent a lot more time on the fence than I would have imagined. I actually probably wouldn't have put up a fence if I knew. It slowed the season way down. It used up some funds. It is beautiful and helpful at this point.

And then I investigated getting water, which would be necessary if I built a hoop house because it wouldn't get any rainfall on it -- and realized that getting [a water line] was prohibitively expensive.

So I kind of nixed the hoop house idea for now until I have water here. There's other ways to do season extension, like just little hoops over individual garden beds with cloth reemay over them, which I'll do in in the fall when it threatens frost. ...

I realized as of this spring that not only are there rocks underneath the soil, but the soil they put on top is really poor. So I've had to take a longer view and thinking about what I'll add in the fall, like leaf mulch and organic matter so that the garden keeps getting stronger. And in five years time it will be like the most beautiful thing in the world -- but it doesn't happen super fast.