Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Hayes.
Hi Christina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have always had a love and passion for cooking. My mother has always been in the restaurant industry as a Cook and a Chef and recently retired as a Chef from the most prestigious hotel & casino in Downtown Las Vegas. Growing up, she cooked for us every day – rarely did we eat out. Holidays were pure feast extravaganzas with so much food extending as far as the eye could see LOL! Obviously, I was in the kitchen from a very young age.
Naturally, I developed a passion for cooking and entertaining. I love seeing people happy and quickly I equated people are happy when you feed them. As a creative you have to find your purpose…some peoples purpose is music and dance and they are able to express their creativity through this, and this brings much joy to people, some peoples purpose is teaching or philanthropy and by being this type of vessel this brings joy and purpose to many lives. My purpose is truly to bring even just a little bit of joy to people, and I am able to do this by expressing my creativity through cooking.
Fast forward to now, Pickeatz was birthed as a direct response from my passion for cooking and entertaining. Any time I would host a gathering I always cooked and would always receive positive feedback. This led to people asking me to cater their events, and eventually to several requests for “plates” and desserts as the people wanted my food outside of a gathering.
I started with wings and banana puddings. Through all of the food I have experienced in my entire life, I am a chicken wing, and chicken tender at heart LOL! Wings are VERY popular in Memphis…right up there next to BBQ so I knew I couldn’t prepare my wings the same way traditional wing places do and use the same flavors that are typically on their menus.
Same with the Best Ever Banana Pudding on our menu…I knew I couldn’t make the same banana pudding grandma made using Nilla wafers…I had to think outside of the box and create something different and more modern.
With our wings and tenders we offer over 30 different flavor options. That being said, we handcraft a variety of our sauces and seasonings. Since we handcraft some of our sauces and seasonings customers quickly found that these exact flavors could not be purchased in stores and starting asking if they could buy them from us thus the birth of our sister company Sauce & Season.
Sauce & Season was created as a direct response to our customers who wanted to be able to enjoy our sauces and seasonings at home on food other than what we serve and quite frankly to make what we make on our truck at home.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not LOL! Where do we start here?! If we are being candid do we want to start from me curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor crying my eyes out contemplating shutting the business’ down or do we want to start with the fact that less than a month after I quit my corporate job with the golden handcuffs (good pay, benefits, flexibility) to pursue this fulltime our food truck experienced the most catastrophic failure a food truck could experience?
It has been a whirlwind but we can begin this by confirming that three common sayings in business are VERY true:
1. “If it were that easy everyone would do it.” There is nothing easy about successfully running a business.
2. “I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this business.” This is a very literal statement when it comes to running a business.
3. “It will cost twice as much and take twice as long.” Yep, this one is very true.
When I stepped out of my home kitchen in order to test the market to ensure I had a viable product that the public would buy, I set up in a commercial kitchen co-op. This is 100% a recommendation I would give anyone contemplating starting any type of food business. You will learn a lot working in a co-op kitchen however some of the challenges are competition, operating in an environment where many are not familiar or never have worked in a kitchen, multiple people vying for the same equipment which can cause tempers to flare, and protecting your intellectual property – your recipes.
You have to be prepared for an unpredictable market not only in sales but primarily with supplies. For example, when I started we would purchase a case of chicken wings for $30 dollars. I priced the menu based on this, and within a 2-3 month time span the price rose to over $120 a case. Of course we did not expect this and we couldn’t quadruple our prices so yeah…lesson learned in setting costs there. Same with our Sauce & Season business…once we realized we had a chance of our product making it into the supermarket retail chain we had to find ways to bring our costs way down as our Sauce & Season line is a very premium product.
When we finally got our food truck we came up with an amazing deal buying it from an existing business that we operated in the co-op kitchen with. They had the truck licensed and had operated on it for over a year so we thought it would be a smooth transfer and we’d be up and running ASAP but that was not necessarily the case.
We faced struggles with getting some of the existing equipment removed and having additional equipment installed. When that was done it never dawned on us that pipes in food trucks can burst just like pipes in your house. So it was fun coming out to truck and seeing the pipes burst and even the faucets cracked. Dealt with that and took the truck to get the inspection from the Health Department in our business name and we failed the initial inspection. due to the faucet concerns. Again, addressed the faucet concerns, passed the inspection just to come up for the next inspection and failed the fire inspection portion. Called the fire inspection company out to inspect and tag our fire suppression system and extinguishers only to find out it was all wired wrong and that it immediately had to be addressed.
My biggest obstacle was dealing with the food truck completely breaking down and getting the news that we needed to replace the engine. The truck broke down a month after we quit our full time corporate jobs to pursue this full-time. this was a heartbreaking and very tough time for us as we had no clue what we were going to do. I questioned EVERYTHING at this point including my faith in God. It was during this time that I truly learned what resilience and having faith meant. It was very tough as we could not easily locate an engine and ended up buying a second truck and taking the engine out of that one and putting it in the existing truck. During this time we towed Big Red back and forth to events we had prior commitments (including an event sponsored by the Memphis Grizzlies), we even worked out a deal with the co-op kitchen to allow us to park the truck in the parking lot so we could operate until we had the engine concerns worked out and repaired.
A fun fact that most people do not know is that during this time our truck was parked at the co-op kitchen there was no engine or transmission which means that there were no breaks…the only physical restraint were chock blocks holding the truck in place to prevent the truck from rolling.
We pivoted, we utilized our business continuity plans, we figured it out, we kept going, and through all of the obstacles we were able to become a multi six figure business in less than a year of doing this full time even with a catastrophic truck failure.
We’ve been impressed with Pickeatz is the name of our food truck Sauce & Season is the name of our sauce and season line, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Pickeatz is our food truck where we specialize in chicken wings, chicken tenders and our famous Best Ever Banana Pudding.
Not only are we open daily for pickups and deliveries (DoorDash and Uber Eats too), we also travel all around the city and we can be booked for both private and public events!
We are known for our wings and what sets us apart from others is that we do not prepare our wings as most traditional wing places do and we offer over 30 different premium flavor options.
Same with our Best Ever Banana Puddings as I put a very modern twist on a classic favorite by coming up with my own recipe and offering different flavors such as caramel, biscoff, red velvet, and strawberry just to name a few.
I am exceptionally proud of the success and recognition our sister company, Sauce & Season has received.
Many do not know that we officially launched Sauce & Season in late fall of 2024. In less than 9 months we were able to get our products in almost all major local grocery stores, listed and sold on Amazon, available for wholesale purchase on Faire, and on our own website available for shipping nationwide.
In this short time since we have launched Sauce & Season we have shipped our products all over the U.S. and even had an entire segment on air on a major local news broadcast!
We are also in the process of creating content for our family business based YouTube channel named The Famipreneuers!
At the moment our brands are 100% family operated.
I am most proud of the fact that through it all I started a company that grew so much that not only was I able to walk away from corporate America, but my fiancé, my son, and his significant other were able to do the same. I am so very much grateful for them as they believed in this so much so that they too took this risk right alongside me.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I listen to a multitude of podcast however the one podcast that stands out for me is How I Built This with Guy Raz. I really like this podcast as Guy Raz features entrepreneurs that have candid conversations about how they built their businesses from the ground up. He brings his guests back to early beginnings before they started and advises them to lay brick by brick their origin stories, and includes everything from funding to scaling and everything in-between. This differs from traditional business podcast as you are hearing first hand from people who have done exactly what you want to do and learn the methods and techniques they used and the obstacles they faced to get exactly where they are versus just general business advise.
The Side Hustle Pro is also one of my favorite podcasts as you can get lots of tips on how to start a business while still working a fulltime job.
My number one app is Canva…GET IT! lol
And get the paid version! It’s worth every single penny and I use it for just about everything…
Content and post creating obviously, meeting templates, contracts, logos, our holiday cards, EVERYTHING.
CapCut is a great app for creating and editing videos.
I like CapCut because you can find trending videos and edit them to reflect your specific content.
The absolute BEST resource that I can’t recommend enough is utilizing a written day planner.
My planner is my bible for day to day tasks. If it’s not written down in my planner it does not get done. As not only a business owner but also as a mother and a fiancé it would be impossible for me to remember every single task that I have to do every day. My written planner is the best way to map out my day/week and is the only tool I use to ensure I stay on track and that I do not forget what needs to be done.
I place everything in my daily planner from when the appliance repair man is coming, to supply ordering reminders, and even reminders to pay the bills!
I believe it has been proven that when you write something down you are more inclined to complete the task.
And there is just something about crossing them off the list as they are completed that makes me feel really good like I accomplished something!
Contact Info:
- Website: pickeatz.com | sauceandseasoncompany.com
- Instagram: @pickeatz | @sauceandseason
- Facebook: Pickeatz | Sauce & Season
- Youtube: thefamipreneuers
