10k in revenue in less than 2mo from my chili crunch start up, EXTRA EXTRA Chili Crunch
A few weeks ago I posted about launching a small-batch chili crunch with my husband: [EXTRA EXTRA Chili Crunch](http://www.extraextracrunch.com/). We've now been selling for just shy of 2mo (preorders started in April, real shipping since late July) and just passed $10k in revenue with over 500 jars sold. I used Claude to pull the full order export in a handy dandy infographic for those curious.
**The headline numbers**
* 264 direct orders, 463 jars shipped or sold in person, plus 72 jars wholesale to three stores — 535 jars total, \~$10K gross (that includes shipping and tax collected, so it's not revenue)
* Shipped to 31 states
* September is three weeks in and is already our best month
**What we learned**
**1. The bundle wins.** We priced at $18/jar with free shipping at two jars, based on a survey of preorder customers. Since launch, 66% of online orders are the 2-jar bundle, 24% are single jars, 9% are four. 87% of the jars we ship go out with free shipping. That's great for average order size ($36 → $44) but it means we eat \~$8 of postage on most orders, which is now the second-biggest cost per jar after the oil. We're working now on reducing the cost per jar and packaging.
**2. Different behavior online vs in person.** In person, people buy one jar to try (1.1 jars/order, $22 average). Online they buy two so shipping is free (2.1 jars/order, $42). Stores take a 24-case at $11/jar ($264 an order). Our biggest single day was one event: 54 orders and 62 jars in about three and a half hours at a night market totaling $1,212. That afternoon out-sold most full weeks online. And three wholesale conversations produced 72 jars.
**3. Advertising is working, but not profitable yet.** Last 30 days across platforms:
* Reddit (\~$2,250, 3 campaigns): 105.9K impressions, 3.68% CTR, $0.30 CPC, 32 attributed purchases
* Google PMax (\~$460, only 2 weeks): 19.8K impressions, 3.98% CTR, $0.45 CPC, 22 purchases
* Meta (\~$420, 3 weeks): 19.2K impressions, 1.15% CTR, $1.91 CPC, 12 purchases
Our three ads platforms together claim 66 purchases. We had 76 online orders in that window, total, including repeat customers and people who've known about us since preorder. Google is the only channel clearly paying for itself, and it's the one we spent the least on. We're shifting budget accordingly and treating Reddit as awareness rather than direct response for now.
**4. People don't need a coupon.** 84% of online orders used no discount code. We'd assumed we'd need to lead with 15% off. We didn't.
**5. Small things that surprised us**
* Saturday and Friday are 39% of online revenue. I have a theory that people bust out EXTRA EXTRA at brunch which would explain our typical Saturday morning rush. Tuesday is a weirdly strong third at 19%.
* Two corporate gifting orders (20 and 24 jars) were 12% of every jar we've shipped. One email to a company's office manager beat a week of Reddit ads.
* 13 monthly subscription orders so far, from a handful of people who are apparently very committed to garlic.
**What's next:** more events, more store pitches now that the first three are stocked, a gifting/B2B page, moving spend from Reddit to Google, and getting our label reprinted cheaper. Happy to answer anything about the regulatory side (California processed food registration, HACCP, water activity testing) if that's useful to anyone making a shelf-stable food product.
u/CarterGee · Health & lifestyle
