I ended my first story about my food delivery business with dreams that we would one day build our own vegetable storage facility and stop buying potatoes at horse-price prices in winter.
Since then, the process has progressed enough to have something to show-to tell in more detail. So: now we have a loan of 35,000,000 rubles for a potato warehouse. But we are sure that the money will fight back, because potatoes are an investment more profitable than bitcoin. I’m telling you.
Where did we get the vegetable storehouse
My father-in-law had a “no man’s land” in the village. Under the Soviet Union, there was a vegetable storehouse, and a year ago-a frankly emergency brick hut, half buried in the ground, trees were already growing on the roof (in those rare places where the roof was preserved). Local adults used the wasteland as a dump, and the boys climbed the abandoned area, imagining themselves stalkers.
We bought this plot a long time ago and at a very low price – because it was more like a garbage dump.
At that time, we didn’t really understand how to use it for business. But over time, it became clear that the food delivery business has not sunk, but is quite afloat and even requires development.
We didn’t like the development options at first. Large chain stores came with offers to make ready-made food for sale in their storefronts. But the conditions were such that it was necessary to either drop the quality or reduce the portions. But in this scenario, how can we abandon the thousands of people who are already used to eating here? Feed them shit or charge the same price for 200 grams of food instead of 300? Well, this. Networkers in a year will say to us: “Orevoir” – and not blink, and a lot of people will remain deceived. I scratched my turnip and thought of the abandoned vegetable store.
We decided that we would not invent anything. It is written in the documents “agricultural land, vegetable storage” – so we will store vegetables here.
By that time, it was autumn. In just a couple of months, in order to be in time for snow, we cleared the area of thickets, arranged a normal entrance there, dug up the building, took out the garbage and redid the roof, and preserved everything until spring. Naturally, we received a lot of indignation from local residents for cutting down trees there. Although on their own land they had every right to do so. For some reason, no one objected to several KAMAZ trucks of removed garbage 🙂
Over the winter, we have already thought out the future plan, everything has been calculated. We read about storing potatoes, and estimated that we consume up to a ton a week for our food delivery needs. The vegetable storage capacity is approximately 1,000 tons. Accordingly, there are a great many opportunities not only to cook potatoes yourself, but also to sell them.
We probed the ground, estimated sales routes – there are enough options. And sell potatoes as they are, and washed, and peeled – in stores and restaurants; and already cooked, with butter and dill, to deliver to the ready-made food departments in chain supermarkets.
In general, by spring, we were determined and ambitious plans to make the ruined vegetable store a profitable business. It remains only to build it – almost anew. This required a very substantial sum of money.
Money
Maybe it will be a discovery for someone, but if you have a cool business idea and don’t have any money, you need to take great care in advance to create a credit history for your legal entity. Otherwise, no bank can take a serious amount of money.
According to all estimates, we needed about 30,000,000 rubles for the construction project.
Naturally, we didn’t have enough money to take it out of the back pocket of our jeans and lay it out. So, welcome, – credit. We approached it prepared. Almost a year before that, we took out a loan for 5 million, which we didn’t really need, but we tried to show that we were giving everything on time. Moreover, it was necessary to spend strictly for the specified purposes, this is checked.
With such credit baggage, there are already chances to get a solid amount. As the saying goes, in order for you to have enough money in the bank, you must first convince the bank that you don’t need the money. Jokes are jokes, but this is about how it works with legal entities.
In short, they gave us money. The requested 30,000,000 for 5 years. In fact, we have already invested more in this project, and we will continue to do so. Because the situation in the country is such that during the construction process, prices for many materials have increased by a third.
In general, in 5 years you need to start up, recapture expenses and already start making a profit in order to pay off the loan.
How everything is built and arranged
First of all, we put a fence around the site so that the local boys wouldn’t get killed while riding their bikes around the construction site. Well, so as not to tempt the surrounding summer residents to profit from building materials.
Then the vegetable storehouse itself was restored – the damaged Soviet brick building was brought to a fairly decent strong room with an entire roof. I had to patch it up very thoroughly. They dug the building up to the foundation, filled it in, filled it out, covered it up, changed it, made waterproofing, etc.
They installed equipment for ventilation, maintaining a constant temperature and a modified gas environment-potatoes are stored in such storage as Snow White in a crystal coffin, and do not spoil, because microbes in a special environment do not multiply well. This is the most important and most expensive part of the construction project – only one “climate” per 1000 sq. m. cost 12,000,000 rubles. But you can control the air composition and temperature.
Around and above the original vegetable storehouse is a hefty modern industrial “hangar” of 2000 sq. m. In fact, the old building stands inside the new one. In addition to it, there will also be workshops where potatoes are processed.
At first, it is simply washed and dried. Already at this stage, some of them will be immediately packed in bags with labels – it will go to stores for sale, like ordinary washed potatoes. All this, of course, requires special industrial tanks and apparatuses, water supply and drainage, and a filling line.
In the next shop, the washed potatoes will be automatically cleaned. Industrial potato peelers are a rotating drum with abrasive walls. Tubers jump merrily there, rub their sides against the abrasive, the skin is simply erased from them. Such potatoes can already be sent to stores in vacuum bags, and directly to our food production.
Logistics-transportation is handled by the same transport company that currently delivers ready-made food to our customers. It will take 40 minutes to reach our food production facility from the storage facility, and we know for sure that it will not freeze or turn dry on the way – neither in the heat nor in the cold.
Deratization (treatment from rats, in a scientific way) will be carried out by a special office. This is safe for food products, because rodents are not poisoned inside the storage facility, but around it, on the approaches. Given that only two doors lead to the room from opposite ends, and between them everything is practically filled with concrete and hermetically sealed, there should be no problems with this.
About 10 people were employed in the vegetable storehouse and workshops attached to it. We hire locals from the village and town of Kirzhach nearby. So, let’s raise the local economy a little bit 🙂
Check out what it all looked like last fall, and what’s here now. It’s a special twist that we’ve completed all this gigantic work in 4.5 months. There, people with long faces walk by and don’t understand HOW. And it’s very simple – when you have a loan for 30 cartoons hanging, you want-you don’t want, but you need to start working!:)
Why Potatoes are cooler than Bitcoin
The most important reason is the waste product. For example, in May, potatoes and waste can be up to 50% off. This is blackness, peel, dirt that will just fly into the bucket. I.e. potatoes bought for 40-50 rubles / kg, increase in price by another 20-25 rubles at the time when they were cleaned and cut. At home, it can be indifferent for a frying pan, but on a ton per day it saves a lot of money.
The huge benefit of the vegetable storehouse for us, as for those who prepare a lot of things from it, is the constant price of raw materials: we bought potatoes in September, at the time of harvest, at a cheap price, put them in storage, and use them all winter. Until now, it was necessary to recalculate the cost of potato dishes with each new batch purchased. And with the vegetable storehouse, until all the stocks are cleared out, this raw material will continue for us at September prices. Even if we just used it only for our own needs in production, we would save a lot of money, and we also plan to sell it.
If immediately after harvesting in September this is a “shock price, have time to buy” at 6-7 rubles per kilogram, then by May potatoes are sold for 60-70 rubles. An increase of 900% in 9 months, this is not the shares of the former Twitter user, Elon Musk. And the result is guaranteed, and not futures-options-stocks, where income forecasts are always more or less a finger in the sky.
Well, let not 900% of the profit, let 500%, including all expenses. If you buy potatoes for 6 rubles per kilo, take them to the storage facility, add up the cost of electricity, then, lo and behold, you can put them in storage for 10 rubles each. While the mass of suppliers by spring have half of the potatoes rotted, sprouted or shriveled flabbily, and what is left is sold at a high price , we have a modified gas environment in our storage (a different composition of the air, in a simple way) and a constant temperature and humidity will protect the tubers from dying.
By the way, this whole story with the replacement of the gas medium was developed at the Union. The Germans still do pretty much the same thing. I remember when I first started working in the food hall, and in the spring I heard from suppliers: “There are no domestic potatoes left, the Egyptian one has gone. At 80 rubles per kilo, but very good, ” – my hair on my ass began to move. Our great vast country, which already has all the necessary technical developments, cannot produce and maintain such a volume of banal potatoes that by the middle of the year it does not need to be transported at exorbitant prices from Egypt!
An additional plus – any labor applied to the potato makes it more expensive. If you just washed it , it’s already worth other money. If you cleaned it, cut it – a little more. And if you cooked it, added butter and dill and sell it as a ready-made dish – it’s quite pleasant.
So it turns out that bitcoin is nervously smoking compared to our earthen gold 🙂
It is logical to assume that we are not the only ones who are so smart-assed, and there should be a lot of vegetable storehouses. However, they are noticeably lacking. I personally saw a picture when 20 percent of the crop is not harvested from large farm fields, because there is nowhere to put it.
Local men come, pick up these potatoes with shovels, and no one catches them, no one cares. Anyway, in a week the frosts will hit and the unkempt crop will go to the beard. This is a common situation in agriculture. At such moments, you remember how many beggars there are in the country, and it is very surprising why no one gives a shit about it with such force.
For me, of course, this is like a sickle on the … heart. Not that I would immediately run to feed all the hungry, but in the place of the state, I would think: if there are entrepreneurs who systematically have extra product from year to year, almost free food just rots in the ground-then maybe it’s better to give them some small money to organize additional storage, and didn’t throw this food in the trash, but fed it to people who don’t care to eat?
But at one time, huge agricultural capacities were simply abandoned. There are thousands of such abandoned buildings like ours in the vast expanses, and no one is in a hurry to return them to operation. Why didn’t everyone pick up on such a lucrative business idea? They would have made a fortune! But no, there are nuances.
Entrance to this business is very expensive. Getting involved in such expenses is naturally dumb. This requires a database. We, for example, have been working with the food industry for 4 years, and we know all this cuisine – literally and figuratively-from the inside. In addition, before that, each of the participants had experience in business, we are all trained to take risks, no one had any illusions at the start that now everything will be easy with poltychka.
We were aware that we were going to do a complex business, so all the roles and areas of responsibility were thought out in advance: one is responsible for construction, another establishes communication with an existing food delivery business, the third is engaged in sales, the fourth is responsible for finance and declarations. In short, we have a certain tactic from the very beginning, and we adhere to it (c):)
What’s next
Now everything is completed, we are re-installing some equipment, and we have already launched the first batches for washing and cleaning. We conduct negotiations and establish contacts with network operators, to whom we plan to sell our potatoes in all possible types, from ordinary to ready-to-eat.
The food industry is already actively working to expand the menu. Mashed potatoes and draniki have always been popular with our customers, and now we will add more mashed potato soups, zraz with different fillings, hash browns-remember those square potato pancakes from McDonald’s, with a juicy middle and a crispy crust?
In the future, there are serious intentions to establish the production of French fries as well. But these are just plans for now, because the price tag for such technologies is completely horse-drawn and is still out of our budgets. Just to understand: an automated processing line, where you put a potato cube at one end and took out ready-made, cut into strips, frozen and packaged French fries at the other end, costs 28 cartoons. It can, of course, be leased, etc., but this requires two conditions.
1) The existing vegetable storehouse should start working fully and earn money for similar future projects.
2) To buy the right amount of potatoes of the right variety, suitable for making French fries, you need to order this variety in advance. In January, you come to the farmers, pay an advance payment for which they buy the necessary seeds, and in the fall you take away their crops grown especially for you. The fact is that the usual varieties “under the kitchen”, for cooking and frying-a lot. But they are not suitable for fries, they fall apart. We need special sotras, which are scarce.
The production of fries is generally a separate process, there is a whole bunch of technological jokes and news that we have yet to study. So it won’t be for another couple of years.
So for now, from the assortment news — onions, carrots and beets. Washed, cleaned, and packed in vacuum bags.
In the less distant future, there are plans that a chamber for growing champignons will be installed next to the storage of potatoes. Mushrooms for our food production are excellent raw materials: delicious, suitable for a lot of dishes, and, by the way, perfectly combined with potatoes. So, while we are reading,we are studying the topic, and as soon as such an opportunity appears, the first thing we will do is organize our own clearing with mushrooms.
By the way, a life hack! If you are a fan of quiet hunting, then in the mushroom season choose a dozen white ones, hang them on a string and dry them. They can be used to make such a flavor and aroma enhancer that monosodium glutamate nervously smokes. You throw a dried mushroom into a coffee grinder, grind it into dust, and just throw it into any mushroom dish as a seasoning. The same buckwheat with meat and champignons is one thing, but sprinkle dried white ones on top-oh, this is a completely different level.
I can still talk a lot about mushrooms, if everything works out and you are interested, then I will tell you everything.
A couple of life hacks on how to eat delicious potatoes all year round
The best varieties. We tested more than 10 different ones for production. We ordered trial batches, and used these samples to work out all the dishes that we prepare or plan to prepare for our delivery. Attention was paid to the color, how the raw material behaves when frying, cooking, in soup. Something was rejected for being pale. When the puree is too white, the consumer suspects that the evil enemies have mixed powder instead of real potatoes. Other options did not keep their shape, fell apart, etc. The products that need to be frozen (such as potato zraz), we froze, thawed, cooked, devoured – and were satisfied.
Specific varieties matter if you are going to grow them yourself. For an ordinary citizen who buys in supermarkets , it is more useful to look at what is indicated on the packaging and price tag. When you want a ruddy fried potato, do not take the one that says “for cooking”: too crumbly, when cooking it will not be preserved in pieces, but will turn into porridge.
Cook, on the contrary, potatoes for frying-you can, especially in mashed soup, so as not to turn it into paste. But as an independent side dish, such potatoes in cooked form will be a little plasticine. In such cases, it is better to take more “sugar” crumbly options specifically for cooking.
Storage conditions. In order for any potato to survive until spring, it must lie in the cold: at 2-4 °C. My parents store their crops in the basement at the dacha – we finish everything at the beginning of summer. The taste and consistency do not deteriorate if stored properly. Here, nothing particularly depends on the variety – it is only important to find a good subfloor. If you only have a balcony or a box in the kitchen, it is better not to buy potatoes in reserve – what you don’t eat in a week or two will still sprout or rot.
It matters where you buy it. Potatoes, although you can’t tell by their appearance – the product is fastidious. Therefore, for example, taking it in the cold on an open market collapse or “from the trunk” of some nomadic sellers is already risky. You don’t know where and under what conditions it was stored, how it was transported, how it was processed, or who ran around it and tried to eat it. Therefore, such potatoes may look good on the outside, be dense to the touch, and you start to peel them – they are black inside. This is due to a violation of storage conditions.
It’s been a long time since I’ve come across this in chain stores – I suspect it’s more profitable for retailers not to push some kind of hat to customers when there are competitors around on every corner, but to keep a sharp eye on suppliers. Those, in turn, are forced to monitor the correct storage.
