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Experiences is a podcast about humans creating happy memories through their participation in the experience economy. We discuss how brick and mortar retail is changing rapidly, the clear winners in the experience economy, and visit with brands that are not just surviving, but thriving.
I am just pleased to be with Jeff Pennypacker of Sweet and Savory Classroom today. My name is Mark Sandino. I am the CEO of Experiences, and we're here to talk about Sweet and Savory Classroom and everything we can unpack about you, your family, and what brought you to where you are today. Welcome to The Experiences podcast.
Jeff Pennypacker:Thanks for having me.
Mark Sandeno:So we've been working together for some years, and I've followed along with your seemingly extraordinary success as you host people in your space and virtually for amazing cooking experiences. My team once had an amazing cooking experience with you where we learned how to make ramen, where we even made the ramen noodles, and mine looked like lumpy breadsticks, but they were still delicious. Can you just start by telling us a little bit about sweet and savory classroom and the humble beginnings to as far along the chain as you wanna tell us?
Jeff Pennypacker:It really started out as just my wife and I. My wife's been a pastry chef her whole life. I've been on the savory side of of kitchens for most of my life. And we just decided after working for somebody who had, like, a really miniature version of what we do, we found that we really enjoyed it. We did it well together.
Jeff Pennypacker:We enjoyed the teaching part. We enjoyed the people. We enjoyed the the environment. And so we actually decided to leave the city we were leaving. We were living in Asheville, North Carolina, and we decided we were gonna move to a new place.
Jeff Pennypacker:And when we got there, we were opening up our own cooking classroom. But we decided to make it bigger and so we can do more people and turn it into our living.
Mark Sandeno:Do you and your wife work together on a daily basis? Does she teach? Do you handle most of the teaching? How does that work?
Jeff Pennypacker:For the first 5, 6 years, it was pretty much, you know, her and I were both part of the business. But we set it up nicely for our family. So at the beginning, sometimes I would be her assistant for a class or she'd be my assistant for a class. But the way the business was designed is just sweet classes of their own entity and then savory classes of their own entity.
Jeff Pennypacker:So when I was teaching a savory class, she was home with the kids and vice versa. We designed it so we could accommodate our newly growing family and make sure that, you know, the business was taken care of well. And then my wife did a lot of administrative stuff and I did a lot of the marketing and private event booking. Since then though, she is now transitioned to being at home with our 4 kids, homeschooling them, and I've hired some other staff to fill those voids. But that's pretty much the gist of how we set it up for us to work.
Mark Sandeno:That's an interesting thing you said earlier about separate entities. Were the sweet and savory actually separate legal entities or just separate disciplines within the business?
Jeff Pennypacker:Just separate disciplines within the business. So for the beginning, I mean, even a lot of my savory classes, they didn't even have a dessert in them. It was an appetizer entree, entree and her classes were just sweet classes only. But it's just sweet and savory as one entity. They're really separate as far as when class is 3 hours long and so her sweet classes didn't have any savory components in them.
Jeff Pennypacker:And my savory classes didn't have any sweet components either. At the beginning, realized quickly that 80% of our classes were savory classes because that's what sold better. And we started needing to add dessert. The savory class became a full meal. Most of them were appetizer, entree, and dessert.
Mark Sandeno:So before we get into the minutiae or the details, the tactical side of how you run your business and how you address customer demand, that's interesting that and that's not something I would have known that the savory sells better than the sweet. Very interesting. Going back to the beginning of everything, were you working in kitchens? Were you working for caterers? Or have you always been a business owner?
Jeff Pennypacker:Depends on where you think the business for me started. I mean, I started selling zucchini out of the garden when I was probably 11 years old. And from then on, I had lawn mowing business. I've worked for some other people, but I've always been a small business owner. It's just in my DNA.
Jeff Pennypacker:I started my official first small business was a furniture making business. I made custom furniture. I didn't do that for very long. I had it as a business for maybe a hobby for a couple years and then a business for less than a year. And then I opened an ice sculpture business and I had that for 10 years.
Jeff Pennypacker:So even though I started cooking when I was 16, some of these businesses I did on the side. And then the ice sculpture business, I end up leaving the kitchen completely and did it for 10 year.
Mark Sandeno:That's interesting. Ice sculpture, you have to have some skills to make a compelling ice sculpture. I know if I just decided to go into that business and it was up to me, I'd basically be selling hacked up blocks of ice. Were you actually sculpting?
Jeff Pennypacker:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We started at the beginning, it was just me, chainsaw, chisel. Then I hired staff and trained them, and then we we integrated CNC technology into the business. We started computer programming using a CAD program to program the sculptures, and then the CNC would help carve them.
Jeff Pennypacker:It doesn't do everything, but it it did quite a bit depending on what we are carving.
Mark Sandeno:How successful did that business get before you abandon it?
Jeff Pennypacker:That business was great. I like niche businesses that have high profit margin. And so even though the that business was probably 50, 52% profit, it was a nice small little business that I sold for a little over 400 and something $1,000.
Mark Sandeno:Okay. Yeah. So you had an exit. That's amazing.
Jeff Pennypacker:Yeah. Had an exit. I sold it. It's actually I was a creator of the company, but then I sold it and it's on its 4th owner right now. So it's continued to go.
Mark Sandeno:As you've heard in this interview, we're talking to retailers that host people. And how do you do that? Well, there has to be a way for people to book their experience with you. It's our contention that the world needs another booking tool like it needs another hole in its head. That's not what we need.
Mark Sandeno:What we need is a platform for bookable retail, and that's what the experience app is all about. In just a few clicks, if you happen to be a Shopify ecommerce user, you can add bookable experiences to your website. They're on brand. It's at your domain. It's done through the Shopify checkout, and you control the data right there in the admin.
Mark Sandeno:You can transfer customers. You can create scannable QR codes. They can be reminded of their upcoming experiences, and it integrates really nicely with everything you do as a retailer. So you're selling your products right next to your bookable experiences, and you don't have to use things like Event Brite or Ticketmaster or one of the other 1,000 bookable tools out there. If you want the tool that works for you as you host people in your retail environment, which quite frankly is pretty much table stakes these days in an era where people don't have to leave their home to buy anything, they're gonna come out create a memory with you.
Mark Sandeno:Go to experiencesapp.com for a free 14 day trial. It doesn't require a credit card to do the 14 day trial. And by the way, if the 14 day trial isn't long enough, just hit us up in the in app chat and we'll extend it for you. So thanks for listening. Experiencesapp.com.
Mark Sandeno:Go there today. Add it to your Shopify store. And if you're not already a Shopify entrepreneur, this would be a great time to start. Go to shop ify.com, get your store going, and then immediately go over and add the experiences app to your store. Once again, this is Mark Sandino, the CEO of experiences.
Mark Sandeno:We hope to see you soon. So this is a really interesting question, for anybody who's listening. I'm assuming that a lot of our listeners are going to be business owners, entrepreneurs, and particularly people who serve people in retail style or physical environments versus maybe software people. You have a business, this ice carving business. I assume it was cash flow positive and profitable.
Mark Sandeno:While you just said it was, you had 50 percent what we call contribution margin. At the end of the day, even after all your overheads, it was thrown off that much cash?
Jeff Pennypacker:Not the beginning. The 1st New Years were it was in the negatives. You know, not everyone agrees this part, but this is part of my journey. So when I came to faith and to know God, I started implementing biblical principles into my business. And my business went from 33,000 was it my 3rd year?
Jeff Pennypacker:I was at like 20 to 30,000 for the first couple years. And then once I start putting biblical principles into the business, it went from 33 to 55,000 then to a 100 to a 106, then 148, then we got into the 200, and it just kept growing and growing.
Mark Sandeno:That's amazing. Can you give me an example of there might have been many biblical principles. And like you said, a lot of people who are in the world are not people of faith, they're not Christians. At the same time, saying, hey, I used this ancient wisdom. I did this thing, and the things just blew up.
Mark Sandeno:People are idiots if they don't wonder about that. Like, what was one of the key biblical principles you employed that you believe attributed itself to the success?
Jeff Pennypacker:Well, like Proverbs 227, it says just as a ritual of the poor, so the borrower will be servant to the lender. And so for a long time, all I did was just increase increase debt, and I realized that in order for the business to thrive, we had to eliminate our debt and not be a slave, you know. So the principle is, you know, don't be a slave to the lender. And every day when I woke up, when I had debt, all I thought about was, you know, how can I make more money so then I can pay my bills? And looking at it from a biblical perspective, it was like, well, I actually need to get rid of those bills so then I can do the right thing all the time and not have and it was just a different motivation.
Jeff Pennypacker:And that significantly changed how I operate the business, what we did with our money, how we manage our money. And when you're in business, one of the main things you talk about every day is money.
Mark Sandeno:You know, we tend to focus on the profit, the p and l, and we can see growth, growth, growth. But in the meantime, we may be going bankrupt because there's not enough cash on the balance sheet, and we can't fund that growth. And so the temptation is like, oh, hey, let's go borrow, borrow, borrow, but you're creating load and weight on the business at the exact same time that requires more growth, more growth, more growth, and it can be a death spiral. So that's fascinating and encouraging, and everyone would be wise to heed that.
Jeff Pennypacker:Well, if I could dive in, I kinda tell the story. It comes up sometimes pretty often. I have this, like, like a circle that I think about and I teach my crew. You know, when you're in business, you have certain things you do. Like, the top of the circle is money.
Jeff Pennypacker:Right? At the top of the circle is money. And most people are trying to chase money. They're trying to say, well, who do I need to know? What do I need to get so I can work my way to the circle to get money?
Jeff Pennypacker:And so it's like this chase you're always trying to chase to get money. And when I started putting biblical principles in, like, God was working on my character. He said, you know, you need to be a man that we can trust, who has integrity, who has honesty. Psalm 15 has become kinda like my life psalm. And so if you read that one, it has a lot of things about your character and your integrity.
Jeff Pennypacker:And so when I started working on character, integrity, and how I treated my customers, you know, that was related to my customer service, The quality of work I was doing on my sculptures. In the end, I got a money and a whole lot more of it. But it was chasing those qualities that when my customers worked me and and I could tell that, you know, I was working harder and make my sculptures look better, then they were happier with the sculptures and they told more people about them. And then they bought more sculptures in turn. So working and then calling customers up and saying, I messed your sculpture up.
Jeff Pennypacker:I'm sorry. And having that humility, those things, they had this trust in me that they would come back over and over and over for more sculptures. And it just it was a positive perpetual cycle.
Mark Sandeno:Regardless of what someone thinks about the supernatural aspect of the Bible, you cannot argue with it is an assemblage of moral, ethical advice and rules that can absolutely transform the way people do business and the way they interact with each other. I am a Christian as well, so I ascribe to it significant eternal value. But it's interesting to hear you talk about, if someone's listening to this and say, yeah, I just really don't get this stuff from a supernatural standpoint. Just like, man, this is the kind of stuff you see in the best business books where they're drawing from this stuff you really can't argue. I hear humility and the willingness to be called out by a customer when you have to say, hey.
Mark Sandeno:I gotta do this again. It might be a little late or it's maybe not gonna be exactly what you hope for. So what I hear from you is a fabric of accountability, good financial practices, entrepreneurialism, and risk taking combined with some sage advice on not getting encumbered by debt that slows you down and changes how you think about money. So you have this business. It's a cash flow business.
Mark Sandeno:It's throwing off cash. You're experiencing some amazing success. What motivated you to sell that?
Jeff Pennypacker:I mean, it's kinda like biblical things again. I just knew he had different plans for me. And so I knew that staying in that business was keeping me from my plans. And so I decided to, you know, take one of those risks and put it up for sale and it took a little while and someone bought it. I moved on and I really don't look back and regret at all.
Jeff Pennypacker:I don't wish I still had it. The only thing I wish is the 4th owner, he changed the name and it was such a great name. He didn't change it to something better, but that's not my choice. He changed it to something worse.
Mark Sandeno:What was the name that you had?
Jeff Pennypacker:Masterpiece ice sculptures.
Mark Sandeno:That's very descriptive.
Jeff Pennypacker:Yeah. And that's what we made. We made masterpieces every day.
Mark Sandeno:You had a vision for the cooking school. Was it always called Sweet and Savory Classroom?
Jeff Pennypacker:No. And actually there was a big gap between, like, selling that business and sweet and savory classroom. There was about a 6 year gap there. That was a really rough, actually dark, hard time in my life. But when it came to Sweet and Savory, you would think we came up with the name really easily but we really didn't.
Jeff Pennypacker:I mean, my wife is a pastry chef, you know, and I'm the savory guy and, I mean, I must have written, you know, on a piece of paper, I must have written, like, hundreds of names on it And you're always checking for a domain. It's like, do you have a name that I can get a domain for? And just crossing those off left and right. And we're on a drive one day and I was like why is this so hard? We're talking months of trying to figure out a name.
Jeff Pennypacker:I was like you're sweet, you know, and I'm savory and then it clicked that day. And so we started out we refined that name to what we are now.
Mark Sandeno:Let's talk a little bit about what's in a name. So on one hand, you can almost choose any name unless it's completely idiotic, and you fill it with meaning as you provide services over time. Do you feel a little bit differently about branding and naming?
Jeff Pennypacker:I think the best thing that come out of your heart, like, what I mean, my wife was a sweet and I was a savory and we love to teach. That's why we didn't do a kitchen. That's why we didn't do a restaurant. That's why we didn't do anything else is because we wanted this to actually be a classroom. I mean, people come into our place.
Jeff Pennypacker:It's an experience they come into, but they are learning something. And so every class, every day, every class that we teach, there are cooking, life, leadership, marriage principles that are taught. Every class.
Mark Sandeno:I wanna talk about this, but I wanna jump back to the struggle in between selling the ice sculpture business and where you are today. As much as you're comfortable sharing, what was this deep dark journey of the soul, or what was happening there?
Jeff Pennypacker:I'm a journaler. I like usually like to write, you know, journal kinda every day. I was looking for something and I found my journals, and I started reading through my journals, you know, and next thing you know, I'm reading through 4 or 5 years of my journals and my journals all said the same thing. They said sell the business. It said it like a 100 different ways.
Jeff Pennypacker:You know, the line that ran through it was sell the business and mentor other. And so I sold the business and I signed up with John Maxwell. You know, your people listening might know John Maxwell. He was one of the founding members of his coaching and speaking team right when he first started training people to teach his materials, and I went through a training process with them and culminated in a conference at the end. And and then so I was licensed to teach his materials, and I started all these small group, like, mentoring sessions and
Mark Sandeno:Can you remind us really quickly, John Maxwell was most famous for
Jeff Pennypacker:The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. That was one of his top books. He's written 80 plus books probably. That was his best seller.
Mark Sandeno:And so you said I'm gonna be a certified Maxwellian trainer, and I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna help people learn how to be great leaders. And I'll make money doing this, and it'll be fulfilling, and I'm going to walk into my future.
Jeff Pennypacker:Yep. So all those things. And it took a while to realize that even though that's why I thought I was on the right path, it was wearing me completely out. And I was helping people too. And in the end, what I learned that I call it your personal formula.
Jeff Pennypacker:And I think it's different for everybody, but I think everyone has a personal formula. So there's kinda like your skills and abilities and then there's Myers Briggs or your disc profile, like personality. Then there's the things in between that that really make you tick. And so I stumbled for a long time wondering, how can I be doing this? Like, I love teaching others and mentoring others and and how can I be doing this and feel so just sad all the time?
Jeff Pennypacker:I was getting depressed. I was becoming a Netflix binger for 12, 14 hours a day sometimes just because I just didn't wanna do anything. I was kinda hating every day and it was getting worse. I had a decent amount of clients. I was making a little bit of money and it just wasn't working.
Jeff Pennypacker:And so you fast forward, there's I was doing that and I started a a little ministry. The ministry fell apart and I lost my funding and so I had to go get a job. And so here I am. I'm in my thirties. I had to go get a job and I haven't worked for someone for a long time.
Jeff Pennypacker:And I started working back in the kitchen. The kitchen was always my worst nightmare. I cooked, you know, from my 16 into my mid twenties and then I did the ice sculpture business and I said, if I ever have to go back to cooking, that is my absolute worst nightmare. And so but I'm back in the kitchen. I'm back in the kitchen just an angry individual for quite some time.
Mark Sandeno:And did that manifest? Were you known as a prickly, angry, difficult to deal with person?
Jeff Pennypacker:No. No. I'm still very calm on the outside. I was on the death spiral on the inside. I was on the death spiral on the inside and so but after a few months of being there, my soul started to perk up.
Jeff Pennypacker:My wife is she's wonderful. She's like, well, you know, it's because you're mentoring these other guys and stuff that are in this kitchen. I said, yeah. But I was doing that before. Anyways, fast forward, basically, what I realized after I was working in the kitchen again and then we started working in the little cooking classroom that my personal formula is that I need to I need to be teaching.
Jeff Pennypacker:So it doesn't matter what it is. I could be teaching lifting weights or building furniture. It doesn't really matter. I need to be teaching. I need to be mentoring others.
Jeff Pennypacker:I need to see the results. I need to be with them when they're getting the results. And I need to work with my hands.
Mark Sandeno:Okay. I'm gonna jump in real quick here because anyone who's listening now, at the end, I'm gonna ask Jeff, how does one take steps to find their personal formula? Jeff, you and I know and anyone listening knows that there's your Myers Briggs. There's, I mean, I have a bunch of books right here that I've taken my team through. There's the one I found recently, the Japanese ikigai is another one.
Mark Sandeno:But I would like you, in the back of your mind, get a subroutine run-in here. If you were to give advice, how does one find their personal formula? Okay. So you're in the kitchen. Your wife is observing in you.
Mark Sandeno:It's like, hey, man. You're perking up. Why? I'm mentoring these people. I'm helping these people.
Mark Sandeno:So your mission is coming out. Your personal formula seems to be manifesting in combination with the context, which is cooking. But I think I hear you saying you could do this anywhere. So how did you end up where you are now?
Jeff Pennypacker:It's like a little bakery. He had his miniature cooking classroom on the side, and and my wife was kinda running the cooking classroom a little bit and she kept saying you should come over here and teach in the classroom. The guy's pay scale was not it was not worthwhile. Let's just say it that way. I really didn't wanna go over there and work a ton for pennies because that's kinda the way it was designed at that point.
Jeff Pennypacker:It wasn't busy enough yet. You know, his classes were only 3, 4, 5 people. It wasn't like they were 15, 20 when you get paid per head. So I resisted it for quite some time, but then the owner, him and I were really good friends. We had been friends way before he ever opened this place.
Jeff Pennypacker:There's only 2 or 3 of us in his kitchen that were had the skill level to probably teach the classes And so he just kept begging me. He was like, I really need to teach classes so that I can go to my kids' soccer game. I gave in to a couple and then after I gave in to a couple classes and teaching them, I realized how much fun I was having. My wife and I pretty much took over his classroom and then decided we liked it enough and then I calculated. You know, I got the calculator out and I was like, alright.
Jeff Pennypacker:His classroom can hold this many people and I know the price per head blah blah blah blah. And I was like, well, if we move somewhere and we, you know, tripled the size of the classroom, those numbers just seemed to work out really nicely. So that's what we did. We said, hey. Appreciate this.
Jeff Pennypacker:We're moving. We sold everything. Bought a motor home. Traveled the country for about 6 months and looked for a new home and ended up where we're at here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And we signed the lease on our space and started renovating it before we ever even moved out of the RV.
Mark Sandeno:So I almost guarantee you that a lot of cooking school owners are going to listen to this. We have cooking schools all over the world that use our tool. They just found us. It's one of our niches. You're the one I've talked to the most.
Mark Sandeno:And quite frankly, I think you're one of the most successful.
Jeff Pennypacker:No, I'll take that. Appreciate it.
Mark Sandeno:And we're gonna dig into that just a little bit. You have that moment where you're an entrepreneur by default. I would love to dig into that. Maybe we will just a little bit. What makes an entrepreneur?
Mark Sandeno:What makes you called yourself a small business owner, but entrepreneur I did a teaching for some business owners a while ago about entrepreneurial risk. And I I need to review my materials, but I I think one of the meanings or the etymology of the word entrepreneur is to endeavor or to begin to endeavor. And risk, when you look, I think it's the Italian or Latin means to cut off. So you endeavor to start and cut off other options. It's like you cross a Rubicon.
Mark Sandeno:You have to be willing and want to do that. Sometimes I run into business owners or people who aspire to be business owners who don't have a choice, and they discover they're entrepreneurial. And other times, they discover very quickly, it's like, this is not for me. It doesn't matter even when I have a little bit of success. Everything that comes with that, the stress and the pressure, which we are gonna talk about in a minute, isn't enough.
Mark Sandeno:So you're there in this context, this situation, this time, and you're doing this small pastry course. And tell me about that moment where you're holding court. I've been to one of your classes. I wouldn't say you're like a showman. I think there's a little bit, that sounds almost a little bit derogatory, but the energy that you infused into what you did for us and some of what I've seen you do in your YouTube stuff, it's special, and it's designed to bring people along.
Mark Sandeno:Is that natural for you, and what was it like when you first discovered that felt right and brought you joy?
Jeff Pennypacker:Back when I was doing the John Maxwell stuff, when I would do small group teachings, you know, very similar, you would think to what I'm doing now. My wife, as soon as I would get done teaching like a 1 hour mastermind or something, I'd come home and she'd just have the bed ready. I was absolutely whipped. I was ready. I was emotionally spent, tired.
Jeff Pennypacker:I need a nap. But then you fast forward into what I do now, you know, I can public speak and teach 3, 4 classes a day and just be energized. That difference is that when I'm teaching the class, we're doing things together. You know, when I was teaching a mastermind, it was like, I'm up there and you're listening, and then you leave and you do all the work. And so, you put me on a demonstration table with where I could use my hands and speak at the same time, and it's super energizing for me.
Jeff Pennypacker:You know, it's grown over the years, but I did know it's probably 26, 27. I'm 46 now. I started doing Toastmasters. Some of you may or may not be familiar. I mean, it's an international public speaking organization, and I had a desire to be a public speaker in my mid twenties.
Jeff Pennypacker:And so I started going to Toastmasters, and I would go every week. And that's where my joy for public speaking really began. I just developed it with it's public speaking with some action, you know. If I don't have any action, then it's just not as fun.
Mark Sandeno:One of the key principles of successful experience economy things. The experience economy as defined by Joseph Pines and his coauthor Gilmore is sports, entertainment, travel, and dining. We tend to serve experiences tends to serve the long tail, or I call it the shadow experience economy. It's cooking schools. It's goat yoga, goat snuggles, alpaca experiences.
Mark Sandeno:It's candle making workshops. And it just goes on and on and on. One of the things that is a core component of the success and experience economy is staging, a little bit of staging, a little bit of theater, and some of the most successful are the cocreation experiences where customers will actually pay more to be part of the making of something than they would pay for someone to do it for them even more expertly. So when you talk about this kind of leadership and teaching in the classroom and you're using your hands and you're demonstrating, is there a component of it where you see people are fully engaged versus passively bringing something in? And do you see that it's easier for you and more valuable for them?
Jeff Pennypacker:Well, that's the whole name of the game. Drawing them in to participate changes almost everybody's outcome. Their level of happiness, it changes their demeanor. When you put them hands on, it's a whole different world. The thing that I have found entertainment, travel, dining, those are like the big, you know, experience things people think of.
Jeff Pennypacker:And then you said you're dialing down to the niches. Right? And some of the cooking experiences and we have seen some of the things you guys do with even like breweries and things, you know, having experiences. I think what makes all the experiences either separates a good experience, one that heightens someone's life, or experiences that you probably won't go back for are the 4 realms. Entertainment, education, aesthetic, and escapist.
Mark Sandeno:Yes. These are straight out of the Experience Economy book whether they crib them from something else or not. Yeah. And then they go even deeper into each one of these. But, please, tell me how has this helped you.
Jeff Pennypacker:I didn't realize we were doing most of them at first When we became intentional about incorporating them into everything we do, then people go home and you said the word earlier that what we do is kinda special. And that has been this theme of what I've been hearing over and over, especially in the past year. Yeah. That what we do in the classroom is so special. You know, the aesthetic.
Jeff Pennypacker:The way I heard it described, aesthetic is like a museum. You go somewhere and you look at it. You might not actually engage with it, but you just absorb and enjoy the beauty. And then you have the escapist, the person who wants to go somewhere and they wanna forget about their problems for a couple of hours. And so the thing is so busy or so active that they can't think about anything else, you know, than just what they're doing and all their problems just evaporate for a little while.
Jeff Pennypacker:Educational. You know, taking in new information, you know, challenges your brain and makes you more excited. Everyone loves to learn. And in entertainment, just wanna have fun. You go to a movie and you just entertain for a couple of hours.
Jeff Pennypacker:The more of those realms you can operate in at the same time, the happier all your people will be and the more they'll come back. And so when you walk into our classroom, I get compliments about how it looks, the aesthetic part of it. It looks pretty and it's enjoyable. And people just they'll come in and they they treat it like a museum. They look at everything and it's really cool.
Jeff Pennypacker:And then we always educate. We're always teaching teaching teaching. And then we keep them so busy. I have people who come in and we always say we don't know what happened to them before they came in. Someone could have died yesterday.
Jeff Pennypacker:Their dog could have got hit by a car. And so we treat them in such a way that they can escape from whatever they they were troubled with before they came. Right? And then we entertain. I mean, we have music and live demonstrations and we dance, we joke, we laugh, we talk.
Jeff Pennypacker:I mean, it's it has all four realms, every single class.
Mark Sandeno:Yeah. I almost certainly guarantee you that I'm gonna come back to you. I think we should do, down the road, a whole podcast about the 4 realms.
Jeff Pennypacker:It's well worth
Mark Sandeno:it. It is right on point for what every experience economy business or we call bookable retail business should know. Diving into maybe one aspect of it, let's just talk about when that person first walks through the door. And I'm gonna paint a narrative that's probably way different than what you do, and I want you to tell me the negative and positive impact of doing it different. So imagine someone walks in and you have a board staff member of any age or any background saying, hey, am I in the right place?
Mark Sandeno:Yeah. Go over there. We'll be with you in a minute. Maybe the aesthetic isn't there or the staging, however you encompass or describe that staging isn't there versus can you tell me what that first interaction with Sweet and Savory Classroom is and why it matters so much versus what we actually see a lot in retail or with entrepreneurs who are doing this kind of stuff that don't understand that principle.
Jeff Pennypacker:It's one of the hardest things for me to go into a place that doesn't do this well. I just had an experience with the place. I won't name the name, but I literally walked in the door and there was nobody there. And I had a scheduled appointment. And then I walked in a little further through another set of doors and a guy walked by me, kinda looked at me and then kept going.
Jeff Pennypacker:Got name tag on and everything. Then he came back and was like hey Kept going. And then finally a guy was like can I help you man? I'm like yeah. I have a scheduled appointment right now.
Mark Sandeno:Oh. Kinda caught him by surprise.
Jeff Pennypacker:There's no way I'm going back. The worst part was that they marketed to me. So I got marketed to through Instagram. I don't usually bite the hook very often, but their marketing got me. I bit the hook and I filled out the form and I scheduled an appointment to go do this thing with them and then I finally get there to talk about it.
Jeff Pennypacker:No one knows I'm coming. I felt like a burden. They took me unlocked the door, took me in the office and literally was like it was like out of a movie, you know, where you have the tables covered with stuff. We had to like scoop them up and dump it so he could move me in and we could have a conversation. I should have just walked out the door, but I gave him a few minutes and then I walked and I left.
Jeff Pennypacker:Versus what we do, we open the doors 10 minutes before our experience starts, before our class starts. One of our chefs, whether myself or the chef, when you come into our door, there's like a little landing and then there's 6 steps into the classroom. At the bottom of those 6 steps, I'm standing there. I've been standing there for 8 years since we've opened or my other chefs and we stand there. We say hey, well what reservation do you under?
Jeff Pennypacker:And then you know we check them off on your app, which is great to make sure they're there. And then I have an apron in my hand. I adjust every apron string so that the apron will hit them right here. Because right here makes them look pretty. Now some people still open it back up and put it on.
Jeff Pennypacker:I adjust it so it compliments them here. So that it looks nice when it's on them. And then, I tell all my crew, don't make it up. But if you see something authentic that you like, compliment them. Man, I love those earrings.
Jeff Pennypacker:Or your hat looks cool. You know, I tell them, if it didn't strike you and you wanna say something about it, then don't say anything. We greet them at the door. We give them an apron. I learn their name.
Jeff Pennypacker:And then sometimes I compliment them. And then I tell them the doctor where to go because they come in insecure, underappreciated, and overwhelmed. And so when they come in, they're insecure. It might be their first time. They don't know what's going on.
Jeff Pennypacker:They don't know what they're getting into. They're most likely underappreciated. This came from work. You know, whatever. Someone cut them off and they're overwhelmed.
Jeff Pennypacker:And so we come in and we say, I'm glad you're here. Here's your apron. Those earrings, they're gorgeous. What's your name? Oh, you know, my name's Mark.
Jeff Pennypacker:Well, Mark, it's nice to meet you. Hey. I'm a make this easy for you. If you just go over here, wash your hand, you can go into the room and find you a spot to sit at. They're welcomed.
Jeff Pennypacker:I memorize everyone's name every single class. And I call people by name and then they know exactly what to do. You need to wash their hands and then go find a spot so they have direction. And every single person, I teach all my crew, that I don't care if there's a weight out the door. A lot of times I think oh, people are at the door.
Jeff Pennypacker:I gotta rush and just give them paper and move them on. And I'm like, no. Every person gets a personalized service. Every single class. Every single person.
Mark Sandeno:Someone might say, well, Jeff is just a really thoughtful person, and he maybe cares about humans more than I do, and maybe it's something about his background, but that is highly strategic and tactical, slowing down. You know, maybe I feel urgent as someone who needs to get this class going. Maybe there's been some delays. And what you're saying to yourself and you're saying to your team, it's like, it's not worth it. These people are worth it.
Mark Sandeno:This moment that we're going to help them actualize is going to what we know about experiences from lots of writing is that what is more valuable to humans than consumption by far is creating durable memories, happy memories with each other, and you as a retailer have a chance to facilitate that by hosting them and be the center of that experience. And then would you say, without getting into a lot of the other four realms, because I I really do wanna save that for another time, has that been super instrumental to the success you're experiencing? The classes look amazing. The food looks amazing. They're learning something.
Mark Sandeno:But is it really about being seen and them actualizing that experience? What's more valuable here?
Jeff Pennypacker:100%. If we're not operating in the 4 realms, they're going home a little bit unsatisfied. And maybe not enough to notice it completely, but there's a difference between being full and being overflowing. You go to a movie. It might be a good movie, but are you telling all your friends about it?
Jeff Pennypacker:Maybe. Maybe not. When you leave the classroom, you're so overflowing that you you tell people about it. And our repeat customer and referral business is huge. Huge.
Jeff Pennypacker:I mean, when I say beginning class, you know, how'd y'all end up here? You know, 30, 40 percent of the room is someone told them about it. That changes everything.
Mark Sandeno:I know since we only have a few more moments of your time, can we really quickly talk about where your business is today? I want people to hear, based on these principles, based on your ethics, based on where you came from in your journey, what kind of success are you enjoying now? And be as blunt and honest as you wanna be about the success and failure you've experienced or the failure and then subsequent success with Sweet and Savory Classroom.
Jeff Pennypacker:The success has been great. I mean, it has been the most lucrative and enjoyable business I've had. We've employed so many great people. I've got a great crew. You know, over the past year, I saw a little bit of a decline and I realized why.
Jeff Pennypacker:And we had to do some deep dive and some analytics. And the analytics just showed that I did step out of the business a little bit and I stepped out as my leadership. It was humbling. It was the way I did it that was probably probably failing a little bit in my leadership and how I was stepping away from the business. And so I am now reengaging and it's funny.
Jeff Pennypacker:Reengaging within just a month or 2 and all of a sudden things are starting to go right back into positive direction. I have to learn how to be a better leader. I don't wanna be the guy in the classroom every day the rest of my life. I mean, I have classes going on all week that I don't teach, but I needed to get back to teaching actually for my soul. I broke my personal formula and pulling out of the business meant I was the computer guy and I wasn't working with my hands as much as I needed to in working with others.
Jeff Pennypacker:I'm realizing I may have to reshape how I do it. But overall, the business has been super healthy. It's been profitable since even before construction was done. We opened it debt free. When I sold the other business, I took that money and paid off our house.
Jeff Pennypacker:Then we were a 100% debt free. Then we moved here and I used cash to do all the construction to open the business from day 1. Literally, we had more money coming in even before the business was actually physically open from presailing that we were profitable from day 1 and have been profitable every day since for 8 years 8 and a half years.
Mark Sandeno:Roughly the size of your business, you do dozens?
Jeff Pennypacker:About 800,000. We're 800,000 annual gross revenue right now.
Mark Sandeno:I think the message for any entrepreneurs out there, you think, oh, you know, these are probably super expensive and unattainable. No. These classes are $89. They're $90, and they're, what, 3 hours?
Jeff Pennypacker:There are 3 hours, and you get the teaching. You get, lot of times, to appetize your entree dessert. I mean, there's a lot that goes with it.
Mark Sandeno:Folks, I hope you've been inspired by Jeff Pennypacker. I wanted to dive into the etymology of his name a little bit, Pennypacker. I actually looked it up ahead of time. Maybe we'll do that in the future. It's such a unique name.
Mark Sandeno:But I hope you're as inspired as I am by Jeff and the journey he's been on. Some of this has been a little tough love. For those of us who have relied too heavily on debt in our businesses or aren't caring for our customers the way we should by loving them as they enter into our space. I hope we receive this with grace, and we maybe pivot a little bit in how we think about doing things. Jeff, thank you so much.
Mark Sandeno:I appreciate your time today. I would, encourage people to check out sweetandsavoryclassroom.com. There's both in person in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and there's virtual courses. Jeff, is there anything else you would like to plug before you go?
Jeff Pennypacker:Just for you. I mean, working with you has been always been fantastic. You've been so attentive. The way I treat my customers when they walk down the door is the way you treated me since I signed on to the app. I wouldn't have expected that when you buy an app, when you purchase an app.
Jeff Pennypacker:It's been great getting to know you and I'm I'm just excited, you know, that if these conversations can help business owners take their business to the next level, that would be a phenomenal thing.
Mark Sandeno:And I'm sure they will. Thank you so much, Jeff, and look forward to talking to you again in the future.
Jeff Pennypacker:Same. Talk to you soon.