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Tailgate guys, have you ever heard of this business? No.
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so this this came up at Farm Con.
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So, I go to this dinner with this guy, he listens to the pod and he was telling me I was like, you know, uh I was trying to make small talk at this dinner where I was like, okay, I hate normal small talk.
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Like, I'm not just going to go, "Oh, yeah, how's the conference going?" Good. Yeah, good. How about you? Good. Good.
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Um and I also don't know anything about farming.
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So, like it's not relevant to me.
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So, you know, okay, I can ask them a bunch of questions. corn, too? Yeah, exactly.
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You know, I don't have much to add there.
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So, What's your favorite type of corn?
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So, as a bit of an icebreaker, I was like, um I was like, first job like what was your first first job?
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First first first I I asked, "Did you have a side hustle in college?"
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And I went around the table.
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I was like, "Did you have a side cuz everybody was doing something different now and they're all established now.
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But, did you when you were in college have a side hustle?"
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And everybody had an interesting one.
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So, this I put that in my question bank of like, "Ah, interesting."
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Uh you know, fun little convo when you're in a in a kind of entrepreneurial group.
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So, one guy tells a story.
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He goes, "Yeah, dude, I um I think he went to like Ole Miss or like one of the Alabama or like one of these like southern football colleges.
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And he's like, "I created a um like tailgate in a box." I was like, "What?"
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He's basically like, "Yeah, like tailgating is huge before the football game.
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People go to the parking lot and they want to grill and drink and play beer pong and do all this stuff.
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And um he's like, you know, for He's like, "My family used to like to do it."
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So, he's like, "First, my family It was so competitive so you had to go wait like kind of overnight to get your spot."
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He's like, "So, they would send me I'd have to go down to the I forgot what it's called, the Grove or something like that and I'd have to wait in the parking lot and hold my family's spot.
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And then I started to be like, okay, cool, you got the spot.
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Well, like well, you got to set up the tailgate for us.
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Like, come on, we need uh tables for beer pong and we need this and that."
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So, he's like, "Okay, I'll I'll get the stuff every week and I'll go do it."
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And he would create a good setup and And the the space next to him was like, "Hey, dude.
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Can we next week can we just can will you set ours up?"
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And he's like, "All right.
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Uh like give me like 200 bucks.
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I'll I'll get you guys some stuff."
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And they're like, "Yeah, sure."
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And then the price goes up and he's like, "Oh, wait.
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I can basically charge each little tailgating square, like each little group of friends, $500 to just set up a cool tailgate spot for them. Turnkey tailgating."
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And so he did this at his college and he's like, "Dude, I was making thousands and thousands of dollars every semester running this."
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Um and I was like, " I Googled Tailgate Guys. Did it get acquired?"
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So So that was their competitor.
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So there was a nationwide version of this.
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He was doing this at small scale.
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That was his college side hustle just to make a little bit of money.
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He's like, "Yeah, Tailgate Guys tried to come in, but they couldn't break into our market.
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Like we owned our market."
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And I was like, "Who's Tailgate Guys?"
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He's like, "Oh, these guys basically took this idea and they started doing it nationwide."
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And I was like, "That's really smart."
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He goes, "Yeah, they But but how's it work?
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Do you have like you just hire college kids and you say, "We'll give you 50 $50 an hour for 3 hours on Saturday. We get 50, you get 50." Exactly.
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And then do they And do the kids go to like Walmart and buy the stuff?
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I think either you give them the supplies in bulk or they have to go grab it.
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You tell them, "Hey, you need to get this table and these balls and this beer and this what whatever."
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And you use like a company credit card or something like that?
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And And so Tailgate Guys And what they do the the the key is they would partner with the school.
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They would say, "Hey, we'd like to be the exclusive uh tailgate provider for the school."
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And the school would give them the license.
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And so they had a monopoly. And I was like, "What?"
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And it's like, "Yeah, actually this is pretty common that schools will basically pick one vendor or provider.
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They'll sell the license rights.
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Basically, they'll let you become the official, you know, North Carolina, you know, you know, the Tar Heels tailgate." you and stuff.
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And you call it Tar Heels Tailgate and it's like their thing and you pay them a fee or a revenue share of what's going on.
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But in exchange, you get a monopoly.
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You get to be the only provider of this And it's like super viral, right?
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Because you're just like everybody sees, wow, that setup looks not bootleg. What is that?
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Oh, they use tailgate guys or whatever? Okay, cool.
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We we should use them next time.
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And uh so tailgate guys apparently did like I think they got bought out by private equity or something, but they um they were doing like I don't know 30 to 50 million dollars a year doing this. What?
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And um and I thought what a great co- example of a college hustle that you then scale up.
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You say, all right, if this works at my college, it's going to work at every college.
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And every college has a football program that has tailgating.
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And then we have this repeatable sales model of going to the university and we tell them, hey, these other eight universities partner with us.
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We'd like to partner with you.
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You get extra income and we will provide a safe uh you know, convenient way for your your fans to do this.
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I thought, that's pretty wild.
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This is a really cool little niche business.
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And then I started thinking, well, what are the other ones?
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What are the other businesses that use the same sales tactic of basically partnering with the school and becoming the exclusive provider.
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So, we had a little mini brain mini cuz the guy listens to the podcast.
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So, we had like a mini brainstorm session at dinner where he's like, dude, this is happening also with scooters.
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Uh when like Bird and Lime came out in cities, companies decided, oh shoot, we should become the exclusive scooter provider on campus.
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Like, we'll go drop these scooters all everywhere.
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It'll be branded by the with the school.
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The school will get a rev share for every scooter ride that happens and we get a captive market that nobody can compete with us in.
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And so, this started happening with scooters.
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And I was like, oh damn, what else could be done?
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Because scooters are cool cuz it's a new category, right?
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Tailgating worked cuz it was a new category.
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So, you just have to think about like, what's something today that they don't even really have a um like an option for.
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Like, they're they're not really there isn't really like a market for it.