002 - How a Mom Turned Biscotti into a Business that Employs Her Son with Autism
Release Date: 11/18/2016
Lessons From the Trenches – A Follow up conversation with Brewability Labs
Autism Advantage
Brewability Lab has been open for just over a year. Tiffany’s employees have experienced incredible growth since then, thanks in large part to the systems she has set up to facilitate the process. For example, there are braille labels on the bar taps so that a bartender who is blind can function at his best.
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Diversifying Impact – A Follow up conversation with the Chocolate Spectrum
Autism Advantage
Since our last conversation, there has been a huge change in the training side of things. Valerie Herskowitz explains that she has mostly just gone with the flow with the business, following the opportunities that presented themselves, instead of having a huge long-term master plan. She explains in this conversation that it occurred to her that they should see if the coffee industry could possibly be something that would work for individuals with autism.
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Growing Smart – A Follow up conversation with Katie’s Snack Cart
Autism Advantage
Tom D. sits back down with Wendy Kohman, the founder of Katie’s Snack Cart. Wendy talks about how she’s taken what started out as a side business for her daughter Katie, to a business that has grown to employing 6 total staff, across 9 clients.
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Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
Autism Advantage
One important thing we’ve noticed that we’re lacking is continually engaging with our community and customers, and telling our story. We realized that, while many of our customers understand exactly what our company does, there are quite a few who had no idea. This was our fault for not being clear and outgoing enough with communicating our story. We decided to do this through digital marketing instead of opting for standard car wash marketing techniques, such as door hangers or printouts.
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Typical Staffing Needs – Recruiting Training Deploying
Autism Advantage
Now, moving into the second half of the season, we’re ready to talk about the other 20% of our staff -- the employees who don’t have autism. These employees are incredibly important to the overall structure of the organization. They navigate the communication, explain the service, and set expectations. While they’re vital to our organization, it can be challenging to find typical people who want to work at a car wash and see the work as an opportunity to grow and have impact.
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2nd Store Open – Frontlines from 1st week
Autism Advantage
Now that we’ve finished up the first week of operations with both stores running, we’re ready to talk about how things went! Instead of putting all the new employees in the new location, we knew it was vital to have a mix of experience levels. We moved about half of our experienced employees to the new location, so each of the two locations is now staffed by half experienced employees and half new employees.
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Hired! - Integrating Candidates into Live Shifts
Autism Advantage
So far this season, we’ve talked about some of our plans for the second location, our big day full of dozens of interviews, and our pre-training process. In that process, as we discussed in the last episode, candidates needed to successfully complete a specific task three times in a row with a time limit. Those who were successful moved onto the next step: being offered a job!
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Almost Employed - Passing Pre-Training
Autism Advantage
We recently hosted our big day of interviews. We had close to a hundred candidates show up. Twenty of these didn’t have autism, and four were unsuccessful in the interview process for various reasons, but we ended up with over 50 qualified candidates who moved onto the next step, our pre-training process.
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Goal 80% Employees with Autism - Post Interview Results
Autism Advantage
We are preparing for a big event: a day of hosting around a hundred candidates in the search for the perfect people to increase our staff and allow us to open our new location. In this episode, we’ll talk about how that interview process went.
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Doubling in Size – The Pre-Recruiting Plan
Autism Advantage
We run Rising Tide Car Wash, which employs several dozen fantastic people with autism. This isn’t a charity, though; we encourage independence and growth by expecting everyone who applies to be able to pull their weight, and we’ve seen great success already.
info_outlineDenise Resnik has had a truly remarkable entrepreneurial background and has been in business as a marketing communications consultant for 30 years. Her projects include the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC), First Place AZ, DRA Collective, and, most importantly for today’s conversation, the remarkable SMILE Biscotti.
Denise is also the proud mother of a young man with autism, Matt, who was diagnosed at age 2. She was told to love, accept, and eventually institutionalize her son, which she found unacceptable. Instead of following that path, Denise used Matt as her source of inspiration, and together they created SMILE Biscotti. Ever since, they’ve been working to find a better way for Matt and others like him.
Originally, SMILE stood for “Supporting Matt’s Independent Living Enterprise.” As the company grew, though, it evolved; the name now stands for “Supporting My Independent Living Enterprise.” The company’s true goal and mission is to help other families build employment opportunities and a sense of community for those with autism.
The company’s very first order was for 1,500 biscotti for a special event in late 2013. Now, it’s extremely successful. SMILE has sold over 160,000 biscotti, and the product is a top seller at a local branch of a major coffee chain.
In our conversation today, Denise emphasizes the fact that the work isn’t just about making, packaging, and selling biscotti, but also about truly creating a community. The employees experience this community when they shop for ingredients from people who know about the company, when they make deliveries to devoted repeat customers, and even when they go to the bank. Tune in to learn about all of this and much more, and maybe to get the inspiration and knowledge you need to take the next steps with your own autism-supporting venture!
In This Episode:
[01:27] - What inspired Denise to start on this journey, and what continues to motivate her?
[02:02] - We learn more about why Denise and her husband, Rob, founded SMILE Biscotti and how their goals have evolved.
[03:39] - SMILE Biscotti started with Denise’s grandmother’s recipe. They experimented with it and found that they were able to create a twice-baked product with a long shelf life.
[04:56] - Tom steps in to clarify for listeners that Denise essentially took an existing skill and pre-sold it, rather than raising capital first. Denise then brings up a few other points, and emphasizes that it has been a feel-good business rather than a feel-sorry-for message.
[06:42] - What did Denise learn from the feedback from early taste testers of the product? This process, she explains, is how they settled on their four flavors: Cinnamon Vanilla, Mocha Magic, Double Chocolate Chip, and Butterscotch Bliss.
[07:37] - Denise raves about how great it’s been to start a family business with children, parents, aunts, and uncles all involved in different ways.
[09:44] - There’s a misconception that entrepreneurship is about you against the world, and a sense of rugged individualism. Tom points out that this is completely wrong, and it’s all about mentors and community.
[11:18] - Denise expands on Tom’s point about supporting each other, discussing how Matt and his coworkers support each other and create efficiency.
[12:52] - How has building this business affected Matt? Denise lists some of the incredible benefits that Matt has seen from the project.
[14:28] - Matt and Denise have been baking together for most of his life, so he already had a lot of experience before the business opened.
[15:54] - Denise discusses how the project has impacted her perception of how capable people with autism are. She also explains how successful their biscotti has been locally, and touches on the role of autism in their marketing and messaging.
[18:19] - Denise goes into more depth about the way that the packaging talks about autism.
[19:37] - What does Denise feel the business implications are that she’s learned from building SMILE?
[20:42] - Tom points out that the messaging is able to talk about how the person is able to realize their own goals, and SMILE is helping them get there. He then points out that at Rising Tide Car Wash, they have the huge advantage of not needing to pay for advertising.
[22:58] - Denise has been seeing that advantage as well, and mentions the loyalty that they see from their repeat customers.
[24:33] - What’s Denise’s vision for the future of SMILE? In her answer, she talks about her perspective on growing the company.
[26:15] - The best way for listeners to get involved with SMILE is to reach out to them through their website. (Another option, of course, is to support the company by buying some of their delicious biscotti!)
Links and Resources:
Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC)
University of Miami-Nova Southeastern University Center for Autism & Related Disabilities