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Meet Brad Brown of Brad B Jammin in Cherry Creek

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad Brown.

Brad has started, run, and founded a number of businesses in his career. He’s a technology guy by trade and a dreamer/inventory at heart. He loves coming up with a concept and following it through to a business. His wife Kristen is the rock behind the Brown family. She’s also an important part of the Brad B Jammin business.

This business began when Brad harvested concord grapes (from the vine growing in front of his wife and daughter’s clothing store, Melrose and Madison) for the season. He wondered what he could do with the grapes. Why not make some jam? Then a year later, Brad and his wife Kristen visited a farmers market in Slovenia, California and purchased Raspberry Jalapeño jam. Late that summer while on a vacation in St. Thomas they went on a search to find more unique jam, but couldn’t find any. They decided to purchase the raw materials and made an amazing raspberry jalapeno jam. The concept continued from there and Brad and Kristen love making jams that are unique.

Brad now has created over 50 unique flavors. He’s considering opening a PB&J (i.e. peanut butter and jam) restaurant where he would offer unique peanut butter, honey, jam, and breads. Brad LOVES the passion his customers’ express with him.

Recently a customer, Joe, purchased some jam for his brother, John. Joe mentioned that when his brother was staying at his house he bought two jars of Brad’s Sour Cherry jam and finished it while at his house, so he wanted to ship him more. Brad didn’t have any plain sour cherry left, so he sent his brother sour cherry jalapeno. Joe also mentioned that he had some cherries in his freezer that were from the cherry tree that used to be in his yard, but it had died after a banner production. He didn’t know how to make jam, so he delivered the cherries to Brad and he is planning on making a batch of sour cherry jam and giving it back to Joe and John. People often gift amazing fruits to Brad and he returns the favor by producing amazing jams.

The business took off in the summer of 2019. The prior two years Brad had only been at the South Pearl Farmers market each Sunday. In early 2019, a friend of Brad’s (from High School) mentioned that her daughter was interested in spending a summer in Denver. Brad had her and her friend interview for an internship with his “day job” company, Onemata. His team didn’t know what they would do with two marketing interns for the summer, so Brad offered up “you could run my jam business for the summer.” The young ladies said, “heck yes.” Brad suggested the team start signing up for farmers’ markets for the summer.

Before he knew it, Brad B Jammin was signed up for 20+ farmers markets – A WEEK! Brad did the math on jam production requirements and quickly realized he couldn’t produce that much jam each week. So he and Kristen set out to find a co-packer in Denver that could produce at least 1/2 of his production needs. Brad and his team did 20+ events a week all summer. Brad B Jammin has a catalog and is in a number of Denver area businesses. Farmers’ markets and holiday events will continue to be important for Brad – “those are fun!”

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There’s no such thing as a smooth road in Brad’s book. If it is smooth, you’re not pushing hard enough. Here are a few of the challenges – Brad can expound more on any of them if you want more. Brad has a “day job” – so when does all of this get done?

Finding a kitchen – at first, Brad thought his summer team could do the production when they weren’t doing farmers’ markets, so he set out to find a commercial kitchen. He talked to a high school that had a kitchen not in use during the summer. Ultimately they said no. Finding a kitchen was challenging.

Finding a copacker – when Brad realized that having his team make jam was unsafe (it’s boiling hot sugar that will leave a mark if you get it on you – and that happened to Brad), he decided to find a co-packer to make his jam. NOBODY wants to make jam – it’s tough to get it to set properly and if you overheat it, you’ll turn strawberries brown.

Missing out on Boulder Farmers Markets – Brad was on vacation when the application was due and BCFM thought Brad was not being responsive to their requests. He missed the deadline and that cost him from not being able to be in some of the best-performing markets in town.

Thought people would want to work all week – Brad booked every market during the week that he could find. Contractors preferred to only work the weekends AND… Markets during the week are not good – not one of them during the week markets made money.

Be careful what you sign – one of the markets in town (many are lumped together and run by a group) has people sign contracts that aren’t favorable to you as a “small guy.” They have language like “if you drop out of our markets, we charge you 25% more for the season” and “you must do our markets before any other market.” So if their market was not performing on a Saturday, but someone else’s was, you had to do theirs or get fined.

Doing events that cost more than they brought in – if a market isn’t in a well-attended location, you’ll lose money.

Freezer space – Brad kept buying fruit and running out of space and buying more freezers.

Basement has been overtaken – Brad’s basement is now nothing but the jam business.

Getting into stores – this has been challenging. You stop by, they want samples. You give them samples and follow up and they don’t test your samples. There is a process to get into stores. When is the owner there?

Choosing a distributor – If you go to the big guys they want $50k per SKU. Figuring out the path to market is challenging.

Graphics – Brad went with graphics he liked and got a LOT of feedback about his “look.” He rebranded two times and now it’s closer, but that’s expensive and time-consuming.

Missing the key holiday events – Brad didn’t realize how good (and bad) some holiday events are. Some people say they don’t do farmers’ markets because they make more in three days than they do all year.

Boxes – $17 -> $3 -> $.50 – Brad tried to find a custom box for a 3 pack of jam. The initial boxes were $17 a box. A 3 pack of jam sells for $21. He was able to get the cost down to about $3 a box and he produced about 50 boxes. Next Brad had 2000 boxes produced and it cost about $.50 a box.

Costs and inventory add up – Brad has continued to put money into the business. If he sells all (or at least more) of his inventory he’ll be in the money, but cash flow was an issue for some time.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We make unique jams. That’s the key – unique, not plain strawberry jam. We make jam (made with fruit) and not jelly (made with juice). We have six lines of jams – sweet (OK, plain strawberry, raspberry, etc are in this category), jalapeno, habanero, boozy, basil and seasonal. We are known for lighting up your taste buds.

I’m most proud of how excited people are to buy our jam every week. People LOVE our products and our new branding. They are excited to grow with us. We listen to people’s suggestions and come back with their suggestions every week. I’m proud of my team for their excitement about our products.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I have a lot of favorite childhood memories. My parents raised me in a small town, Princeton, Illinois. I LOVE that town and the people in it. My favorite childhood memories involve working in the cornfields, detasseling corn, managing the crews and working with friends. A lot of country songs sound like my home town! My grandparents lived there until they were 93. My parents still live there.

Pricing:

  • 1 jar – $9
  • 2 jars – $16 ($8 each)
  • 3 jars – $21 ($7 each)

Contact Info:

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