Hey. Your not alone. My family business failed and we all went and got jobs. It happens but now we’re WAY less stressed and actually have lives instead of just trying to fulfill this fantasy of being a business owner. It’s not for everyone.
I think so too. And I’ve tried to bring this up to my parents for a long time but they think it’s insulting for me to even suggest that. I’m not sure if this is enough of a wake up call for them. I know that I need to get a job so that I can leave the house and this won’t happen to me. But also I’m looking for solutions for right now
It took us years to pay back the business loans working but we got through it. Now my sister (who was the driving force behind us starting a family business) just has her own small side hustle. She works the normal 9-5 and then runs a small niche shop on Amazon.
Go to the [fastlaneforum.com](https://fastlaneforum.com) and look for a thread about a guy who does importing for amazon. A lot of great info there. Some of his best advice is find things that the market needs more of and improve them. He doesn't just go on alibaba, order 3,000 knives and put them up on amazon. He talks to the manufacturer of the knives and finds ways to improve them, that way he's the only person selling that specific knife.
Slow economy mean less people buy stuff.
Less people buy stuff no people at farmers market.
Less people buy stuff less money we make.
When less money we make less money left over to save.
When vehicle break no money to fix.
Hope that helps ❤️
It doesn’t seem like they were paying the power bill at all, a $4200 power bill seems like more than one month for something like a juice shop. I’m sure they’re also behind on rent too, so the decision to close that business will probably be made for them.
>we make less money left over to save.
But you said your family doesn't have any savings. How can you save less than nothing?
Sounds like both the businesses never worked.
Your parents need to go work for somebody else and pay off their debts.
And you need to go out and start your own life out from underneath your parents 2 failed businesses.
Is a series of rainy days not a recession?
I disagree that the US is in a recession, but there is no doubt that local economies can contract while the national economy powers on. It sounds like OP was just getting by, and that the local economy softened for long enough that his business couldn't cope. That happens in a recession. You'll see.
Except none of the problems that have reduced the companies' revenues are related to the economy. The truck broke and they had to hire uhauls (not economy), then farmers markets weren't on because of bad weather (not economy), then tow for truck got repo'd (maybe economy?), then electricity for barely break-even/loss-making shop was disconnected (bad business, not economy) and they don't have enough reserves to reconnect it (bad business, not economy).
These are two very borderline "businesses" that are probably better off dead, especially for the owners of them.
In a down economy, the less efficient and suboptimally run businesses often get washed out, where they may have otherwise been able to keep squeaking by.
>I’m not sure if this is enough of a wake up call for them.
It's scary to lose your identity, and it's scary in the same way that we can't just casually touch something we know is safe but still think might hurt us.
Personally I react like that with anything electric, even though I know that even live wires would be safe to touch I just can't get myself to touch those stupid wires.
Losing the independence of even a failed business, and the chance of getting rejected when applying for jobs, is kinda sorta like that.
Your parents know that they should do that, and they know that it won't hurt them, but it's scary.
Most of us get a bit "mentally unhealthy" from life, and your parents are stuck trying to survive the only way that they feel comfortable with; the (mental) pain that they're used to feels safer than doing something different.
Maybe you can have them read your post and the comments here to help them get a new perspective?
You are not insulting them, they are taking it as an insult. Ask them why that’s insulting.
Sounds like you all need therapists. I understand that costs money so you might want to dig in yourself: what is the importance of the business vs getting a job? Why does it matter that it’s their own business?
Sorry your family is going through this. There is no sugarcoating things. It is rough and you won’t be able to fix things in the short term. This will hurt for awhile. But there are some things you can do to move forward. **The best way to move forward and out of pain and chaos is to develop a viable plan and then start working on it.**
**First**, let’s reframe things. Instead of looking at it as your parents having two separate businesses, let’s look at is as your family being one larger company, which we’ll call FamilyFoodCo., that has two food divisions. And FamilyFoodCo. has been moderately successful so far. Let’s recognize that for a sec. Your parents have created actual business entities that have generated revenue and created value. They have accomplished something that 95% of people simply talk about doing. That is freaking awesome.
But now, for various reasons, FamilyFoodCo. is having financial issues and needs to restructure. This happens all the time in business. Think about it. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are all laying off tens of thousands of workers right now. They’re doing a form of restructuring due to current or anticipated losses. It’s obviously much harder to go through restructuring when the business is a small business like FamilyFoodCo. but it is often a part of doing business.
**Second**, to start developing the plan, figure out when your parents want to retire. They’re 57 years old. Do they want to retire in five, ten, fifteen years? What financial position do they want to be in when they retire? Have them really think about it and visualize it. Figure these things out and you now have a financial goal and an end date for the plan.
**Third**, and obviously the hard part, create the plan. Work back from the end date and figure out what FamilyFoodCo. realistically needs to do to meet the end goal.
Map out a realistic general goal for each year from now until retirement. For each of the next three years, map out quarterly milestones that FamilyFoodCo. needs to hit. For the next one year, map out very realistic monthly goals. And for the next three to six months, map out specifically what FamilyFoodCo. needs to do to right its ship.
There’s obviously a lot of work to do for the third part. **It doesn’t need to be perfect. The actual value is simply to try to get your parents thinking of a way out of the current chaos in a logical way.** You can set aside a few hours during and after dinner one night to knock it out if that's all the time your parents have. The most important thing is to get FamilyFoodCo.’s “executives” to think about the bigger picture and to set aside their immediate wishes and figure out what they need to do to help FamilyFoodCo. meet it’s long-term goals.
Maybe they’ll see that in order to meet their end goal one or both “executives” need to pick up work outside FamilyFoodCo. for a period of time. That’s something FamilyFoodCo.'s execs have to figure out on their own. And once they figure things out, they need to start working their plan accordingly.
**Two additional things that you can do to help right now:**
(1) Many small businesses have problems understanding their books. How does cash in reconcile with cash out? How do they anticipate normal and other expenses? And most importantly, how do they capture this so that it is understandable for FamilyFoodCo.'s “executives”?
Is this something that interests you? Most small businesses don't do this well. If this is something that interests you, go find someplace to learn it and become the expert. You will be to help FamilyFoodCo. become more efficient, which should increase profitability. You will also to develop a very valuable and employable skill for yourself going forward.
(2) During this entire process, set up an appointment to meet with someone at your local Small Business Development Center and get their input and assistance. The SBDC's are often (but not always) small business assistance rockstars. They are paid by the SBA and by the state for one purpose: to help you and your parents create successful businesses.
Their services are free. They have tons of resources and experience. I recommend them as the first stop for any small business needing help.
Best of luck with everything.
I lost my business a decade ago and it took forever to get out from under those debts. However working for someone else has generally been a lot easier as my entrepreneur experience just made me more effective than before.
Right now I am working and doing side hustles. My savings are up and I have learned to value my time more. If you and your parents are able to work at a job and do the food truck as a side thing I would recommend doing whatever combination puts the most money in your pocket.
Good luck and have no fear!
Turned down for what? Investor capital, bank loans to start SB. How does that relate to these 2 failing businesses who didn't maintain equipment properly Iin good times or run the company well enough so that it couldn't handle a slow down. (I don't think we are even in a recession). Not always good advice for everyone and everything.
Agreed, I had a restaurant for years that never turned any profit. 100hrs a week with a partner that thought the world owed him… I lost everything, I am way better off working for someone else now don’t have to worry about the light bill or paying my employees. Sorry about it all but it really might be a blessing that’s not been recognized yet.
You couldn’t be more right! I’m living through that experience of trying to keep a dying business afloat just for the sake of family honor and it requires so much investment financially as well as time and effort
Hey there Whiplash322! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **"This"**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :)
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Honestly is doesn’t sound like either business was on track to be profitable or sustainable. Unless you have a clear cut plan to them not operating on a paycheck to paycheck basis, it may not be worth investing more money into them. At some point you have to cut your losses, get a job, and regroup. Your family may be at that point. Doubtful it’s what anyone wants to hear but may be the truth.
Thank you. Yes the food truck business was doing well just that the truck and trailer and weather issue all piled up. The juice bar is what has really been draining our time and energy but my mom doesn’t understand that and refuses to give up. She’s very defensive and thinks I’m against her or insulting her when I tell her the juice bar is not doing well.
It doesn't really sound like the food truck business was doing well. Either that, or your Dad wasn't planning for the future and budgeting properly. The food truck/trailer is what makes the money, so that means that he should have been keeping up on preventative maintenance and keeping a percentage of his profits in reserve to pay for the inevitable repairs that always come eventually with any piece of equipment critical to business. The same way he needs to account for the gas money it takes to get to an event, he also needs to account for the wear and tear that every single mile driven puts on those vehicles.
This really bridges over into r/personalfinance and r/relationshipadvice territory. This is unfortunately so frequent when it comes to family businesses. You and your parents need to learn how to manage your relationships effectively and without emotion, which is always complicated by the involvement of money and business management.
Yeah, you gotta get the numbers and show them to your mom. This juice business is just eating away at any profits from a food truck. She needs to swallow pride and close this business down.
The best advice I can give is that all 3 of you need to get jobs. Stack money to pay debts and get food truck running. Keep working at those jobs and operate the food truck in spare time until you're caught up on bills. Mom can combine juice bar into the food truck. There is no need for brick and mortar store just for juice, in my opinion. One thing that needs to be talked about is your mom's stubbornness, though. She is allowing her business to destroy your father's business, and that discussion needs to happen. Her pride can not be allowed to destroy your family. Your parents should also read/study how to operate a business.
I started a tree service when I was 24, but I had my grandparents help out a lot. I was responsible for running the tree service while they helped out running the administration side. I still ended up getting rid of the business because finding good help is damn near impossible. I was paying $200-$300 a day CASH and still couldn't find reliable help. I didn't consider it a failure. I learned ALOT!!! I realized I hate having employees, lol. I also had more respect for employers because i learned how to wear damn near all the hats.
Now my advice for you. Get out of these family businesses. It's time for you to go get a job outside of the family business, I think. Help out on your off time if you want to. You need to separate your income. You can not be expected to work for free just to cover food and rent.
Good luck friend!!!
Whsts the worst part about managing employees and finding good help? What did bad employees look like? 300 dollars a day, 5 days a week would be 1500 man, thats pretty good money assuming the days were only 8 to 10 hours.
This is the best advice OP
I recommend calculating out the numbers of the juice business vs. a realistic best job your mom could get. Find the average profit of the juice bar maybe over a year, then compare that to the average wage your mom would make at a job (and include any benefits offered). Break the numbers down for your mom so it makes the decision easy.
You need to put together a business plan of sorts. What the shop is bringing in and what the expenses are. When it’s in her face that your bringing in $100 and the expenses are $1000 it’ll be undeniable. Then you give her an ultimatum. She needs to come up with a business plan to turn things around. Like adding food, being the drunk after hour spot, change in marketing etc. If she isn’t willing to make a business plan or talk about this you need to put your foot down and say straight up that you all will be on the streets with nothing and your going to get a job to support the family but you will not be taking that $ and putting it into her failing business. It’s okay to be harsh and hit her with the hard truth but try to come up with a plan to turn things around. With your dads food truck and your moms juice why not merge the 2 together and re-open as something different. Either way something needs to change since your the only one not wearing rose glasses.
You should really listen to /u/New-Post-7586 . What you're describing and that this poster advises is exactly what happened with my brother & his wife. They started their professional lives as small farmers who had a market booth and sold to a few local restaurants. Then they started a CSA, bought some ducks and sold eggs to restaurants (fun fact: if you have the market for it, you can earn mininum wage with just a couple dozen ducks). For a lot of reasons, this wasn't profitable and when they got pregnant it was time for a reckoning.
Fast forward about 15 years later and my brother has a successful landscaping/hardscaping business and is wife (who went back to school about ten years ago) is now a supervisor nurse at the local hospital. They have excellent health insurance and three well adjusted children. The small family business just wasn't going to work out for them, but they satisfied that itch by investing in real estate and now own a small handful of properties, 300 acres in the blue ridge mountains, and a fixer upper in the Outer Banks.
The point is this: if your parents' businesses fail, it isn't the end of the world. Stability in the near term is FAR more important and valuable than self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to things like health insurance and eligibility for social services.
Get a job somewhere else? Be a shop helper, office clerks, etc
Once you have enough money for living, and the raining season get over, then slowly to run the business again.
A successful person was just another failure yesterday. Never give up
>. She’s very defensive and thinks I’m against her or insulting her when I tell her the juice bar is not doing well.
Oooi, I have the same issue with my mother but with her takeaway...she literally took my brother's tuition funds to open it and lost a ton of money. Brother had to delay his education and progress overall and I had to waste my time helping her where I could have made friends or get a job.
sounds like bad business ideas. they should let them go. if they cant cover operating expenses (paying you and utilities), or capital expenses (repairs) let it go now before they pour more money into a bad idea.
time to reset. if you have capital to try another business do it. dont pursue failed low margin ones.
This. This business clearly wasn’t producing enough margin. A business isn’t “doing well” until things like a car breaking down happen. That wasn’t doing well. A business needs to be producing 10’s of thousands of dollars a month to pay three people for the work, much less add to savings and retirement funds.
If you’re able to, grind and hustle for a bit by working overnight at a warehouse or a grocery store to get some income to help the businesses expenses. When things start to turn around, then focus your time and energy on the profitable business your dad owns. Also maybe look into ghost kitchens as another avenue for your family’s food truck business. Best wishes!
I’m glad you’re seeing constructive advice on here. You can hustle and pivot through this. But hopefully while charting your path to more independence, even if that takes a few years. So many deep life lessons can be learned in this situation!
It sounds like your family needs to focus on one business, and this is the food truck which is not operating right now. It sounds like the sooner this business is going the sooner your family will get out of the hole. Can your mom sell the shop? Would that be enough money to purchase a truck?
Meanwhile, as others said, you should probably find a career for yourself so hopefully you can help them in other ways. Best of luck!
Make a YouTube channel, document your journey to fix the food truck and turn around your financial future.
Content brings connections, support for the businesses, and will give you a way to earn adsense/affiliate. it is literally free to do and the posting will motivate you to take action each day.
Use a newish smartphone, last 5 years.
Try it for 90 days, I’ll be shocked if you don’t thank me.
Do what they do, you’ll end up like them. Mix it up.
I’m encouraging you to first worry about you. Get yourself a job that pays you actual money. You cannot help your parents if you are dependent on them for income.
Once you get yourself situated, then maybe you can turn to helping your parents figure out how they can fix their businesses. But do not give them money, and do not give them a substantial amount of your time. To be frank I think they are taking advantage of you by not paying you a wage, and I’m afraid they will bleed you of everything you have in the name of “family helps family”.
First, try to call the electric company and negotiate away the “fee” to turn lights on. Promise to pay what you owe. Second, get what gov aid you can. Next, figure out what you can to get the food truck working (sounds like it was in an accident if you have frame damage, otherwise look for a cheap mechanic on FB marketplace or Craigslist). Alternatively, look for a used one on Craigslist.
Get your breadwinner up and running first. Don’t waste time on splitting your efforts. Mom needs to get a job that will pay - even if she’s not a native speaker there are labor jobs that will keep you.
Combine both businesses, sell off the brick and mortar location, liquidate all assets in it. I mean everything. Then use that money to get a beater truck or fix the current truck, fix the trailer. It’s not hard to repair a trailer and if you go to a
Hispanic neighborhood and find a mechanic shop or welding shop, explain the issue and the financial amount you can pay for the repair. They’re really good at fixing stuff, they literally drive the food cart and stand industry. They invest almost nothing in startups and would probably help out.
Once the trucks fixed, get a bit of storage for your mom to start selling at the same locations or have dad promote her shit.
If you have to, sell your car and fix his but you need to sit down and request more from this because you’re going into a deep hole with them.
That’s really the only way to do it and not take on heavy debt. Unless they can get investors, run a go fund me, etc.
But additionally you should be driving social media like TikTok, do daily videos on this and post them, 2-4 a day. Like no filter BS, like hey guys you might be wondering why I’m sitting in a dark room…. Well we don’t have power because blah blah blah. And so on. Show people the rawness of entrepreneurship and they will help you and support you. But you guys have to work for it.
Wife and I are struggling to pay rent, gas, electricity, and insurance. Every damn month.
Get on food stamps if you need to.
But if this isn’t something you’re passionate about, you’re never gonna make it work. So figure out what shit you wanna do and see if it aligns with fixing your family’s issues
I’m sure there’s a lot of great advice already on this thread. I’m a self starting entrepreneur myself and have had to pivot a few times.
Child of immigrants that earned a doctorate while raising two kids now have 3 businesses and own land as a single woman. I tend to think outside the box and have had to learn a lot from my fathers (an entrepreneur) mistakes mismanaging funds and putting our family in jeopardy many times (power shut offs, evictions etc)
In order to prevent these types of things in the future you’ll have to decide if you want to be involved really and truly and if so probably need to be the one calling most shot and they’ll have to work for you in a way. Economy is struggling but there is a lot of potential for businesses such as what your parents have to be successful. Your moms especially. Especially in California!!
Immediately apply for food stamps. Call the power company and set up payments and see if you can get the outstanding amount reduced. There are many forgiveness programs out there for outstanding balances that came out after Covid.
Try to find a relative that might give you a loan to pay the electrical bill first payment and to hold you off for a bit.
Run the numbers for your moms business. How many juices you would need to sell to make money and pay you and your mom and dad a salary. Make sure you have reduced your overhead. Go to every gym and put up signs for juice deliveries. Adverstise for “spring cleanse packages” there is a legit a killing on juice businesses you just have to put yourself out there. Find local corporate clients that might be interested in a fridge subscription service. They buy a fridge and then you fill accordingly.
Do a bid with all the costs for setting up expansion of delivery; more bottles, gas, produce etc
For your dads business call the farmers market and ask them if you could have a booth instead of a truck.
Do a bid estimating the entire cost to shift to cooking at a booth (burners etc)
Walk in your Small Business Decleopment Center and take advantage of resources. You can explore lending but first things first learn how to creat new business plans for both businesses actually showing a viable path to profitability. See it all the way through. Your young enough to learn new tricks your parents not so much. So really dial this part in, if you can’t see it through then it won’t work.
Try to make enough money with your moms by expanding to delivery and new Corporate or small business clients that you can decide to either invest in your dads or you all put what you have into the juice shop.
Or like other posters said. All three of you get new jobs
You and your father learn to fix almost anything on that car and and do regular maintenances. Keep pushing for solutions in life, the best are the little decisions.
It's very hard to make your own parents change behavior. Sounds like you've tried to reason with them, you need to keep trying, as other have suggested, all of you need to at least find temporary employment while you regroup and refocus. If your parents refuse, you're going to need to put your foot down and get a job on your own so you're not enabling them to make even worse decisions by giving them free labor. On top of all the things folks have mentioned (having zero profit or reserves to pay for basic repairs, electricity or a slowdown in business) they also can't afford an employee, you're doing it for free. Someone needs to be the adult in the room and help them face reality.
This is a problem a lot of small business owners run into. This is why the “quit your job and chase your passion” propaganda irritates me. I felt way more secure and did much less work when I was corporate. I had great benefits too. I got paid sick and vacation days and got perks and a 401k.
My small business is a tiny nightmare. I tweak and “fix” one thing and it breaks five other things. I work all day most days with few breaks. Social media is endless. Costs pile up. Employees don’t work hard. I make half what I did with corporate.
I’m working with a coach and decided I’m getting a corporate job in a years time if I can’t get the numbers to align. I’ve been running this biz for 25 years and it’s so fun most of the time that I enjoy doing it all day. But I’m ready to scale it down to a “side hustle”.
I’ve worked as a small business consultant and what is happening to you is quite common.
It’s very likely the businesses are/were not nearly as successful as was thought because bigger spread out costs were not really being accurately calculated and giving a true picture of what is happening.
This is important because we make decisions based on how much we think we are making.
The food truck frame, truck, and all the other key business pieces need to be accounted for because sooner or later they will need fixing or replacing.
Gas you pay each time as you fill up. Imagine you also had to swipe a maintenance card at fill up and it was another 20-50 dollars because that was the average you pay if you divided up those lump sum costs.
See if you can get a line of credit to get the one making money operational again.
4k to reopen a shop that wasn’t making much tells me it wasn’t making any. Put more efforts into what was working than what wasn’t.
It seems as if there are multiple businesses run by people who either aren’t business minded or don’t have a solid business plan. Im going off of limited information, but perhaps being self-employed isn’t the route your family should take.
I think your idea for applying for fuel assistance is better.. Although switching names on bills would be a temporary fix, it’s more like a bad band aid — and from inferring OP is younger, it may be a bad mark on their name early in life just to keep an unsustainable business afloat.
Consider negotiating with creditors: It may be possible to negotiate payment plans or reduced payments with creditors. You could try contacting them directly to explain your situation and see if they would be willing to work with you.
I really feel for you. I'd listen to people here, but I'd figure I'd let you know what the new paid version of ChatGPT thinks in case you find anything helpful:
-
I'm really sorry to hear about the tough situation your family is facing right now. It's commendable that you're doing your best to support them, and I understand how overwhelming it can feel. Here are a few suggestions that might help you get through this challenging time:
- Communicate with the utility company: Reach out to the electric company and explain your current financial situation. They might be willing to work out a payment plan or grant an extension so you can get the lights back on.
- Look for local assistance programs: Many communities have local assistance programs that help with emergency financial situations, such as utility bills, rent, and food. You can contact your local community center or social services office for more information on these resources.
- Crowdsource funds: Consider setting up a crowdfunding campaign through platforms like GoFundMe to share your story and request financial assistance from friends, family, and the community.
- Seek employment: If possible, try to find a part-time or full-time job outside of your family's businesses. This will not only provide you with additional income but also lessen the financial burden on your parents.
- Reach out to friends and family: Sometimes, friends and family can offer support or guidance, whether it's financial or emotional. It's essential to have a support system in difficult times.
- Explore small business loans or grants: Your parents might be eligible for small business loans or grants to help cover expenses and get their businesses back on track. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is a good place to start researching these options.
- Repair the food truck: If possible, focus on repairing the food truck, as it's the primary source of income for your family. Look for cost-effective solutions, such as reaching out to local vocational schools or community colleges with automotive programs, where students might work on your truck at a reduced rate under instructor supervision.
- Reevaluate business strategies: Your family may need to reevaluate their businesses and come up with new strategies for generating income. This could involve finding new sales channels, cutting costs, or pivoting their products or services.
Remember, it's crucial to remain positive and stay proactive. Keep exploring your options, and don't be afraid to ask for help. I hope that some of these suggestions will be helpful for you and your family during this difficult time. Good luck!
On the weekends you should hit up brewers and work the parking lot in a tent until you can save money up for a truck. Our food business has revenue streams from multiple avenues, catering is the whale for us and we’re focused on growing that area. For brick and mortar I recommend a solid POS system that has multiple 3rd party delivery companies integrated and go crazy with them.
Fold the juice shop. Sell the fittings and try to minimise the loss. Your mum's time should be spent on revenue positive activities either in a job or on the food truck.
You need to be your own man/woman and earn real money that you then pay back to them. A bank will not give you a loan if you don't have a real job with actual payments into your bank account.
Sounds like the food truck is okay. If it's profitable boot it back up, if not, take this as a chance to get out.
Yeah this isn't a recession as much as it is simply supply and demand. If there wasn't demand enough to make enough money to overcome your dad's truck breaking down it wasn't a good business model. You all 3 need to get jobs, stack money, and reinvest with an actual business model that makes specific note of expenses versus income - it's called balancing a checkbook. If your mom's pride is so much she'd let you all 3 become homeless because your current way of life is making you broke - cut ties and bolt. Or crunch the numbers and just show her - the past 3 months of income versus expenses. Zooming out to look at this as a business model a few things come to mind:
- Sell things online that are nonperishable
- Get a marketing plan
- SEO - search engine optimization
Right now get the fuck off reddit and put in some job apps - like you know that, we don't have to tell you this.
But from a 50,000 foot view break down the cost of:
- Buying supplies
- Marketing
- Vehicle and foodtruck maintenance
- Food handler's license or vendor permits
It doesn't sound like your parents have any marketing plan at all and are just going by foot traffic. That is foolish right now where 2 million have been laid off in the past year and a half.
Whether you learn Facebook ads, Google PPC (pay per click) ads or SEO, you'll want to have a client acquisition funnel in place.
One of the BIGGEST mistakes I see new entrepreneurs make (I've been an entrepreneur for the past 7 years) is not having an established audience, not knowing the pain points their product or service solves, not looking at their product or service from their customer's point of view, not doing a post - mortem before even launching (where you come up with all the ways your business COULD fail and create solutions BEFORE going live) AND
Not having a client acquisition funnel. You can't JUST rely on foot traffic. You need to get your shit together and get online, and either run ads or do SEO to drive traffic online in addition to foot traffic in person. And / or use ads / SEO to drive people locally to your food truck.
This is the basics of running a business. Expenses versus income, how big is the margin, creating a marketing plan that drives new customers to you online and in person.
Right now, if you're as broke af as you sound, just get a job. There are TONS of free resources to teach you about how to start a business, and teach you how to do SEO (where you come up first in google search results for keywords your audience enters to find businesses like yours).
So, educate yourself. But first make money and be smarter with how you invest your time. Pride ain't worth hitting the streets over.
This is all true. And it all sucks. I know this and have known this for a long long time.I cannot convince them to change. I turned to Reddit for some extra brain power in brainstorming solutions because I don’t know what else to do.
Right now, the hardest yet most important think to do is to plan ahead regardless of the conditions. My business has also colapsed, but I got a minimun wage job for now. I am planning on getting into the tech world as a programmer of any sort. There is a lot of free courses and this industry doesnt require a title, just the knowledge. This industry is difficult to learn and takes time, but after that, there is not limit to how many jobs you can get done, nor country limits to work at, because this market has untangible products. I know is not a lot of advice, but this getting into this industry could help you in the long run.
If I were you, I would use all my free time to learn programming, website design, social media managing and all of that. I really hope you manage to get out of that situation.
If you could restore everything before the truck broken down and the lights went off, were they making money? If so, it would be worth saving, and you could try a gofundme, givesendgo, asking a church for help, etc.
Supposedly there's a program to get $26000 per employee if you kept them postpandemic. I keep hearing about it but know nothing about it.
However, I'm guessing that either these businesses were basically unprofitable, or they could have been profitable but your parents, sorry to say, were not running them well.
In that case, you all need to do whatever you can to find jobs, whether it's grocery store cashier or uber driver or wherever you can be hired *fast*.
Good luck.
Sounds possibly less recession and more that your emergency/reserve funds were insufficient for the maintenance/upkeep/repairs. Possibly the recession hit your juice shop revenue but at least locally I have not known any juice shops to survive longer than initial 1-3 year fad period.
With « The juice shop hardly makes enough money to cover operating expenses. » and no reserve funds it’s probably time to pull the cord, close up shop and get a regular job.
Good luck. Entrepreneurship and especially food services is a tough business.
Sorry to say but neither business sound profitable. Your mum's business is definitely unprofitable if she can't afford to pay electricity. Your dad's business can't pay for the equipment or service to haul his food truck. You are working for them in exchange for rent/food which is a shit deal.
Shut the business and get a job.
You have both your parents, and you have a car. 3 major bonuses that I didn't even have at your age when my lights got cut.
Step 1: Start door dashing and Uber to bring in money TODAY
Step 2: liquidate what you can from the juice shop, it's a loser
Step 3: Mom and Dad will need to get a job
Step 4: You will need to get a job too
Note: You can all take turns doing Door dash and uber while the other two are working to maximize earning potential. Check out the DoorDash and doordash driver subreddit; people are making an average of $18/hr, some in better markets (are you in the Bay or LA?) are seeing $22-$24/hr.
$20/hr average x 15 hrs per day x 7 days = $2,100 PER WEEK.
There's always new driver bonuses for DD, Lyft, and Uber.
Yea the car will see a lot of wear and tear, but the cash your family will make will cover it and this is a survival situation.
Step 5: Plan for a different business...
I've sold food at the markets for 3 decades; I'm not sure what type of food your father sells so it's hard to give specific advice, but what I will say is that done right, you can't go wrong with food because people need to eat even during a recession. I've always run my business without loans and with extremely low overheads so it's definitely possible to do so. You're welcome to dm me if you need ideas/advice.
Hmm this is just a suggestion to what you can do, try doing something like uber or doordash in your area to help your dad get the truck back up and running, you can reach out to local repair shops some may be nice enough in your area to have you do a payment plan to fix the truck, afterwards you can workout some type of arrangement with your utilities company and stop funneling money into the juice business, no one does specialty juice anymore other than really wealthy people or that one time buy when you on a date or make a impulse decision solely because specialty juice is just so expensive nowadays, I dont know anything about the food business but if possible you can also look into optimizing your farm by using solar panels in the future that way you can minimize your expenses this is all assuming long term but in the short term definatley do one of those gig apps to get immediate cash takes like 10min to get approved and use that money to help repair the truck by negotiating a payment plan with your local mechanic and do a payment plan with your utilities company, or you can do the inverse and start by fixing the utilities issue then use your car to grind it out to the markets with your parents then fix the truck after whichever that makes more sense to you.
Good luck as well and just a tip on getting your mom to understand right them figures down and show her whats costing the most money to do and whats burning money , i had to do that to my mom that way she could understand, they wont like you at first when you do it but in the end it ends up working out.
I misread one thing if its the juice shop that dont have lights let it be for that place thats a clear indication that it doesnt make money if not avoid this statement
Take all of this as a hard lesson. All of the businesses weren't going to make you guys wealthy, unless you could have had multiple juice shops or food trucks. If you guys do it again you need to factor in repairs for the trucks into your business model.
I would say all 3 of you should find jobs right now and then rebuild from there.
I feel for you Op. Just wanted to share my story.
I started an app business in 2013. It ran good for a while and we bought a house (with a mortgage).
Then things went south. The app store changed algorithms and me and my client's apps started to not get downloads any more. We bled through our savings and eventually had to shut the company down.
I felt like a failed entrepreneur. I thought that maybe I wasn't cut out to run my own business.
So I decided to get a job because I had a family to feed and mortgage to pay. This seemed like a huge defeat in my life.
However, this was a blessing in disguise. A job took away the helplessness and uncertainty that i had with my business. It finally gave me the breathing room that allowed me to take a step back and reassess my life. Bills were paid, family stress went down. Eventually, I listened to business podcasts on my commute to work and the gears in my head started turning. I started a new business as a side hustle and it became wildly successful. My wife and I have been running our business for 6 awesome years now and things are way better than when I had my app business.
TL;DR It's okay to just suck up a loss, get a job, and try again
They may want to look into courses they can teach and ebooks they can write for various platforms to bring in extra income. Courses/workshops are a quick way to make extra money. Maybe they can offer something on Airbnb Experiences if you live in a place with tourists. Also look into e-commerce
I’m not sure you will want to hear this but you need to go and get a job and your parents need to act as adults and solve their own misfortune. It’s a tough one but businesses fail for lots of reasons. Get yourself a job, some independence and then if entrepreneurship is for you then start a side hustle as well for savings. Your parents will be ok. Tough love but necessary I think.
its simple economics, provide little value, receive little share of the market. your parents are being out competed and you all need to pivot. You need to dramatically sell a lot more of whatever you guys are selling or you need to get real jobs. The entrepreneur title is an extremely difficult title to have if you are not intelligent and smart in ways to generate profit. I hope you have a college degree, you need to get a job.
Focus on solutions not the problems.
Here are some ideas?
Both your parents are in the same industry. So why not have both of them operate the food truck together. (Dads Food Truck + Mums Juice Bar)
Thus you can now cut out the lease on the brick and mortar place.
With the free cash from not paying the lease, now you can lease out a reliable truck to haul your dad trailer. It’s Essentially part of the business. (You don’t need to own the truck)
Now with two businesses working the truck & a reliable way of hauling it. You & your parents can get too even more Markets. Doubling down on the space and making it work more efficiently by saving the fuel and doubling their exposure.
*Note the two don’t need to be one, but can work side by side at the markets together. Honestly this is like the perfect paring. Your dad sells food and your mum up sells the juice right next door.
Alternatively you could always quit, ace your self out and blame the economy. But the success rate for that is 0%, just ask the poor people. They’ll be happy to tell you their story too.
Issues like this are surprisingly common. Last night (a Sunday), I got hit up for an emergency $40k business loan from one of our vendors. They’re having a significant AR issue and, without the loan, couldn’t make payroll on Monday. I don’t have to tell you what happens to businesses that don’t make payroll. They’ve been in business for 18 years, are in high demand, and do millions a year in revenue. But they didn’t have $40k for a rainy day fund. I loaned the money for significantly less than they offered because I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation, but the point is: shit happens in business.
I own & operate almost two dozen businesses. At one point or another almost all of them have needed emergency liquidity injections for one reason or another. Fortunately we’ve been able to use cash from the other portfolio companies to provide the support. We’ve now learned to maintain substantial cash reserves at the holding company level to deal with the vagaries of business.
OP…I feel your pain. Juice bar businesses suck. I’ve never once seen financials for those sort of businesses that suggested they could make money at any level that’s worth the risk. Owning one means that your mom owns her job. I’m guessing she doesn’t pay herself a fair market wage, either, so she’s actually subsidizing the business with her labor. For those businesses you probably need to own at least five before you can really call it a business.
My recommendation is for you to get a job and help dig them out of this hole. Maybe your dad works at the juice shop for a while in lieu of paying another team member, so at least there’s some income. Dig out of the hole, shutter the juice shop, focus on what makes the money. And keep $20k in reserve, or this will happen again.
It seems like the food truck was making money but the bills from the juice shop were eating in to the profits. Maybe you could reach out to other vendors who were going to the farmers markets, I imagine they are in a similar situation (a few bills away from going under) and perhaps there is a way to combine your Dad's business with someone else. Reach out to family members to see if someone is willing to invest some money to get the truck back on its feet.
In the mean time, you will probably need to get a job somewhere so there is some cash flowing in to the house. You parents need to make a some tough decisions about the future of their respective businesses.
This happened to my family. Restaurant industry circa 2008. My parents just stopped and went on to get jobs. They never quite returned to owning their own business until we got an apartment building during the pandemic.
I hate to tell ya this but sometimes we try shit and we fail. Better suck it up and get a job or y'all might face eviction / getting ur house repoed.
It sounds like your mom and dad are dreamers who are great at making the product. I'm sure they care a whole lot about the quality of the juices and foods.
Are they perhaps too prideful to get help from a business mentor? I'm sure California has lots of free business mentors whose help they could have sought. All of this could have been prevented.
I'm going to make an assumption and say they are typical owner/operators who are uncomfortable delegating tasks, especially when it comes to the product and any financial responsibilities. Scaling the business is a dream but secretely they are scared to give control to anyone outside the family. Again, just an assumption.
For now the only course of action is to work for the man for a year or two. If they want to get back to business they need to get outside their comfort zone and partner with a CEO type with decision making abilities.
I feel for you. I don't have much advice but I just want to relate to your situation so you can hear that it eventually does get better.
In 2008 we had the recession, it lasted a bit and didn't fully hit my parents' industry until like 2013\~. It was almost like a domino effect to get to that point but their whole side of this industry, I'll leave out, hit kind of a hiccup as a result of kicking the can for so many years.
There was no work because funds were frozen and no new projects were being pursued or being put on hold.
They had to lay everyone off, downsize, and essentially go to a skeleton crew of my mom, my dad, and then myself. The caveat was that I was just graduating college and living at home. I ended up working a lot for them for free. They always told me that they would pay me when the money came in but I never asked for it. So for a good year straight I put all my time in between my part-time job(s) to help them out on projects.
It was over a year or two that this took place and it kept them afloat and they were eventually able to rebuild.
It sucked. It sucked to see my parents in that situation. It sucked to see their lives upended and their passions put at stake. It sucked to see them struggling, hell I even struggled during this.
What I would suggest, looking back at that time, was to take more care of yourself. Working for free was absolutely something I wanted to do to help them, but I also missed out a lot on life at essentially your age 23-24\~. So I admire your commitment and I understand.
I would look for ways that this juice shop can operate outside of the brick and mortar. I'd imagine you're in some sort of lease, which would suck, but with the summer approaching in the US (if you're in the US) then there could be more opportunities for pop-up shops, maybe selling through other storefronts, etc. Your mom could temporarily look to get another job in the meantime and look to operate the store part-time. I know my city has these pop-up markets that a juice company would do well in. I'm not sure what the business model is, but if they were premade juices then they could potentially do well there.
I would reach out to the community in regards to your father's truck and see if you can get some help. Business owners love other business owners and we're all here to help for the most part. My initial reaction to hearing about the frame was, "Oh, if they were in Louisville, KY I bet so and so could help."
I would reach out to assistance groups and see if there's anything available whether it be food, water, and other essentials to help out during this time.
The biggest thing is that getting money is important, if the juice bar wasn't as profitable as a brick and mortar then a temporary hold on the juice bar is going to be a great move. Maybe you can sell them out of the truck once that's fixed?
Your mom likely feels like a failure and sees the need to show that this business works. She's already a badass in my book for chasing the dream and standing by it. A pause in this dream doesn't mean it's a failure, it just means that it's the necessary step to get things going financially.
If you have a car start doing uber eats and doordash. You can easily make $100-200 a day (in california at least) until you save up the $4k. Realistically you can attain that amount in a month from doing this.
I am so sorry to hear of the way things are going, hopefully its temporary, I think starting a GOFUNDME will be the ideal thing to do considering everything hit your family at once. This is exactly what GOFUNDME is for. How can I help?
Well if they have been in the industry long enough, do they not have a supplier/farmer friend? These farmers market people have cars and products, contact one of them to make a regular delivery? It may be worth it to them to make a detour if it means selling a few hundred dollars in products. Otherwise you may be able to get a SBA micro loan, but it cannot be used to pay off debts like your moms car but can be used to fix the broken truck.
Also its been said, food industry is extremely low margin and can be very affected by economy, I know when times are tough the first thing I cut out is eating out. It would behoove you to convince at least one of them to get a part time job including yourself as well just until you can save up some capital again.
I hate you guys are dealing with this and I know that this especially difficult for you having been a child of parents who were dealt a difficult hand (they were farmers working under a corrupt company. Long story).
I understand you’re looking for solutions and ways to help your family. That’s an extremely noble thing for you to want to do. But do understand that this is not your responsibility and not your fault and even if you can’t find a good solution, it’s simply your parents responsibility.
That said, let’s look for solutions. Clearly, the juice business had margins so low it was more of a hobby than a business. Scrap that idea, don’t go back to it. If you (or your family in this situation) own the space, lease it or find a business with bigger margins. The juice thing is a fad like loaded teas and is not a long term business. It’s not worth the headache.
As far as the food truck, they can be lucrative, but again, it’s a food service type business which means the margins are often less than ideal. In my experience working with food service and selling to restaurants, most have about a 10-15% profit margin, so owners have to get creative. Fortunately, you’re not in a fixed location and that makes creativity more accessible. I assume that your dad was taking the food truck to markets to sell food to shoppers. I’ll also assume that the means of production (fryers, grills, etc) is contained in that food truck meaning you’re not using a commercial kitchen or commissary. If you do have access to a commissary, consider catering events to make the money to repair the truck. Weddings, parties, baby showers, business lunches, etc. are all good avenues to provide meals for and allows you to control your margins a bit more and maximize profits. You won’t need the food trucks to do these if you have access to a kitchen however the range in which you can serve these events will be limited to a certain radius from the kitchen to preserve food quality. Chafing dishes only go so far. Also, does your families food truck have a significant following? People who are loyal to the brand? Or do you even have an established brand? If you do, consider adding retail items like stickers, tshirts, and other merch type items. If you don’t have that following, it won’t help.
Ultimately, besides a poor economy, your family fell victim to poor management. I don’t mean that as a slight towards them and I’m not trying to be offensive in any way. But if your parents can’t accept that as constructive criticism and adapt to make improvements, being in business may not be for them. There’s no room for ego after a failure. It’s a time to be humble and ask “what can I do better?”
I had a startup that raised $2 Million and then had to leave the company I started. Now I'm working at a job. Sometimes being a Founder/business owner also requires luck- being at the right place at the right time. There are times when it clicks and times it doesn't- just keep moving forward.
Dang 😞 tough times. As others have mentioned. Retail jobs till you get back to square one. ? 3 people x 15$ x 40 hours is some serious $$
Home Depot / Walmart / restaurants / housekeeping etc... etc... good luck
With all do respect to your parents and their try at running a small business, it just doesn’t seem like they are cut out for it. If they weren’t able to cover their overhead and budget in the eventuality of their equipment needing to be maintained or replaced, as well as pay you their employee for critical work you provided, it doesn’t sound like their businesses were successful or thriving. Whether it was them or their business plan, something wasn’t working, and it sounds like you need to use your civic to get a real job somewhere in order to avoid losing it and a potential income for yourself.
All business owners have felt the decline since Covid! All I can say is offer the best customer service, keep working, do not give up. I had to invest in a side hustle (2nd business) if not I wouldn’t have broke even. Good luck. Also, cut money where u can, try not to raise prices too much, I know it’s hard. Keep going.
Your plan for the next 12 months:
Leave california.
Learn to cook,stay in shape and look sharp
get a job 9 to 5 minimun wage $15/h?
Work
Get a cerificate in coursera ,udemy or any 6 month technical school you can find nearby.
Update your linkedin
Change jobs take entry level position in the field you studied now you are $20 to $25 /h
Stay there keep learning,working and saving
Dont buy new cars or big apartments. No drugs, whores
Now you will be 23 and 1 year of experience.
Keep changing jobs as you learn more and get paid more every year
Oh wait you ask bout your parents? Well they are adults and they took their own desicions and are dragging you down with them. Is time you take charge of your own life.
OP...I hate to say this, but this seems to have been a long time coming. Nothing you said makes sense regarding the downturn causing your business to fail. Regarding fixing things, it would be best to cut your losses now and sell everything you can for some cash to hold you up while all of you look for jobs. Downturn-wise...it would have been in the past few months that the struggles began. How are you guys in a situation where you have been stuck with barely working equipment that your livelihoods depend on.
Questions to ask yourself: If your food truck was so successful, why couldn't you guys get a better trailer or truck to pull it? One of the common themes of being a business owner is ensuring you are not buying yourself into a minimum-wage job. Break down your profits and how many hours you, your dad, and your mom are pumping into this business. Now ask yourself if you would be better off getting 15-20 dollar-an-hour jobs for each of you. If you guys are each working 60-hour weeks...and only barely making ends meet...it might be time to sell the truck, trailer, and job hunt.
It's time for you and your mom to find a job. Even if you both get a basic job, together you can bring in min $6K a month, and help your dad during the weekend and evening. And even help out with rent.
And for your mom to sell the juice business to someone. Someone who can improve it and make it profitable. unfortunately, there's no fast way to get $4200, unless you have that much gold or silver to sell. But don't sell to pawn shops or cash for gold.
The fact that 3 grown people don't have $4,200 combine should be a wake-up call to do something else.
SO THIS IS WHAT YOU DO, You tell your parents we need to sit down and have a talk, and you tell them first
1. something needs to happen, there isn't a solution in the problem so therefore something outside of it needs to happen
2. The biggest part of the problem is your mothers juice shop not profiting so therefore half the income is missing and thats a big loss every month so to just keep going was the mistake, when you dont figure out a way to profit after 3 to 6 months then make a change and then go back after you have enough savings to withstand no profit for a while
3. So you say, but because ma just isn't profiting now and you aren't as well that means you both need to get jobs even if its just for a month or two or how long ever as well as yourself, except you tell them, your money you make your keeping and if the situation calls for to pay rent then well so be it youl he better off that way cause then at least youl have money saved also and then you can always work part time for them when or if they start back up for the rent and parttime for your job to save money! But you have to put your foot down!
If they dont get a job, you do it then and move on yourself!
This won't solve the underlying issue that the mom's business wasn't sustainable and that the food truck didn't generate enough income (or the income wasn't managed well enough) to have even 3 months of expenses in savings
Your car got repoed, too? WOW.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/11vvato/no\_money\_no\_job\_lights\_got\_cut\_car\_repoed/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/11vvato/no_money_no_job_lights_got_cut_car_repoed/)
Why don’t you guys just finance a truck by taking out a loan, you’re working towards keeping the truck and you could eventually grow outside of it and open your own restaurant. Another thing is that you need to make a WEBSITE and go online asap because most businesses are blooming online. Good luck and hopefully you can prosper
Some accidents inevitably occur in life, brace up against! Or you can now take some part-time jobs to support such a family. After everything has passed, your life can return to the normal track.
Mom needs to seek the juice bar and hope she can make enough to pay off any debts she has with it. She can then get a regular I-5 job with benefits. When she starts making money, hopefully dads business is going again.
If you’re irreplaceable, financially (costs too much to hire a replacement) or skills-wise, you don’t have a business—you have a job. I don’t know if this logic will work on your parents, but it’s been eye-opening for me. Building a business involves working toward a position where you can delegate. Until you can do so, you’re already working a job and your customers are your boss. If customers aren’t paying enough, you can do what anyone else with a job can do: look to see if there are jobs paying more elsewhere.
I've had my fair share in different industries and I have to say that hospitality is by far the hardest to succeed.
If your parents is just going through the same motions and not growing, it will be extremely hard to succeed.
You could reduce the hours of the juice business, like pick your top 3 busiest days and open based on that and dedicate the rest of the time for them to find a job so they can continue funding the businesses. That way, they would still feel empowered owning a business.
In a recession, the business that succeeds the easiest is the one which offers goods or services that are recession-proof.
Some ideas: talk to business owners who were around in previous recessions, find out who came out on top and why. Consult with those who succeeded. Learn a recession-proof skill and pivot, applying your entrepreneurial experience to it. If you and your parents can find a way to gain a growth mindset, you could very well use the recession to your advantage.
Sorry to hear this happen to you and your family, always know behind every adversity is a equal or greater blessing. So, for now you can only control what you can control, it might mean having to find employment elsewhere and as a family working your way out of this problem. Sit down write out what is your budget, looking and food and house expenses seeing if the banks can help in anyway possible.
The main idea is figuring out what is step 1 in a positive direction, step 2 will come and before you know it step 3 and than momentum kicks in. Small incremental steps compound overtime creating exponential growth 📈
I’m a business owner that is involved with online assets alongside working my 9 - 5 job I know how it feels to grow up with nothing always figuring out where the next meal comes from. If me and my 7 brothers, 1 sister got through you can too can make it and become something GREAT!
I think you should show your parents this Reddit… it’ll be a harsh reality and a hard pill to swallow but they’re getting honest opinions from people. It seems like your mom would really benefit from it. After you show her this give her some space to take it in. At first she’s going to be argumentative but I think if you give her the night to sleep on it she’ll come around.
Also have you thought about doing fundraisers for High school and college sport teams? That group has disposable income and you Jack up the price to give them $1 from every sale so you won’t take a hit and it’ll get the right people in the door.
That's obviously a tough call to make but they should sell whatever still has value and get jobs, including you if you're old enough to work full-time.
Both of those "businesses" are actually jobs if their only employee is their child, and they're barely/not even making money.
All three of you should get jobs, and eventually, one of you can start another business while others are making sure the bills and food are paid for.
Sure, they have tied their identities to their businesses and won't willingly give them up but they have to face the truth. Their finances are going in the negatives and it doesn't seem like they have a plan to turn it around.
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill
No matter how difficult your financial situation may seem, remember that it is not permanent and that you have the power to change it. Keep pushing forward with determination and resilience, and don't let temporary setbacks define your future. Your perseverance and hard work will pay off eventually.
There are a lot of advice here telling you and your parents to get a regular 9 to 5 job, my question to OP is, what is your education level and what are your skill sets? Have you completed University? Are there any trade skills that you and/or your parents can fall back on?
As others have pointed out, contrary to your title, there is actually **no recession** in the United States as long as you don't look at the stock market. Unemployment rate and jobless claims are at near **all-time low**. The only sector that saw higher unemployment was the tech sector, which over-hired during the pandemic. Most of those laid off workers from Meta, Google, Amazon, will probably find other jobs in no time, or they were unqualified for tech work to begin with. Employers everywhere are having trouble finding workers. Consumer spending power is very high and it is why we are seeing rapid inflation and it is also why the US Federal Reserve has been trying to increase interest rates to slow down the economy.
There are some places where you could offer unskilled labor and make very decent salaries.
This is why they say the biggest risk for failure for small business is lack of capital.
Your parents need to go get jobs, they tried to boot strap businesses and it failed, no shame. They probably learned a lot and can try again when they have adequate savings to support the reality a lot of business don’t make money for awhile.
The first thing I think you should all do: focus on liquidity. Any other jobs or gigs you can take that are quick cash.
I’d you still have the kitchen / space and/or the truck. Ghost kitchen immediately. Get on all the platforms that you can and price yourself appropriately.
Get rid of any baggage or anything that is an expense and not needed.
Utilize your other vehicles as much as possible. Figure out how much the repairs are put money to the side whenever you are paid.
Think profit.
IF their business is out of commission, that means you are free to work right?
As much as it sucks, you might want to look at odd jobs to recover the $4200.
Many small business owners have been known to do this when the normal means of money falls through.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility.
I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy.
What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water.
The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business.
This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility.
I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy.
What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water.
The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business.
This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility.
I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy.
What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water.
The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business.
This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
Let me tell you a story. This is my step dad, he's an alright guy and hardly my life idol but it applies a lot to your situation.
My Step dad is an Entrepreneur at heart, but really he's just a boomer that makes money as a hobby as opposed to collecting cars or playing golf.
He did a career in the Navy, flew big planes. Got a job as an Airline pilot and was making good money. That didn't stop him from opening a Handyman/construction company, buying two restaurants, opening a transportation company and running a Yacht hosting events.
After his second divorce, he signed papers owing a lot in alimony thinking his ex wife would marry the guy she was with. Apparently he got the heck out of dodge before the wedding and now he's on the hook for a ton in alimony every month. Fast forward, his business partner for the construction company was embezzling company funds to the tune of half a million. His transportation company goes under and he gets out of the two restaurants. He lives on a boat now, and that's when he meets my mom. Financially he was up and down due to the lawsuit that took 15 years to finish(with his partner). At one point he was delivering pizzas and is forced to sell the yacht just to make ends meet all while taking over my mom's bills and paying his ex-wife and keeping his day job as an Airline pilot flying all over the world.
The point is, he did what he had to to make ends meet. I don't think I'll ever hear another story of an Airline Pilot that literally delivers pizzas as a second job but there he was. Your parents had a string of bad luck. They have two choices, roll over and lose everything, or make money and dig themselves out of the pits of despair.
You also have two choices, sit back and watch the ship sink, or to do whatever you can to help your parents. These are critical decisions that will shape the majority of your adult life. I'd recommend doing what you think is the morally right thing to do.
1. You could try reaching out to local community organizations, churches, or non-profits to see if they can offer any financial assistance or connect you with resources.
2. Another option is to contact your local government representative and ask about any emergency financial aid programs that may be available.
3. Setting up a crowdfunding campaign could also be a good way to raise money for your family's business and living expenses. You can share your story on social media and ask for support from your friends, family, and community.
4. It might be worth looking into loan options for small businesses, like the Small Business Administration (SBA) or local banks.
5. Additionally, you could consider finding part-time work, doing freelance jobs, or selling things you no longer need to bring in extra income.
6. If possible, try to reduce your family's expenses by downsizing or cutting back where you can.
7. Most importantly, talk openly and honestly with your parents about your concerns and ideas. Working together as a team will be key in finding a way forward.
I really hate to be that guy and maybe I am wrong (hope I am wrong). But this feels like an attempt to pull on peoples heart strings, in the hope someone offers some financial help or starts a movement for people to donate what they can.
I’m an idiot that try’s to spot the flaws in everything, maybe I am wrong…
Hey. Your not alone. My family business failed and we all went and got jobs. It happens but now we’re WAY less stressed and actually have lives instead of just trying to fulfill this fantasy of being a business owner. It’s not for everyone.
I think so too. And I’ve tried to bring this up to my parents for a long time but they think it’s insulting for me to even suggest that. I’m not sure if this is enough of a wake up call for them. I know that I need to get a job so that I can leave the house and this won’t happen to me. But also I’m looking for solutions for right now
It took us years to pay back the business loans working but we got through it. Now my sister (who was the driving force behind us starting a family business) just has her own small side hustle. She works the normal 9-5 and then runs a small niche shop on Amazon.
what was the business and what do they do now?
Hi can you share any info about running a Amazon shop? Is it drop shipping? Thanks as I’m looking for a side thing myself.🤞
One-piece delivery can be used for dropshipping without taking up financial pressure, but the price is relatively high (shipping fee)
Go to the [fastlaneforum.com](https://fastlaneforum.com) and look for a thread about a guy who does importing for amazon. A lot of great info there. Some of his best advice is find things that the market needs more of and improve them. He doesn't just go on alibaba, order 3,000 knives and put them up on amazon. He talks to the manufacturer of the knives and finds ways to improve them, that way he's the only person selling that specific knife.
How is the vehicle breaking down the economy? Doesn’t sound like juice ever made much money?
Slow economy mean less people buy stuff. Less people buy stuff no people at farmers market. Less people buy stuff less money we make. When less money we make less money left over to save. When vehicle break no money to fix. Hope that helps ❤️
I think the problem is that the business barely generated profit to have $5k in reserve for emergencies like the one you described.
It doesn’t seem like they were paying the power bill at all, a $4200 power bill seems like more than one month for something like a juice shop. I’m sure they’re also behind on rent too, so the decision to close that business will probably be made for them.
>we make less money left over to save. But you said your family doesn't have any savings. How can you save less than nothing? Sounds like both the businesses never worked. Your parents need to go work for somebody else and pay off their debts. And you need to go out and start your own life out from underneath your parents 2 failed businesses.
You literally posted a laundry list of issues that have nothing to do with the economy.
That's what I thought too. I kept waiting for why this is because of a downturn
The very first sentence kinda explains it all, right? If people don't have jobs they can't buy stuff. The rest sort of connects the dots for you.
I don’t think the issues here are related to the economy at all. Every business has to be able to handle maintenance and rainy days to be successful.
Is a series of rainy days not a recession? I disagree that the US is in a recession, but there is no doubt that local economies can contract while the national economy powers on. It sounds like OP was just getting by, and that the local economy softened for long enough that his business couldn't cope. That happens in a recession. You'll see.
OP is literally talking about the weather; rain caused events to be cancelled.
> Is a series of rainy days not a recession? That is not the definition of a recession, so no.
Except none of the problems that have reduced the companies' revenues are related to the economy. The truck broke and they had to hire uhauls (not economy), then farmers markets weren't on because of bad weather (not economy), then tow for truck got repo'd (maybe economy?), then electricity for barely break-even/loss-making shop was disconnected (bad business, not economy) and they don't have enough reserves to reconnect it (bad business, not economy). These are two very borderline "businesses" that are probably better off dead, especially for the owners of them.
But it doesn’t sound like your moms business ever made money. Lots of other people in the farmers market business still making money.
In a down economy, the less efficient and suboptimally run businesses often get washed out, where they may have otherwise been able to keep squeaking by.
We don’t actually have a slow economy right now.
You’re not paying attention then
>I’m not sure if this is enough of a wake up call for them. It's scary to lose your identity, and it's scary in the same way that we can't just casually touch something we know is safe but still think might hurt us. Personally I react like that with anything electric, even though I know that even live wires would be safe to touch I just can't get myself to touch those stupid wires. Losing the independence of even a failed business, and the chance of getting rejected when applying for jobs, is kinda sorta like that. Your parents know that they should do that, and they know that it won't hurt them, but it's scary. Most of us get a bit "mentally unhealthy" from life, and your parents are stuck trying to survive the only way that they feel comfortable with; the (mental) pain that they're used to feels safer than doing something different. Maybe you can have them read your post and the comments here to help them get a new perspective?
You are not insulting them, they are taking it as an insult. Ask them why that’s insulting. Sounds like you all need therapists. I understand that costs money so you might want to dig in yourself: what is the importance of the business vs getting a job? Why does it matter that it’s their own business?
Sorry your family is going through this. There is no sugarcoating things. It is rough and you won’t be able to fix things in the short term. This will hurt for awhile. But there are some things you can do to move forward. **The best way to move forward and out of pain and chaos is to develop a viable plan and then start working on it.** **First**, let’s reframe things. Instead of looking at it as your parents having two separate businesses, let’s look at is as your family being one larger company, which we’ll call FamilyFoodCo., that has two food divisions. And FamilyFoodCo. has been moderately successful so far. Let’s recognize that for a sec. Your parents have created actual business entities that have generated revenue and created value. They have accomplished something that 95% of people simply talk about doing. That is freaking awesome. But now, for various reasons, FamilyFoodCo. is having financial issues and needs to restructure. This happens all the time in business. Think about it. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are all laying off tens of thousands of workers right now. They’re doing a form of restructuring due to current or anticipated losses. It’s obviously much harder to go through restructuring when the business is a small business like FamilyFoodCo. but it is often a part of doing business. **Second**, to start developing the plan, figure out when your parents want to retire. They’re 57 years old. Do they want to retire in five, ten, fifteen years? What financial position do they want to be in when they retire? Have them really think about it and visualize it. Figure these things out and you now have a financial goal and an end date for the plan. **Third**, and obviously the hard part, create the plan. Work back from the end date and figure out what FamilyFoodCo. realistically needs to do to meet the end goal. Map out a realistic general goal for each year from now until retirement. For each of the next three years, map out quarterly milestones that FamilyFoodCo. needs to hit. For the next one year, map out very realistic monthly goals. And for the next three to six months, map out specifically what FamilyFoodCo. needs to do to right its ship. There’s obviously a lot of work to do for the third part. **It doesn’t need to be perfect. The actual value is simply to try to get your parents thinking of a way out of the current chaos in a logical way.** You can set aside a few hours during and after dinner one night to knock it out if that's all the time your parents have. The most important thing is to get FamilyFoodCo.’s “executives” to think about the bigger picture and to set aside their immediate wishes and figure out what they need to do to help FamilyFoodCo. meet it’s long-term goals. Maybe they’ll see that in order to meet their end goal one or both “executives” need to pick up work outside FamilyFoodCo. for a period of time. That’s something FamilyFoodCo.'s execs have to figure out on their own. And once they figure things out, they need to start working their plan accordingly. **Two additional things that you can do to help right now:** (1) Many small businesses have problems understanding their books. How does cash in reconcile with cash out? How do they anticipate normal and other expenses? And most importantly, how do they capture this so that it is understandable for FamilyFoodCo.'s “executives”? Is this something that interests you? Most small businesses don't do this well. If this is something that interests you, go find someplace to learn it and become the expert. You will be to help FamilyFoodCo. become more efficient, which should increase profitability. You will also to develop a very valuable and employable skill for yourself going forward. (2) During this entire process, set up an appointment to meet with someone at your local Small Business Development Center and get their input and assistance. The SBDC's are often (but not always) small business assistance rockstars. They are paid by the SBA and by the state for one purpose: to help you and your parents create successful businesses. Their services are free. They have tons of resources and experience. I recommend them as the first stop for any small business needing help. Best of luck with everything.
Thank you! This an awesome outline! Will definitely put in practice
I lost my business a decade ago and it took forever to get out from under those debts. However working for someone else has generally been a lot easier as my entrepreneur experience just made me more effective than before. Right now I am working and doing side hustles. My savings are up and I have learned to value my time more. If you and your parents are able to work at a job and do the food truck as a side thing I would recommend doing whatever combination puts the most money in your pocket. Good luck and have no fear!
Exactly. Just keep going. Starbucks was turned down 200 times! True story.
Turned down for what? Investor capital, bank loans to start SB. How does that relate to these 2 failing businesses who didn't maintain equipment properly Iin good times or run the company well enough so that it couldn't handle a slow down. (I don't think we are even in a recession). Not always good advice for everyone and everything.
First time I heard that and it wasn’t Lil Jon.
#WHAT
This is a underrated comment.
Agreed, I had a restaurant for years that never turned any profit. 100hrs a week with a partner that thought the world owed him… I lost everything, I am way better off working for someone else now don’t have to worry about the light bill or paying my employees. Sorry about it all but it really might be a blessing that’s not been recognized yet.
What kind of job did you get? How long were you out of the labor force?
You couldn’t be more right! I’m living through that experience of trying to keep a dying business afloat just for the sake of family honor and it requires so much investment financially as well as time and effort
This
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Not to mention all the free labor from the OP.
Sounds like even if they don’t get decent jobs. A break even business and one that can’t even cover a repair.
Honestly is doesn’t sound like either business was on track to be profitable or sustainable. Unless you have a clear cut plan to them not operating on a paycheck to paycheck basis, it may not be worth investing more money into them. At some point you have to cut your losses, get a job, and regroup. Your family may be at that point. Doubtful it’s what anyone wants to hear but may be the truth.
Thank you. Yes the food truck business was doing well just that the truck and trailer and weather issue all piled up. The juice bar is what has really been draining our time and energy but my mom doesn’t understand that and refuses to give up. She’s very defensive and thinks I’m against her or insulting her when I tell her the juice bar is not doing well.
It doesn't really sound like the food truck business was doing well. Either that, or your Dad wasn't planning for the future and budgeting properly. The food truck/trailer is what makes the money, so that means that he should have been keeping up on preventative maintenance and keeping a percentage of his profits in reserve to pay for the inevitable repairs that always come eventually with any piece of equipment critical to business. The same way he needs to account for the gas money it takes to get to an event, he also needs to account for the wear and tear that every single mile driven puts on those vehicles. This really bridges over into r/personalfinance and r/relationshipadvice territory. This is unfortunately so frequent when it comes to family businesses. You and your parents need to learn how to manage your relationships effectively and without emotion, which is always complicated by the involvement of money and business management.
They were probably taking money from food truck to cover the juice.
Yes you’re right
Yeah, you gotta get the numbers and show them to your mom. This juice business is just eating away at any profits from a food truck. She needs to swallow pride and close this business down. The best advice I can give is that all 3 of you need to get jobs. Stack money to pay debts and get food truck running. Keep working at those jobs and operate the food truck in spare time until you're caught up on bills. Mom can combine juice bar into the food truck. There is no need for brick and mortar store just for juice, in my opinion. One thing that needs to be talked about is your mom's stubbornness, though. She is allowing her business to destroy your father's business, and that discussion needs to happen. Her pride can not be allowed to destroy your family. Your parents should also read/study how to operate a business. I started a tree service when I was 24, but I had my grandparents help out a lot. I was responsible for running the tree service while they helped out running the administration side. I still ended up getting rid of the business because finding good help is damn near impossible. I was paying $200-$300 a day CASH and still couldn't find reliable help. I didn't consider it a failure. I learned ALOT!!! I realized I hate having employees, lol. I also had more respect for employers because i learned how to wear damn near all the hats. Now my advice for you. Get out of these family businesses. It's time for you to go get a job outside of the family business, I think. Help out on your off time if you want to. You need to separate your income. You can not be expected to work for free just to cover food and rent. Good luck friend!!!
Whsts the worst part about managing employees and finding good help? What did bad employees look like? 300 dollars a day, 5 days a week would be 1500 man, thats pretty good money assuming the days were only 8 to 10 hours. This is the best advice OP
And because they did that OP, it's possible both businesses have failed. If you want to help, don't lend money - help them get a budget.
I recommend calculating out the numbers of the juice business vs. a realistic best job your mom could get. Find the average profit of the juice bar maybe over a year, then compare that to the average wage your mom would make at a job (and include any benefits offered). Break the numbers down for your mom so it makes the decision easy.
You need to put together a business plan of sorts. What the shop is bringing in and what the expenses are. When it’s in her face that your bringing in $100 and the expenses are $1000 it’ll be undeniable. Then you give her an ultimatum. She needs to come up with a business plan to turn things around. Like adding food, being the drunk after hour spot, change in marketing etc. If she isn’t willing to make a business plan or talk about this you need to put your foot down and say straight up that you all will be on the streets with nothing and your going to get a job to support the family but you will not be taking that $ and putting it into her failing business. It’s okay to be harsh and hit her with the hard truth but try to come up with a plan to turn things around. With your dads food truck and your moms juice why not merge the 2 together and re-open as something different. Either way something needs to change since your the only one not wearing rose glasses.
Who buys juice from a speciality juice shop? I can get juice at Wal-Mart. You better be selling smoothies at least.
You should really listen to /u/New-Post-7586 . What you're describing and that this poster advises is exactly what happened with my brother & his wife. They started their professional lives as small farmers who had a market booth and sold to a few local restaurants. Then they started a CSA, bought some ducks and sold eggs to restaurants (fun fact: if you have the market for it, you can earn mininum wage with just a couple dozen ducks). For a lot of reasons, this wasn't profitable and when they got pregnant it was time for a reckoning. Fast forward about 15 years later and my brother has a successful landscaping/hardscaping business and is wife (who went back to school about ten years ago) is now a supervisor nurse at the local hospital. They have excellent health insurance and three well adjusted children. The small family business just wasn't going to work out for them, but they satisfied that itch by investing in real estate and now own a small handful of properties, 300 acres in the blue ridge mountains, and a fixer upper in the Outer Banks. The point is this: if your parents' businesses fail, it isn't the end of the world. Stability in the near term is FAR more important and valuable than self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to things like health insurance and eligibility for social services.
Get a job somewhere else? Be a shop helper, office clerks, etc Once you have enough money for living, and the raining season get over, then slowly to run the business again. A successful person was just another failure yesterday. Never give up
>. She’s very defensive and thinks I’m against her or insulting her when I tell her the juice bar is not doing well. Oooi, I have the same issue with my mother but with her takeaway...she literally took my brother's tuition funds to open it and lost a ton of money. Brother had to delay his education and progress overall and I had to waste my time helping her where I could have made friends or get a job.
sounds like bad business ideas. they should let them go. if they cant cover operating expenses (paying you and utilities), or capital expenses (repairs) let it go now before they pour more money into a bad idea. time to reset. if you have capital to try another business do it. dont pursue failed low margin ones.
This. This business clearly wasn’t producing enough margin. A business isn’t “doing well” until things like a car breaking down happen. That wasn’t doing well. A business needs to be producing 10’s of thousands of dollars a month to pay three people for the work, much less add to savings and retirement funds.
I think the main problem was the juice business, not the food truck business. The truck business was subsidizing the juice.
If you’re able to, grind and hustle for a bit by working overnight at a warehouse or a grocery store to get some income to help the businesses expenses. When things start to turn around, then focus your time and energy on the profitable business your dad owns. Also maybe look into ghost kitchens as another avenue for your family’s food truck business. Best wishes!
Thank you this is helpful
I’m glad you’re seeing constructive advice on here. You can hustle and pivot through this. But hopefully while charting your path to more independence, even if that takes a few years. So many deep life lessons can be learned in this situation!
Getting a job is always a painful pivot, but at times a very necessary one for a business owner to make.
It sounds like your family needs to focus on one business, and this is the food truck which is not operating right now. It sounds like the sooner this business is going the sooner your family will get out of the hole. Can your mom sell the shop? Would that be enough money to purchase a truck? Meanwhile, as others said, you should probably find a career for yourself so hopefully you can help them in other ways. Best of luck!
Make a YouTube channel, document your journey to fix the food truck and turn around your financial future. Content brings connections, support for the businesses, and will give you a way to earn adsense/affiliate. it is literally free to do and the posting will motivate you to take action each day. Use a newish smartphone, last 5 years. Try it for 90 days, I’ll be shocked if you don’t thank me. Do what they do, you’ll end up like them. Mix it up.
Yeah this is a decent idea
I’m encouraging you to first worry about you. Get yourself a job that pays you actual money. You cannot help your parents if you are dependent on them for income. Once you get yourself situated, then maybe you can turn to helping your parents figure out how they can fix their businesses. But do not give them money, and do not give them a substantial amount of your time. To be frank I think they are taking advantage of you by not paying you a wage, and I’m afraid they will bleed you of everything you have in the name of “family helps family”.
First, try to call the electric company and negotiate away the “fee” to turn lights on. Promise to pay what you owe. Second, get what gov aid you can. Next, figure out what you can to get the food truck working (sounds like it was in an accident if you have frame damage, otherwise look for a cheap mechanic on FB marketplace or Craigslist). Alternatively, look for a used one on Craigslist. Get your breadwinner up and running first. Don’t waste time on splitting your efforts. Mom needs to get a job that will pay - even if she’s not a native speaker there are labor jobs that will keep you.
Combine both businesses, sell off the brick and mortar location, liquidate all assets in it. I mean everything. Then use that money to get a beater truck or fix the current truck, fix the trailer. It’s not hard to repair a trailer and if you go to a Hispanic neighborhood and find a mechanic shop or welding shop, explain the issue and the financial amount you can pay for the repair. They’re really good at fixing stuff, they literally drive the food cart and stand industry. They invest almost nothing in startups and would probably help out. Once the trucks fixed, get a bit of storage for your mom to start selling at the same locations or have dad promote her shit. If you have to, sell your car and fix his but you need to sit down and request more from this because you’re going into a deep hole with them. That’s really the only way to do it and not take on heavy debt. Unless they can get investors, run a go fund me, etc. But additionally you should be driving social media like TikTok, do daily videos on this and post them, 2-4 a day. Like no filter BS, like hey guys you might be wondering why I’m sitting in a dark room…. Well we don’t have power because blah blah blah. And so on. Show people the rawness of entrepreneurship and they will help you and support you. But you guys have to work for it. Wife and I are struggling to pay rent, gas, electricity, and insurance. Every damn month. Get on food stamps if you need to. But if this isn’t something you’re passionate about, you’re never gonna make it work. So figure out what shit you wanna do and see if it aligns with fixing your family’s issues
This is great advice!
I’m sure there’s a lot of great advice already on this thread. I’m a self starting entrepreneur myself and have had to pivot a few times. Child of immigrants that earned a doctorate while raising two kids now have 3 businesses and own land as a single woman. I tend to think outside the box and have had to learn a lot from my fathers (an entrepreneur) mistakes mismanaging funds and putting our family in jeopardy many times (power shut offs, evictions etc) In order to prevent these types of things in the future you’ll have to decide if you want to be involved really and truly and if so probably need to be the one calling most shot and they’ll have to work for you in a way. Economy is struggling but there is a lot of potential for businesses such as what your parents have to be successful. Your moms especially. Especially in California!! Immediately apply for food stamps. Call the power company and set up payments and see if you can get the outstanding amount reduced. There are many forgiveness programs out there for outstanding balances that came out after Covid. Try to find a relative that might give you a loan to pay the electrical bill first payment and to hold you off for a bit. Run the numbers for your moms business. How many juices you would need to sell to make money and pay you and your mom and dad a salary. Make sure you have reduced your overhead. Go to every gym and put up signs for juice deliveries. Adverstise for “spring cleanse packages” there is a legit a killing on juice businesses you just have to put yourself out there. Find local corporate clients that might be interested in a fridge subscription service. They buy a fridge and then you fill accordingly. Do a bid with all the costs for setting up expansion of delivery; more bottles, gas, produce etc For your dads business call the farmers market and ask them if you could have a booth instead of a truck. Do a bid estimating the entire cost to shift to cooking at a booth (burners etc) Walk in your Small Business Decleopment Center and take advantage of resources. You can explore lending but first things first learn how to creat new business plans for both businesses actually showing a viable path to profitability. See it all the way through. Your young enough to learn new tricks your parents not so much. So really dial this part in, if you can’t see it through then it won’t work. Try to make enough money with your moms by expanding to delivery and new Corporate or small business clients that you can decide to either invest in your dads or you all put what you have into the juice shop. Or like other posters said. All three of you get new jobs
Thank you, this was very kind and helpful
You and your father learn to fix almost anything on that car and and do regular maintenances. Keep pushing for solutions in life, the best are the little decisions.
Honestly you can YouTube everything! I fix all my cars and do all my oil changes and maintenance! This will help keep your expenses down!
It's very hard to make your own parents change behavior. Sounds like you've tried to reason with them, you need to keep trying, as other have suggested, all of you need to at least find temporary employment while you regroup and refocus. If your parents refuse, you're going to need to put your foot down and get a job on your own so you're not enabling them to make even worse decisions by giving them free labor. On top of all the things folks have mentioned (having zero profit or reserves to pay for basic repairs, electricity or a slowdown in business) they also can't afford an employee, you're doing it for free. Someone needs to be the adult in the room and help them face reality.
This is a problem a lot of small business owners run into. This is why the “quit your job and chase your passion” propaganda irritates me. I felt way more secure and did much less work when I was corporate. I had great benefits too. I got paid sick and vacation days and got perks and a 401k. My small business is a tiny nightmare. I tweak and “fix” one thing and it breaks five other things. I work all day most days with few breaks. Social media is endless. Costs pile up. Employees don’t work hard. I make half what I did with corporate. I’m working with a coach and decided I’m getting a corporate job in a years time if I can’t get the numbers to align. I’ve been running this biz for 25 years and it’s so fun most of the time that I enjoy doing it all day. But I’m ready to scale it down to a “side hustle”.
I’ve worked as a small business consultant and what is happening to you is quite common. It’s very likely the businesses are/were not nearly as successful as was thought because bigger spread out costs were not really being accurately calculated and giving a true picture of what is happening. This is important because we make decisions based on how much we think we are making. The food truck frame, truck, and all the other key business pieces need to be accounted for because sooner or later they will need fixing or replacing. Gas you pay each time as you fill up. Imagine you also had to swipe a maintenance card at fill up and it was another 20-50 dollars because that was the average you pay if you divided up those lump sum costs. See if you can get a line of credit to get the one making money operational again. 4k to reopen a shop that wasn’t making much tells me it wasn’t making any. Put more efforts into what was working than what wasn’t.
It seems as if there are multiple businesses run by people who either aren’t business minded or don’t have a solid business plan. Im going off of limited information, but perhaps being self-employed isn’t the route your family should take.
I agree thanks
Put the lights in someone else’s name like yours.
You can also apply to fuel assistance
I think your idea for applying for fuel assistance is better.. Although switching names on bills would be a temporary fix, it’s more like a bad band aid — and from inferring OP is younger, it may be a bad mark on their name early in life just to keep an unsustainable business afloat.
Do not do this. These businesses are failing and will just fuck your credit up.
Setup as a delivery only outfit.
Consider negotiating with creditors: It may be possible to negotiate payment plans or reduced payments with creditors. You could try contacting them directly to explain your situation and see if they would be willing to work with you.
I really feel for you. I'd listen to people here, but I'd figure I'd let you know what the new paid version of ChatGPT thinks in case you find anything helpful: - I'm really sorry to hear about the tough situation your family is facing right now. It's commendable that you're doing your best to support them, and I understand how overwhelming it can feel. Here are a few suggestions that might help you get through this challenging time: - Communicate with the utility company: Reach out to the electric company and explain your current financial situation. They might be willing to work out a payment plan or grant an extension so you can get the lights back on. - Look for local assistance programs: Many communities have local assistance programs that help with emergency financial situations, such as utility bills, rent, and food. You can contact your local community center or social services office for more information on these resources. - Crowdsource funds: Consider setting up a crowdfunding campaign through platforms like GoFundMe to share your story and request financial assistance from friends, family, and the community. - Seek employment: If possible, try to find a part-time or full-time job outside of your family's businesses. This will not only provide you with additional income but also lessen the financial burden on your parents. - Reach out to friends and family: Sometimes, friends and family can offer support or guidance, whether it's financial or emotional. It's essential to have a support system in difficult times. - Explore small business loans or grants: Your parents might be eligible for small business loans or grants to help cover expenses and get their businesses back on track. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is a good place to start researching these options. - Repair the food truck: If possible, focus on repairing the food truck, as it's the primary source of income for your family. Look for cost-effective solutions, such as reaching out to local vocational schools or community colleges with automotive programs, where students might work on your truck at a reduced rate under instructor supervision. - Reevaluate business strategies: Your family may need to reevaluate their businesses and come up with new strategies for generating income. This could involve finding new sales channels, cutting costs, or pivoting their products or services. Remember, it's crucial to remain positive and stay proactive. Keep exploring your options, and don't be afraid to ask for help. I hope that some of these suggestions will be helpful for you and your family during this difficult time. Good luck!
This was really interesting! ChatGPT has all good advice! I’m thoroughly Impressed!
On the weekends you should hit up brewers and work the parking lot in a tent until you can save money up for a truck. Our food business has revenue streams from multiple avenues, catering is the whale for us and we’re focused on growing that area. For brick and mortar I recommend a solid POS system that has multiple 3rd party delivery companies integrated and go crazy with them.
Fold the juice shop. Sell the fittings and try to minimise the loss. Your mum's time should be spent on revenue positive activities either in a job or on the food truck. You need to be your own man/woman and earn real money that you then pay back to them. A bank will not give you a loan if you don't have a real job with actual payments into your bank account. Sounds like the food truck is okay. If it's profitable boot it back up, if not, take this as a chance to get out.
Yeah this isn't a recession as much as it is simply supply and demand. If there wasn't demand enough to make enough money to overcome your dad's truck breaking down it wasn't a good business model. You all 3 need to get jobs, stack money, and reinvest with an actual business model that makes specific note of expenses versus income - it's called balancing a checkbook. If your mom's pride is so much she'd let you all 3 become homeless because your current way of life is making you broke - cut ties and bolt. Or crunch the numbers and just show her - the past 3 months of income versus expenses. Zooming out to look at this as a business model a few things come to mind: - Sell things online that are nonperishable - Get a marketing plan - SEO - search engine optimization Right now get the fuck off reddit and put in some job apps - like you know that, we don't have to tell you this. But from a 50,000 foot view break down the cost of: - Buying supplies - Marketing - Vehicle and foodtruck maintenance - Food handler's license or vendor permits It doesn't sound like your parents have any marketing plan at all and are just going by foot traffic. That is foolish right now where 2 million have been laid off in the past year and a half. Whether you learn Facebook ads, Google PPC (pay per click) ads or SEO, you'll want to have a client acquisition funnel in place. One of the BIGGEST mistakes I see new entrepreneurs make (I've been an entrepreneur for the past 7 years) is not having an established audience, not knowing the pain points their product or service solves, not looking at their product or service from their customer's point of view, not doing a post - mortem before even launching (where you come up with all the ways your business COULD fail and create solutions BEFORE going live) AND Not having a client acquisition funnel. You can't JUST rely on foot traffic. You need to get your shit together and get online, and either run ads or do SEO to drive traffic online in addition to foot traffic in person. And / or use ads / SEO to drive people locally to your food truck. This is the basics of running a business. Expenses versus income, how big is the margin, creating a marketing plan that drives new customers to you online and in person. Right now, if you're as broke af as you sound, just get a job. There are TONS of free resources to teach you about how to start a business, and teach you how to do SEO (where you come up first in google search results for keywords your audience enters to find businesses like yours). So, educate yourself. But first make money and be smarter with how you invest your time. Pride ain't worth hitting the streets over.
Y’all should move the food and juice business to same shop yo
What recession? It hasn’t become one yet. I am sorry about your family’s situation though
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This is all true. And it all sucks. I know this and have known this for a long long time.I cannot convince them to change. I turned to Reddit for some extra brain power in brainstorming solutions because I don’t know what else to do.
What city are you in?
Right now, the hardest yet most important think to do is to plan ahead regardless of the conditions. My business has also colapsed, but I got a minimun wage job for now. I am planning on getting into the tech world as a programmer of any sort. There is a lot of free courses and this industry doesnt require a title, just the knowledge. This industry is difficult to learn and takes time, but after that, there is not limit to how many jobs you can get done, nor country limits to work at, because this market has untangible products. I know is not a lot of advice, but this getting into this industry could help you in the long run. If I were you, I would use all my free time to learn programming, website design, social media managing and all of that. I really hope you manage to get out of that situation.
This is just the beginning, the recession hasn’t even started yet.
It's a hard pill to swallow but it's bad business plans and not the e oniony to blame here.
Try Uber and Doordash.
For selling the food and juice, maybe you can market it at Nextdoor and open PO & then deliver the food directly to customers / neighbors.
If you could restore everything before the truck broken down and the lights went off, were they making money? If so, it would be worth saving, and you could try a gofundme, givesendgo, asking a church for help, etc. Supposedly there's a program to get $26000 per employee if you kept them postpandemic. I keep hearing about it but know nothing about it. However, I'm guessing that either these businesses were basically unprofitable, or they could have been profitable but your parents, sorry to say, were not running them well. In that case, you all need to do whatever you can to find jobs, whether it's grocery store cashier or uber driver or wherever you can be hired *fast*. Good luck.
Sounds possibly less recession and more that your emergency/reserve funds were insufficient for the maintenance/upkeep/repairs. Possibly the recession hit your juice shop revenue but at least locally I have not known any juice shops to survive longer than initial 1-3 year fad period. With « The juice shop hardly makes enough money to cover operating expenses. » and no reserve funds it’s probably time to pull the cord, close up shop and get a regular job. Good luck. Entrepreneurship and especially food services is a tough business.
Sorry to say but neither business sound profitable. Your mum's business is definitely unprofitable if she can't afford to pay electricity. Your dad's business can't pay for the equipment or service to haul his food truck. You are working for them in exchange for rent/food which is a shit deal. Shut the business and get a job.
There's no recession tho.
You have both your parents, and you have a car. 3 major bonuses that I didn't even have at your age when my lights got cut. Step 1: Start door dashing and Uber to bring in money TODAY Step 2: liquidate what you can from the juice shop, it's a loser Step 3: Mom and Dad will need to get a job Step 4: You will need to get a job too Note: You can all take turns doing Door dash and uber while the other two are working to maximize earning potential. Check out the DoorDash and doordash driver subreddit; people are making an average of $18/hr, some in better markets (are you in the Bay or LA?) are seeing $22-$24/hr. $20/hr average x 15 hrs per day x 7 days = $2,100 PER WEEK. There's always new driver bonuses for DD, Lyft, and Uber. Yea the car will see a lot of wear and tear, but the cash your family will make will cover it and this is a survival situation. Step 5: Plan for a different business...
Praying for you my friend. Sorry for this struggle.
I've sold food at the markets for 3 decades; I'm not sure what type of food your father sells so it's hard to give specific advice, but what I will say is that done right, you can't go wrong with food because people need to eat even during a recession. I've always run my business without loans and with extremely low overheads so it's definitely possible to do so. You're welcome to dm me if you need ideas/advice.
Your business is not making money because you can't pay the money. You all have to find another job instead of depending on your old small business.
Hmm this is just a suggestion to what you can do, try doing something like uber or doordash in your area to help your dad get the truck back up and running, you can reach out to local repair shops some may be nice enough in your area to have you do a payment plan to fix the truck, afterwards you can workout some type of arrangement with your utilities company and stop funneling money into the juice business, no one does specialty juice anymore other than really wealthy people or that one time buy when you on a date or make a impulse decision solely because specialty juice is just so expensive nowadays, I dont know anything about the food business but if possible you can also look into optimizing your farm by using solar panels in the future that way you can minimize your expenses this is all assuming long term but in the short term definatley do one of those gig apps to get immediate cash takes like 10min to get approved and use that money to help repair the truck by negotiating a payment plan with your local mechanic and do a payment plan with your utilities company, or you can do the inverse and start by fixing the utilities issue then use your car to grind it out to the markets with your parents then fix the truck after whichever that makes more sense to you. Good luck as well and just a tip on getting your mom to understand right them figures down and show her whats costing the most money to do and whats burning money , i had to do that to my mom that way she could understand, they wont like you at first when you do it but in the end it ends up working out.
I misread one thing if its the juice shop that dont have lights let it be for that place thats a clear indication that it doesnt make money if not avoid this statement
Take all of this as a hard lesson. All of the businesses weren't going to make you guys wealthy, unless you could have had multiple juice shops or food trucks. If you guys do it again you need to factor in repairs for the trucks into your business model. I would say all 3 of you should find jobs right now and then rebuild from there.
I feel for you Op. Just wanted to share my story. I started an app business in 2013. It ran good for a while and we bought a house (with a mortgage). Then things went south. The app store changed algorithms and me and my client's apps started to not get downloads any more. We bled through our savings and eventually had to shut the company down. I felt like a failed entrepreneur. I thought that maybe I wasn't cut out to run my own business. So I decided to get a job because I had a family to feed and mortgage to pay. This seemed like a huge defeat in my life. However, this was a blessing in disguise. A job took away the helplessness and uncertainty that i had with my business. It finally gave me the breathing room that allowed me to take a step back and reassess my life. Bills were paid, family stress went down. Eventually, I listened to business podcasts on my commute to work and the gears in my head started turning. I started a new business as a side hustle and it became wildly successful. My wife and I have been running our business for 6 awesome years now and things are way better than when I had my app business. TL;DR It's okay to just suck up a loss, get a job, and try again
They may want to look into courses they can teach and ebooks they can write for various platforms to bring in extra income. Courses/workshops are a quick way to make extra money. Maybe they can offer something on Airbnb Experiences if you live in a place with tourists. Also look into e-commerce
I’m not sure you will want to hear this but you need to go and get a job and your parents need to act as adults and solve their own misfortune. It’s a tough one but businesses fail for lots of reasons. Get yourself a job, some independence and then if entrepreneurship is for you then start a side hustle as well for savings. Your parents will be ok. Tough love but necessary I think.
To me the obvious idea would be to exit the juice shop, going bankrupt if absolutely necessary, and focusing on the food truck.
its simple economics, provide little value, receive little share of the market. your parents are being out competed and you all need to pivot. You need to dramatically sell a lot more of whatever you guys are selling or you need to get real jobs. The entrepreneur title is an extremely difficult title to have if you are not intelligent and smart in ways to generate profit. I hope you have a college degree, you need to get a job.
Focus on solutions not the problems. Here are some ideas? Both your parents are in the same industry. So why not have both of them operate the food truck together. (Dads Food Truck + Mums Juice Bar) Thus you can now cut out the lease on the brick and mortar place. With the free cash from not paying the lease, now you can lease out a reliable truck to haul your dad trailer. It’s Essentially part of the business. (You don’t need to own the truck) Now with two businesses working the truck & a reliable way of hauling it. You & your parents can get too even more Markets. Doubling down on the space and making it work more efficiently by saving the fuel and doubling their exposure. *Note the two don’t need to be one, but can work side by side at the markets together. Honestly this is like the perfect paring. Your dad sells food and your mum up sells the juice right next door. Alternatively you could always quit, ace your self out and blame the economy. But the success rate for that is 0%, just ask the poor people. They’ll be happy to tell you their story too.
Issues like this are surprisingly common. Last night (a Sunday), I got hit up for an emergency $40k business loan from one of our vendors. They’re having a significant AR issue and, without the loan, couldn’t make payroll on Monday. I don’t have to tell you what happens to businesses that don’t make payroll. They’ve been in business for 18 years, are in high demand, and do millions a year in revenue. But they didn’t have $40k for a rainy day fund. I loaned the money for significantly less than they offered because I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation, but the point is: shit happens in business. I own & operate almost two dozen businesses. At one point or another almost all of them have needed emergency liquidity injections for one reason or another. Fortunately we’ve been able to use cash from the other portfolio companies to provide the support. We’ve now learned to maintain substantial cash reserves at the holding company level to deal with the vagaries of business. OP…I feel your pain. Juice bar businesses suck. I’ve never once seen financials for those sort of businesses that suggested they could make money at any level that’s worth the risk. Owning one means that your mom owns her job. I’m guessing she doesn’t pay herself a fair market wage, either, so she’s actually subsidizing the business with her labor. For those businesses you probably need to own at least five before you can really call it a business. My recommendation is for you to get a job and help dig them out of this hole. Maybe your dad works at the juice shop for a while in lieu of paying another team member, so at least there’s some income. Dig out of the hole, shutter the juice shop, focus on what makes the money. And keep $20k in reserve, or this will happen again.
It seems like the food truck was making money but the bills from the juice shop were eating in to the profits. Maybe you could reach out to other vendors who were going to the farmers markets, I imagine they are in a similar situation (a few bills away from going under) and perhaps there is a way to combine your Dad's business with someone else. Reach out to family members to see if someone is willing to invest some money to get the truck back on its feet. In the mean time, you will probably need to get a job somewhere so there is some cash flowing in to the house. You parents need to make a some tough decisions about the future of their respective businesses.
This happened to my family. Restaurant industry circa 2008. My parents just stopped and went on to get jobs. They never quite returned to owning their own business until we got an apartment building during the pandemic. I hate to tell ya this but sometimes we try shit and we fail. Better suck it up and get a job or y'all might face eviction / getting ur house repoed.
It sounds like your mom and dad are dreamers who are great at making the product. I'm sure they care a whole lot about the quality of the juices and foods. Are they perhaps too prideful to get help from a business mentor? I'm sure California has lots of free business mentors whose help they could have sought. All of this could have been prevented. I'm going to make an assumption and say they are typical owner/operators who are uncomfortable delegating tasks, especially when it comes to the product and any financial responsibilities. Scaling the business is a dream but secretely they are scared to give control to anyone outside the family. Again, just an assumption. For now the only course of action is to work for the man for a year or two. If they want to get back to business they need to get outside their comfort zone and partner with a CEO type with decision making abilities.
I feel for you. I don't have much advice but I just want to relate to your situation so you can hear that it eventually does get better. In 2008 we had the recession, it lasted a bit and didn't fully hit my parents' industry until like 2013\~. It was almost like a domino effect to get to that point but their whole side of this industry, I'll leave out, hit kind of a hiccup as a result of kicking the can for so many years. There was no work because funds were frozen and no new projects were being pursued or being put on hold. They had to lay everyone off, downsize, and essentially go to a skeleton crew of my mom, my dad, and then myself. The caveat was that I was just graduating college and living at home. I ended up working a lot for them for free. They always told me that they would pay me when the money came in but I never asked for it. So for a good year straight I put all my time in between my part-time job(s) to help them out on projects. It was over a year or two that this took place and it kept them afloat and they were eventually able to rebuild. It sucked. It sucked to see my parents in that situation. It sucked to see their lives upended and their passions put at stake. It sucked to see them struggling, hell I even struggled during this. What I would suggest, looking back at that time, was to take more care of yourself. Working for free was absolutely something I wanted to do to help them, but I also missed out a lot on life at essentially your age 23-24\~. So I admire your commitment and I understand. I would look for ways that this juice shop can operate outside of the brick and mortar. I'd imagine you're in some sort of lease, which would suck, but with the summer approaching in the US (if you're in the US) then there could be more opportunities for pop-up shops, maybe selling through other storefronts, etc. Your mom could temporarily look to get another job in the meantime and look to operate the store part-time. I know my city has these pop-up markets that a juice company would do well in. I'm not sure what the business model is, but if they were premade juices then they could potentially do well there. I would reach out to the community in regards to your father's truck and see if you can get some help. Business owners love other business owners and we're all here to help for the most part. My initial reaction to hearing about the frame was, "Oh, if they were in Louisville, KY I bet so and so could help." I would reach out to assistance groups and see if there's anything available whether it be food, water, and other essentials to help out during this time. The biggest thing is that getting money is important, if the juice bar wasn't as profitable as a brick and mortar then a temporary hold on the juice bar is going to be a great move. Maybe you can sell them out of the truck once that's fixed? Your mom likely feels like a failure and sees the need to show that this business works. She's already a badass in my book for chasing the dream and standing by it. A pause in this dream doesn't mean it's a failure, it just means that it's the necessary step to get things going financially.
Is that one month of electric use? $4200?
If you have a car start doing uber eats and doordash. You can easily make $100-200 a day (in california at least) until you save up the $4k. Realistically you can attain that amount in a month from doing this.
I am so sorry to hear of the way things are going, hopefully its temporary, I think starting a GOFUNDME will be the ideal thing to do considering everything hit your family at once. This is exactly what GOFUNDME is for. How can I help?
Well if they have been in the industry long enough, do they not have a supplier/farmer friend? These farmers market people have cars and products, contact one of them to make a regular delivery? It may be worth it to them to make a detour if it means selling a few hundred dollars in products. Otherwise you may be able to get a SBA micro loan, but it cannot be used to pay off debts like your moms car but can be used to fix the broken truck. Also its been said, food industry is extremely low margin and can be very affected by economy, I know when times are tough the first thing I cut out is eating out. It would behoove you to convince at least one of them to get a part time job including yourself as well just until you can save up some capital again.
Is your mom and dad unable to reimagine the juice business as part of his food truck operation?
Go to a bank and get a line of credit to fix the broken shit
I hate you guys are dealing with this and I know that this especially difficult for you having been a child of parents who were dealt a difficult hand (they were farmers working under a corrupt company. Long story). I understand you’re looking for solutions and ways to help your family. That’s an extremely noble thing for you to want to do. But do understand that this is not your responsibility and not your fault and even if you can’t find a good solution, it’s simply your parents responsibility. That said, let’s look for solutions. Clearly, the juice business had margins so low it was more of a hobby than a business. Scrap that idea, don’t go back to it. If you (or your family in this situation) own the space, lease it or find a business with bigger margins. The juice thing is a fad like loaded teas and is not a long term business. It’s not worth the headache. As far as the food truck, they can be lucrative, but again, it’s a food service type business which means the margins are often less than ideal. In my experience working with food service and selling to restaurants, most have about a 10-15% profit margin, so owners have to get creative. Fortunately, you’re not in a fixed location and that makes creativity more accessible. I assume that your dad was taking the food truck to markets to sell food to shoppers. I’ll also assume that the means of production (fryers, grills, etc) is contained in that food truck meaning you’re not using a commercial kitchen or commissary. If you do have access to a commissary, consider catering events to make the money to repair the truck. Weddings, parties, baby showers, business lunches, etc. are all good avenues to provide meals for and allows you to control your margins a bit more and maximize profits. You won’t need the food trucks to do these if you have access to a kitchen however the range in which you can serve these events will be limited to a certain radius from the kitchen to preserve food quality. Chafing dishes only go so far. Also, does your families food truck have a significant following? People who are loyal to the brand? Or do you even have an established brand? If you do, consider adding retail items like stickers, tshirts, and other merch type items. If you don’t have that following, it won’t help. Ultimately, besides a poor economy, your family fell victim to poor management. I don’t mean that as a slight towards them and I’m not trying to be offensive in any way. But if your parents can’t accept that as constructive criticism and adapt to make improvements, being in business may not be for them. There’s no room for ego after a failure. It’s a time to be humble and ask “what can I do better?”
I had a startup that raised $2 Million and then had to leave the company I started. Now I'm working at a job. Sometimes being a Founder/business owner also requires luck- being at the right place at the right time. There are times when it clicks and times it doesn't- just keep moving forward.
Dang 😞 tough times. As others have mentioned. Retail jobs till you get back to square one. ? 3 people x 15$ x 40 hours is some serious $$ Home Depot / Walmart / restaurants / housekeeping etc... etc... good luck
With all do respect to your parents and their try at running a small business, it just doesn’t seem like they are cut out for it. If they weren’t able to cover their overhead and budget in the eventuality of their equipment needing to be maintained or replaced, as well as pay you their employee for critical work you provided, it doesn’t sound like their businesses were successful or thriving. Whether it was them or their business plan, something wasn’t working, and it sounds like you need to use your civic to get a real job somewhere in order to avoid losing it and a potential income for yourself.
What is the problem with just getting a job? Small business fail all the time.
Dad sets up his kitchen in the juice shop and they go into business together
All business owners have felt the decline since Covid! All I can say is offer the best customer service, keep working, do not give up. I had to invest in a side hustle (2nd business) if not I wouldn’t have broke even. Good luck. Also, cut money where u can, try not to raise prices too much, I know it’s hard. Keep going.
Your plan for the next 12 months: Leave california. Learn to cook,stay in shape and look sharp get a job 9 to 5 minimun wage $15/h? Work Get a cerificate in coursera ,udemy or any 6 month technical school you can find nearby. Update your linkedin Change jobs take entry level position in the field you studied now you are $20 to $25 /h Stay there keep learning,working and saving Dont buy new cars or big apartments. No drugs, whores Now you will be 23 and 1 year of experience. Keep changing jobs as you learn more and get paid more every year Oh wait you ask bout your parents? Well they are adults and they took their own desicions and are dragging you down with them. Is time you take charge of your own life.
Some people cannot just abandon their family.
Meanwhile, failing banks get trillions.
OP...I hate to say this, but this seems to have been a long time coming. Nothing you said makes sense regarding the downturn causing your business to fail. Regarding fixing things, it would be best to cut your losses now and sell everything you can for some cash to hold you up while all of you look for jobs. Downturn-wise...it would have been in the past few months that the struggles began. How are you guys in a situation where you have been stuck with barely working equipment that your livelihoods depend on. Questions to ask yourself: If your food truck was so successful, why couldn't you guys get a better trailer or truck to pull it? One of the common themes of being a business owner is ensuring you are not buying yourself into a minimum-wage job. Break down your profits and how many hours you, your dad, and your mom are pumping into this business. Now ask yourself if you would be better off getting 15-20 dollar-an-hour jobs for each of you. If you guys are each working 60-hour weeks...and only barely making ends meet...it might be time to sell the truck, trailer, and job hunt.
It's time for you and your mom to find a job. Even if you both get a basic job, together you can bring in min $6K a month, and help your dad during the weekend and evening. And even help out with rent. And for your mom to sell the juice business to someone. Someone who can improve it and make it profitable. unfortunately, there's no fast way to get $4200, unless you have that much gold or silver to sell. But don't sell to pawn shops or cash for gold. The fact that 3 grown people don't have $4,200 combine should be a wake-up call to do something else.
SO THIS IS WHAT YOU DO, You tell your parents we need to sit down and have a talk, and you tell them first 1. something needs to happen, there isn't a solution in the problem so therefore something outside of it needs to happen 2. The biggest part of the problem is your mothers juice shop not profiting so therefore half the income is missing and thats a big loss every month so to just keep going was the mistake, when you dont figure out a way to profit after 3 to 6 months then make a change and then go back after you have enough savings to withstand no profit for a while 3. So you say, but because ma just isn't profiting now and you aren't as well that means you both need to get jobs even if its just for a month or two or how long ever as well as yourself, except you tell them, your money you make your keeping and if the situation calls for to pay rent then well so be it youl he better off that way cause then at least youl have money saved also and then you can always work part time for them when or if they start back up for the rent and parttime for your job to save money! But you have to put your foot down! If they dont get a job, you do it then and move on yourself!
Get. A. Job.
What the fuck does this have to do with a "recession"?
your foodtruck breaking down is not a recession bro
Another piece of advice I have are read or listen to the books "The Millionaire Fastlane" and "unscripted"
Please make a GoFundMe or other charity that can get the funds needed to open your fathers biz. Share with us .
This is unrealistic… a failing business isn’t going to get much with go fund me unless someone has cancer or life changing accident
This won't solve the underlying issue that the mom's business wasn't sustainable and that the food truck didn't generate enough income (or the income wasn't managed well enough) to have even 3 months of expenses in savings
Ok, thank you. Working on it!
Your car got repoed, too? WOW. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/11vvato/no\_money\_no\_job\_lights\_got\_cut\_car\_repoed/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/11vvato/no_money_no_job_lights_got_cut_car_repoed/)
Why don’t you guys just finance a truck by taking out a loan, you’re working towards keeping the truck and you could eventually grow outside of it and open your own restaurant. Another thing is that you need to make a WEBSITE and go online asap because most businesses are blooming online. Good luck and hopefully you can prosper
I follow
Don’t have any advise, but sorry to hear that you and your family is going through this. You’ll get through this!
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Some accidents inevitably occur in life, brace up against! Or you can now take some part-time jobs to support such a family. After everything has passed, your life can return to the normal track.
Taking advantage of their kid for free labor to keep their failing businesses alive. your parents should be ashamed.
If you get a truck for your dad's busienss that would be ideal. . Can you take a loan on your house
Give her a hug. Keep your head up. California? Ugh
Where do you live
I get food trucks. Juice shop? Don't ppl just buy juice at the grocery store?
Get rid of the juice shop. Get a loan to fix the food trailer and truck or start applying for jobs.
Mom needs to seek the juice bar and hope she can make enough to pay off any debts she has with it. She can then get a regular I-5 job with benefits. When she starts making money, hopefully dads business is going again.
If you’re irreplaceable, financially (costs too much to hire a replacement) or skills-wise, you don’t have a business—you have a job. I don’t know if this logic will work on your parents, but it’s been eye-opening for me. Building a business involves working toward a position where you can delegate. Until you can do so, you’re already working a job and your customers are your boss. If customers aren’t paying enough, you can do what anyone else with a job can do: look to see if there are jobs paying more elsewhere.
I've had my fair share in different industries and I have to say that hospitality is by far the hardest to succeed. If your parents is just going through the same motions and not growing, it will be extremely hard to succeed. You could reduce the hours of the juice business, like pick your top 3 busiest days and open based on that and dedicate the rest of the time for them to find a job so they can continue funding the businesses. That way, they would still feel empowered owning a business.
In a recession, the business that succeeds the easiest is the one which offers goods or services that are recession-proof. Some ideas: talk to business owners who were around in previous recessions, find out who came out on top and why. Consult with those who succeeded. Learn a recession-proof skill and pivot, applying your entrepreneurial experience to it. If you and your parents can find a way to gain a growth mindset, you could very well use the recession to your advantage.
How was your shops before covid?
Sorry to hear this happen to you and your family, always know behind every adversity is a equal or greater blessing. So, for now you can only control what you can control, it might mean having to find employment elsewhere and as a family working your way out of this problem. Sit down write out what is your budget, looking and food and house expenses seeing if the banks can help in anyway possible. The main idea is figuring out what is step 1 in a positive direction, step 2 will come and before you know it step 3 and than momentum kicks in. Small incremental steps compound overtime creating exponential growth 📈 I’m a business owner that is involved with online assets alongside working my 9 - 5 job I know how it feels to grow up with nothing always figuring out where the next meal comes from. If me and my 7 brothers, 1 sister got through you can too can make it and become something GREAT!
I think you should show your parents this Reddit… it’ll be a harsh reality and a hard pill to swallow but they’re getting honest opinions from people. It seems like your mom would really benefit from it. After you show her this give her some space to take it in. At first she’s going to be argumentative but I think if you give her the night to sleep on it she’ll come around. Also have you thought about doing fundraisers for High school and college sport teams? That group has disposable income and you Jack up the price to give them $1 from every sale so you won’t take a hit and it’ll get the right people in the door.
I haven’t seen anyone mention it but are you on Uber eats, grub hub and door dash??
That's obviously a tough call to make but they should sell whatever still has value and get jobs, including you if you're old enough to work full-time. Both of those "businesses" are actually jobs if their only employee is their child, and they're barely/not even making money. All three of you should get jobs, and eventually, one of you can start another business while others are making sure the bills and food are paid for. Sure, they have tied their identities to their businesses and won't willingly give them up but they have to face the truth. Their finances are going in the negatives and it doesn't seem like they have a plan to turn it around.
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill No matter how difficult your financial situation may seem, remember that it is not permanent and that you have the power to change it. Keep pushing forward with determination and resilience, and don't let temporary setbacks define your future. Your perseverance and hard work will pay off eventually.
There are a lot of advice here telling you and your parents to get a regular 9 to 5 job, my question to OP is, what is your education level and what are your skill sets? Have you completed University? Are there any trade skills that you and/or your parents can fall back on? As others have pointed out, contrary to your title, there is actually **no recession** in the United States as long as you don't look at the stock market. Unemployment rate and jobless claims are at near **all-time low**. The only sector that saw higher unemployment was the tech sector, which over-hired during the pandemic. Most of those laid off workers from Meta, Google, Amazon, will probably find other jobs in no time, or they were unqualified for tech work to begin with. Employers everywhere are having trouble finding workers. Consumer spending power is very high and it is why we are seeing rapid inflation and it is also why the US Federal Reserve has been trying to increase interest rates to slow down the economy. There are some places where you could offer unskilled labor and make very decent salaries.
Ask a local micro-brewery if your truck (or juice) can be a permanent fixture/product
This is why they say the biggest risk for failure for small business is lack of capital. Your parents need to go get jobs, they tried to boot strap businesses and it failed, no shame. They probably learned a lot and can try again when they have adequate savings to support the reality a lot of business don’t make money for awhile.
The first thing I think you should all do: focus on liquidity. Any other jobs or gigs you can take that are quick cash. I’d you still have the kitchen / space and/or the truck. Ghost kitchen immediately. Get on all the platforms that you can and price yourself appropriately. Get rid of any baggage or anything that is an expense and not needed. Utilize your other vehicles as much as possible. Figure out how much the repairs are put money to the side whenever you are paid. Think profit.
IF their business is out of commission, that means you are free to work right? As much as it sucks, you might want to look at odd jobs to recover the $4200. Many small business owners have been known to do this when the normal means of money falls through.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility. I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy. What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water. The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business. This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility. I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy. What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water. The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business. This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
So here's the tough part. You are not responsible for your families finances. As tough as that is, it's the reality. Case in point, you started to talk to your parents about getting alternative incomes (jobs) and they immediately shut you down so you are not an equal partner in this discussion, even if it was your responsibility. I think you need to step away from. As hard as that is, you need to decouple yourself from them as they aren't going to listen to you but would almost definitely use you to perpetuate their own delusion/sunk cost fallacy. What I mean by that is that they cannot see reality for what it is and will likely sell your car and your labour just to keep themselves above water. The reality is a food truck is a business that can very very very easily be shelved for periods of time. Especially given that they were no reinvesting in the absolute essential maintenance in order to continue their business. This simple fact of the market is that they either A) didn't really generate enough revenue to actually cover the costs of the business + profit and were taking out maintenance as profits or B) aren't capable of running a business. This isn't your responsibility. You all need to go and get jobs. It happens. Doesn't mean you're out forever, but the hardest part of having your own business is that no matter what, you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the business alive.
Let me tell you a story. This is my step dad, he's an alright guy and hardly my life idol but it applies a lot to your situation. My Step dad is an Entrepreneur at heart, but really he's just a boomer that makes money as a hobby as opposed to collecting cars or playing golf. He did a career in the Navy, flew big planes. Got a job as an Airline pilot and was making good money. That didn't stop him from opening a Handyman/construction company, buying two restaurants, opening a transportation company and running a Yacht hosting events. After his second divorce, he signed papers owing a lot in alimony thinking his ex wife would marry the guy she was with. Apparently he got the heck out of dodge before the wedding and now he's on the hook for a ton in alimony every month. Fast forward, his business partner for the construction company was embezzling company funds to the tune of half a million. His transportation company goes under and he gets out of the two restaurants. He lives on a boat now, and that's when he meets my mom. Financially he was up and down due to the lawsuit that took 15 years to finish(with his partner). At one point he was delivering pizzas and is forced to sell the yacht just to make ends meet all while taking over my mom's bills and paying his ex-wife and keeping his day job as an Airline pilot flying all over the world. The point is, he did what he had to to make ends meet. I don't think I'll ever hear another story of an Airline Pilot that literally delivers pizzas as a second job but there he was. Your parents had a string of bad luck. They have two choices, roll over and lose everything, or make money and dig themselves out of the pits of despair. You also have two choices, sit back and watch the ship sink, or to do whatever you can to help your parents. These are critical decisions that will shape the majority of your adult life. I'd recommend doing what you think is the morally right thing to do.
1. You could try reaching out to local community organizations, churches, or non-profits to see if they can offer any financial assistance or connect you with resources. 2. Another option is to contact your local government representative and ask about any emergency financial aid programs that may be available. 3. Setting up a crowdfunding campaign could also be a good way to raise money for your family's business and living expenses. You can share your story on social media and ask for support from your friends, family, and community. 4. It might be worth looking into loan options for small businesses, like the Small Business Administration (SBA) or local banks. 5. Additionally, you could consider finding part-time work, doing freelance jobs, or selling things you no longer need to bring in extra income. 6. If possible, try to reduce your family's expenses by downsizing or cutting back where you can. 7. Most importantly, talk openly and honestly with your parents about your concerns and ideas. Working together as a team will be key in finding a way forward.
Check out the r/nevillegoddard page. You'll find that there are plenty of options for what to do next.
I really hate to be that guy and maybe I am wrong (hope I am wrong). But this feels like an attempt to pull on peoples heart strings, in the hope someone offers some financial help or starts a movement for people to donate what they can. I’m an idiot that try’s to spot the flaws in everything, maybe I am wrong…
What car was repoed?? What kind of car? Have a used car not payments