HDYGTFAJ: Jason Lewis of Lollyphile
Amy Palanjian
Mondays suck. Especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can now look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process—right here, every Monday, starting now.
VITAL STATS
Occupation: Owner, web designer, marketing department, production manager, graphic designer, sales rep, customer service representative, and flavor creator, Lollyphile
Location: San Francisco
Age: 31
First Job: Amy's Ice Cream, Austin, Texas
Best Job: The weekend graveyard shift at Sparky's in SF.
Greatest Professional Challenge: Figuring out the pragmatic stuff (insurance, taxes, payroll) without turning to sedatives.
Salary During 20s: 50K
1. Hi, Jason Lewis. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
I got laid off from a gig handling PR for a software company in 2007 and made a batch of absinthe lollipops for a Halloween party. Everyone liked them, so I started selling them at artsy trunk shows, underground parties (including, weirdly, a swingers party where I was definitely the odd man out: "Hey, Naked Guy! Want to buy a lollipop? No?"), and basically anywhere that would let me set up a table. Miette picked up my candies and sold out in a couple of days. I whipped up a website and started getting sales pretty much immediately, and when I was picked up by Daily Candy I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get unemployment checks anymore.
2. What's distinctive about Lollyphile?
We only put out flavors if they don't currently exist in the world. Hard candy doesn't have the same gourmet attention that, for instance, chocolate and ice cream do. So you end up with pretty predictable, loveless options in your day-to-day candy life. We've been trying to take up the slack, making confections with the idea of gustatory adventure in mind, giving candy addicts something worth getting good and excited about.
3. How did you get your start working in food/candy?
My first real gig was at Amy's Ice Creams, an Austin institution that makes insane ice cream flavors (and really delicious versions of the standards). Up through college I'd been in some kind of food service or other, either waiting tables or cooking or bartending. I had never made candy before I got a bug to make absinthe lollipops.
4. You seem to have a way with creating crazy flavors. Is there a trick to finding the ones that work?
We make up small batches of flavors that we think sound cool, and then pass them around to friends for responses. If the response is overwhelmingly positive, we head out to bars and pass them out because you get the best and most honest input from drunk strangers. As for the ideas themselves, they usually just happen. When all we offered was absinthe, we got calls pretty regularly from people who were obviously looking to get high from the lollies due to all the false info about absinthe's hallucinatory effects (ps- there aren't any). So rather than spending my life being treated like a potential drug dealer*, I knew we needed something on the opposite end of the pharmacological spectrum. I thought up Maple-Bacon lollies on my way to class one day, made a couple of batches, and passed them out to a crowd at an R. Kelly singalong. The next day I woke up to reviews to the tune of Trapped in the Closet on Yelp.
6. What is your typical day like?
I work from home at this point, so it's mostly not exciting, work-wise, unless I'm making a test batch of a new flavor. Beyond the walking-the dog or going-to-the-gym stuff it's mainly me handling calls from retailers, distributors, and food brokers while taking care of customer service calls and emails. And cooking dinner for my wife, who's a nursing student and would starve to death otherwise.
7. Have you had any role models along the way, foodies or otherwise?
In terms of food, Amy Miller (Amy's Ice Creams) has always been in the back of my mind, even though I was fired for accidentally leaving a freezer open overnight and thereby melting several hundred pounds of ice cream and also for hooking up with one of the managers (I was young. Things happen). In terms of small business, William Hibbitts, one of my dearest friends, started a company called VegRev that converts diesel cars to run on vegetable oil. He's been the guy I run to, crying, when I need someone to remind me how to balance capitalism with integrity.
8. What are the biggest pleasures of the job? What could you do without?
I love not having a boss. I suck at being told what to do, even if it's phrased sweetly and is obviously within the bounds of my job description. I love having the freedom to change text on the website without having to run it through office culture. I love that I have a business which is an extention of my personality- the website is full of smart-ass copy and is chatty, rather than being peppered with SEO keywords and sales-y product descriptions. As for what I could do without- the worst thing for me is managing people. I live in terror of being a boss the same way that many people are scared to become their parents. And I'm constantly dealing with a fear that I'm about to fail terribly, but that's just my basic tendency to paranioa.
9. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start a candy company?
Don't tell anyone what you're doing before you're almost done. People will give you knee-jerk negative feedback up until the point where you're finished, and it's better to be criticized than to be disheartened. And get in touch with me, we should probably hang out.
*Quick anecdote: I was selling absinthe lollies at a gothy dance party at DNA (arguably all of them are, but whatever), and a man in what appeared to be his late fourties bought one and ate it while dancing. Twenty minutes later he came back and asked how long it took for the effects to wear off because he was freaking out. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was all in his head, so I told him "oh, about 45 minutes. Just drink some water and breathe. You'll be fine."
VITAL STATS
Occupation: Owner, web designer, marketing department, production manager, graphic designer, sales rep, customer service representative, and flavor creator, Lollyphile
Location: San Francisco
Age: 31
First Job: Amy's Ice Cream, Austin, Texas
Best Job: The weekend graveyard shift at Sparky's in SF.
Greatest Professional Challenge: Figuring out the pragmatic stuff (insurance, taxes, payroll) without turning to sedatives.
Salary During 20s: 50K
1. Hi, Jason Lewis. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
I got laid off from a gig handling PR for a software company in 2007 and made a batch of absinthe lollipops for a Halloween party. Everyone liked them, so I started selling them at artsy trunk shows, underground parties (including, weirdly, a swingers party where I was definitely the odd man out: "Hey, Naked Guy! Want to buy a lollipop? No?"), and basically anywhere that would let me set up a table. Miette picked up my candies and sold out in a couple of days. I whipped up a website and started getting sales pretty much immediately, and when I was picked up by Daily Candy I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get unemployment checks anymore.
2. What's distinctive about Lollyphile?
We only put out flavors if they don't currently exist in the world. Hard candy doesn't have the same gourmet attention that, for instance, chocolate and ice cream do. So you end up with pretty predictable, loveless options in your day-to-day candy life. We've been trying to take up the slack, making confections with the idea of gustatory adventure in mind, giving candy addicts something worth getting good and excited about.
3. How did you get your start working in food/candy?
My first real gig was at Amy's Ice Creams, an Austin institution that makes insane ice cream flavors (and really delicious versions of the standards). Up through college I'd been in some kind of food service or other, either waiting tables or cooking or bartending. I had never made candy before I got a bug to make absinthe lollipops.
4. You seem to have a way with creating crazy flavors. Is there a trick to finding the ones that work?
We make up small batches of flavors that we think sound cool, and then pass them around to friends for responses. If the response is overwhelmingly positive, we head out to bars and pass them out because you get the best and most honest input from drunk strangers. As for the ideas themselves, they usually just happen. When all we offered was absinthe, we got calls pretty regularly from people who were obviously looking to get high from the lollies due to all the false info about absinthe's hallucinatory effects (ps- there aren't any). So rather than spending my life being treated like a potential drug dealer*, I knew we needed something on the opposite end of the pharmacological spectrum. I thought up Maple-Bacon lollies on my way to class one day, made a couple of batches, and passed them out to a crowd at an R. Kelly singalong. The next day I woke up to reviews to the tune of Trapped in the Closet on Yelp.
6. What is your typical day like?
I work from home at this point, so it's mostly not exciting, work-wise, unless I'm making a test batch of a new flavor. Beyond the walking-the dog or going-to-the-gym stuff it's mainly me handling calls from retailers, distributors, and food brokers while taking care of customer service calls and emails. And cooking dinner for my wife, who's a nursing student and would starve to death otherwise.
7. Have you had any role models along the way, foodies or otherwise?
In terms of food, Amy Miller (Amy's Ice Creams) has always been in the back of my mind, even though I was fired for accidentally leaving a freezer open overnight and thereby melting several hundred pounds of ice cream and also for hooking up with one of the managers (I was young. Things happen). In terms of small business, William Hibbitts, one of my dearest friends, started a company called VegRev that converts diesel cars to run on vegetable oil. He's been the guy I run to, crying, when I need someone to remind me how to balance capitalism with integrity.
8. What are the biggest pleasures of the job? What could you do without?
I love not having a boss. I suck at being told what to do, even if it's phrased sweetly and is obviously within the bounds of my job description. I love having the freedom to change text on the website without having to run it through office culture. I love that I have a business which is an extention of my personality- the website is full of smart-ass copy and is chatty, rather than being peppered with SEO keywords and sales-y product descriptions. As for what I could do without- the worst thing for me is managing people. I live in terror of being a boss the same way that many people are scared to become their parents. And I'm constantly dealing with a fear that I'm about to fail terribly, but that's just my basic tendency to paranioa.
9. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start a candy company?
Don't tell anyone what you're doing before you're almost done. People will give you knee-jerk negative feedback up until the point where you're finished, and it's better to be criticized than to be disheartened. And get in touch with me, we should probably hang out.
*Quick anecdote: I was selling absinthe lollies at a gothy dance party at DNA (arguably all of them are, but whatever), and a man in what appeared to be his late fourties bought one and ate it while dancing. Twenty minutes later he came back and asked how long it took for the effects to wear off because he was freaking out. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was all in his head, so I told him "oh, about 45 minutes. Just drink some water and breathe. You'll be fine."
