Edible Arrangements: Tariq Farid

When Tariq Farid was 12, he emigrated from Pakistan to the U. S. – and quickly found a job at a local flower shop. Eventually he opened his own shop, which eventually led to the crazy idea to make flower bouquets out of fruit. Edible Arrangements has now bloomed into a franchise of nearly 1300 locations with an annual revenue of $600 million. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how the Seattle-based clothing company, Five12, is making athletic wear out of used coffee grounds. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  I remember showing him the brochure and he looks at it and he goes, "Hmm, interesting. Why do you think this is going to work?" And I'm like, "Well, because I see the reaction of the customers. I think this is great." He goes, "Does anybody else does this?" I said, "No, that's the brilliance." And he goes, "Well, if no one else does it, why do you think you will be successful? So I would encourage you to stick to your daytime job. You have very successful flower shops. Stick to that."

• 0:35Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Tariq Farid turned flower bouquets into fruit bouquets, and out of that, built a multimillion-dollar franchise called Edible Arrangements.

• 1:02Guy Raz?

  Okay, so say you're an investor and someone pitches you a concept to sell cool glasses online, like Warby Parker, or a ride-hailing app, like Lyft, or even a new type of women's undergarment, like Spanx. You could imagine thinking, "Yeah, this might have a chance of taking off, right?" But what if someone pitched you a business idea to take cantaloupe and pineapples and strawberries, carve them into flower shapes, put them on toothpicks, and arrange them into bouquets? Would you jump at that? Because, to be honest, if I were an investor 20 years ago and Tariq Farid pitched that idea to me, there's no way I would have taken it seriously. And as you will hear,

• 1:46Guy Raz?

  back when he first pitched it, almost no one else did, which is why, in some ways, today's episode is one of our most mind-blowing, because Tariq Farid had convinced himself his intuition was right, and he defied almost everyone to build a franchise that today does more than half a billion dollars in annual revenue. And even more inspiring is how it all started, because up till the age of 12, Tariq barely spoke English. His parents took the family from Pakistan to the US in 1981, looking for a better life. They settled in West Haven, Connecticut, and Tariq's dad got a job at a machine shop during the day. And to make a little extra, he worked the night shift at Burger King.

• 2:31Guy Raz?

  And one afternoon, a few months after their arrival, Tariq realized just how tight money was during a trip to the grocery store with his parents.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  And my mother saw mangoes. And she goes, oh, look, mangoes. You know, we should buy some for the kids. And they were like a dollar something each. And my father looks at it and says, oh, no, no, Salma, we can't afford those a dollar each. And this was a father who used to bring cases of them in Pakistan. You know, we never had, you would eat until your stomach hurt. And so I realized that things had changed. And I remember that moment that, you know, wow, my father can't afford a piece of fruit and I have to help. And at that point, I never asked him for anything. And I started to pitch in.

• 3:11Guy Raz?

  So what kind of things did you do?

• 3:13Speaker 00

  So paper route, you know, deliver newspapers. In the summer months, I would go to my father's machine shop. And then, you know, I had a group of people that I cleaned their yards, I cut their lawn, I, you know, removed their snow. And then the flower shop job. And that's probably the most important.

• 3:35Guy Raz?

  Well, tell me about that. So how old were you when you started working in a flower shop?

• 3:40Speaker 00

  13. So I used to deliver papers. It's Charlie Ferriselli. And Charlie's one of those amazing entrepreneurs. We used to deliver papers to them. And one day, my brother just asks him that, Charlie, are you looking for someone to water plants or can we help? And I think Charlie felt bad.

• 3:57Guy Raz?

  Charlie, Charlie's the owner of the flower shop?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he said, you know what? I need some help taking some flowers across the street to the cemetery or watering the plants. Yeah, come on down, kid. Come down a few days a week and do something and keep yourself busy. And so I started to work at Ferriselli's Flower Shop in West Haven, Connecticut. And it was just watering the plants, helping the customers, you know, taking orders, ringing up things. But the biggest thing was I was in the shadow of an amazing entrepreneur.

• 4:26Guy Raz?

  And he taught you how to do all this stuff?

• 4:29Speaker 00

  He not only taught me how to do that, but the genius of this man was that he would kind of have you follow. When he would go and help a customer, he would have you follow. And he was just amazing at customer service. So I learned just by shadowing him, just walking around with him.

• 4:46Guy Raz?

  And did you? Did you run the register? Did you make flower arrangements? What other things did you do in the flower shop?

• 4:53Speaker 00

  I did everything. I've never really worried about what I'm doing. I worry more about how I'm doing it. So I wanted to impress Charlie that I can do a good job. And Charlie was amazing at compliments. When my father would come to pick me up, he'd run to the car and he'd say, you have a good kid here. He's a hard worker. He's going to make it. He's going to do something one day. And I just wanted those compliments. So I not only ran the register, I would go and try to do things on my own so he knows. He can count on me. I would help people make flower bouquets and everything. So by the time I was 13, 14, I knew every aspect of the outdoor plants, how to water them, how often to water them, help customers. And the nice thing was, there's a 14-year-old who's telling someone, and people are like, oh, my God, that's so cute.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Wow, you're smart. And that pretty much started the entrepreneurial journey.

• 5:44Guy Raz?

  And did you continue to work in that flower shop throughout middle school?

• 5:49Speaker 00

  The second year of middle school, I got a job at Burger King in Milford, Connecticut, with the Burger King my father worked at. I can work all weekend. I can make a lot of money because most of the money went to helping the family.

• 6:01Guy Raz?

  I mean, were you handing over your checks to your parents?

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 6:07Guy Raz?

  So you spent, your middle school and high school, you were spending that working, like, working at McDonald's or Burger King, or doing a paper route, or the flower shop, which obviously had a big impression on you. And then, I guess, at around age 17, a flower shop went up for sale in your town?

• 6:26Speaker 00

  So my father, since I worked at the flower shop, he would always look for businesses. And I remember him taking me to a Subway franchise conference in Long Wharf, New Haven, at a hotel where they presented why you should be a Subway franchisee. And it was just too expensive. We looked at it and we couldn't afford it. And then he saw an ad in the paper for a flower shop for sale. But it wasn't the flower shop for sale. It was that the flower shop had gone out of business, and they were selling their equipment, and I think it was for $6,000. And he said, look, there's a flower shop for sale. We should go check it out. And I went checked it out. It was a time that you never said no. You know, I didn't know anything about it. I worked at a flower shop. He assumed that because I worked, I could probably run one.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  So when he asked me, he goes, look, this could be good and we can afford this. It's only 6,000. You want to do it? And I said, sure, let's do it.

• 7:19Guy Raz?

  What did the 6,000 include?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Everything, you know, there was a cooler and counter and refrigeration, some inventory. But it had been shut down for a while. And my father borrowed $6,000 from Denise and Bill Holtberg, who were his boss. And next thing you know, we owned the shop. And it was just mostly the equipment is what we bought. But we ended up convincing the landlord to sign us a lease.

• 7:43Guy Raz?

  Was it a pretty good location?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  I, you know, I didn't even know the concept of should it be a good location? It was probably not. It probably went out of business because it wasn't a good location. It was at a busy intersection and it was hidden. It was tiny. It was about 600 square feet. So it was a tiny little flower shop. But it was perfect for us because it's something we could afford. Everything was 100,000, 200,000. This was 6,000. So it didn't really matter where it was.

• 8:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So with the 6,000, you have this store. And then what did you just start? I mean, what did you actually do once you signed the deal with the guy selling you the shop?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  I made my first mistake. That's what I did.

• 8:21Guy Raz?

  How was it?

• 8:23Speaker 00

  So the first holiday was Easter and I had never been to wholesale. I had never, I didn't know where Charlie bought flowers or where he got the stuff. So I looked up how to buy the flowers, where we get them. And, you know, back then, the nice thing was there was Yellow Pages for everything. And found a wholesaler that I went to and bought the flowers. So I think I had like 600 that we had kind of saved up for the initial inventory for Easter. And I went and bought the flowers and I didn't know what to buy. And it was Mr. Pirati who owned Pirati's Wholesale Flowers in New Haven, who kind of pointed me in the right direction to say, you know, you got to buy the pinks and the blues and the lighter pastel colors. That's Easter. Buy some tulips, do this, do that. And he kind of directs me because he saw I didn't know what I was doing. So he kind of helped me up.

• 9:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  He directs me, I pay him cash and hey, good luck kid. And off I go. Um, show up at the shop, the cooler was shut down for a long time and I'm looking at the cooler and I don't know what temperatures should be set back then. There was no Google to look up flowers temperature. So I, I, I'm looking at it and it has a one and it has cooler and coldest or something like that. And it was one through nine. And I'm thinking, you know, I want these flowers to do well, so I'm going to set it to nine. Uh, but I didn't know the cooler had a freezer functionality. So put the flowers in, made all the arrangements, got ready for Easter, went home, came back the next day. Everything in the cooler is frozen because I had turned it on freeze. Uh, temperature and that was the only money I had. So here I am, I'm trying to revive the flowers.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I didn't know you can't revive them. I'm trying to get them into, you know, room temperature water and see if I can save them. I can't, so I show up at Mr. Perotti's wholesale. He knows I just bought the stuff yesterday. So he's like, what'd you sell out? And I'm embarrassed to tell him, you know, I'm the kind of shy, I'm like, no, no, I just need some stuff. And I'm picking a few things out and he notices that I pick a few things because I didn't have that much money. I only had a couple of hundred or a hundred, something that I got from my parents. And, and he goes, what happened? And I told him what happened. He got a laugh and he said, just take whatever you need. Go take, pick, pick the stuff and pay me whenever you can. You're good for it. And that was probably the most amazing kindness that somebody could ever have. So he saved me.

• 10:29Guy Raz?

  That's incredible. So, so you go back and presumably you, you set it to the right, to the right temperature.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  How do, how do you get customers to, to come into the door?

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, I learned a lot from Charlie. Said that you, it's all about customer service. I, you know, I didn't see Charlie advertise. I didn't know anything about advertising. What I did see was the great customer service he did. So we put up a banner outside, did some specials. And I, I think, um, you know, majority of the people that come to you, if you understand the customer, most people want to impress or want to wow someone. So that's what I always focused on, that have things that I know will sell and people will really like and make them in such a way that it impresses. So we would make the arrangements, have the flower bouquets and, and make it real easy for the customer. I mean, the one thing we did, I looked around at what flower shops did and everybody closed by five o'clock or six o'clock.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  I stayed open until seven thirty, eight o'clock. And then we started to get a lot of customers coming home after work. And they would say, oh, I'm glad you're open late because I needed something and I couldn't get to the shop and it was closed, or the shops are closed. So we started to do more and more of that, that I would be open very late. And then the other thing was, you know, you started to get regular customers. And with those regular customers, you started to figure out what they like and what works.

• 11:47Guy Raz?

  And so what did they like? What were you doing for them?

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Well, I remember about a year in, there was this gentleman that used to come to us and he used to buy flowers for his fiancee every week. About six months in, he comes in and he goes, we're getting married and we want you to do our wedding.

• 12:04Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  And I was honest, I said, I am sorry, I've never done a wedding. And I remember, you know, just, he's an amazing guy. He goes to me, well, I've never been married before too, so we're both in the same boat. Don't worry about it. So we'll figure it out. And it was a large order. I mean, it was a couple of thousand dollars. And I remember doing that and along the way, learning every aspect. I had never been to a church before. I didn't know what an altar is, or what an aisle runner is, or these, you know, the carpets you lay down and everything. But once we did that, then after that, the wedding business became really big because, you know, it was something that we did good and we had a reference.

• 12:46Guy Raz?

  And who worked there? Who actually ran the place, besides you?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  So I was in high school, so the first person that ever worked there was my mom. You know, so my mom really is the foundation of all these businesses. My mom would kind of wake up early in the morning, get all the kids ready for school. And by eight o'clock, you know, I would drop her off, we had one car, I'd drop her off at the shop. And then she kind of knew what to watch. She didn't speak much English, but she would just, you know, watch the shop. And then I hired another employee to take the orders. So when I come back at one, they would have the orders ready. I would make the orders and then I would go out on delivery. So that happened for the first five or six months because I couldn't really afford to pay anyone, except that one person that would take the orders in the morning.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  And she had kids, so I had to be back by one, so she could go back and pick up her kids. And then I would take over.

• 13:39Guy Raz?

  How soon after you opened up the flower shop, were you profitable?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  I think breaking even or making some money, we started to do that within five to six months because you never really had a value for how much you paid yourself. You just saw that at the end, some money is left. And as long as there was some money left and there was a profit, you did well. But what we did really good with is that the holidays were really good for us. I always focused on bringing customers back for Mother's Day and Christmas and Valentine's Day, and they always came back. And that's when you really made the money.

• 14:10Guy Raz?

  So this is like 1980, 88, 89, around then?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, yep.

• 14:16Guy Raz?

  And once the store kind of started to hit its stride, did you think about expanding?

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Right away, opened the second store in Milford, Connecticut.

• 14:24Guy Raz?

  And how did you guys come up with the money for it?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  I remember writing a business plan for a flower shop back then and going to the bank, say that, hey, I want to open this, it'll be really quick, it's $120,000 I need. And I did a business plan and presented it to the bank, and of course, they denied me.

• 14:43Guy Raz?

  But I'm assuming you were like 19, 18 years old when you went to the bank asking for money?

• 14:48Speaker 00

  About 18, yep.

• 14:49Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, it's sort of, you can't really blame them for not wanting to give an 18-year-old $120,000, right?

• 14:55Speaker 00

  I don't blame them at all.

• 14:57Guy Raz?

  So what did you do then?

• 14:59Speaker 00

  I had to go back to Plan B, which was go buy something you can afford, and it's probably run down, and you probably have to build it from scratch, and that's exactly what we did.

• 15:09Guy Raz?

  How much was that second shop?

• 15:10Speaker 00

  It cost about, I think, $70,000. It was, but it was a fully functional shop, but it was a note that the owner held. So he said, I'll give you a loan, you just pay me every month something. I think I paid him off within a year and a half or a year.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  And by then, I had moved on to a third project. I computerized my first shop.

• 15:32Guy Raz?

  When you say computerized, what do you mean?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Put a POS system in.

• 15:35Guy Raz?

  A point-of-sale system?

• 15:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:38Guy Raz?

  Because it was done all by paper up until that point?

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Everything was manual, and this was a single IBM PC you would buy, everything was on floppy disks back then, and we were just in 88, starting to get into hard drives. And so I put in a Novell network, and the reason I ended up putting it in myself was that I wanted to computerize my first flower shop, and I wanted to put a POS system in, bring in the wire service computers, and it was just so expensive. People would come in and say $12,000. A Novell network and it'll cost this much. And I just started to play around with it myself and I put in the system myself. And once I did that, the company asked, hey, you know, there are other shops that are looking for this, you want to do this? And by 88, 89, I was helping other shops put in POS systems.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  And by 90, I had launched a company that was doing that.

• 16:26Guy Raz?

  So, so basically, this company was providing an installation service. I mean, you weren't, you weren't actually making the software. You were doing what a few years earlier, somebody said to you, hey, yeah, we'll wire your system up for 12,000 bucks. But you just thought, well, I can do that for other people.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 16:43Guy Raz?

  So, so go from essentially like a ledger book where they were like writing in their sales and their, doing their accounting by hand to a computer system where they were entering numbers into a computer that would then file them away or create spreadsheets.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it was paperless type of a format where what we were trying to do at that time is everything was done in triplicate with carbon paper or those duplicates where you would take an order, then give you the yellow sheet and then the pink one would go to accounting and the white one would go to the designer to make it and the driver. So this company called Daisy Systems out of Memphis had created this software and it was, they owned flower shops as well. So it totally automated the flower shop.

• 17:24Guy Raz?

  It's amazing because, I mean, obviously, we, you know, we take that for granted now. When you call, oftentimes when you call a shop, they already know who you are simply by the number that appears, the phone number that appears on their, on their phone. But, I mean, up until that point, I mean, this, most businesses were not using computer systems for, for their sales, right?

• 17:44Speaker 00

  And especially not flower shops, you know? So if they were, they were expensive. So we started to do a lot of work and I, by 90, 91, I was doing 100% of my work into automating flower shops.

• 17:57Guy Raz?

  I mean, at this point, you are barely out of high school. I mean, you've still got the flower shops and then also this new business.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:05Guy Raz?

  Which is kind of incredible.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  You know, we were blessed. You know, I had more work than we could ever do. We couldn't hire people because when I would tell them to say, hey, I have this company and we automate flower shops, they're like, flower shops? Okay, no, you couldn't hire somebody from IBM to come help you to automate flower shops. I just didn't think the industry was that big. But it was enormous. There were thousands of flower shops and they all wanted to get that efficiency or manage their customers. So, you know, we were doing stuff and there was a lot of money in it because there was hardly anybody doing it and we couldn't do them fast enough or process the orders fast enough.

• 18:42Guy Raz?

  So you were traveling, you were probably on the road every single day of the week?

• 18:47Speaker 00

  I was probably home three days of the month and the rest of the days I was on the road.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  What kind of, I mean, at its height, what sort of revenue were you guys doing?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  There was a year that I did over a million dollars in sales.

• 19:01Guy Raz?

  Wow. In the network or in the flower shops?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  In the network, in the computer business.

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  So what happened to that company?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  So the parent company sold. So in 1997, Teleflora bought Daisy Systems and they asked, would you like to work for us?

• 19:17Guy Raz?

  You sold your networking company as part of this?

• 19:20Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 19:21Guy Raz?

  So Teleflora, which is now, of course, huge, which is a huge company, and they bought this company and they said to you, hey, we hear you do great work. Why don't you come work for us? And you thought, okay, great.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. By then, you know, I had a four-year-old and I was traveling a lot and I was ready to not travel as much. And I thought I would really enjoy the part of working for someone and not have to work for myself and kind of work as hard as I did and travel as much as I did. So I thought I was ready for a corporate job.

• 19:49Guy Raz?

  And how long did you last there?

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Physically, month and a half. Mentally, about two weeks.

• 19:56Guy Raz?

  Wait, you worked for them for a month and a half?

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Month and a half, two months at the most, yeah.

• 20:02Guy Raz?

  That's interesting. I mean, you must have really disliked it.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  No, it's not that I disliked it. I just think I missed that part of the craziness that I thought I wouldn't like, the craziness of owning a small business and kind of going day to day and wondering what's going to happen. If I, am I going to be able to do this? I, I realized that I liked that and I enjoyed that, that I wanted to go back to that. So what do I do? I, I go and start a flower shop from scratch, another one, and bought a building and started building a flower shop in '97. And within a few months, I was back running the shops again.

• 20:34Guy Raz?

  So is, is that basically what you thought that you'd be doing for, you know, like for the foreseeable future?

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, but then edible got in the way.

• 20:44Guy Raz?

  Edible arrangements?

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  I had seen the fruit business being done. I had interacted with it where people were doing it.

• 20:53Guy Raz?

  Doing, doing what? Selling fruit?

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Fruit arrangements.

• 20:56Guy Raz?

  Oh, fruit arrangements?

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 20:58Guy Raz?

  Oh, this existed?

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, and then there was a show on cruise ships that would make these big masterpieces of fruit. And, and so I, I saw that and, and with it, I started to dabble into the, like, how do you make this model scalable? How do you make it where it's not a hobby or a small operation? That I saw the opportunity in it of kind of scaling even, you know, where you can open a few shops and really give a unique experience to the customers.

• 21:29Guy Raz?

  And what, what did you do? Did you start to experiment with this idea at your flower shops?

• 21:35Speaker 00

  So, yes, just got some tools and got a knife and started to make them.

• 21:39Guy Raz?

  Just like stamped out, you know, flowers from cantaloupes and melon balls and things like that?

• 21:45Speaker 00

  The same way as we did the flowers in the beginning. You just, you just experiment. You keep trying until you get it right. So I spent most of '98 doing that.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  So, Tariq, for, for people who have, who've no idea what edible arrangements are, can you just describe what it, what it, what it is, what it looks like?

• 22:02Speaker 00

  So it's, it's really evolved, you know, so it started out with a fruit arrangement that looked like a flower arrangement from a distant, but it was all cut fruit that you could literally remove the wrap and eat every piece. And it was bite-sized strawberries, cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple flowers with a cantaloupe center.

• 22:22Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  So it's, it's a flower arrangement that, you know, the objective is to wow, and then the objective is that it disappears. It disappears really quick.

• 22:30Guy Raz?

  So after you started making like samples of these arrangements, were you testing them out with anyone?

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Yes. Towards end of 97 and beginning of 98, I started to send it out to friends. And some thought it would be great, but the majority of them thought it wouldn't work. You know, who's going to buy fruit on sticks in a basket? I mean, come on.

• 22:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I could completely-- see, if I was your friend at the time, I would have said the same thing. I would have said, who is going to buy fruit arranged as flowers? I mean, what a weird idea. Why would you even think this is going to be successful?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  And my father was so, I think, worried that he bought one of his friends to-- who was a professor at a university. And my father's saying, my son is starting this. And hey, I bought in so and so, and I figured he could give you some feedback. And he looks at me and goes, hmm, interesting. Why do you think this is going to work? And I'm like, well, because I see the reaction of the customers. I think this is great. He goes, does anybody else does this? I said, no, that's the brilliance. And he goes, well, if no one else does it, why do you think you will be successful? So I would encourage you to stick to your daytime job. You have very successful flower shops. Stick to that. And I said, no, no, no, I'm going to do this. This is going to be really successful. And then I-- he asked me about a focus group. I actually, I didn't know what a focus group was, but he asked me to do a focus group.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  And I kind of said something to him that I think he didn't like. I said, I did do a focus group. I took it home and I put it on the dining room table. My mother looked at it and said, oh, my God, honey, this is going to be big. I said, yeah, so if mom says it, I think it's going to be cool.

• 24:06Guy Raz?

  Coming up, how many, many, many more people besides Tariq's mom came to love edible arrangements and how Tariq took this idea to a level that even he didn't think was possible. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Stay with us.

• 24:40Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1999 and Tariq has set up the very first edible arrangements inside one of his flower shops in East Haven, Connecticut. It has a very simple layout. There's a hand carved logo on a sign behind the counter and a small cooler in the back for the fruit. And because that first store opened right before Easter, from the beginning, business was pretty good.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  And I sent out brochures. I made these brochures and sent them out to customers. And the phones started to ring. And where people were more curious, they would call and say, hey, I saw this. Is this really what I think it is? Where's your shop? And we'd tell them. And so then people, I think we got 28 orders on Easter. And I remember the number. It was 28 orders because it took us all day to make them. And the biggest questions and the concerns these customers had was that, hey, cantaloupe doesn't really taste good that. How do I know it's going to be good? And that's where my mission statement came from. And I remember getting on the phone with a customer and saying, I guarantee you that the person who gets it will call you and use the word wow. If they don't use the word wow, you call me back, I will actually give you your money

• 25:53Speaker 00

  back, 100% of it. And they're like, really? I said, yes. I never had to give anybody the money back because people loved it.

• 26:00Guy Raz?

  And at the time, where were you getting all this fruit from?

• 26:04Speaker 00

  We would go to the market in the morning and buy the fruit.

• 26:07Guy Raz?

  And how did you, how could you guarantee that it was going to taste good? Because even, I mean, cantaloupes aren't always good and melons aren't always good. Sometimes they're just not that sweet. Pineapples, right? I mean, how were you able to make sure that the fruit was good?

• 26:20Speaker 00

  There's always good fruit. You just have to, one, pay more. Second, spend a lot more energy making sure what you're putting in. It's sort of like the chefs. You have to sample it. You have to learn about the fruit. So now, we have a whole team that does this. We have a whole team, the fresh team, that does, that goes all the way to the farms and sources the fruit. Back then, you went and you shopped, right? Even when the fruit cost me a lot of money and I was losing money, I wanted the customers to get that experience because I was building a business. I was trying to build a brand. So with that, we made sure that the experience of the recipient and the customer was nothing short of a wow. And you did that by making sure and then you threw away a lot of fruit.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  You couldn't use it because when you buy a case, there would be some pieces in it that you can't use. You buy strawberries, third of the box you couldn't use because either their shape wasn't right or they looked a little tart or you know, so you pick the best ones and you make it better. But you know, eventually as we grew, we were able to source it properly and get it right from the farm of knowing exactly the variety that we want.

• 27:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah. How long did it take before it actually, you felt comfortable that it was going to take off?

• 27:31Speaker 00

  About a year.

• 27:32Guy Raz?

  About a year. Did you have a vision at that point that this was going to be a national or international brand? Or did you think, all right, maybe this will work and we'll, you know, I'll make more money and then I'll take that money and buy, you know, build another outlet or another shop?

• 27:47Speaker 00

  So I never thought it would be national and that national journey started in 2000 where a gentleman walked into our shop and said, look, I was just visiting my mom from Boston and everybody loved this arrangement. Can I open one of these in Boston? And he goes, can I buy a franchise? Now, of course, I knew about franchising, but I hadn't thought about franchising edible arrangements. I thought about building a brand. That's why I spent so much time on the logo and the name. So I kind of composed myself and said, oh, that sounds wonderful. We've thought about opening franchises. Where would you like to open? And he goes, a Boston. I said, wonderful, let me talk to my attorney. I didn't have one and I will get right back to you. And so I called up my attorney, who was a real estate attorney, and I called him up.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  I said, look, you know, I need a franchise document. He goes, I know nothing about that. So, you know, so he looked it up. He goes, eh, this is complicated. So we started that journey of then getting the documents ready and doing everything for franchising. And one year later, we opened our first store in Wolf MS.

• 28:50Guy Raz?

  So after that first franchise, how did you attract more franchisees? Did you kind of connect with a, like a law firm or a company that does this? And then they put it out there to the world?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  I never, no, we did it one at a time. So it was all word of mouth. So up to our first 10 or 15 shops, it was all word of mouth because I was more concerned with doing it right. But what happened with us was that then somebody visiting Boston. Calls from Atlanta, like, hey, I live in Atlanta, I want to open one of these in Atlanta. Then I think the fifth call was from somebody in Northridge, California, and say, hey, I just saw this, I'd like to open one in California.

• 29:31Guy Raz?

  That's where I grew up, Northridge.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Are you there?

• 29:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I worked at the Northridge Mall. So you, how were you able to maintain quality? Like, how were you able to make sure that a franchise owner wouldn't try to cut corners by buying, you know, cheaper fruit, or cutting them smaller, cutting the pieces smaller? Like, how were you able to maintain the quality that you kind of laid out in your store?

• 29:56Speaker 00

  First, it's the owner. So with that, it's first choosing the right franchisee, the right person. After that, just having an amazing training system where you just kind of train on how to make the arrangements, how to do the customer service. We were the ones going to each one of these shops and literally replicating everything.

• 30:15Guy Raz?

  So were you guys just kind of growing, like, one store at a time?

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Well, what happened in, you know, in 2004, the business started to take off. We started to get a lot of phone calls. I was able to hire someone that can start putting together structure and start selling. And at that point, it just pretty much got automated and got bigger than me. And, you know, I had a staff, I hired a team, and that's when the magic happened, when I hired that team and all these things that we had automated and put into systems. We were, by 2004, 2005, we were selling 300 stores a year.

• 30:48Guy Raz?

  And were you, I mean, at this point, I mean, I think one might imagine that you had tons and tons of cash coming into the business, or was it more complicated than that?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  It was a lot more complicated because as soon as we got to a certain size, we opened a warehouse to start doing the supply chain. I expanded the computer business and started hiring a lot of the developers. Now, the website was being developed, you know, a next generation of software was being developed. So a lot of the money was going into building the infrastructure because I was more interested in scaling it. So there was never really much money. And I remember, you know, I would invite people to my home. And I drove around a 1994 Volvo 850 and people would come by saying, oh, wow, you have hundreds of stores. And they would look at me like, it doesn't look like he's that successful, because I lived in a little raised ranch. And for me, that wasn't important. I knew that I can always do that later in life.

• 31:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  But building the brand is very important. So all my money and all my energy, everything was invested back into the company and it paid off.

• 31:53Guy Raz?

  So even after you already had like a few hundred stores, you were still reinvesting because, right, because to really scale, I mean, in many of the examples that we've had on the show, it seems like at a certain point entrepreneurs have to turn to outside investors. They have to bring in outside investors to really, really grow big. And is that what happened with you guys?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  So we didn't bring on any investors, even though by 2006, 2007, many people are interested in buying into the brand or investing in the brand. And I had many offers of private equities wanting to get involved. I just didn't see any benefit of it at that time. Since I was self-funding and doing it, why dilute? So we just kind of kept going.

• 32:39Guy Raz?

  And you were working like just like a dog the whole time?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  I think dogs even get a break sometimes.

• 32:44Guy Raz?

  I mean, obviously, Tariq, you were and you did incredibly well. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. But, I mean, is that, is that sort of the trade-off, that to have a, to have professional success at that level, you kind of have to give up some family time? I mean, I read that your first marriage ended in divorce.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:08Guy Raz?

  And then you had three girls that presumably you weren't able to spend much time with. So there was a price to be paid for that success.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  A very heavy, very heavy price. Yes. Yes, there is a, there is a price that you pay.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  And it's something that people, you know, you have to be ready for. And our business is very unique, even with the franchisees. I mean, when people are taking time off, we're working harder. So on the holidays is when we're busy. So when, as people are going into the Christmas holidays, we're just getting started. And so we're going to be busy through that. You know, I, I think the, the biggest thing that you look back at and you wish you did it differently is, is probably the children, you know, the, you know, the, the kids because I, I don't think they understand, you know, and they don't care if you're rich or poor. You know, they just want their time and they want their love. And, and a lot of times you're spending all this energy where you think you'll be big, but they're not seeing it. You're not taking them on to fancy vacations.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  You're not, you know, you're working night and day. You have no money. You can't get a bank loan. So you're telling them this is going to be big one day. And, you know, the nice thing is that they continue supporting you and they stay behind you. And that's critical to someone who wants to scale a business and work in a business and build a brand. And this is, you read about everyone, Steve Jobs and everything, they tell you how much, what the price they paid for their success. It is very costly at times.

• 34:31Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  You know, now my oldest is working with me and I, I tell you, everything is worth it because I see her and, and God willing, you know, I love to hand it off to her.

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  How old is she?

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Something that she could be, she's 23.

• 34:44Guy Raz?

  Awesome. And she works for, for the company now?

• 34:46Speaker 00

  A brilliant young lady.

• 34:47Guy Raz?

  That's awesome.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Brilliant young lady. I'm glad my daughter is much smarter than me.

• 34:51Guy Raz?

  Hmm. So, okay, so you, you're building this company. It's growing really fast. And then I guess at a certain point, you did actually take some private equity money, right? In, in about 2012?

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Uh, 2012, yes.

• 35:05Guy Raz?

  And what, why? Why did you decide to, to accept that money when you guys were doing great without it?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  You know, I, I come from simple background and, and, you know, I, I didn't know anything about business. I've never had any training in business. My family has never really had any good experience in business. And so you're always in doubt that are you the person who can run it, who can scale it? Do you know what you're doing? I, I remember my attorney asking me that, hey, should we list you as a CEO? And I'm like, CEO? I'm not a CEO. I don't think about CEO. And I remember reading books about what CEOs are and, and interviewing people for the CEO's position. So there's always this doubt. You know, you've worked very hard to build this company. You want it to grow, you don't want to make a mistake. And so that was the thing, it was more for what I didn't know.

• 35:55Guy Raz?

  So here's something I'm really curious about. You started this company, it's your company, it's your brand, it's your idea. You franchise it, all these people are running it, it's really great. You know, but then in 2010, a bunch of your franchisees, they file a lawsuit against you. I guess there was a dispute about how long the store should be open and things like that. And that lasted, I read that lasted for like three years. Was that, was that tough? Did that take a toll?

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Emotionally, yes. You know, I put my heart into everything and I just was, you know, I was, you know, you're heartbroken, you can't believe it happened. You know, I remember, I have a very good friend of mine who's my attorney, who's kind of the right-hand person who's guided me. And I remember him saying something when I got served with the lawsuit, saying, well, you know, this is just a matter of time. I'm surprised it took so long. You know, the lawsuit is part of the culture and this will happen. Franchise is like a family and even in families, there's disagreements. And when you're a leader, even if a leader of a family, sometimes you ask the family to do something and everybody, and sometimes everybody's against you to say, we disagree. And we were kind of running the business from our point of view, instead of the customer's

• 37:07Speaker 00

  point of view, from hours and convenience and, you know, deliveries and all that stuff. And the world was changing around us. So we made some decisions at that point that we need to pivot the brand this way. And we had some that disagreed. And at that point, they took legal action. The outcome, it was nice at the end. All the initiatives that we talked about did work and, you know, the lawsuit was withdrawn. And, you know, I think the relationship, anybody that's thinking about getting in a franchise should realize that it is a relationship that you are actually now getting into a partnership with another entrepreneur. You're going to have to spend a lot of time listening and making sure and inspiring and having, understanding what you're doing. And you may disagree at times, but you better have your act together and you better have

• 37:50Speaker 00

  your concept together because they'll let you fail once or twice, but they won't let you fail too many times or do goofy things. Because it's their livelihood you're playing with if you're just simply putting initiatives together that aren't really thought through.

• 38:05Guy Raz?

  Do you, is it important for you to be right? Or are you prepared to be wrong?

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm very prepared to be wrong. And you know, what I learned a long time ago was that when you're wrong and you admit that you're wrong, everybody around you will help you to, to kind of dig out of it and to help you learn a lesson. But if you have an ego or you think you are right, people at that point not only will, but have the right to stomp on you. And I'm not, I haven't gotten to where I've gotten to because I've been right. It's just I've asked the right people and bounced ideas off the right people. I love calling people up out of the blue and just saying, hey, I'm thinking about this, what do you think?

• 38:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  And I love building businesses. So I'll just, you know, I'll, I'll be on a, in Bahamas with the family and we're on a fishing and you know, somebody's not really doing it right. I'm like, you know what? If we got a couple of boats and did it this way, set up this customer, set up a website. It's like, stop, just enjoy the fishing, right? You know, you just, you kind of see opportunity in everything and, and you think you can do it because I think as a business owner, you, your job is to build businesses.

• 39:14Guy Raz?

  How many edible arrangements stores are there now in the U.S. and, and also around the world, right?

• 39:20Speaker 00

  About 1,300, close to 1,300.

• 39:22Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Either operating in.

• 39:24Guy Raz?

  How many countries?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Probably about 10 countries.

• 39:27Guy Raz?

  1,300 around the world?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:30Guy Raz?

  And do you have a sense of like what combined revenue is for all the stores, annual revenue?

• 39:35Speaker 00

  About 600 million.

• 39:37Guy Raz?

  From edible arrangements, from fruit?

• 39:39Speaker 00

  From cutting fruit.

• 39:40Guy Raz?

  From cutting fruit?

• 39:41Speaker 00

  You know, so, you know what, I, I tell people and I, I spend a lot of time when people bring me ideas, don't underestimate anyone and don't underestimate the power of, of kind of the market that we have here. And it's amazing. And you know, as you were saying, that I have to kind of pinch myself because I, I am still, I remember, you know, my mother said something amazing when I was 17, 18 that really changed me for the rest of my life. You know, I, I used to struggle. I would come home and I would talk to her like, okay, we're doing this much, we're not, you know, we're not making enough money, I gotta do this, it's expensive. And she, she just, you know, she, in Urdu she said it and you know, she turned around and she goes, honey, you have to stop chasing money because money runs really fast. You should go do the right thing, it'll chase you.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  And at that point, I stopped worrying about making money. So when the bank said no, I didn't go there and say, oh, my God, this won't work. I went and figured out how to make it work.

• 40:35Guy Raz?

  Your dad came to this country penniless, from a village in Pakistan. He was a machinist. He was going to Burger King, McDonald's on the weekends. With five kids, I mean, what did your parents make of your success?

• 40:51Speaker 00

  I mean, they're just as odd. My father is retired now. You know, he enjoys his life. He gets to travel a lot, do a lot of those things that you want to do and that you want to be able to do for your father. My mom, you know, never really got to see. You know, it was 2005 that she passed away and she was sick for a while. And she was instrumental. I mean, she literally, you know, she was that person that when I wanted to stop and give up and couldn't make the bills, she would always kind of, you know, remind me that you'll make it and, you know, as long as you have your health, honey, you'll do it, keep going. So that's what I miss the most, that I wish she got to see this because she spent a lot of time wanting her children to be very successful or wanting me to be very successful and pushing me.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  I think she should be on top of the world right now if she was around to see what we were able to do in starting out with this little flower shop that I would use to drop her off in the morning and go to high school and she would watch the shop. And, you know, so that's the part that, that's, you know, I wish it was a little different, that she was able to see it. But my father is in awe every single day as we are.

• 42:02Guy Raz?

  Tariq Farid, founder of Edible Arrangements. A few years after his mom passed away, Tariq founded an elementary school in her honor, the Salma Farid Academy in Hamden, Connecticut, not too far from where he grew up in Westhaven. By the way, Tariq's original mentor, Charlie Ferriselli, you know, the guy who taught him and his brother how to run a flower shop when they were kids? Well, we called them to find out what he thought about his mentees.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  I actually turned to my brother and I said, How do you like these kids? They picked my brain and they opened up a flower shop. Now I'm in competition with them. But you know, it was a beautiful competition. I'm happy with that kind of competition for sure.

• 42:44Guy Raz?

  After 38 years in business, Charlie Ferriselli sold his flower shop this past December. He's still in regular touch with Tariq. And when we spoke, they were planning on meeting up for lunch.

• 43:03Guy Raz?

  And please do stick around because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building.

• 43:13Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  My name is Brooklyn Gould Bradbury. I'm based in Tacoma, Washington. And I am a co-founder of a company called 512 Apparel.

• 43:25Guy Raz?

  And 512 Apparel is athletic wear, something Brooklyn knows a lot about because since she was a kid and right on through college, she was a pretty serious volleyball player.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  So years and years of volleyball, wearing different uniforms, different brands, you really start to pay attention to what kind of materials you like and what bothers you about a uniform and what's uncomfortable.

• 43:47Guy Raz?

  And as it turns out, and you may know this if you play volleyball, those uniforms can be really uncomfortable in many, many ways.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  They have itchy seams or if they're too tight in certain spots or they won't stay down in other spots. And some of them, they're way too thick and they don't breathe. And so you just, they're way too sweaty and gross and you just can't wait to get them off.

• 44:08Guy Raz?

  Luckily for Brooklyn, her stepdad Jeff is a designer in the clothing industry. And the two of them started to talk about maybe going into business together to make a new line of athletic wear.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  As an apparel company, it's very difficult to get started because Consumers have the brands that they like, and it's hard to pull somebody away from a brand that they know and love.

• 44:30Guy Raz?

  But Jeff started to think of an idea that could set their company apart, especially in a place like Seattle. And he had heard of a textile mill in Taiwan that used coffee grounds to make fabric. And apparently, it's great fabric for athletes.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  It's a very, very breathable fabric, but it's also odor controlled. So as you sweat and say you work out and then you go do something afterwards, you're not worried about your clothes smelling badly like maybe some other spandex material would or like a cotton t-shirt would.

• 45:00Guy Raz?

  And in case you were wondering, the clothes do not make you smell like coffee. Anyway, Jeff and Brooklyn decided to work with that mill in Taiwan. And most of their coffee comes from the local Starbucks.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  The mill picks up the grounds and they extract all of the oils so that what's left is coffee ground oil and then a very fine powder. And that powder is infused in the yarn, and that's what gives it its properties. So the coffee grounds are blended in with the yarn that we use.

• 45:29Guy Raz?

  So once Jeff and Brooklyn had the fabric they wanted, they started to work on a bunch of prototypes. And they started with long-sleeved jerseys. They handed them out to volleyball players and other athletes and then asked a lot of questions.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  How does it feel around the shoulders? And how does it feel when you're bending up and down? Is the fabric moving or is it staying in place? And yeah, that was a huge part of it before we actually launched and ordered our full line.

• 45:54Guy Raz?

  And now that full line is out and available on the company's website. They've been selling for about a year and have made around $200,000 and are repurposing a lot of coffee grounds.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Right now, for our last collection, we used close to 2,000 pounds of reused coffee grounds, which equates to about 45,000 cups of coffee or 90,000 shots of espresso. And we love that idea. We love that it's eco-friendly, that we're using something that we all drink daily to make our clothing.

• 46:24Guy Raz?

  That's Brooklyn Gould Bradbury. Her company is called 512 Apparel and it's based in Tacoma, Washington. If you want to find out more about it, check out our Facebook page. Just search How I Built This on Facebook. And of course, if you want to tell us your story about the business you're building, go to build.npr.org. And hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also write us. It's h i b t at npr.org. If you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Rund Abdelfatah with original music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

• 47:05Guy Raz?

  Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Claire Breen, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Lawrence Wu. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.