Jordan Queen & Gilead Fishel With Dilly Dally Provisions

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio brought to you by FirmSpace, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firmspace.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:20] Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kantor, and before we get started, I just want to go ahead and thank today’s sponsor today. Sponsor is firm space thanks to them because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. We’ve got a great one for you today. Today’s guests are the Dream Commercial Kitchen Pitch Contest winner at the hatchery in Chicago. They’re the co-founders of Dilly Dally Provisions, and I’m so excited to talk to them about everything they’re doing. Please welcome the show, Jordan Queen and Gilad Fishel. Welcome to the show, guys. Thanks for having us. Well, let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit what is dilly dally provisions?

Jordan Queen: [00:01:03] Yeah, so don’t dilly dally provisions. We we specialize in chef crafted preserved goods. The focus is small batch handcrafted, everything, a sugar free, no additives, no preservatives. And we just take a lot of pride, a lot of passion in creating delicious good for you products that are oil free, vegan and also gluten free when possible.

Max Kantor: [00:01:31] So how did this idea come about of dilly dally provisions?

Jordan Queen: [00:01:37] Yeah, so Gilad and I are our brother in laws. You know, I moved to Chicago about three years ago and yeah, you know, I’ve always been a long time hobbyist of pickling and fermenting and preserving just always been something super passionate. I’ve been passionate about my grandmother. She we grew up in Appalachia mountains, so it was just very much a way of life. She was very self-sufficient. She grew everything herself. So, you know, always played around. But then, you know, of course, you know, the pandemic happened and I got furloughed, so I had to kind of move around a little bit kind of, you know, shift the focus. So I came up with this idea for dilly dally provisions. I knew we had some. I had some good recipe development, but I just I knew that I needed someone to kind of help bring more of a business perspective. And that’s when I approach my brother in law of Gilad. And we just started kind of brainstorming and thought that it had some legs and we’ve been making a run at it.

Max Kantor: [00:02:43] Now, Gilad, have you had any background kind of in like the food industry or restaurant industry or this was all new to you?

Gilead Fishel: [00:02:50] I’ve worked. I’ve dabbled in in restaurant kitchens. Not a ton. I mean, really, the the the culinary expertize comes from Jordan side. But I mean, I love food and you know, a little bit about our back, our backgrounds in general. I mean, Jordan’s from rural North Carolina. I grew up on a kibbutz in Israel. And so while we come from very different backgrounds, we just we found that we had this common set of values around the connection that we have to food and farming and sustainability. So you know, it just it’s just kind of it just kind of evolved and we’re just been really enjoying kind of taking our passions and creating something out of it.

Max Kantor: [00:03:35] Now, I’m not familiar with the pickling process. Could you talk about like what goes into pickling something and how do you guys decide what you are going to use?

Jordan Queen: [00:03:47] Yeah. So, I mean, the pickling process and this goes with fermenting, too, I mean, the basis of it is you need an acid. You know, usually sugar and salt. Those are the core ingredients and then spices that kind of makes up the general foundation for pickling. But that’s but there’s there’s so much that you can kind of build off that. So, you know, we we we do six products all very different. You know, it all ranges from, you know, kind of condiment based. We do hot sauces, spicy beer, mustard. We offer a couple of different relishes. Being in Chicago, we have to offer a genre relish that’s fermented and oil free. And we do dilly beans and corn relish. We’re just kind of taps into my roots of being in the south. But you know, the the R&D part is just, you know, that’s that’s kind of the fun part about our name dilly dally. It’s not only fun to say, but it’s also kind of expresses our love for food exploration. So a lot of times when we were developing these recipes and we continue to develop recipes throughout the farmers market season because we work with a lot of farmers and we offer seasonal rotation. So a lot of us just inspired by what we can get our hands on locally and and just kind of, you know, a lot of experimentation. You know, it’s a lot of things. We try it and we’re like, That’s not it. Sometimes we’re like, That’s cold. So it’s just a lot of trial and error. And then, you know, and then we’re constantly trying to perfect recipes, you know, tweaking here and there. But that’s kind of our process.

Max Kantor: [00:05:31] Totally. It’s interesting to hear you talk about how this business kind of grew during the pandemic because we’ve talked to a couple of restaurants on Chicago Business Radio and we obviously bring up, you know, how COVID hit them so hard. And Jordan, I know you talked about getting furloughed like, you know, firsthand, so it’s great to hear you guys took this really hard time, but then made something out of it. But during that? Were there any struggles that you had to overcome when getting started?

Gilead Fishel: [00:06:00] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think it’s something that is not necessarily unique to our business, standing a business in the midst of a pandemic is sounds kind of crazy, but at the same time, it’s kind of like. Why not, you know, the world is kind of turned upside down, so we we I mean everything in terms of navigating. I mean, I think first and foremost, we launched our business really in in front of people at the farmer’s market. And so obviously, you know, we’ve been masked the whole time, pretty much at least initially when when when the business kicked off. A lot of a lot of people are interested in sampling our products, and that’s not something we’ve been able to do. You know, it’s kind of the typical list. Supply chain issues there was a major shortage of of glass jars when we started the business because guess what? We weren’t the only ones that thought that this would be a good time to start pickling. So, yeah, it was. Those are just a few of the challenges. But you know, we we are we’re so, we’re so grateful and feel so fortunate to be where we are. And we’ve already, you know, we launched in November of twenty twenty and we’ve we’ve managed to establish some really strong partnerships with some suppliers and vendors. And so it’s you compare it to the horror stories we’ve heard from from others. We feel really grateful that we’ve been able to move forward and execute in the way that we did last year and what we have planned for twenty twenty two.

Max Kantor: [00:07:42] Oh, absolutely. Now are you guys pickling out of your home kitchen? Do you have a space you go to? Where are you guys doing this?

Jordan Queen: [00:07:52] Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, initially when it started a lot of the a lot of the experimenting and a good bit of the R&D started just from my home kitchen. But once we realized that it had potential, we kind of, you know, partnered up with Gil-Ad and really decided to make, you know, build a business model around this. We was lucky enough to have a neighbor that owned a restaurant just just nearby in Evanston, on the North Shore, and we were able there like the restaurant was closed down for almost a year, so we were able to get in there and do a lot of production. But, you know, as the pandemic lifted and restaurants started going back to normal, it kind of put a little bit of a squeeze and we had a we kind of had down dance around their schedule. So we started looking for other opportunities. And, you know, late late last fall, Dillard was like, Hey, there’s a pitch contest coming up, I’m going to sign us up for it. And I was like, Sure. And then, you know, next thing we know it’s we’ve been we made it down to top top five finalists, which we were just so humbled and blown away by that. We thought we were kind of a long shot just to get to that point. And then we, we we did our pitch in front of it was it was virtual, which is kind of different. But we had an amazing panel of judges and and we, you know, we we won which that was. We’re still kind of thinking shocking on cloud nine about that. So that’s allowed us. We’ve actually just moved in this past week into the hatchery. We have our own private kitchen here, and it’s just a total game changer for us, you know, just having unlimited access and just it’s going to really allow us to be able to scale and kind of ramp up our business, and we’re just really excited about it.

Max Kantor: [00:09:51] So you mentioned being in some like small farmers markets, markets like store like that. Where can people find you both in person and online?

Gilead Fishel: [00:10:05] Yeah, well, last year we were fortunate to participate and be a vendor in the Evanston Farmer’s market, which has been going on for over 30 years. So we were there every Saturday and as well as the Wicker Park Farmer’s Market, which is also long standing. So, you know, John lives in Evanston. I live in the city, and so we kind of started to focus on on kind of establishing ourselves in our own neighborhoods. And so those are two major markets we were also in in a number of other ones during the week Lincoln Square, Ravinia in uptown. But we’ve we have these wonderful independent shops all scattered throughout the the city and the suburbs that are taking a chance and offering our products. So Ravens, Goods and Ravenswood in Lincoln Square. Kaufman’s deli is a is is a fun one in in Skokie, to name a few.

Max Kantor: [00:11:13] Now do you guys have any upcoming products, locations, events that you want to share to our listeners?

Jordan Queen: [00:11:22] Yeah, I mean, we’re we’re as far as upcoming products, we have a lot of things kind of in the works. You know, the beauty about us working with local farmers like during the season, it really does. It’s kind of a it allows us to do a lot of R&D kind of testing recipes and then hopefully perfecting those where they can kind of move into our lineup. But you know, as Gilad mentioned earlier, he does, you know, he has, you know, he was born in a kibbutz in Israel and he’s got those roots. So we’re definitely focusing on maybe some Mediterranean flavors. We’re developing in the process of developing a harissa recipe where we’re trying to make it an oil free version, which a lot of commercial versions you get are are a little heavy on the oil. So, you know, and then just whatever we can get when peaches come in season, we we we do pickled peaches, pickled asparagus, we we just have so much available to us. We can kind of that’s the fun part. We have our core lineup, but we have so much room to play with on the seasonal side. And I don’t know. I personally, I love that aspect of it.

Max Kantor: [00:12:38] What would you say is the most rewarding part of what you guys are doing?

Jordan Queen: [00:12:45] I would say real time customer feedback and engagement. I think that’s just the beauty of being in a farmer’s market. It’s not like you’re selling online or a store or someone buys it and you never hear from them again. I mean, we see a lot of these people every week. I mean, they’re very much loyal to the markets in their neighborhoods, and they’ll be very frank with you and honest and and, you know, lucky for us, we’ve had a tremendous amount of positive feedback and it’s just it’s great. Like without that, we we feel like it would be hard for us to improve and get better. So we really we really are grateful to our customers.

Max Kantor: [00:13:27] And if people want to purchase some of your products, learn more. Do you guys have a website, social media? Where can they find you?

Gilead Fishel: [00:13:35] Yeah, we we absolutely do. Dilly Dally Provisions launched on Small Business Saturday Enough in twenty twenty. We offer free local delivery in the city for those that can’t make it out to visit us in markets or in gift shows. And yeah, we are on Instagram as well with the dilly dally provisions handle and lots of we try to we try to share our experiences and our journey of how we’re, you know what we’re up to. And so, yeah, please check us out.

Max Kantor: [00:14:12] Well, Jordan, glad you guys are both doing great work and we appreciate you for being on Chicago Business Radio today.

Jordan Queen: [00:14:20] Thanks so much for having us.

Gilead Fishel: [00:14:21] Thank you.

Max Kantor: [00:14:22] And thanks to you all for listening. Today’s episode once again is sponsored by firm SpaceX, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:14:30] This episode is Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm SpaceX, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firme Space.com.