Today we’d like to introduce you to Devon Rice
Hi Devon, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Anna and I met through the Utah Tech Student Association where we had the opportunity to work on important business skills like managing large budgets, learning leadership skills, communication skills, conflict resolution, and a whole slew of other valuable traits we have today. In this experience, we grew close and eventually married.
Anna has a younger sister, Kat, who has autism. With Kat’s adulthood on the horizon, the need for a job is more apparent now than ever. Since 2019 I have worked for NeuroDev – a school for neurodivergent young adults, and just like Kat they are all seeking jobs, too.
After recognizing this great need I sold my car, sold my stocks, and used all of the funds to start dinkers® glazed nuts with Anna. Why nuts? It was something I did in high school for a retired veteran and I really enjoyed the novelty of it, and I knew that the startup costs would give us the opportunity to bootstrap the entire company. Opening all of the Amazon packages felt like Christmas morning.
Since inception, we have been able to provide jobs to nearly 10 neurodivergent adults. We utilize our mentoring skills to provide work for them in an environment that understands their needs, while still holding strong boundaries that promote professional development. The model has worked so well that NeuroDev collaborated with dinkers® to create a white-labeled version called Neurodivergent Nuts, ultimately providing even more jobs to the neurodivergent population.
dinkers® has a mission to provide meaningful development opportunities for neurodivergent young adults. The only way this is possible is by having a legitimate, cash-flowing business. We want to be hiring many more students and our current limitation is just sales. We have built a great team, we even have a neurodivergent manager running all event operations for the St. George area, so we’re ready to add more workforce once the budget will allow.
What I like to say with our nut companies is that we don’t sell nuts, we sell opportunity – the nuts are just a means to an end… and they’re quite delicious. Visit either of the two companies at dinkers.co and neurodivergentnuts.com. I’m a fan of the classic Cinnamon Almonds. The dinkers® special/Sweet Amber Pecans are definitely the crowd favorite.
To any St. George locals, visit us at local farmers markets, the county fair, Utah Tech Athletics games, and many other major events. Keep us in mind for your next company gift, stocking stuffer, wedding, or major event.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
dinkers® has been bootstrapped all along the way and we’re at a crossroad of deciding whether we pivot to seeking an investor in the retail industry or move toward improved self-sufficiency. This is all in an effort to be proactive with our income to better ensure that we have the funding necessary to succeed in our mission.
It’s far more difficult than it seems to simply afford to hire employees. Let’s consider a simple number crunch – Assume a business that has a 60% profit margin on their cost of goods sold (COGS), they sell all of their goods at $10/each, at a typical event they sell 10 goods per hour, their overhead includes machinery, transportation (on average, equates to ~$150/event), and labor at an average of $14/hr. If the company has 2 employees working a 4 hour event, the company can expect 12 hours of labor cost (2 people, 4 hour event, 1 hour setup, 1 hour takedown) totaling $168. Round up for taxes and you’re at ~$180. The total income on the event is $400, take out $180 for labor, $150 for overhead, and 30% for COGS ($120), and an event fee of $50, you’ve now lost $100 by doing this event.
Now, take that example above and apply it to a full-weekend event that is projected to have 8,000 attendees and a vendor fee of $500… and only 800 people show up. At those events, we’ve lost as much as $500.
Other roadblocks include providing jobs for students whose parents stand in the way of their growth. Failure and struggle is encouraged in the work that we do, and it’s unfortunately frequent for parents of students to “save” their child from failure, robbing them of the development opportunity they have by having a job that challenges them. The most common example of this is paying for their basic needs and oftentimes giving an allowance on top of it, ultimately giving a false sense of reality of the workforce.
We have dealt with a handful of issues with our roasting machines recently, all of which have been long, hard, costly tasks. Check out our Instagram – we are currently pushing out a whole series detailing the rebuild process on the roasters.
Lastly, the hours. I work full time, run a company on the side, and do the work with the nut companies when I’m able. For the past 6 months I’ve been averaging 60-70 hours per week of work. It’s hard being a business owner, but I have learned time and time again that struggle is essential for success.
As you know, we’re big fans of dinkers® glazed nuts. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
dinkers® was created around a problem I was constantly surrounded by – the need for jobs catered to neurodivergent adults. I knew that solving the problem by starting a business of my own would be the easiest, most controlled solution to this problem, and my experience and knowledge preparing me for this role is ultimately what made this endeavor possible.
I started buying and selling drums when I was 12 years old. From there I quickly started learning the value of money. Combining the sales experience with my mom’s frugal lifestyle and my many high school jobs, I was prepared to pursue a marketing degree at Utah Tech university. In my time as a student there I wore many hats in student leadership – the ambassador program taught me necessary skills in public speaking and sales, the director of social events role taught me how to be very detail-oriented, overcome obstacles (I was planning events for thousands of students amidst the tremendous Covid regulations), and especially how to best utilize a small budget, the vice president of student life role taught me what it takes to be an effective leader and how to handle conflict in the workplace, the student body president role taught me how to establish culture in a team, how powerful politics is, and how incredibly inefficient bureaucratic organizational structures are. In this time I also worked for NeuroDev and got acquainted with the needs of our neurodivergent population, as well as learning the tools necessary to effectively mentor them.
I’m proud of my personal brand, my innovative thinking, my communication and problem-solving skills, and especially my energy fueling all of the things I do.
How do you define success?
True joy in my days. I’ve always told Anna, I don’t care what you do for work, happiness in our home matters more to me than any amount of money.
Pricing:
- Local orders on dinkers.co are always free delivery.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dinkers.co
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dinkers.co
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/dinkers.co
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/dinkers-glazed-nuts
