Important Business Lessons I Learned While Working As A Door-To-Door Pickle Salesman

• Choose the right name. Some companies are family businesses, and as such bear the family name. Depending on the product, this isn’t necessarily a good idea. I should have gone with a name like “Quality Pickles” or “The Great American Pickle Peddler,” rather than my arrogant choice of Rod Tickle’s Sticky Pickles.

• Packaging matters. People just don’t want to buy pickles out of a 1) A steamer trunk, or 2) The trunk of a 1994 Oldsmobile, or 3) A large metal bowl. They prefer to get them at grocery stores, and in jars. This is the most common reason given by people when I knocked on their doors and tried to sell them pickles in this fashion.

• Refrigeration is important. Apparently only some brands of pickles are shelf stable. Mine were not. I deeply apologize for the salmonella outbreak that affected all four people who bought pickles my first week on the job.

• Don’t “get high on your own supply.” I started Rod Tickle’s Sticky Pickles because I just love pickles so much. I thought this career would eat I’d get to eat all the pickles I wanted. But I quickly realized that if I ate my on pickles, it would cut into profits.

• Make your product look attractive. I figured a free taste of my pickles would encourage sales, so I always had samples at the ready. But I should have had those pickle chunks in little plastic cups on a tray, instead of what I did, which was store them in my pants pockets.

• Don’t limit yourself. I should have attempted a much larger market at first, geographically speaking. I could have been selling my pickles nationwide, statewide, or even citywide. Instead, I trod the same three block radius every day of the week, knocking on the doors of the same 40 houses of people who were decidedly not interested in buying pickles from a man at the door.

• Don’t be too innovative. Pickle preferences are deeply entrenched, and it was tough trying to get people to even try pickles that weren’t “dill pickles” or “sweet pickles.” My pickle industry-disrupting pickle flavors like Tuna, Chocolate Pecan, and Blue Raspberry Blast just didn’t move.

• It’s good if people don’t think you’re a prostitute. I would knock on doors and say something like, “Want a pickle?” or “Who wants a pickle in the mouth?” I’d say about 40 percent of the time, people thought I was a prostitute. (A very proactive prostitute flogging his wares door-to-door, but a prostitute nonetheless.) I assume this is on account of all the pickle talk. It was especially awkward when the client didn’t want pickles, but did, in fact, want to hire me for acts of prostitution.

• Protect the product. I could have just knocked on the door with my fist, or rang a doorbell. I guess I thought it would be quirky and fun to knock on doors with some of my pickles. First of all, pickles are soft and make terrible door knockers, and when you try to hit something hard with them, like a door, they fall apart in your hand.

• Adapt, adapt, adapt!  One day I thought I’d get a little fancy on my door-to-door pickle-selling rounds and wore a pickle slice pinned to my shirt’s breast pocket. That’s ultimately how I earned a living as a pickle man: selling pickle slices with pins in them to wear on your shirt. That’s now a standard bit of men’s fashion, of course, and it was all thanks to me!