- PNC is proud to support Business Forward, where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in central Illinois.

(soft upbeat music) ( intense upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George.

This show is gonna make you hungry.

Joining me tonight, Harreld Webster.

Harreld is the owner, I have to say the slow, of Triple Dipple's Treats & Delicacies in Chillicothe, Illinois, welcome.

- Thanks for having me.

- [Matt] All right, so Chillicothe right, great community.

- Absolutely.

- [Matt] What made you open a business in Chillicothe, Illinois?

- Well, we had been looking for a place to have a brick and mortar business for about a year or so.

And one day we're doing a vendor show at Shore Acres Park and the person in charge of that vendor show, mentioned to me that there were no bakeries in Chillicothe.

And so the first light bulb went off like, "Wow, this might be a good place to set up shop."

Then she said that they used to have a bakery, but it closed down about a year prior.

And I was like, well, then there might be a place that the health department is already approved, that there might be something in it that we could still use.

And then the third thing she said was, it was right down the street and it was the only building with a brand new face.

And I was like, "Wow, okay so this is a triple whammy, this is a great idea."

- It's a Triple Dipple.

- Exactly, and so after I met with her, I drove down the street, found the only building with the brand new face.

There were box in the windows.

And so I did what any good stalker would do, and I held my phone up high and took pictures of the inside of the building.

And it was immaculate, it was gorgeous.

I called the number on the window, spoke to the guy.

This was a Thursday we met on Friday.

The owner of the building and the price was right.

The building was beautiful, everything was perfect.

And I signed the lease the following Tuesday.

So in the five day process, it was meant to be everything just lined up.

- [Matt] If you think about it, that was meant to be.

- [Harreld] Yeah, absolutely.

- I mean, that is very, very cool.

So, well, thanks for coming on.

This is gonna be, this is a fun topic.

Let's start with you.

- All right.

- [Matt] All right, you're not from here, are you?

- No, I'm originally from Los Angeles.

I was born and raised.

- [Matt] Okay so you came from Los Angeles to middle Illinois.

- Yes, so my wife is from Peoria area.

And she grew up in the Peoria area.

And then after college in Louisiana, she moved out to Los Angeles, which is where her brother was.

I met her through a mutual friend, three days after she moved there and we've been hanging out ever since.

- [Matt] Oh, that's cool.

- Then we got married and started a family.

And after a while we realized that we wanted that middle America feel to raise our family.

And so we moved out here in 2008 and I've been shoveling snow ever since.

(Matt and Harreld laughing) - Lately, especially.

- Right.

- So, well, that's really neat.

That's, a cool story because we had a lot of people on this show and we talk about all the time, people from Dallas and people from LA and somebody from Idaho.

And they pick middle Illinois.

- Right.

So it's kinda fun that you come here and you went to school in Augusta.

What schools in Augusta?

- I went to Paine College in Augusta, Georgia.

It's a historically black college.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Yeah.

- [Matt] That's pretty cool too.

That town really, just side notes, really only known for one thing and that's the Masters.

- [Harreld] Right, and James Brown, it's the home James Brown.

- [Matt] Oh, there you go.

- Right.

- [Matt] All right, so it seems like you're a true entrepreneur at heart.

(Harreld laughs) But you didn't go to school as thinking, "I'm gonna be, I don't even know if a baker or own a bakery."

And I like that you said bakery, because I was gonna ask you when you're making cheesecakes, do you consider yourself a bakery?

- [ Harreld] Yeah, absolutely.

And I never thought that one day I would be a baker and even the term professional baker, to me sounds a little weird when applied to me, because I didn't go to school for culinary arts.

I didn't go to school for pastry or anything like that.

I was a communications major with the emphasis in radio and television broadcasting, so.

- [Matt] This is perfect.

- This is perfect.

This is, yeah.

I feel in my element, but I wanted to go back to LA and be on the radio and be TV and rule the airwaves.

And after getting rejection, after rejection, after rejection from being fresh out of college, I ended up doing a lot of other things before I found myself as a baker.

It wasn't until we moved here, that I even baked more frequently.

And that was just a hobby mainly because I wanted to satisfy my stomach.

Not because I wanted to woo anybody with my treats or anything if I saw something, I figured I could try and create that myself and that's how it started, so.

- [Matt] Are you a cook?

- [Harreld] I can cook, but I would not classify myself as a cook at all.

- [Matt] See I can cook, I can't bake.

- Gotcha.

- So I can't do anything that you do with your great cheesecakes.

(Harreld laughs) So let me ask you this.

I've got a million questions cause I consider myself a food guy.

And when you think about what your product is, like, how do you explain what you sell, just cheesecakes?

- I call them gourmet cheesecakes.

- [Matt] Gourmet cheesecakes.

- Just because it's not your standard New York style cheesecake, and we can create that for you as well.

But we add so many things to it and I'm always trying to think of a new flavor, a new type of cheesecake, something that I think would be good on its own, but even better in a cheesecake.

And it all started just from cravings, you know.

(Matt laughs) - [Matt] I love it, I love it.

- It'll be something, I just wanna try.

I wonder if that'll work in a cheesecake and I'll combine it with our recipe or tweak the recipe here and there.

And when I find something that I like, I'm like, "Okay, now I wanna share this."

And I put it out there to the public and it goes wild, so.

- [Matt] So when you were coming up with the concept, was cheesecake on your mind because you loved cheesecake or did you do cookies and all this?

Like how did you find that lane?

- So the cheesecake originally began simply because I wanted a cheesecake and I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere around here.

I went to several different places and purchased cheesecake from a number of different businesses, but none of them scratched the itch that I had.

And so I spent two months and way too much money in my own kitchen, creating a cheesecake recipe that satisfied me.

Once I did that, I took it to work and I shared it with people that were at my job and they started placing orders that same day.

And so even then I wasn't trying to create a cheesecake business.

I was just thrilled that other people liked the food that I was making.

- [Matt] Yeah, you're proud.

- Yeah, exactly.

And then after a while my wife said that, "Maybe should start charging people for your time cause you're spending more time in the kitchen than you are sleep in bed."

(Matt and Harreld laughing) And I guess that's kinda when the idea of a business began.

(Harreld laughs) And it was my sister-in-law that said, if you can figure out how to make them smaller, cause these were full sized cheesecakes, "So if you can figure out how to make them smaller, I know somebody that's running a vendor show that you could probably be a part of."

And so I scoured the internet and I was looking for smaller pans or ways to make them individual that was still affordable that I could still do.

And at the time it was at home, so it was nothing official.

And I found a pan after watching several YouTube videos ordered, I think it was just two at the time thinking, "Oh my goodness, this is a lot of cheesecake."

I make 12 at a time now and baked a few of those cheesecakes took them to the under show and they went really well.

And after doing a small vendor shows like that for a while, it was my wife that suggested I should try the farmers market.

And I was like, "We're gonna need more pans."

And all I saw were dollar signs that were going out for something that I just considered a hobby.

You know, this was a little side money to pay for gas or something else, you know?

And she would kept encouraging me and I'm like, no.

All I saw were the prices for registering a business name and prices and fees for the health department and fees for the actual farmers market and the purchase of more pans and ingredients.

- [Matt] You were scared.

- I was scared, yeah.

And I'm thinking, "what if we don't get this money back?"

Because only people that know me are like friends and family and the small community of vendor shows, and that's it.

You know, this is a big stage.

We're going on a big scale out here trying to make something big happen.

And I don't know about that.

And she said, "Just do it."

And walked out the room.

And so I was like, "Okay, I guess I have to do it now."

And we forked up the money for all of those fees and supplies and everything else.

And the first couple of weeks was really slow.

And I was thinking to myself, see this isn't gonna work.

- [Matt] See, I told you so.

- Yeah, exactly.

And she was like, "Well, why don't we offer samples?"

Like this is genius.

And so we started baking these tiny cheesecakes, which is a huge seller today as our cheesecake bites.

We started offering those as samples and once people tasted them, next thing you know the cheesecakes are selling out.

And so then we realized we had a legitimate business and not just a hobby anymore.

- Well, thank goodness for your sister-in-law, - Yeah coming up with the smaller version, right?

- Right, absolutely.

- And your wife that is very cool stuff right there.

So you're in a competitive space, right.

Because there's some really neat bakeries in this region.

I mean, but you have found like a niche that's just unique enough to where you're different.

- Yeah it works.

- [Matt] It works.

- It does, the miniature cheesecakes, enough for just one person.

I mean, you can share it if you had to, but that's unique.

Nobody, well, I won't say nobody cause I'm sure there are people like me out there that will gladly eat an entire cheesecake, but it's the convenience of having something smaller.

I don't have to waste any or look for people to share it with.

I can just enjoy this and even save some of this if I want to.

And then with the multiple flavor options and the new flavor coming every couple of weeks, it's exciting, it's, you know, almost like a subscription plan, you know?

- [Matt] There you go, Triple dipple a month.

- [Harreld] Exactly.

- All right, so are you thinking of getting into another space or is this just what you bake?

- Well, we do cheesecakes, we also do a couple of cookies.

When we first started, we were doing pies and cakes and cookies, cake pops and all kinds of other things.

- [Matt] Yeah, that's what I thought.

- Yeah, we were doing a number of different things.

- when I got on Facebook and everything now that's not the focus.

- No, and we realized there's just some business analysis and figuring out what people really want.

The different types of cookies we were offering, we just scaled them back to the main three, the oatmeal cream pies, our triple chocolate chip with walnuts and then our triple chocolate chip cookies.

That's what most people were coming back for time and time again.

The cake pops that were really popular, but for us, it became a time thing.

I make the cake pops, my wife does and she's got a job.

And so she can only make them when she's able to make them.

And we can't necessarily meet demand.

So we have no problem supporting other small businesses and recommending other people who make fantastic cake pops and you know, and even do it better than us.

You know, we suggest them to go and check them out.

With the pies and everything, we only do that seasonally now.

So when Christmas and Thanksgiving come around, we'll take care of that for them.

But we are known as the cheesecake place or the cheesecake shop so we wanna make sure we give everybody what they want.

- I look at it that way too.

You know, you, the Riverfront, that's where I originally met you.

And you know, there's a whole group of small business down there and there's other areas other than food, obviously.

But within that food space, you guys are all buddies, right?

- [ Harreld] Oh, yeah.

Sharon Graham, which is the person that's in charge and runs the whole market, she once called it an incubator for small businesses and the Riverfront Farmers Market is that, it really is.

We started as kind of a weekend hobby as did several other businesses that are now brick and mortar businesses or several locations, or they're in all these other places.

And I love the markets.

There's so much fun, you're out there with everybody.

You're, you know, you greet each other as old friends, you meet new people and they come back time and time again.

And we've all kinda grown through this market and we've become great friends.

There are people that I can't wait to see on Saturday mornings or Tuesdays and Morton, for example.

And it's just some businesses now that, I met at the market have become some of my favorite businesses to visit and eat and all those kinds of things too.

- What's fun about it is there's nothing better than small business in small towns.

- Oh yeah.

- There's nothing better because it's about people.

When I take my family there every Saturday morning during the spring and summer, and we walk through, there's really nothing better than seeing a line at a place like yours.

- Absolutely.

- You know what I mean?

- Yeah it's exciting, it's encouraging.

And I mean, and in a business sense too, if there's a line at somebody else's business, that means that there are more people that are closer to your business and more people that you might be able to influence.

But, yeah, it's exciting.

So when CxT, for example, on a cold morning has this incredibly long line, I know that they're gonna keep walking around the market and CxT customers will come and visit Triple Dipple's or they'll stop by and grab some popcorn or they'll stop by and you know, pick up a churro or they'll grab something from somewhere else, you know.

- [Matt] Pretzels or whatever, they maybe.

- Yes, oh my goodness, yeah.

- [Matt] That line is a mile long.

- [Harreld] I would love to name drop all my favorites, but I'd probably leave somebody off.

- [Matt] Right, right.

Well, what's great about it is I love that term an incubator for small business because that is what drives our region.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Have you thought about expansion?

- Yes, we're not quite ready to open up a second store just yet, but we are working on a few things to place our items in more places.

- [Matt] Oh yeah.

- Recently we're wholesaling with Sous Chef, a specialty grocery store here in the Warehouse district.

We have our cheesecakes at CxT Coffee, we're at the Coffee Hub in Lacon and a couple of restaurants in Chillicothe that our cheesecakes is at as well, like Diane Toms home of the just massive tenderloin.

- [Matt] Those things are huge.

- Yeah, they are.

(Matt and Harreld laughing) - [Matt] That feeds a family.

- Right, it does, we also have some at Po-Boys on Frostwood Parkway and we're working right now with Hy-Vee and in a couple of months, we'll have our cheesecakes in the Hy-Vee out at Grand Prairie.

- [Matt] All right, you my pivot to the next question, because think about this for a minute.

Every one of those places that you named before Hy-Vee, all small business family owned.

- [Harreld] Yes.

- Which is my favorite business.

- [Harreld] Yeah.

- Right, now you got Hy-Vee that has got to make you as a business owner, like justification almost.

Like when a brand that big, likes you or likes you and your product.

- Right.

- [Matt] Because they're really teaming up with you and saying, "There isn't anything we don't like."

because they're picky, they can be picky.

- Absolutely.

- It's like Shark Tank, you know, on Shark Tank when you're watching and they'll say, "There's not a lot of space in these stores.

And the big box stores are in these grocery chains."

- Where Hy-Vee is making that space.

- They're making that space.

I mean, tell me about it.

This is cool.

- Well, Hy-Vee is definitely friendly to local small businesses.

There are a number of people that they reach out to.

And before I knew anything about this, it was one of those things where I thought I had to reach out to these larger businesses to try and establish something with them.

But last year in February, I was approached by someone from Hy-Vee, brought me flowers and brought them right into the bakery and asked me if I was who I was.

And we started talking and she purchased a few cheesecakes and said, "Listen, if you ever wanna have a partnership with Hy-Vee, let me know, and we'll talk."

And so fast forward to these last couple of months, been working on methods where I produce more to take them out to either more small businesses or someplace like Hy-Vee.

And I gave her a call and I said, "Hey, this is what's going on."

And she got excited and said, "I'm on my way."

And she actually came down and we sat down and spoke for a while and next thing you know, it's posted all over social media and we'll be in Hy-Vee really soon.

And so it's super exciting.

It's always something that I wanted to do just to grow our business to the point where we can get our cheesecakes to more people.

Not necessarily because I, you know, want the money, which is also a great benefit.

- [Matt] Well, you need the money.

You're running a business.

- Exactly, we're running a business, but at the same time, I still have that same feeling from when I took my first cheesecake to work and other people enjoyed it.

I want other people to enjoy it as well.

I want the feedback and to be able to create something that makes people happy.

That's an awesome feeling.

- [Matt] Do you ever get sick of cheesecake?

(Harreld laughs) You know how some people own like a pizzeria and are like, "I can't even eat another bite of pizza."

- Well, the funny thing is I love cheesecake, but I can't eat it as often as most people would think I would, I only have cheesecake when I'm in the mood for it.

And so even now as a cheesecake baker, I have to be in the mood for a cheesecake in order to really truly enjoy it.

- [Matt] Probably a good thing.

- It is very good thing, very good thing.

(Matt laughs) - Yes, but I'll try all the new cheesecakes that we come out with, the new flavors that we create.

I have to try those to make sure that they're at the point.

- [Matt] Quality.

- Exact quality, that the flavor is where I want it to be, that it tastes like the description says it's supposed to be, and then I'll be okay.

But every now and then I will sit there and look at a cheesecake and it's almost like a lustful desire, you know.

I wanna get my fork and just devour it while people are staring at me eating it, so.

- [Matt] There nothing wrong with that.

- Absolutely.

- Are there supply chain issues with some of the products that you have?

- Our early supply chain issues, where with our containers where, - [Matt] That's, what I was wondering.

- that the pans that we baked the cheesecakes in, we ended up having to order different sizes and different shapes and changing our prices to reflect the sizes that were smaller.

We also had to order outside of our normal supplier, we had to order off of Amazon even to get the pans to carry us over until those were back.

One of the great things though is in this recent cream cheese shortage, we haven't had much of an issue with that.

Graham cracker crumbs a little bit, but we just go back to our old school way of blitzing our Graham crackers, you know, whole Graham crackers and doing it from.

- [Matt] You're finding work around.

- Yeah, exactly.

We just going back to the way that we used to do it, you know, and it's worked out so far.

We haven't run into any issues as far as supplies that would, you know, take the business down any, the only thing is that prices are going up.

And so of course, even with things that we haven't had issues with, the prices are going up.

So as a result, we had to raise our prices the first time in six years.

And so that was kind of, it was a difficult thing for my wife and I to do.

We didn't really want to do that at first, but it's the only way we could survive so we had to.

- [Matt] I think when small family owned business raises their prices it feels okay.

- [Harreld] Yeah.

- I think when chains do it, you're sitting here going, "You gotta be kidding me."

- [Harreld] Right.

- Because I want to support you, right.

And that is what that's Americana.

That's what drives our economy, our local economy is you.

That's cool.

- Yeah, definitely.

- [Matt] Oh man, so where'd you come up with this name?

- My son is a third, so he's Harreld Webster, the third.

And I never had a really cool nickname when I was a kid, so I wanted to make sure that he did.

And I came up with Trips because he's like the triple version of my dad.

And Trips was his nickname, and as with nicknames, they begin into rhymes.

So Trips became Triple, Triple became Triple Dipple.

And when we wanted to open up a business with a fun name to, you know, portray the fun environment that we had, we asked him if we could steal his name and put it on the business.

And he was like, yeah.

And he was eight at the time.

And he's like, sure.

And so that's how the name came to be.

- [Matt] You know what, there's nothing better.

I haven't heard you tell that story.

You've done a lot of social media.

I've never heard that story.

That is really cool.

- Definitely.

- [Matt] Well, that makes you feel good.

- Yeah, it does.

You know, and of course, when he answers the phone at the bakery, he says, " Triple Dipple's, this is Triple."

(Matt and Harreld laughing) And that's always fun, I remember the first time I heard him say it and I just laughed to myself, I'm like, " I love it, let's keep going."

- How do you pick flavors?

- Whatever my stomach tells me.

A lot of times, like in the beginning it was whatever people requested.

So the first cheesecake was our Sweet Tater cheesecake.

After that people started saying, - [Matt] Explain that.

- Oh, the Sweet Tater cheesecake.

That one is my mom's sweet potato pie recipe, swirled into our cheesecake recipe.

- [Matt] That's crazy.

- Yeah, it's so unusual.

Especially in this region, people hear Sweet Tater like, "Nah, I don't wanna try that."

Or sweet potatoes, "No, I don't wanna try that."

And that was the one that we would offer samples for.

And so we wouldn't tell people what the sample was, cause automatically they would've turned their noses up.

And so we would hand them that in there and they would say, "What flavor is?"

I'm like, try it and take a guess.

Let me know what you think it is.

And they would love it.

And I'd tell them that it's Sweet Taters, and then they would purchase Sweet Tater and nothing else.

And so it quickly became our best selling cheesecake based on the sample alone.

- [Matt] Once you have it.

You go back to it every time.

- [Harreld] Yeah, every time.

- It's how I am with Young's popcorn, with Joe Grey.

I just go, I get the same flavor every time.

- Right, the nacho cheese for me or the spicy nacho cheese.

- That is so funny.

So I wanna give you credit on something.

- Okay.

- You do a really good job of getting out there and branding and marketing.

And that's not easy.

- It's a job into itself.

- It's a job into itself.

And so when you go onto your Facebook or your website, when you look at all the flavors, it's crazy how they've added up.

You gotta be sitting here going, "Do I have too many sometimes?"

(Harreld laughs) Heath Bar is my favorite.

- Oh, it's a good one, yeah.

- [Matt] Anything Heath bar, I love.

I was, you know, looking for some samples right now.

(Harreld laughs) No, I'm just joking, I don't need it.

But so do you are the marketing and branding guy?

I mean you're the brand.

- Yeah, definitely.

- [Matt] That's really cool.

- My wife, she says I'm the face of Triple Dipple's.

So she doesn't like to come out to the front.

She doesn't enjoy, she's fine with customer service, but she doesn't enjoy that aspect of the business.

She'd rather be in the back putting cheesecakes together.

And I'm perfectly fine with that.

You know, at one point during the farmers markets, she was saying that I needed to be at the bakery so I could bake and she you'll go ahead and do the farmer's markets.

After a season, she was like, "No, I'll stay at the bakery and bake you go and do the farmers markets."

And it's been a great time, I love it.

- [Matt] What's it like having your son there too?

- It's great.

And so my son is there and I have two daughters that are also there.

In the summertime, they may not enjoy it as much as I do, but they're tremendous help.

My son, all the cookie dough, my middle daughter tops most of the cheesecakes, my oldest daughter, she tops cheesecakes and she's out front helping the customers and everything.

And so yeah, it is a 100% family owned and operated business.

And like I said, the kids don't enjoy it as much as I do, but it has been a tremendous help.

And now my own oldest daughter is there with me full time and it's opened up, you know, just doors and windows and things that have allowed us to move forward and do things that I've only considered doing at one point now we can actually do them.

- [Matt] You're living the dream.

- [Harreld] Yeah, I'm having a blast.

- You're having a blast.

You know, I've always thought it would be really neat to have a family owned business with your own kids that you could actually, someday just hand off to them.

And you know, my brother's got three daughters and they all bake.

- Okay.

- And so their dream, and they're young 10, 11, 12, their dream is to have three sisters bakery.

- Oh, that's fun.

- They live in Chicago area.

But that is a cool concept.

- Yeah, definitely.

- [Matt] What's your favorite flavor besides, you can't say, - Besides the Sweet Tater?

- [Matt] Sweet Tater cause that's give, you can't tell your mom, that's not your favorite.

- Of course not, and it's the first one, right?

There are actually probably three, that I have in my top three, the sugar cookie cake batter, which was a collaboration with a seven year old Chillicothe resident a few years back.

And it's the sugar cookie crust, cake batter cheesecake, sugar cookie inspired whipped cream and sprinkles that we normally have around Christmas time.

Aside from that one, there is the one that we call strawberry ice cream dream.

It's similar to the, yeah, the Strawberry Shortcake ice cream bars and that was the inspiration and that one is just.

- [Matt] What's your last one?

- The last one is the pecan pie cheesecake.

- Oh yeah.

(Harreld laughs) - And then there are just tons that are so close to.

- [Matt] That's an old school taste right there.

(Harreld laughing) - Well go out to Chillicothe, you know, check out Triple Dipple's on Facebook and website, social media.

The food's great, but the people are even better.

- Oh, thank you.

- [Matt] We'll see you at the Riverfront.

We'll see you out in Chillicothe.

- All right.

- [Matt] Thanks for coming on.

- Thanks for having me.

- Another fun show, this is Matt George.

Another episode of Business Forward.

(upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning into Business Forward, brought to you by PNC.