So you are in a pickle and could really use more cash each week. What can you do?

  You finally want to be your own boss too? How do I boss myself around? Well there have been ways to answer all your questions if you are willing to be creative and as usual, work hard. Why is it that some of the laziest people earn the most money? Too many questions?

Four years ago Shamus Jones started a company called Brooklyn Brine and now sells pickles in 35 stores. Yeah, when in a pickle this guy decided to sell pickles, and besides his choice, who doesn’t like to eat a pickle? He is a typical guy who hated his day job and didn’t like having to be so polite to his boss for a living. So. He took a lot of cucumbers and made them into a company called Brooklyn Brine.

He admits that it is the hardest job that he has ever had but it is the most rewarding job too. He did it by getting a free commercial kitchen from ten at night to four in the morning. The 32 year old pickle pioneer worked all night to punch out his pickles. He cured cucumbers and spread the dill. He had the nerve to just go into it without a business plan, without operating capitol without even a trust fund. He just went into the barrel and made a product.

So what’s the big deal? I can walk into any supermarket and buy all the pickles I want and besides that, how many pickles can you eat anyway? Well, he was smart enough to make his pickle unique and different. He makes varieties that you just can’t get anywhere else like Whiskey Sour Pickles, Spicy Maple Bourbon or just Damn Spicy pickles. So, local orders shot up and in 2010 came a call from a big company called Williams-Sonoma a source for gourmet foods and professional-quality cookware.

The first order from them was for 22 thousand jars where he had only a month to make it by hand. Somehow he did fill that order and in only three years later Jones says Brooklyn Brine is topping a Million dollars in gross annual sales. After that order he feels nothing is impossible anymore. The fact of the matter is that you can mass produce pickles. You don’t need a lot of equipment to make them.

You just need big barrels of vinegar or brine and then food to put into it. If you can market the stuff there is the ability to make a profit. Adam Steinberg is a historian at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. New York's Tenement Museum focuses on America's urban immigrant history. The Tenement Museum provides walking tours and is a popular attraction. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum ,located at 97 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan New York City, is a National Historic Site.

In the 1870’s pickles were considered a very exotic snack. At the turn of the 20^th Century, pickle pushcarts packed the neighborhood and the stench of pickles and garlic stunned people who visited that neighborhood. Now you can see rats and the stench of urine on the streets. But then the smells of pickles were enough to attract food giant H.J. Heinz who figured that if New Yorker’s liked pickles then the nation would like them too.

Heinz was mass producing and mass marketing food and got into the pickle jarring. Americans now are eating more than One Billion pounds of pickles every year. Do the math and that turns out to be about 4 pounds of pickles per person. At the small shop called The Pickle Guys located at 49 Essex Street in NYC they boast that they get delivered about 2 thousand pounds of cucumbers every Tuesday and they sell. In fact Allen Kaufman there says that sales are rising steadily.

Even the traditionalists are now making pickled pineapple, pickled mango even pickled okra to add to pickled mushrooms and onions. Both Jones and Kaufman agree that there is still room for competition because everyone loves a pickle on their food or on the side. Go grab your pickle and enjoy. LOL