Her Side Hustle Hit $100K at Weekend Farmers’ Markets: OHME!

This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Jenny Yue, 31, of Richmond, British Columbia. She is the CEO and co-founder with her husband Han Yue of OHME! Foods, a freeze-dried snack company. Yue started the business as a side hustle while working in health informatics and digital health within British Columbia’s provincial health system. Two years into the side hustle, she quit her job to focus on OHME! full-time. Now, the business is on track for $1 million in annual revenue. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

A New Year’s resolution leads to a side hustle: OHME!

When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
OHME! officially met its first customers at a farmers’ market in July 2023, but the side hustle idea began with a New Year’s resolution.

During the pandemic, I was working from home while caring for our 1-year-old, and the combination of stress, disrupted routines and putting myself last caught up with me. I gained more than 50 pounds in less than six months. One day, I looked in the mirror and barely recognized the person looking back. That was my wake-up call.

My husband and I resolved to start taking better care of ourselves. The first goal was to start our day with a good breakfast. We replaced bacon and fries with oats, yogurt and fruit. It was a positive change, but we quickly learned that eating well can become repetitive when you are not excited about what is in the bowl.

While we were searching for nutrient-dense toppings that could make breakfast more enjoyable, my husband remembered the freeze-dried fruit he had eaten as a child. It offered the simplicity of real fruit, intense flavor and a surprisingly satisfying crunch. We started experimenting with fruits at home, and what began as a way to make eating better feel less like a punishment eventually became OHME!.

Launching the side hustle with about $5,000

What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money did it take to launch?
To start the side hustle, we bought a freeze-dryer and experimented with different fruits, formats and textures. From there, we rented a commercial kitchen and put the products in front of real customers as quickly as possible.

Farmers’ markets became our first research lab. We could watch someone try the product, see their immediate reaction and hear the questions they asked before buying. That feedback helped us refine the product and story much faster than sitting at home trying to make everything perfect.

We launched the side hustle with approximately $5,000, which covered our equipment, commercial kitchen rental and initial ingredients. It felt like a significant investment at the time, especially because we had no guarantee that anyone beyond our friends and family would buy the product.

Farmers’ markets for sales and customer acquisition

If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?
I would start building repeatable sales channels earlier instead of allowing our market calendar to determine our revenue.

Farmers’ markets were incredibly valuable because they helped us validate the product and understand our customers. But if we missed one market, we lost an entire day of sales. Weather, attendance and the type of crowd could completely change our results from one weekend to the next.

If I were starting again, I would still attend markets, but I would treat every one as both a sales opportunity and a customer acquisition channel. I would collect email addresses, create a clear reason for people to order online and track repeat purchases from day one. That would have helped us turn one-time market customers into recurring revenue sooner.

The not-so-glamorous challenge of retail shelves

When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?
Getting onto retail shelves can feel glamorous, especially when you are announcing new store launches. But the shelf is actually the beginning of another job.

Sustainable growth comes from getting customers to notice the product, try it and come back for it. That means supporting retailers with demos, education, promotions and consistent follow-through while managing production, inventory and cash flow behind the scenes.

When we started OHME! in 2023, very few people in our local community understood freeze-drying. Customers would look at the bag and ask, “Do I need to keep this in the freezer?” We spent much of our first two years explaining the process, how it differs from dehydration and why the texture is so unique. We weren’t simply introducing a new brand. In many ways, we were helping people understand a new snack category.

You can be growing quickly on paper… and still feel cash-constrained every day.

Founders should also be prepared for how much cash growth requires. When we handled our own freeze-drying, production was smaller, but we had more control over timing and spending. As we grew and began working with co-manufacturers capable of producing at a much larger scale, the cash-flow game changed completely. Retailers may pay weeks after delivery, while manufacturers and suppliers often need to be paid right upon delivery. 

You can be growing quickly on paper, appearing in more stores every month and still feel cash-constrained every day. That was one of the biggest, and least glamorous, surprises of scaling a food business.

Don’t underestimate how much finished inventory you need

Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
One of our biggest early mistakes came after we received our first major distributor order. The products sold much faster than we expected, which initially felt like a very good problem to have. Then we realized that selling out is only good news if you can restock quickly.

We had underestimated how much finished inventory and how many raw ingredients we would need. We also had not planned far enough ahead to secure production time. By the time we understood the real demand, we could not replenish fast enough. We lost sales, and some of our retail partners were understandably unhappy because they had given us shelf space that we could not consistently fill.

We fixed it by treating forecasting as an ongoing operating process rather than an occasional guess. We now look much further ahead when ordering ingredients, booking production and planning for distributor orders, retailer growth and promotions. We also build in more of a buffer because food production rarely moves as quickly as a spreadsheet suggests it should.

Luckily, AI made things way easier. It helped us organize sales data, identify patterns and model different demand scenarios more quickly. Obviously it didn’t replace human judgement, but it did give us a much stronger starting point.

The experience taught me that demand is only one half of growth. The other half is being operationally ready to meet it. Selling out makes a great social media post; staying in stock builds the actual business.

From $100k in first-year sales to a $1m annual projection

How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?
We did not have consistent monthly revenue during our first year because the side hustle depended heavily on farmers’ markets. Revenue changed based on how many markets we attended, the weather and the crowd. If we missed a market day, we missed an entire day of sales. Even with that inconsistency, OHME! generated more than $100,000 in first-year sales. 

We began seeing more predictable revenue as we expanded beyond markets into retail, wholesale and online D2C sales in year two. That shift meant revenue was no longer entirely dependent on where we could physically show up that weekend.

What does growth and revenue look like now?
In our second year, we expanded from about 50 specialty stores to roughly 120 independent grocers and reached about $350,000 in sales.

Today, OHME! is carried in more than 600 retail locations across Canada, including Whole Foods Market, Urban Fare, London Drugs, Well.ca and Costco.ca. We also sell through our direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels and are building a growing U.S. export presence. We expect to close our current fiscal year at approximately $1 million, with a target of $2 million for the next fiscal year.

Running a business means freedom to act on ideas

What do you enjoy about running this business?
Growing up, I believed that the safest and most responsible path was to build a stable career with a predictable income. I valued my work in healthcare, but large systems naturally involve many layers of review and approval, so even good ideas can take a long time to move forward. Running my own business has given me the freedom to act on ideas, test them and see the results for myself. I can choose the direction of the company, decide who I want to work with and build a team around people whose values and energy align with mine. I love being part of the entrepreneurial community because so many people have a bias toward action. When something goes wrong, the conversation usually begins with, “How do we solve this?”

What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
Stop protecting the idea and start testing it. Give yourself 30 days to create the simplest, least expensive version of your product or service, then put it in front of 10 people who could genuinely become customers. Do not just ask whether they like it. Ask whether they would pay for it, what might stop them from buying and what they would change. Compliments feel good, but buying behavior tells you much more.

I see so many people with great ideas remain in the planning stage because they are afraid of failing, losing money or discovering that the idea is not as strong as they hoped. But you cannot think your way to certainty. A small test gives you real information without requiring you to quit your job, invest everything or have the entire business figured out.