How a West Virginia-Based Entrepreneur is Using AI to Take Her Chili Nationwide

Growing up in Webster Springs, West Virginia, there was this little dairy bar we all called “The Custard Stand” in the middle of town. My husband, Dee, and I lived on opposite sides of town, and we both loved that place. When it closed in the early '80s, our community lost its ice cream shop. Fast forward to 1991, I was a school teacher and Dee was a truck driver, and we were expecting our second daughter, Linsey. We were kicking around ideas for a second income stream, and that's when The Custard Stand idea sparked.

The original was just a walk-up window, but we added lunchtime delivery. During my maternity leave, we remodeled an apartment in our building and created The Custard Stand. My great aunt, who'd managed the original stand, gave us their hot dog chili recipe. Years later, I learned that recipe was my grandfather's.

The business grew, and folks kept asking for our chili to-go. By 2003, we launched Custard Stand Food Products to sell to retailers. We learned everything through trial and error, asking questions, working with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, and Dee’s YouTube research to build our production facility behind the restaurant.

We started with local mom-and-pop shops. Being a teacher, I had this big West Virginia map on my wall with stars marking our progress: green stars for stores that bought our product, yellow for "come back later," and red for "no thanks." We kept expanding, building routes, and set our sights on bigger stores. I’m persistent. I learned that when people say no, you dig deeper, find out why.

In 2016, we got on Shark Tank, and while it didn’t land us a deal, we got connected with this incredible network of entrepreneurs. We even started a local group to support young business owners. At one of our Shark Tank Pals meetings, I learned about ways to use AI and shared it with my older daughter, Alissa, who’s our marketing director and runs our second location. Now, she uses Gemini daily to help craft emails and social media captions and research information like companies for networking opportunities.

I find Gemini super helpful, too, for summarizing Google Chat conversations, long email threads, and particularly with writing emails.

Our office manager, Jamilyn, uses Gemini in all sorts of ways and is constantly experimenting with new ways to integrate it into her day. She saves hours every day using Gemini for productivity tips, onboarding new employees, note-taking features in Google Meet, and sentiment analysis in Gmail to make sure she’s communicating the right tone when she’s moving quickly.

We’re constantly innovating. That applies as much to what’s happening in the kitchen, like Alissa’s new spice blend, as it does figuring out how to use technology to grow. With our kids’ help, we’re pushing forward.

Looking ahead, we want to become a national brand. But we’re not just building a business; we’re trying to raise the next generation of entrepreneurs and show them that with hard work and persistence, anything is possible.