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You might not think of it this way when you walk into a grocery store, but every aisle is an opportunity for a small business to sell big.
It's an opportunity that knocked on Max Crawford's door, and he answered.
Max is in the spice game, but that game got a whole lot bigger now that 19 Hy-Vee stores in the Kansas City area started stocking his spice blends, Max Mix.
“I love doing Max Mix," Crawford said. "Makes me happy."
It started as a gift for his teachers when he went to Blue Valley High School.
Max graduated from high school and wanted to start his own business," Pam Crawford, his mom, said.
They started an online business and occasionally held pop-up events where Max would sell spices.
Hy-Vee District Store Director Karla Quandt explained how they discovered Max at one of those events.
“One of our managers, George ... said that he met this really awesome kid over the weekend and that we need to carry his spices," Quandt said.
“I still remember the day that Max and his family walked in," she said. "And just his energy and his excitement behind his spices I was like, ‘We’re going to make this a big deal.’”
It was an immediate hit.
“That first weekend that Max came in and demoed at our location, his spice immediately jumped up to being the top SKU of spices of that entire month in just one day because our customers just fell in love with the product," Quandt said.
The bigger his business gets, the closer he gets to his dream.
"My dream: I want to be independent, I want to have my own place, I want to go to college," Max said.
His mother couldn't be more proud.
“So proud," she said. "Like it makes me just want to cry. Like he is really growing up. This is amazing. He’s really maturing. This is his superpower."
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