Merch Launch Plan

1 — Embroidered cap Best margin No size risk

Order: 48 units — 4 colorways × 12 (Richardson's minimum per colorway, and the multiple that earns free freight). Comp check: Voodoo caps sell $20–30, Dutch Bros bucket hats $20–30. $30 is the top of the band and needs the embroidery to look premium — which is exactly why the badge logo has to replace the thin wordmark.

2 — Tee 58.2% of the reported mix

Both figures are one-colour screen print at 50 units. A second colour or second location adds roughly $2–3.

Recommendation: Comfort Colors 1717. The $2.40 delta buys a heavier, garment-dyed shirt in earthy tones that sit natively next to the brand palette, and it's the blank that reads "bought this somewhere real" rather than "company t-shirt." That perception is the whole product.

Size curve — 72 units

Skewed slightly large for a QSR customer base. This curve deliberately drops XS — a full XS–3XL run is seven sizes, and carrying all seven on run one is how a pilot strands inventory. The actual available range must come off the selected blank's spec sheet, not off this page. If anything strands here it will be 3XL — keep that number small on run one and reorder into proven demand.

Caveat on what this test can teach you: spread across six sizes, 72 units is ~12 per size, and a smaller pilot is thinner still. That is enough to sell through; it is not enough to learn a reliable size curve from. Treat run one as a demand test, not an allocation study.

3 — Sticker ~88% margin Free advertising

Voodoo runs six sticker SKUs and a $2 logo sticker. This is the impulse buy that converts a $15 donut ticket into a $19 one without the customer thinking about it — and every unit sold is a logo on a laptop or a water bottle somewhere in DFW.

Grounded in the real product mix

Pulled from the ops system, not assumed:

• 7 active DFW stores — Arlington, Carrollton, Dallas, Fort Worth, Grapevine, North Richland Hills, Saginaw.
• Kolaches are a real line, not a sideshow — jalapeño & cheddar, smoked beef, ham, turkey, bacon, croissant-based builds.
• A full coffee bar — Community Coffee, iced mocha / caramel / french vanilla, 16 oz hot and cold cups.

The strategic point: "donut shop merch" is a category with a hundred entries. Texas kolache-and-coffee shop merch is a category with very few. Neither Voodoo nor Randy's can run that play. Lean into it.

Four directions briefed to Mickey

Non-negotiable design constraints

• Gold on cream is low contrast and washed out on the quarter-zip proof. Brown is the workhorse; gold is an accent or carries a brown outline.
• Thin monoline type dies in embroidery. Cap artwork must hold at ~2.5in wide with a minimum stroke of roughly 1.5 mm. The solid badge survives this; the arched wordmark does not.
• Darker bodies. Cream and sand in a fryer environment look destroyed in a month.
• Exact tokens only — cream #FFF6E9, brown #5c3b18, gold #f6b73c, ink #2b2116. No eyeballed hex.

1. Design lock + quotes. Pick one of the four directions. Send artwork out for real quotes to three decorators — cap embroidery, tee screen print, sticker. Confirm Richardson 112 colorway availability.
2. Proofs. Digitizing file produced and sewn out on an actual cap before approving — a digitizing proof on screen tells you nothing about whether the counters fill. Screen-print strike-off on the real blank.
3. Production starts. Cap, tee, sticker into production. Quarter-zip presale opens the same week — it rides the launch attention without consuming any launch capital.
4. Production continues. Build the in-store display. Decide the 2–3 launch stores off the trailing four-week sales data, not gut feel. Brief managers and set the staff spiff.
5. Delivery + merchandising. Goods land. Count them in against the PO before anything hits the floor. Display up at the counter — merch behind the register doesn't sell.
6. Launch. Staff spiff live from day one. Close the quarter-zip presale: 40+ units → production run; below that → it stays staff-only and you kept the money.

Presale mechanics — for the quarter-zip

1. Post the approved mockup with a firm price and a firm close date.
2. Collect payment up front, not interest. Interest is not demand.
3. Threshold: 40 units. Above it, order exactly what sold plus ~10% for walk-ins. Below it, refund and keep it as staff uniform.
4. Run it for 14 days. Longer doesn't gather more orders, it just delays the decision.

This converts the single riskiest SKU from a $1,500 inventory bet into a demand test with almost no inventory exposure — you still carry the refund handling, the ~10% walk-in overage, and the reputational cost of cancelling on people who paid.

Where it sells

• Counter display, 2–3 stores. At the register, at eye level, priced clearly. Merch on a back wall is merch nobody buys.
• Stickers at the point of payment — a $4 impulse item needs to be within arm's reach of the card reader.
• Online later, not at launch. Shipping a $30 cap for $8 postage destroys the margin and adds a fulfilment job nobody owns. Prove it in-store first.

What good looks like — 90 days

Open decisions — needed from Jack

• Which of the four design directions (or a blend) once Mickey's concepts land.
• Which 2–3 stores get the first run.
• Comfort Colors vs Bella+Canvas — recommendation is Comfort Colors, $2.40 more for a materially better product perception.
• Is the $2 staff spiff approved, and does it come out of store labour or marketing?
• Quarter-zip: confirmed as staff uniform + presale, not a stocked retail SKU?

A note on these numbers

Every cost on this page is a researched market range, not a quote: Richardson 112 blanks and 12-piece minimums, embroidery at roughly $1.50 per 1,000 stitches, Bella+Canvas at $11.32 and Comfort Colors at $13.70 decorated at 50 units, one colour. Sticker pricing is the softest number here and is flagged as an estimate. Nothing should be ordered off this page without three real quotes. The structure holds regardless of where the quotes land; the margins move.