Adam Torres and Alan Pinel discuss Mega Mix Expo.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Mega Mix Expo coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Alan Pinel, Managing Director at VCCP.biz, explore the upcoming Megamix expo.
About Alan Pinel
Alan Pinel is a vegan businessman who understands the challenges of starting and running a business. Having navigated various obstacles himself, he is passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs overcome similar hurdles whenever possible. Most of his businesses are service-based, driven by his love for sharing knowledge and providing valuable shortcuts to his clients.
In today’s business environment, where customers expect seamless digital payment options both in-person and online, he recognizes the importance of adapting to these needs. This is a priority across his architecture business, consulting firm, and eCommerce store.
About VCCP.biz
A transparent pricing model ensures that every client pays a fair rate. For those currently using or considering a merchant processor with a flat-rate pricing model, the savings may come as a pleasant surprise, allowing more revenue to stay in their pocket.A transparent pricing model ensures that every client pays a fair rate. For those currently using or considering a merchant processor with a flat-rate pricing model, the savings may come as a pleasant surprise, allowing more revenue to stay in their pocket.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Alan Pinnell, and he’s Managing Director over at VCCP.
biz. Alan, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you, Adam, for having me on the show. All right, Alan. So we got a lot to talk about today. So for those that have been listening for the series I’ve been creating, we’re definitely going to be bringing up Megamix Expo 2025. It’s taking place March 12th and March 13th in Santa Anita Park, Arcadia, California.
You can get tickets, learn more at megamixexpo. com. And Alan, I understand that you’ve been to the event more than once, right? Like you’ve been an exhibitor multiple times. Am I off on that? Uh, Yeah, no, that’s correct. I was first a participant, came out to see the show, and then I, really wanted to get involved, so I became an exhibitor, and then, this is my, second or might be my third time being an exhibitor here with, the expo.
I’m really excited to be a part of it. That’s awesome. So what keeps you coming back? A lot of different events, a lot of things you can do, a lot of ways you can spend your time. What keeps you coming back? Well, I’ve been in a lot of different expos, but I really liked the way Tony and his team run the expo.
It’s very it’s fun and it’s very. Community oriented. So I love that part. And it just feels like a, family when I’m there. Yeah. Talk a little bit more about your business. First off, VCCP. biz, like the name, what, what does that stand for? Well, originally, so my business mentor told me to really niche down when I start my business.
So I’m a. 30 year vegan. So I figured it’d be kind of fun to incorporate veganism into my business. So I named my first company VeganCreditCardProcessing. com, which is a mouthful. So as we started getting a more business traction, we ended up shortening it for the email purposes and made it VCCP instead of the Vegan Credit Card Processing.
A little easier to manage. Now, hold on. So in the beginning, it was just, you didn’t have anything to do with being vegan. Like it’s credit card processing, right? Was that your hook? Or you’re like, wow, we don’t process credit cards for those meat eaters. Like, well, that’s kind of a funny part, man, by the way, go ahead.
Well, my focus was a vegan restaurants and vegan business owners, me being vegan. So that was my main focus and our fact page. Okay. It wasn’t just a random, Hey, you know, I like Yeah, it’s funny because we did, we do say that on our fact page too, that you know, we do accept meat eating companies as well.
And an interesting thing, I do have several carnas ideas, which are meat markets that are part of our business profile. So, oh man, here you go. You’re a. That’s awesome. So I love it. I love it. And credit card processing. I feel like for a lot of the business, we had a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs that listened to this program and I feel like sometimes there’s this, thing out there where either it’s a commodity or you have to know the right person or all these other, like, I feel like myths out there about credit card processing in general or merchant processing in general, like why is having the correct.
Merchant processing partner so important. that matter? Like, explain to me. I will definitely say that merchant processing as a whole is very similar to a commodity it’s, one is the same as the other, unless you have a really good partner who can answer the phone call when you need something, a lot of times.
A merchant processor is just a big, giant company, and to get in touch with them, you got to send some emails, leave some phone calls, but me being a broker, I’m a merchant services broker, I’m usually very, able to, sorry, I’m able to, you can get in touch with me if you need me. You just text me or a member of my team and we’ll get back to you very quickly.
And that’s, I mean, that’s very different than when you’re working with one of the big companies, you’re trying to get ahold of them, and then all of a sudden you click on one link, and I know a lot of people listening to this have been there, you click on a link, and it says, call this phone number, then it says, we don’t, then you get an email that says, we don’t use that phone number anymore, and then you get another thing that says, do this, and it’s like, and you’re in this loop, and it’s like, like, okay, so how does this get solved?
I feel like we’ve all been there at some point in way and shape and form. So how how does this work? Maybe like if somebody’s listening and they’re thinking about, well, does this make sense for me to look at vccp. biz versus what I’m currently doing? Like, how does that conversation go?
So to be totally honest, I think picking any company is going to be good for your business. But now if you want to do some more things in the community and we might talk a little more about that I’m really community oriented. And one of the reasons I actually started the company was I have a non profit and we wanted to accept credit cards.
Then we found out how expensive these credit card fees were. And I thought, man, I’d rather have our donations go more to promoting the business, making more burritos for, for the homeless that, I’m passionate about, instead of giving these feeds to a merchant processor. And someone made a joke, goes, Alan, just start your own company and give yourself more of the money to charity.
And it kind of sparked something. My other business at the time in architecture, I design a lot of restaurants and bars. And when I get to the end of the project and I ask the restaurant owner, what do you need help with? What can I do for you now? He says, well, do you know a credit card processor? That, became the impetus for me to really get started and create this, merchant processing company.
So I can continue to serve my architecture clients that have restaurants and bars and also be able to help. Non profits with saving more that money and giving less to the merchant process there. So one of the things that I do is because I’m very passionate about giving back We nominate a certain non profit for the year, and we give 10 percent of our profits to that charity.
And I thought about that, and I go, well, not everyone might not be passionate about my charity choice, which this, for this year, is Burrito Project. So say, for instance, what’s your favorite charity item? Well, I want to know more about Burrito Project, actually. What is that? Like, just the name.
What’s Burrito Project? Yeah, well, I’ll tell you about Burrito Project. And you’re not like, I’m like, how do you know all these branders? You’re VCCP. biz. We got Burrito Project. That’s so simple. I love that. You’ll never forget that name, ever. What is that? Yeah, well, Burrito Project, it’s as simple as it sounds.
Burrito Project is a group of friends and family and, just community members we get together. We make burritos, and then we give them to people that are unhoused and hungry in the community. We are based here in Los Angeles, but we have burrito projects all across the country, in actually semi international too.
We have some, chapters in Canada, and we even have a chapter in Egypt, but they go as the falafel project, because falafels are more popular than burritos over there. Yeah, but they are part of our burrito project. Exactly. So yeah, so that’s what Burrito Project is, and that’s my passion, and actually Tony’s been out to volunteer with us as well.
Yeah, and we do this every month, and we just want to be able to give a beautiful, like, meal and a warm tortilla to people that are hungry. And that’s what we do with Burrito Project. How do you go about developing, like, these community partnerships? Like, how do you go about, like, selecting or just figuring out what you want to do next?
Well, I know that my passion and my passion and the passion of a lot of our team is the Burrito Project. We do this as a team. We go and volunteer. But I know that’s not for everyone. So what I do is to say there’s a business owner that wants to use our service. Say they like, okay, I like that you’re giving back to charity.
I’m going to come on board, but I will also ask them, what’s your favorite charity and whatever their favorite charity is, I will give 10 percent to them too. So we as a company give 20 percent back to charity, 10 percent to burrito project and 10 to the, to the charity of the owner’s choice. That way we’re, partnering with them.
And their community. So say, for instance, say it’s a softball league or like a softball team in the area. Now, we know the softball team knows that this restaurant is giving money back to them. So where are they going to have their their next like celebration. They might go back to the restaurant where they know that.
It’s a partnership there. And so they, they, they’re able to give money to each other and share the, profits with each other. Yeah, that’s great. What kind of response have you gotten from this? This is very different. I haven’t really quite heard of a model like this before.
What kind of response have you gotten? it’s been really good. One of the reasons I kind of redid this during the pandemic, relaunching our new brand. And it happened to be, we scheduled for March 2020. And I was super excited. I had about 20 appointments booked for the week.
At my second appointment, that’s when the pandemic hit and all the bars and restaurants closed down. So I had to really rethink how am I going to redo this business to benefit restaurants and bars as well as other companies. And one thing that also helped was a lot of people started doing stuff online.
So now we had people selling from their home and so we really tweaked that and we started catering to the online business owner as well. So we have plugins that people can attach to their shopping carts, which then allow them to accept credit cards, usually at a rate, about 10 to 20 percent less than the other people that they most likely will use.
Yeah. What are the I know you mentioned restaurants and bars. Are there certain industries or niches you work with more than others? Like where are, a certain size of business? How does somebody know if they’re a good fit? I tend to work with the smaller businesses.
So that’s my passion. So, I’ve been a business owner and entrepreneur from as early as I can remember being in second grade and, hustling, selling some chips and that kind of thing. Yeah, we would have been friends. I had the baseball cards. I had the comic books. And you would have had the snacks.
Man, we would have been bartering. We would have had that playground on lock. Go ahead. I’m in. Exactly. Megamix Expo. You better watch out, Tony.
Exactly. So just, like, I’m not gonna tell the being a vegan, I’m not going to tell the local taco stand that I’m not going to serve them. Of course, I’m going to serve them. They have, they have a family there they’re trying to make money for and, and to serve. So I’m going to work with them.
And if Disneyland wants me to take their business. I will say yes as well. But my focus is, the smaller mom and pop businesses as well as midsize businesses. So. Speaking of, we got the taco person coming on later over at Baja Tacos Fish Chef. So Bertha, she’s going to be at Megamix Expo.
So when you said tacos, all this talk of burritos and tacos, man, you’re, you’re putting in my head on what’s for dinner today. That’s awesome. What is Taco Tuesday as we record this today? So, perfect. Aw, man, come on. No, thank you, everybody. Thank you. No, I’m over here. That’s awesome. Well, Alan, man, this has been a lot of fun getting to know more about you, getting to know more about your business.
If people are connecting, if they are listening to this or watching this and they want to connect with you, and learn more about the credit card processing and side of things, how do they do that? Come to our website, it’s vcp dot bizz, so it’s V like Victor, V like cat, C like Cat, P like Paul, and then Bizz business BIZ.
So Vcp do biz. Fantastic. And for everybody listening to that, just to let you know, we’ll definitely put that link in the show notes so you can just click on it and head right on over. And also don’t forget head to that megamix expo.com website. I’m gonna be at the expo. So is Alan like, come out there, come see us.
So again, megamixexpo. com, I think they also have some sponsorship opportunities still available and some booths and things like that. If you want to get involved then definitely check that out. And if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet hit that subscribe or follow button.
Don’t, don’t wait any longer. Hit the button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas. new stories and hopefully new ideas and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Alan, man, looking forward to meet you in person and thanks again for coming on the show.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Adam. I appreciate it.