March 30, 2023

Jered Johnson had just hung up the phone with Cole Swindell.

Well, more precisely, the country music singer-songwriter’s “people,” and the news was good.

“We’re doing his fall tour, which spans across multiple cities,” said Johnson, president and CEO of Pepper Entertainment.

“That never happened before the pandemic.”

A lot of things for this Sioux Falls-based company never happened before the pandemic.

A disruption unlike any other for the live entertainment industry, Pepper didn’t just hang on as a business. It leaned in – which paid off.

“We got late into 2020 and said, ‘Listen, we want to be first to the market when things come back.’ We leaned into hiring and expanding.”

Johnson brought in a vice president who had been furloughed at a national competitor to help launch an office in Boise, Idaho, giving the company a presence in the West.

He added a CFO in the local headquarters and bolstered the marketing team in Minneapolis.

“Looking back, it was apparent we got a pretty good head start on a lot of other similar-sized businesses that either didn’t make it or decided to stay boutique,” he said. “We took on a bunch of opportunities and grew our touring division, where we’re focused on doing a lot more full tours with individual acts versus regional dates here and there.”

That led to relationships with the likes of Foreigner, Justin Moore and REO Speedwagon. National companies weren’t able to submit offers, “whereas us, as independently functioning and being in the Midwest and fairly nimble, we started getting calls from acts like Foreigner,” Johnson said.

“Those were phone calls we wouldn’t have gotten because they would have been under a touring deal, and they started to come in at the same time we were picking up … just taking a portion of market share from a global promoter for us grew our business 200 percent and allowed us to get out in the market first.”

From hobby to business

Johnson founded Pepper Entertainment in 2006 as a one-man show while still working at the Argus Leader.

A few years later, he brought in partners and began working on the concept that became The District in Sioux Falls.

He sold his portion of The District in 2015 while acquiring back 75 percent of Pepper Entertainment and bought out the remaining shares in 2017.

The company now has 10 employees, half in Sioux Falls.

“Our whole team essentially stuck together during the entire time (in 2020),” he said. “Early in the pandemic when things shut down, we had about 120 shows on sale at that point. Every one hit pause.”

A show in 2021 with Toby Keith in Sioux Falls became the first arena show since the pandemic began, “so the phone was ringing quite a bit,” he said. “So we were forming new relationships, and now it’s just continual. It’s trying to sustain that pace and hiring the right people and trying to systematically support it.”

Pepper Entertainment went from 120 shows on sale to 200. This year, “we’re pacing about 300 shows,” he said.

“And we have focused on building a different silo of our company that we never focused on before the pandemic … the client representation side of our business.”

For instance, Pepper Entertainment now works with multiple fairs and festivals, including the Sioux Empire Fair, to secure their entertainment lineups.

“We’ve been a zero-debt company for a long time, and that helps keep us financially healthy and create new opportunities in marketing what we’re doing business in,” Johnson said.

The Sioux Falls live entertainment scene has evolved considerably since he started the business, and ticket sales generally are “very strong,” he said. “When we first started doing larger formatted shows, probably 75 percent of Pepper’s business was here locally or between Brookings and Sioux City, and now it’s the opposite.”

Because of more national promoters coming into the market, Pepper has expanded its focus to other areas such as Mankato, Minnesota, and Rapid City too.

“Which organically, out of default, helped us scale our brand because we’re moving our content into other markets,” he said. “It’s a good thing as far as building a business, but as a hometown guy, I’d like to do all my stuff down the road.”

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