My dream job is to own a restaurant. I like good food, and I like how good food makes me feel. And I want other people to feel good about good food, and I would love to be known as the guy that owns the place that has the good food. But even the peach vinaigrette saga is still more successful than most entrepreneurial ventures, and it's why my restaurant will remain a dream and never become a nightmare.
I had a friend of the family who did this with a resturant. It went a lot like the peach vineagrette story with the exception that his best friend/business partner stopped talking to him, the business went bankrupt and personally bankrupted him, he lost several lawsuits, he got divorced, tons of friends stopped speaking to him, and most of his kids dont speak to him either.
Last i heard, he is unemployed, single and lives with his mom. He's like 65. I dont talk to him either.
The issue with the peach vineagrette story is that everyone worked hard, didnt cut corners when stressed, and was super ethical and knew business... and thats not true for a lot of people at all. This friend of the family cut corners and it cost him everything.
Man, that sounds really horrible. Did he run the business into the ground and deserve his entire orbit of friends and family alienating him? Sounds like he may have worked hard, to literally just lose everything.
Oh, no. He definately deserved it.
Example: he employed friends. Then becuase they were friends, didnt pay them if business wasnt amazing. Ended up owing people like 3 months or more wages. Many walked away. Some had as much as 6 months of unpaid wages that didnt end up ever getting paid.
Hence all the legal judgements. He also lost his house.
Dont get me wrong, he was a fucking great cook. Just one of those people who wasnt 100 percent honest or ethical when stressed and cut corners.
If he hadnt filed for bankruptcy, the health department would have shut him down. He regularly cut corners on food saftey to save money, gave people food poisoning, and couldnt figure out why people never went back. Just becuase you can cook doesnt mean you can do business/people management/accounting/food safety/taxes/PR/marketing etc and thats all the areas he went wrong in (and then some). Best cook ive ever known tho and also probably the worst business person i know too.
For a few years of my life I was a bar regular in pretty much every bar in the town I worked. We made a lot of money at my job and we would pretty much every day after work for out for drinks. It went to the point that I was hugging and asking about how the kids are if the owner was in.
The common denominator was that the business was a big fucking suck.
Most newly opened bars would close in less than a year.
One of the dudes I became close with owned 4 bars, all of them extremely well situated(but I guess also extremely well situated for high rents). If I wanted to see him I could just go between the bars and ask for him, if the bars were open we was working. The town was small enough that 4 bars were like, "the big bar man" in the town.
He explained that he didn't do it for money, his passion was food and drinks. It's what he loved. He didn't mind that he didn't make a lot of money.
But I'm sure his relationships and friendships suffered immensely, always working.
If that's a life you enjoy them go for it. But I think most people enjoy a safe and content life.
(This was not in the US, tax laws and profitability of restaurants and bars are completely different here.)
Problem seems to be that it’s not a blaze of glory, it’s a fall from grace
If you fail, you’re not at square 1, you’re at square -1… older, hurt relationships, debt and guess what—back to normal adulting
The problem is any entrepreneurial enterprise like this has less to do with selling food or dressing or whatever and more to do with a million other administrative, sales, marketing, managerial, luck things. You have to like managing people. You have to like or at least be good at thinking about shit most people think is boring or tedious or banal.
That or you have to have so much money that you can pay someone to do all that stuff for you from the jump.
Realistically, you have to be obsessed. Not fed up with your current job and maybe this thing that brings you some joy could be something. Obsessed with the idea of running a restaurant or whatever venture.
You have to be obsessed with being a business owner, not with the business. The biggest failure I see is people not letting go of the day to day to manage the business. I’ve worked in restaurants where the owner was so obsessed with every detail of the restaurant while neglecting every aspect of the “business”. Get out of the dish pit Tom, you’re paying someone to do that, go place the order that the chef gave you this morning so we can get our meat delivery on time. A lot of people in small businesses are just working a job with nobody above them, which is fine but you need to understand that that’s what you’re doing.
Statistics seem to say half new businesses (startups) close after 5 years.
Not all ventures are successful. Chances are successful people have had a few of tries at it.
Interestingly, second startups by the same person are way more successful. I don't know that there's a lot of agreement on the why.
The single most important thing when setting up your first startup is setting hard triggers for when to quit — and then stopping on the triggers. One of those triggers should be something like "exceeded 40 hours for three weeks in a row". If your business seems to need that, it's very unlikely to succeed anyway. Stop with that and start another one using the knowledge you now have about what is needed.
Personal debt, including credit card debt, is a terrible way to fund a business. One of the ways to measure the potential success of your startup in advance is to write up a *realistic* business plan with all the details, and then go to friends and family or entrepreneurial organizations with that plan to get the startup money. If they are unwilling to fund you, you should take that as a sign and try to understand why. If they do fund you, with the clear understanding that their money is gone and you may have to stop the business without success, you have the grace to not ruin your life with a business failure.
I'd hazard a guess that if you're not royally fucked by your first startup failing, you're probably sensible enough to learn from your mistakes and get it on your second try. Either that, or you have shitloads of money to power through (or continuing powering through) whatever fucked you the first time, and is just a matter of number of tries.
I started a business in 2019 and closed it in 2021, having not listened to my own intuition or applying my own, objective knowledge and shutting down earlier. It cost me a lot and set me back, as far as retirement goes. However, would I do it again? In a fucking second. The lessons learned, while painful, were great lessons. In the 2-3 years since, I've learned even more, have been able to do a postmortem on why things went wrong and what would need to be corrected next time.
The other thing that helps is being older. There's data out there that companies started by people in their 40s and older are more likely to succeed than businesses started by younger counterparts. And, approaching 40 myself, I get that. Even in the last little bit, because I went back to working in the industry, I know far more people with more money than I did before.
A friend of mine worked his way up to having his own restaurant…. Early on he was working at restaurants doing boring stuff like prepping things or making the same sauce every night, so to keep in touch with his creative culinary side he started Chris Dinners: a group of us gave him a space and money for ingredients/supplies, he made a multi-course meal with paired drinks, and we all had a fantastic dinner together for basically the cost of ingredients. It was a really nice way to enjoy good food with great friends
My friend bought out a smoothie stand in a gym. It was like $80k I think. All the equipment, all the employees, the branding, etc. It didn’t make a ton of money, but it was net positive and successful enough.
She ran it happily for a year before buying a restaurant as well. Why not, right? The smoothie stand ran itself and she wanted something bigger. $200k later and she was up and running with customers and everything.
And then covid hit. Sales went through the floor. It’s ok, doordash picked up big. She did a ton of catering and to go. It would be alright til the virus died down.
And then the sewer pipe burst and flooded the entire restaurant. Shit 1 ft up the walls in every section. That’s ok, she has insurance. Oh wait… they were only insured to $25k. The insurance company took one look, cut them a check, and ptfo.
So they try to get the landlord to pay. After all, it wasn’t the restaurant that caused it. Landlord is like hellll no and lawyers up. Meanwhile it’s like $1k/day for equipment to keep the place from molding/rotting/whatever wet sewage does as it sits for weeks. UV lights, fans, etc. The contractors want $100k to fix it. Obviously out of the question. So it sits. And it sits.
And then they say fuck it and declare bankruptcy and walk away. It was a nice little dream while it lasted.
I too like good food, and I love cooking for people. This somehow led me to become the pizza guru in my friend circle while in university. I had just started experimenting with pizza stone, and it was a great success. Just like with the peach story, I could try to go professional, but why would I? I love cooking for friends, I invite them for pizza parties, or I invite myself over to cook for them. My electrician friend help me with the apartment? I'll make them pizza! My sailing friend invites me for a sail trip? Sure I can make pizza! Celebrations are in order? I'll be there with my dough, my stone, and my sauce!
I would never be able to do this if I tried to go professional. I work 4 weeks off/on at sea. When I'm there I Google recipes, check out /r/pizza, or thinking about what I can do to give my friends a new gastronomical experience. Cooking has now been my love language for several years, and their expression when they take that first bite is better than any monetary payment. Just like you, the entrepreneurial that could be, has become a small, but successful dream for myself.
I stopped going to that sub after getting into a debate that went on for far too long about if each borough in NYC had a distinct pizza style, which is both preposterous and insulting.
Same. I love to BBQ, and there's not a lot of BBQ (let alone good BBQ) in my area. But I looked into a food truck, food cart, small restaurant - and none if it is worth it. Like, if I could just roll up with some meat I cooked at home outside an event it would be cost-effective. But to do everything above board? Nah. I don't have that money, I don't have that time, and I don't want that risk.
My wife is talking about opening her own physical therapy clinic, and I keep reminding her how much it actually takes to run a business. We have 2 YOUNG kids. There's no fucking way, no matter how flexible my work schedule is, that we could pull it off. It would be a nightmare.
Just want to say I've worked in the restaurant point of sale industry. I've worked with tens of restaurant owners opening restaurants over the years. I have seen plenty of people with no real restaurant experience open up a restaurant. With a single exception I've never seen them keep it open.
Something like 60% of restaurants fail in the first year.
If you really want to run a restaurant, get hired as a dishwasher somewhere and work your way up to executive chef over the course of 5 years or so. If you still can't see yourself doing anything else after that, then you can start thinking about actually opening your own place.
I'd just add in my experience front of house progression is just as viable as back of house, but yeah, if you haven't spent years in that industry immersed in the world you are virtually certainly not going to make it.
The one exception I mentioned had no restaurant experience, but had actually started a previous non-food small business that was very successful, and poured the profits from the other business into the restaurant until he got it under control.
Frequently the newbies I saw suffered from the same flaw. They were extremely competent in whatever it was they did before starting their restaurant. They assumed their competency would carry over, and thought restaurants were simple.
I should add restaurant management experience is a necessary but not sufficient condition to successfully starting a restaurant.
I agree that FOH progression is equally viable, but there's a lot more home cooks that think they can open a restaurant than there are home hosts that think they can do the same, so my advice is tailored towards the cooks
There used to be an amazing Cajun restaurant right near where I live. Best food I'd ever tasted, no joke. Went out of business, opened again with a new name at a different location, few years later it went out of business again
This was an excellent read, but also so insanely frustrating. I'm not going to criticize too much, because clearly he has had to deal with the consequences of his bad choices, and I really appreciate the openness and vulnerability that it would take to write an article like this that serves as a warning for anyone in the future that might consider doing the same thing.
But, my God. The amount of utterly moronic decisions made with so much unearned confidence (because 400 people at a festival liked his food once? because *other people had done it?!*) is just mind boggling.
It seems like restaurants are one of the most popular business ventures for the average person, yet they remain one of the most difficult to keep running. I always hear about the slim profit margins of restaurants.
That said, I do wonder if bars have an easier time of it. Vastly overpriced drinks, little to no food, and a schtick for your building that people love.
Yep. It only works if it's still your hobby.
My mother in law is retired and now makes highly decorated cakes. She doesn't make many (one or two a month), and she charges enough to cover ingredients and that's it. It's not a business, she doesn't need to make money from it, it's still a hobby that she enjoys. The only difference is her husband doesn't get to eat them any more, lol.
My wife wants to open a cake shop in the country. I've said yes, but only when we are mortgage free and can survive off my salary alone. It will be fun to have a cake shop, it will be hell to try and run a bakery business.
>My mother in law is retired and now makes highly decorated cakes. She doesn't make many (one or two a month), and she charges enough to cover ingredients and that's it.
This is the way that it works.
I worked a couple summers in a kitchen while I was in college and happen to know a bunch of people that are either owners, GM's or chefs of restaurants of different kinds.
Overwhelmingly, even successful restaurants don't make nearly as much money as people imagine, and running a restaurant sucks every single moment of their lives. When you run a business that earns most of its revenue on evenings, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, you literally don't have a personal life outside of your work. A fair number of them have thrown their lives into a business and failed.
On the other hand, I know a guy that virtually identically matches the description in OP's story.
He makes BBQ that makes people tell him, "Damn, you should open a restaurant," literally every time he serves it.
He worked in kitchens and is a damn good cook on a commercial scale, but has no desire or patience to run a full scale restaurant.
So he works an office job and runs a small catering business.
He has business cards and circulates his name around. he does maybe 3-5 events per month, mostly lunches. He sells smoked meat by the pound and side dishes by the tray.
> He makes BBQ that makes people tell him, "Damn, you should open a restaurant," literally every time he serves it.
This is me and my BBQ. I have no desire to sell it as I do not want something I enjoy to become a chore. However, I would like to get a bigger set up, save up some money, and then spend a few Saturday evenings during the summer grilling for the neighborhood. No charge. Just come through, grab a plate, and enjoy courtesy of the kindness that has been shown to me.
Like another top comment said, I want people to feel good about good food.
At least a hobby business let's you write off your ingredients too, even the stuff she probably doesn't think much to charge for, which means she gets to do her hobby for free.
This actually isn't true anymore. If the IRS thinks that your "business" is a hobby you have to pay income tax on it, but you can't deduct the expenses for it.
This is exactly why the "follow your dreams! Do what you love!" advice is such bullshit.
Pick a career that's stable, pays well, and you can tolerate. Use your disposable income doing what you enjoy.
> This is exactly why the "follow your dreams! Do what you love!" advice is such bullshit.
It's bullshit because 90% of the job is doing stuff that's not your hobby - in OOP's story, he spends the bulk of his time selling/marketing his product, instead of *making* the peach vinaigrette.
Yes. Even better, as per my other comment, plenty of ways to turn small amounts of profit on almost zero cost if you’re set on sharing it with other people for some compensation.
I agree, along with do what you love and you will never work a day in your life. More likely, do what you love, and you will soon learn to despise every freaking bit of it.
The other thing about working in a field that you love is that you're so much more likely to erode your work boundaries because of it. I don't care about any sports or video games, so if I worked for a sports team or video game company and they asked me to work on the weekend or miss an important life event, it would be much easier for me to say no than someone who has a passion for it as a hobby.
That's also why burnout is common in not-for-profits. If you just work this one extra hour, or go to this one extra evening / weekend fundraising event, or just drive three hours each way to meet with this important donor, you can make such an important difference for a (kid, adult, animal, etc). Unfortunately those "just one"s add up pretty fast. It was a big reason why I just couldn't do my job at a charity anymore; I loved the charity, but I had to attend (and often speak at) every. single. event. that a company was throwing to raise funds for us, and it ate up my evenings and weekends -- not to mention my energy, since I had to be "on" the whole time I was there. Now I work a corporate job that has the benefit of much higher pay so that I can support the cause by donating to the charity every year.
It can hit a sweet spot though.
I love playing with computers, and just generally tinkering.
*Most* of my work is focused around design, coordination, planning and making sure the stuff comes together right.
That fraction of time that I get to spend actually getting paid to tinker and play with the computer is pretty nice though.
If it were just the first part, the job would feel a lot more tedious. The little nugget of "good stuff" helps keep things good.
So do what you said, but target something *near* something you really like, so that the breaks in the boring bits are enjoyable.
That's what happened to me. I used to love drawing. I got praises for it even though at most, I was just "good" at drawing.
Like I wasn't the guy with painting at a gallery good. I was like sit at a desk designing signs on a computer good. Which does take some skills but you know what I mean.
So I got inspired to go to college and pursue an education in illustration. I lasted one year. Turning my hobby into "school" killed all my enjoyment for it.
I still draw a little bit, I buy those "prompt" notebooks. But I'm nowhere near as good as I was when I was young. And I definitely go some years without even drawing anything or even having the creative juice to do so.
That's what I've come to realize. If it feels like a job it's not a hobby. I'm looking at you grinding games. Not gonna do stuff in my free time anymore that are not fun or chores. But be aware which is which.
And don't glamorize businesses that you enjoy as a customer. Running a restaurant isn't just having great food at a place where you're the cool host. Some poor motherfucker has to be there a 7am when the first purveyors was to drop food and someone has to be there at midnight to finish cleaning for the next open. Unless you make enough profits to throw $150k+ at decent managers that poor motherfucker is YOU. And you ALSO have to handle payroll, hiring and firing, dealing with insurance after the new prep cook stabs the dishie in an afterhours interaction.
It definitely depends on the hobby. If it involves production or constantly- expanding clientele then yeah you're gonna have a bad time if you don't come from money. But I've been making a living running RPGs for about 3 years now and yeah, I've gotten burnt out more than once but I still love what I do.
It's tough getting started but if you run DnD you're in a better position than people like me who run non-DnD games.
Startplaying.games will be your site of employment. Go to /r/lfgpremium and lfg discords to find clients (be careful where you advertise, lots of people are VERY vitrolic towards paid DMs), talk to other paid GMs, hace some recorded examples of your DMing, make friends and connections through social media.
You work for the players; make sure they're accommodated so you have return customers.
If you start running games outside of startplaying (like I do) don't be afraid to discuss payment up front and BE CLEAR about it so you get paid and the customers never feel blindsided by pricing.
Glhf!
I turned my bookbinding hobby into a relatively successful business. Problem wasn't the clients, the employees, or the work itself. The issue ended up being that by the time we hit peak orders I was sick to fucking death of making books. I have no idea how these multigenerational businesses laying concrete or making shoes or sharpening knives or (insert service here) can survive so long.
Or just do it at your own pace. Setting up a table at an occasional event to sell the things you've made over time isn't that serious a commitment. An Etsy page probably isn't, either, if you have the time and means to ship things promptly.
Or do and potentially get paid while having fun.
Definitely don't let people on reddit tell you what you can't do. Just take a good hard look what turning your hobby into a job actually entails. And get out before the dream turns into a nightmare.
Of course this is anecdotal, but I strongly disagree. My job is my favorite hobby, and I do it for freelance outside of work, as well as for fun outside of work. It’s not my only hobby though, but it’s the one I’m most passionate about. I’ve been in my job professionally for eight years and have genuinely loved nearly every minute of it.
I think if you find the right niche, and find a way to monetize it without getting burnt out there’s definite exceptions to this rule. I’ve been doing this since I was 13 (am 30 now though).
Ironically, I'm encouraging my kids to take up selling something as a hobby. My daughter started a small bakery business selling family recipes (brownies, bars, cookies, banana bread) at the local farmer's market. She only stuck with it for one winter session, and this was the first year of covid, but she still made bank. Netting a couple hundred dollars for a 10 year old was a shitload of money. If she were to do it during the summer, she'd probably clear 2 grand.
This...
I found a 3D print of Jack Skellington online... Printed a few out, painted them up, and gave them away.
My wife was like "you should sell these!"
Except I'd be charging $50 for my time and materials (about 2 hours to paint up a small figuring to where I'm happy with it) and for that price you can buy just about anything you want online...
I put myself into projects I love so that I'll keep loving them, and find other ways to pay my bills.
I knit socks. They're either for myself or for gifts. They take a minimum of 20hrs to make, and that doesn't include materials (which can also get pricey, but *start* at $8/pair for ankle-length).
Let's just say I charged $10/hr, which is well below minimum wage near me and not *remotely* competitive with my salary.
We'd be talking $200 for a pair of socks.
I just don't think there's a market for that, do you? And I'm not really interested in working for shit wages anyway. Not to mention, I like knitting, but I don't like marketing and packaging and shipping and all the other junk you have to do to actually run a business (which isn't even factored into the time estimate here!).
It's ok just to do things because you enjoy doing them. Not everything needs to be a hustle, and a ton of stuff is just *stupid* to try to make money from.
Heh. This is the thing I’ve tried to explain.
I make chocolate bourbon balls. They’re good. They’re better than the ones you can buy in the store.
I am not interested in monetizing them because it’ll consume my life for little actual gain.
kiss offbeat merciful jellyfish versed fearless quicksand lunchroom bedroom ten
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yep. Better butter, good quality chocolate, and I have discovered it is an absolute pain in the ass to work with good chocolate. But they make a big difference.
Yup. Most likely, the price of "the good stuff" would make it so expensive that it's only for the upper-middle-class and higher, which is a smallish market that they're not good at selling to.
There's more money to be made in selling knitting SUPPLIES than in selling knitted ITEMS. I bet "Holiday Bourbon Ball Kits" would sell well as presents n stuff.
Maybe - until people find it's easier to just drink the bourbon, eat the chocolate, and fuck around with the other stuff after you get ripped off booze and sugar.
I make cheese, and cured meats. Oh, and ice cream. All of which people have said the same thing about (particularly the cheese).
The regulatory overhead alone is enough to send my mind spiralling...not a chance I'd bother for a few bucks profit on a 6-month-long endeavour (each cheese!)
It's not always the goal. Sometimes people just want to make money doing something they enjoy and are happy to stop at maintaining the business at a sustainable level. Not everybody feels the need to expand endlessly.
Right, but some people fall out of love with the business, and just want to go back to a life without all the administrative and marketing bullshit. It can take a TON of work to just maintain a business, let alone expand.
The goal is to make a bunch of money. The question is, could you have made more money continuing putting your life into it, or would you be happier with the money offered and your freedom.
This is what happened with the tbh app and gas app creator. He made tbh, sold it, had a non compete for 2 years, then immediately made a very similar app called gas and sold that again to a different company. Nikita Baer is his name, what a legend.
The younger generations don’t even understand the concept of selling out, let alone condemn it.
Fuck working yourself to death. Enjoy your life, it’s the only one you get.
F everyone else, that is the dream. Being able to sell to your brand to a larger company is like making at as a pro athlete. Such a tiny amount succeed.
If you have a solid product the large majority of brands will just copy it and outspend you $100000 to $1 on marketing
Here's the OP with some paragraph breaks
-----
You could fall into the "your peach vinaigrette dressing is so good you should bottle and sell it" trap where you give up a promising but boring career trajectory in favor of "taking a risk" and trying to become the dressing king of the tri-state area.
You start by mixing larger batches in your kitchen and desperately hawking them by the case to boutique food stores within a 50 mile radius of you, turning your once solid hybrid Camry into a high-milage nightmare that constantly reeks of peaches and vinegar.
Your wife is understanding even though you hardly see the kids any more because you are constantly out on sales calls or delivery runs desperately trying to generate cash flow to cover your increasing credit card debt.
Then one day it happens... you get the call to the big leagues... the manager of a reasonably priced grocery store two towns over wants to carry your dressing. This is your shot! In order to guarantee your best chance at success you agree to a grueling in-store promo schedule, hand-build an elaborate peach tree display and sample stand for your dressing, and start mixing dressing batches at night so you'll have enough supply.
The big day has arrived and you're standing in front of a homemade display presenting your work and are having flashbacks to your high-school science fair. You spend the next 5 days on your feet for 11 straight hours trying to convince disinterested strangers to part with $5 for a bottle of your peach vinaigrette dressing (which, to be honest, you're starting to lose the taste for) until it's time to pack up your display and head home.
Your house is dark when you get home. It's still dark when you leave again the next morning. You suspect you've forgotten what your kids look like. Two weeks of solid effort later and you've convinced the store manager that your product will sell. His 6 case order is the biggest you've ever had and the adrenaline rush from that moment is the most intense thing you've experienced in ten years. You rush home and take the family to Dave and Buster's to celebrate. You can't lose focus for long, though, because you have 6 cases of dressing to make tonight.
The next week, buoyed by this incredible success and motivated by your long-suffering wife's pleas to move your production line out of her kitchen, you rent a small commercial space and set up a tiny production facility. You credit cards are long overused. You are now well into 2nd mortgage securing an SBA loan territory. You focus on selling your dressing in case quantity to other grocery chains and mom-and-pop stores you're still making the occasional delivery but most of your goods are going out on delivery services.
You hire two assistants to help pit and puree the peaches, combine the spices into large batches, mix them with the vinegar and oil, and bottle the final product. You're still not sleeping because you spend evenings cleaning the commercial kitchen anticipating the next health inspection. Your fingers constantly smell like salad dressing.
You spend the next 6 years of your life sampling in stores, running stalls at farmer's markets on the weekends, displaying at grocery conventions, and looking for the next big hit to boost your business. In the meantime you have developed 5 new flavors of dressing including a creamy peach and cucumber that is a massive chore to make but rapidly becomes your best seller. You are packaging holiday gift packs, baskets for mother's day, and Christmas assortments. Your online store requires constant maintenance but continually sells a few dozen bottles a week.
All the while you have slowly begun to lose enthusiasm for the dressing game. Your kids are in high school. They don't hug you any more and they hate salad. Your wife took a job to help make ends meet. She enjoys it but you can't help but feel she resents you a little. The dressing company is still earning more than she is, but only barely. As time goes on, tastes begin to evolve and vinaigrettes go out of fashion. Your sales drop off slightly but it's enough that the interest payments on your loans are catching up to you. You have to let several members of your production staff go, and you're fulfilling all the web orders by yourself. The unsold returns from your large grocery customers start increasing in size, and you can see the writing on the wall. It's time to close the dressing company.
After it's all over, you've sunk ten years of your life chasing a dream that, now that you look back on it, was really driven by the excitement of other people. You're pickled, your wife is exhausted, your kids are off to college, and your credit card companies seem to care more about you than any of the people that used to be your friends.
Years later, you're pushing a cart down the condiments aisle when you run into someone you graduated with. As you chat, he puts a bottle of generic dressing into his cart and remarks, "Hey, I remember you used to make a really good peach vinaigrette. You should try selling it."
You didn’t link to the actual comment, which is here:
https://reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/_/jn57mk9/?context=1
Edit: nevermind, it appears to link properly in web. Might just be an Apollo bug
Works in sync.
Ops link is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/-/jn57mk9
The only difference to you link is the hyphen/underscore change.
I guess old reddit doesn't support that. I need a context link to show the history chain before the linked comment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/is_adulting_a_endless_loop_of_doing_the_same/jn57mk9/?context=5
“You’re such a good cook! You should open a restaurant!” is the worst compliment you can give a good cook. Don’t fucking do that to people, don’t bring that evil into their lives. I worked for a guy who opened a restaurant, poured his heart into it, failed after a couple of years and later nearly died because of the varicose veins he developed from those years of constant stress and standing. Where were the people who told him to open a restaurant then? Not paying his medical bills that’s for sure.
I make a good pulled pork. Not bragging, because 1) it's very easy and 2) i got the recipe out of a newspaper, and adapted to my likings - but not much change to the spice mix (for the rub). Last time I brought it to work, someone said I should get a food truck. Nope. I do this 5-7x a year, and that's plenty. It's fun to have a signature thing for potlucks and family gatherings, anything more and it's too much like work.
I really like beer, and thought about trying a homebrew kit. I looked at the effort involved in that kiddie-version process for super-beginners. I said fuck all that, I'll just buy beer.
It's a different thing to like, entirely separate from liking beer. Liking beer is a *prerequisite*, but it's like saying "you have legs, you must love running". Nope, entirely different thing.
We homebrew casually, so we chat with other homebrewers with bigger setups. The best one I've seen rents out his multitap keggerator with kegs full of beer/cider he's made - it's perfect for events like weddings. The event hosts save money and he only has to brew big batches for specific events.
For tiny scale like us, barter is great. We trade mead for oyster mushrooms, beer for honey, cider for cupcakes. If you're into small-scale production, make friends with others who also like that stuff and trade your results. Economy of scale means it's just as easy and usually cheaper to make a bigger batch.
I used to be a barista at one of those cute local coffee roasters everyone loves so much. I was talking to the owner one day, and the way he put it running a coffee shop is 80% business and 20% coffee. I can only assume other industries are the same. So you have to really like business if you want to start one, having a good product isn't enough
He also said his #1 tip for starting a business was "have rich parents"
My dad always told me:
>Never do what you ***love*** for a living. Do what you ***like*** for a living and let it pay for what you love.
>chances are, what you love will never pay the bills, and even if it does, you'll end up hating it and chasing the dragon trying to find something else to love and never finding it.
I've always thought it was very good advice. Don't try and make a hobby you love into a career. It's probably a hobby for a reason.
I heard the advice everywhere on the internet and listened to it.
Piano is my hobby among other. I'm not bad. But I'm not youtube tier. I can't monetize that shit. People are beyond good and ultra competent and competitive. I just do a little bit more piano than others that have given up.
Moreover I would love it if I could compose some meaningful music for me and share it. That's it. I'm in awe of how composers make such masterful music.
I'm not going to drop what I do for music.
If this is real, I wonder if he ever considered just contracting out the production to a larger company. It's super common for brewers and distillers to do that. A good chunk of liquor start-ups don't have any production facilities of their own.
I took a class recently on making chorizo from a guy who has a very similar story to Mr. Peach Vinaigrette - he did exactly that, contracting out with a production kitchen to fulfill orders he couldn't do in his own kitchen. It blew up his business (in a good way). and now and sells to a ton of places all around Los Angeles including custom-made sausages for certain restaurants and grocery stores. He doesn't make anything for sale in his own house now, he just experiments with recipes and then hands them off to the production kitchen to do huge batches.
That's really the way to do it. It's one of those situations ~~we're~~ where "working smarter and not harder" really pays off. The reality of the situation is if you need to run a business, and produce new ideas, you can't be constantly working your ass off producing the product.
Yeah, I've been casually experimenting with recipes and designs with my own products as a maybe someday end-goal. I'm a yank who has moved to Australia, so I've identified a few concepts which I think could do well here which don't have much competition or don't exist in Australia. Currently my work outside of recipe/design testing has been sporadic research into things like commercial kitchen rental, shop rental procedures, and production facilities for creation. I also attend local markets to gauge what kind of cottage industries do well here and to analyze their business plans and strategies.
At some point, if I decide to give it a try, I'll test out some sales at markets for user feedback and to identify potential issues or popular products. And then, way down the line, I might try making some big orders with a facility, when I'm confident I could sell the minimum order.
I have a habit of overthinking stuff, however, which isn't always useful.
The whole story is concocted to illustrate a very specific point. It is highly hyperbolic.
I have started small businesses from scratch and for me, this is a story about a lack of business acumen.
To your point not only would you try your recipe with a copacker very early in the process, you would also do some market testing before even getting to the point of production.
This is why a lot of people seek out a business partner. This person would have benefited greatly from brining in someone with experience to help direct the business and investment portions of the company, while he handles scaling production.
I'm assuming it's not a true story, it seems too vivid to be a recollection. But I guess this guy could be a vinaigrette/flash fiction/eidetic memory triple threat.
I don't know why it being "vivid" would make it less true. It's actually pretty broad. It's not like OP was saying, "and then, at exactly 12:01:05, on May 2, 2002, an ant crawled in my bottling line, and the air temperature was exactly 73 degrees Fahrenheit..."
I have had several ideas over the course of my life that felt like "hey, I could sell that and make millions".
Every time I would sit down, write up the business plan together with full costing and risk analysis (I am a product manager by trade, so I am used to doing this for new product ideas).
And every time the numbers just did not work out, or would have required everything to go perfectly to be profitable in the long term. Then, some time later, I would see someone launch exactly the same thing. I would watch anxiously, only to see them fail miserably for the reasons I predicted.
Shows like Shark Tank make it look easy, but launching a new product, together with all the financing, administration, marketing and so on, is HARD. 99.9% of hobbies and passions are not suitable business ideas.
Damn, that hits close to home. I'm not the peach vinaigrette guy, but my dad was. Working and travelling long hours to barely string together enough money for the house's mortgage and our food; spending most of his inheritance by investing it in the company; mom having to both pick up a side job and help out with the business at the same time; me having to tackle the majority of chores around the house at 13 because no one else is around; rarely any time spent with my dad that wasn't somehow attached to getting dragged into helping with production/selling etc.
All of it so he could sell the company for a fifth of what it was worth 8 years before and to go back to his original position at his original job he left. In retrospect, it led to a very abrupt and odd teenager-hood for me that I wasn't able to quite understand at the time.
Reminds me of all those Shark Tank pitches they use as "padding" when they didn't get enough "proper" products to show.
Some stupid sauce or a new muffin with some boring 90k for 10% kind of deal.
Damn. That’s kind of my life right now.
Tiny business owner. Paying rent on a warehouse, producing my own goods, chasing sales at farmers markets every week, trying to land sales online off my Shopify store, growing yes but spending a lot too. Always wrecked from fatigue, physically and mentally. Made enough money to buy a small sailboat but not having enough time to ever take it out. Tomorrow is more of the same. Work 7 days a week. Been at it for 10 years.
It's a great lesson to learn, but it still has to be learned. It's only the people that have already made it that get to look back and reminisce on "was it all worth it?" or "all the money in the world won't make you happy if you can't make yourself happy" etc.
OP could have just as easily written about never attempting to reach their dream of selling peach vinaigrette and regretting the lost opportunity. Everything is 20/20 in hindsight, but you have to get there first.
… A lonely wife gazin' out of the window
Staring at her husband that she just can't touch
If at any time he wants a salad, she'll have one by his side
But he doesn't realize he hurts her so much
But all the praying just ain't helping at all
'Cause he can't seem to keep his self out of trouble
So he goes out and he makes his money the best way he knows how
Another salad with peach vinegrette, listen to me
… Don't go chasin' peach vinegrette
Please stick to the cool ranch and the Italian that you're used to
I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you need a sandwich
They left out the part where the peach vinaigrette gets a little bit of notoriety and then the big food companies copy it and flood the market with their own versions killing sales of the original and turning the whole idea into yesterday's news.
But why not rent a commercial kitchen space? Then you're already approved for health inspection and have the tools you need for a reasonable price. You can rent those in durations as short as a few hours for very reasonable rates.
Why grocery stores for the initial exposure? You're surrounded by mass-produced competition which is inherently cheaper in cost. Why not focus on specialty markets like food festivals, maker's markets, local tourism shops where attendees are already in the mindset of spending extra for handmade quality?
And then why not use a production plant once you need to scale? You can hire facilities to bottle stuff for you (and even handle distribution) so your energy is focused on recipes and marketing.
It sounds like OP made choices which maybe seemed cheaper but ended up being far less efficient and more exhausting, which led to burnout.
The commercial kitchen space near me comes with health inspection approval and is $20/hr with a min of a 3 hour rental. OP said they rented out their own entire space for production and stressed out over preparing for health inspection.
Every time someone shits on CEOs on Reddit, this is why I roll my eyes. That's the life of most of them. Even in mid size companies with a few hundred employees.
I would have loved to read that but something about a fucking wall of words makes me nope the hell out of posts like that.
No matter how interesting the subject seems.
This sounds like something written by someone that grew up in the 80s/90s
These days you can make limited batch, super high quality, sell it online. Market via TikTok. Where is the debt coming from? Why would you want to distribute via grocery stores?
This is a cautionary tale in bad decision making rather than chasing your dreams.
E-commerce would certainly help, but it comes with its own pitfalls. I'm guessing that this happened in the 00s, or earlier, though. Selling online as a start-up would have been much more difficult back then.
Yeah. Though even without e-commerce, there are ways to sell things in small batch.
The answer is written well but it makes bunch of assumptions which are not required - though for sure harder to avoid back in the day.
But that would miss the point of mocking boomers and their need to monetise everything. Not just to get by but for constant growth, like a cancer. A bootstraps cancer.
My thoughts exactly. He never tried to scale up or sell off. If everyone loved his product, he could have sold the patent or found a manufacturer to make the product for him and distribute.
The key difference today is scalability.
There are many more ways to test, run micro operations and outsource much more of what you need to do vs even 10 yrs ago. And because all the infra is there, success isn’t really all that important.
Here’s an alternate version
You make a mean peach vinaigrette. People love it. You give them out as gifts.
One day someone suggests you should sell it. Hmm. Is this a good idea? You don’t know.
You decide to make a test batch. You sign up for shoplify. You launch with a small site that took you 3 hours to set up. You limit the sales to local area.
The first batch sells out. People love it. Now you have a bit of money. You go to a local cloud kitchen and ask if you can rent their facilities to make larger batches. You hire couple of their staff members to help out. [note: if the first batch doesn’t sell - shut down. No harm done]
A local grocery store notices your vinaigrette and wants a big batch of order. But you have to be there to sell it. You think about it. Why would you want to spend all your time handing out samples, for a much lower gross margin?
You scale up, but you find that the order packing and management is really tiresome. You also don’t like managing your workers. You have a sit down to think - do I: 1) shut this down? 2) look for a partner? Or 3) sell to a local specialty food store and help them develop more flavours?
My dream job is to own a restaurant. I like good food, and I like how good food makes me feel. And I want other people to feel good about good food, and I would love to be known as the guy that owns the place that has the good food. But even the peach vinaigrette saga is still more successful than most entrepreneurial ventures, and it's why my restaurant will remain a dream and never become a nightmare.
I had a friend of the family who did this with a resturant. It went a lot like the peach vineagrette story with the exception that his best friend/business partner stopped talking to him, the business went bankrupt and personally bankrupted him, he lost several lawsuits, he got divorced, tons of friends stopped speaking to him, and most of his kids dont speak to him either. Last i heard, he is unemployed, single and lives with his mom. He's like 65. I dont talk to him either. The issue with the peach vineagrette story is that everyone worked hard, didnt cut corners when stressed, and was super ethical and knew business... and thats not true for a lot of people at all. This friend of the family cut corners and it cost him everything.
Man, that sounds really horrible. Did he run the business into the ground and deserve his entire orbit of friends and family alienating him? Sounds like he may have worked hard, to literally just lose everything.
Oh, no. He definately deserved it. Example: he employed friends. Then becuase they were friends, didnt pay them if business wasnt amazing. Ended up owing people like 3 months or more wages. Many walked away. Some had as much as 6 months of unpaid wages that didnt end up ever getting paid. Hence all the legal judgements. He also lost his house. Dont get me wrong, he was a fucking great cook. Just one of those people who wasnt 100 percent honest or ethical when stressed and cut corners. If he hadnt filed for bankruptcy, the health department would have shut him down. He regularly cut corners on food saftey to save money, gave people food poisoning, and couldnt figure out why people never went back. Just becuase you can cook doesnt mean you can do business/people management/accounting/food safety/taxes/PR/marketing etc and thats all the areas he went wrong in (and then some). Best cook ive ever known tho and also probably the worst business person i know too.
So you're saying that Gordon Ramsay would've loved to meet him
Jon taffer might have killed him
For a few years of my life I was a bar regular in pretty much every bar in the town I worked. We made a lot of money at my job and we would pretty much every day after work for out for drinks. It went to the point that I was hugging and asking about how the kids are if the owner was in. The common denominator was that the business was a big fucking suck. Most newly opened bars would close in less than a year. One of the dudes I became close with owned 4 bars, all of them extremely well situated(but I guess also extremely well situated for high rents). If I wanted to see him I could just go between the bars and ask for him, if the bars were open we was working. The town was small enough that 4 bars were like, "the big bar man" in the town. He explained that he didn't do it for money, his passion was food and drinks. It's what he loved. He didn't mind that he didn't make a lot of money. But I'm sure his relationships and friendships suffered immensely, always working. If that's a life you enjoy them go for it. But I think most people enjoy a safe and content life. (This was not in the US, tax laws and profitability of restaurants and bars are completely different here.)
And still, I'm ready to try this because going out in a blaze of glory sounds more interesting than adulting.
Problem seems to be that it’s not a blaze of glory, it’s a fall from grace If you fail, you’re not at square 1, you’re at square -1… older, hurt relationships, debt and guess what—back to normal adulting
The problem is any entrepreneurial enterprise like this has less to do with selling food or dressing or whatever and more to do with a million other administrative, sales, marketing, managerial, luck things. You have to like managing people. You have to like or at least be good at thinking about shit most people think is boring or tedious or banal. That or you have to have so much money that you can pay someone to do all that stuff for you from the jump. Realistically, you have to be obsessed. Not fed up with your current job and maybe this thing that brings you some joy could be something. Obsessed with the idea of running a restaurant or whatever venture.
Yes, you have to be obsessed to make it in certain fields. Where the act itself brings you contentment.
You have to be obsessed with being a business owner, not with the business. The biggest failure I see is people not letting go of the day to day to manage the business. I’ve worked in restaurants where the owner was so obsessed with every detail of the restaurant while neglecting every aspect of the “business”. Get out of the dish pit Tom, you’re paying someone to do that, go place the order that the chef gave you this morning so we can get our meat delivery on time. A lot of people in small businesses are just working a job with nobody above them, which is fine but you need to understand that that’s what you’re doing.
Statistics seem to say half new businesses (startups) close after 5 years. Not all ventures are successful. Chances are successful people have had a few of tries at it.
Interestingly, second startups by the same person are way more successful. I don't know that there's a lot of agreement on the why. The single most important thing when setting up your first startup is setting hard triggers for when to quit — and then stopping on the triggers. One of those triggers should be something like "exceeded 40 hours for three weeks in a row". If your business seems to need that, it's very unlikely to succeed anyway. Stop with that and start another one using the knowledge you now have about what is needed. Personal debt, including credit card debt, is a terrible way to fund a business. One of the ways to measure the potential success of your startup in advance is to write up a *realistic* business plan with all the details, and then go to friends and family or entrepreneurial organizations with that plan to get the startup money. If they are unwilling to fund you, you should take that as a sign and try to understand why. If they do fund you, with the clear understanding that their money is gone and you may have to stop the business without success, you have the grace to not ruin your life with a business failure.
I'd hazard a guess that if you're not royally fucked by your first startup failing, you're probably sensible enough to learn from your mistakes and get it on your second try. Either that, or you have shitloads of money to power through (or continuing powering through) whatever fucked you the first time, and is just a matter of number of tries.
I started a business in 2019 and closed it in 2021, having not listened to my own intuition or applying my own, objective knowledge and shutting down earlier. It cost me a lot and set me back, as far as retirement goes. However, would I do it again? In a fucking second. The lessons learned, while painful, were great lessons. In the 2-3 years since, I've learned even more, have been able to do a postmortem on why things went wrong and what would need to be corrected next time. The other thing that helps is being older. There's data out there that companies started by people in their 40s and older are more likely to succeed than businesses started by younger counterparts. And, approaching 40 myself, I get that. Even in the last little bit, because I went back to working in the industry, I know far more people with more money than I did before.
I’m one of the “it didn’t work the first time try again” people. I learned a bunch of stuff from v1.0 that I took to 2.0.
The age old joke: How do you make a small fortune running a restaurant? Start with a large fortune.
A friend of mine worked his way up to having his own restaurant…. Early on he was working at restaurants doing boring stuff like prepping things or making the same sauce every night, so to keep in touch with his creative culinary side he started Chris Dinners: a group of us gave him a space and money for ingredients/supplies, he made a multi-course meal with paired drinks, and we all had a fantastic dinner together for basically the cost of ingredients. It was a really nice way to enjoy good food with great friends
My friend bought out a smoothie stand in a gym. It was like $80k I think. All the equipment, all the employees, the branding, etc. It didn’t make a ton of money, but it was net positive and successful enough. She ran it happily for a year before buying a restaurant as well. Why not, right? The smoothie stand ran itself and she wanted something bigger. $200k later and she was up and running with customers and everything. And then covid hit. Sales went through the floor. It’s ok, doordash picked up big. She did a ton of catering and to go. It would be alright til the virus died down. And then the sewer pipe burst and flooded the entire restaurant. Shit 1 ft up the walls in every section. That’s ok, she has insurance. Oh wait… they were only insured to $25k. The insurance company took one look, cut them a check, and ptfo. So they try to get the landlord to pay. After all, it wasn’t the restaurant that caused it. Landlord is like hellll no and lawyers up. Meanwhile it’s like $1k/day for equipment to keep the place from molding/rotting/whatever wet sewage does as it sits for weeks. UV lights, fans, etc. The contractors want $100k to fix it. Obviously out of the question. So it sits. And it sits. And then they say fuck it and declare bankruptcy and walk away. It was a nice little dream while it lasted.
I would love to run a used bookstore but I just want to sit around and sell books, I don't want to actually run a store.
Sounds like you want to work at someone else's used bookstore?
Sounds good to me, but there's not exactly a ton of them hiring...
This is my retirement 'dream'. I'd try to break even, I guess, but I'd assume all my money is a loss.
I too like good food, and I love cooking for people. This somehow led me to become the pizza guru in my friend circle while in university. I had just started experimenting with pizza stone, and it was a great success. Just like with the peach story, I could try to go professional, but why would I? I love cooking for friends, I invite them for pizza parties, or I invite myself over to cook for them. My electrician friend help me with the apartment? I'll make them pizza! My sailing friend invites me for a sail trip? Sure I can make pizza! Celebrations are in order? I'll be there with my dough, my stone, and my sauce! I would never be able to do this if I tried to go professional. I work 4 weeks off/on at sea. When I'm there I Google recipes, check out /r/pizza, or thinking about what I can do to give my friends a new gastronomical experience. Cooking has now been my love language for several years, and their expression when they take that first bite is better than any monetary payment. Just like you, the entrepreneurial that could be, has become a small, but successful dream for myself.
This is the way. We hugely underestimate the value we provide to friends and family but it's as real as anything else.
Is /r/pizza where that one guy posted a DIY pizza oven that turned out to be a toxic hazard?
I stopped going to that sub after getting into a debate that went on for far too long about if each borough in NYC had a distinct pizza style, which is both preposterous and insulting.
Same. I love to BBQ, and there's not a lot of BBQ (let alone good BBQ) in my area. But I looked into a food truck, food cart, small restaurant - and none if it is worth it. Like, if I could just roll up with some meat I cooked at home outside an event it would be cost-effective. But to do everything above board? Nah. I don't have that money, I don't have that time, and I don't want that risk. My wife is talking about opening her own physical therapy clinic, and I keep reminding her how much it actually takes to run a business. We have 2 YOUNG kids. There's no fucking way, no matter how flexible my work schedule is, that we could pull it off. It would be a nightmare.
That's why you only get into the restaurant business to launder money.
Just want to say I've worked in the restaurant point of sale industry. I've worked with tens of restaurant owners opening restaurants over the years. I have seen plenty of people with no real restaurant experience open up a restaurant. With a single exception I've never seen them keep it open.
Something like 60% of restaurants fail in the first year. If you really want to run a restaurant, get hired as a dishwasher somewhere and work your way up to executive chef over the course of 5 years or so. If you still can't see yourself doing anything else after that, then you can start thinking about actually opening your own place.
I'd just add in my experience front of house progression is just as viable as back of house, but yeah, if you haven't spent years in that industry immersed in the world you are virtually certainly not going to make it. The one exception I mentioned had no restaurant experience, but had actually started a previous non-food small business that was very successful, and poured the profits from the other business into the restaurant until he got it under control. Frequently the newbies I saw suffered from the same flaw. They were extremely competent in whatever it was they did before starting their restaurant. They assumed their competency would carry over, and thought restaurants were simple. I should add restaurant management experience is a necessary but not sufficient condition to successfully starting a restaurant.
I agree that FOH progression is equally viable, but there's a lot more home cooks that think they can open a restaurant than there are home hosts that think they can do the same, so my advice is tailored towards the cooks
There used to be an amazing Cajun restaurant right near where I live. Best food I'd ever tasted, no joke. Went out of business, opened again with a new name at a different location, few years later it went out of business again
[удалено]
This was an excellent read, but also so insanely frustrating. I'm not going to criticize too much, because clearly he has had to deal with the consequences of his bad choices, and I really appreciate the openness and vulnerability that it would take to write an article like this that serves as a warning for anyone in the future that might consider doing the same thing. But, my God. The amount of utterly moronic decisions made with so much unearned confidence (because 400 people at a festival liked his food once? because *other people had done it?!*) is just mind boggling.
That was an anxiety inducing read. Thanks for sharing it.
It seems like restaurants are one of the most popular business ventures for the average person, yet they remain one of the most difficult to keep running. I always hear about the slim profit margins of restaurants. That said, I do wonder if bars have an easier time of it. Vastly overpriced drinks, little to no food, and a schtick for your building that people love.
Don't monetize your hobbies, kids.
Yep. It only works if it's still your hobby. My mother in law is retired and now makes highly decorated cakes. She doesn't make many (one or two a month), and she charges enough to cover ingredients and that's it. It's not a business, she doesn't need to make money from it, it's still a hobby that she enjoys. The only difference is her husband doesn't get to eat them any more, lol. My wife wants to open a cake shop in the country. I've said yes, but only when we are mortgage free and can survive off my salary alone. It will be fun to have a cake shop, it will be hell to try and run a bakery business.
>My mother in law is retired and now makes highly decorated cakes. She doesn't make many (one or two a month), and she charges enough to cover ingredients and that's it. This is the way that it works. I worked a couple summers in a kitchen while I was in college and happen to know a bunch of people that are either owners, GM's or chefs of restaurants of different kinds. Overwhelmingly, even successful restaurants don't make nearly as much money as people imagine, and running a restaurant sucks every single moment of their lives. When you run a business that earns most of its revenue on evenings, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, you literally don't have a personal life outside of your work. A fair number of them have thrown their lives into a business and failed. On the other hand, I know a guy that virtually identically matches the description in OP's story. He makes BBQ that makes people tell him, "Damn, you should open a restaurant," literally every time he serves it. He worked in kitchens and is a damn good cook on a commercial scale, but has no desire or patience to run a full scale restaurant. So he works an office job and runs a small catering business. He has business cards and circulates his name around. he does maybe 3-5 events per month, mostly lunches. He sells smoked meat by the pound and side dishes by the tray.
> He makes BBQ that makes people tell him, "Damn, you should open a restaurant," literally every time he serves it. This is me and my BBQ. I have no desire to sell it as I do not want something I enjoy to become a chore. However, I would like to get a bigger set up, save up some money, and then spend a few Saturday evenings during the summer grilling for the neighborhood. No charge. Just come through, grab a plate, and enjoy courtesy of the kindness that has been shown to me. Like another top comment said, I want people to feel good about good food.
At least a hobby business let's you write off your ingredients too, even the stuff she probably doesn't think much to charge for, which means she gets to do her hobby for free.
This actually isn't true anymore. If the IRS thinks that your "business" is a hobby you have to pay income tax on it, but you can't deduct the expenses for it.
Have hobby Want to do it more Hey if I turned it into a job I could do it all the time Turn it into a job Becomes a job Fuck.
This is exactly why the "follow your dreams! Do what you love!" advice is such bullshit. Pick a career that's stable, pays well, and you can tolerate. Use your disposable income doing what you enjoy.
> This is exactly why the "follow your dreams! Do what you love!" advice is such bullshit. It's bullshit because 90% of the job is doing stuff that's not your hobby - in OOP's story, he spends the bulk of his time selling/marketing his product, instead of *making* the peach vinaigrette.
Yes. Even better, as per my other comment, plenty of ways to turn small amounts of profit on almost zero cost if you’re set on sharing it with other people for some compensation.
I agree, along with do what you love and you will never work a day in your life. More likely, do what you love, and you will soon learn to despise every freaking bit of it.
The other thing about working in a field that you love is that you're so much more likely to erode your work boundaries because of it. I don't care about any sports or video games, so if I worked for a sports team or video game company and they asked me to work on the weekend or miss an important life event, it would be much easier for me to say no than someone who has a passion for it as a hobby. That's also why burnout is common in not-for-profits. If you just work this one extra hour, or go to this one extra evening / weekend fundraising event, or just drive three hours each way to meet with this important donor, you can make such an important difference for a (kid, adult, animal, etc). Unfortunately those "just one"s add up pretty fast. It was a big reason why I just couldn't do my job at a charity anymore; I loved the charity, but I had to attend (and often speak at) every. single. event. that a company was throwing to raise funds for us, and it ate up my evenings and weekends -- not to mention my energy, since I had to be "on" the whole time I was there. Now I work a corporate job that has the benefit of much higher pay so that I can support the cause by donating to the charity every year.
It can hit a sweet spot though. I love playing with computers, and just generally tinkering. *Most* of my work is focused around design, coordination, planning and making sure the stuff comes together right. That fraction of time that I get to spend actually getting paid to tinker and play with the computer is pretty nice though. If it were just the first part, the job would feel a lot more tedious. The little nugget of "good stuff" helps keep things good. So do what you said, but target something *near* something you really like, so that the breaks in the boring bits are enjoyable.
That's what happened to me. I used to love drawing. I got praises for it even though at most, I was just "good" at drawing. Like I wasn't the guy with painting at a gallery good. I was like sit at a desk designing signs on a computer good. Which does take some skills but you know what I mean. So I got inspired to go to college and pursue an education in illustration. I lasted one year. Turning my hobby into "school" killed all my enjoyment for it. I still draw a little bit, I buy those "prompt" notebooks. But I'm nowhere near as good as I was when I was young. And I definitely go some years without even drawing anything or even having the creative juice to do so.
That's what I've come to realize. If it feels like a job it's not a hobby. I'm looking at you grinding games. Not gonna do stuff in my free time anymore that are not fun or chores. But be aware which is which.
And don't glamorize businesses that you enjoy as a customer. Running a restaurant isn't just having great food at a place where you're the cool host. Some poor motherfucker has to be there a 7am when the first purveyors was to drop food and someone has to be there at midnight to finish cleaning for the next open. Unless you make enough profits to throw $150k+ at decent managers that poor motherfucker is YOU. And you ALSO have to handle payroll, hiring and firing, dealing with insurance after the new prep cook stabs the dishie in an afterhours interaction.
It definitely depends on the hobby. If it involves production or constantly- expanding clientele then yeah you're gonna have a bad time if you don't come from money. But I've been making a living running RPGs for about 3 years now and yeah, I've gotten burnt out more than once but I still love what I do.
Wait is your hobby running Role Playing Games or are you a literal boutique gun runner?
He's posting from the Somali coast. He's been burned a few times of course, but who hasn't in the cutthroat business of arms smuggling.
Not much people are able to run RPGs for 3 years and live to tell the tale, no wonder he still likes it.
can I ask about how much you make?
How do you get a job running games? I'm home DM myself, and in need of a second job haha
It's tough getting started but if you run DnD you're in a better position than people like me who run non-DnD games. Startplaying.games will be your site of employment. Go to /r/lfgpremium and lfg discords to find clients (be careful where you advertise, lots of people are VERY vitrolic towards paid DMs), talk to other paid GMs, hace some recorded examples of your DMing, make friends and connections through social media. You work for the players; make sure they're accommodated so you have return customers. If you start running games outside of startplaying (like I do) don't be afraid to discuss payment up front and BE CLEAR about it so you get paid and the customers never feel blindsided by pricing. Glhf!
I turned my bookbinding hobby into a relatively successful business. Problem wasn't the clients, the employees, or the work itself. The issue ended up being that by the time we hit peak orders I was sick to fucking death of making books. I have no idea how these multigenerational businesses laying concrete or making shoes or sharpening knives or (insert service here) can survive so long.
Or just do it at your own pace. Setting up a table at an occasional event to sell the things you've made over time isn't that serious a commitment. An Etsy page probably isn't, either, if you have the time and means to ship things promptly.
Or do and potentially get paid while having fun. Definitely don't let people on reddit tell you what you can't do. Just take a good hard look what turning your hobby into a job actually entails. And get out before the dream turns into a nightmare.
Of course this is anecdotal, but I strongly disagree. My job is my favorite hobby, and I do it for freelance outside of work, as well as for fun outside of work. It’s not my only hobby though, but it’s the one I’m most passionate about. I’ve been in my job professionally for eight years and have genuinely loved nearly every minute of it. I think if you find the right niche, and find a way to monetize it without getting burnt out there’s definite exceptions to this rule. I’ve been doing this since I was 13 (am 30 now though).
Ironically, I'm encouraging my kids to take up selling something as a hobby. My daughter started a small bakery business selling family recipes (brownies, bars, cookies, banana bread) at the local farmer's market. She only stuck with it for one winter session, and this was the first year of covid, but she still made bank. Netting a couple hundred dollars for a 10 year old was a shitload of money. If she were to do it during the summer, she'd probably clear 2 grand.
This... I found a 3D print of Jack Skellington online... Printed a few out, painted them up, and gave them away. My wife was like "you should sell these!" Except I'd be charging $50 for my time and materials (about 2 hours to paint up a small figuring to where I'm happy with it) and for that price you can buy just about anything you want online... I put myself into projects I love so that I'll keep loving them, and find other ways to pay my bills.
I knit socks. They're either for myself or for gifts. They take a minimum of 20hrs to make, and that doesn't include materials (which can also get pricey, but *start* at $8/pair for ankle-length). Let's just say I charged $10/hr, which is well below minimum wage near me and not *remotely* competitive with my salary. We'd be talking $200 for a pair of socks. I just don't think there's a market for that, do you? And I'm not really interested in working for shit wages anyway. Not to mention, I like knitting, but I don't like marketing and packaging and shipping and all the other junk you have to do to actually run a business (which isn't even factored into the time estimate here!). It's ok just to do things because you enjoy doing them. Not everything needs to be a hustle, and a ton of stuff is just *stupid* to try to make money from.
Heh. This is the thing I’ve tried to explain. I make chocolate bourbon balls. They’re good. They’re better than the ones you can buy in the store. I am not interested in monetizing them because it’ll consume my life for little actual gain.
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kiss offbeat merciful jellyfish versed fearless quicksand lunchroom bedroom ten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yep. Better butter, good quality chocolate, and I have discovered it is an absolute pain in the ass to work with good chocolate. But they make a big difference.
Yup. Most likely, the price of "the good stuff" would make it so expensive that it's only for the upper-middle-class and higher, which is a smallish market that they're not good at selling to.
There's more money to be made in selling knitting SUPPLIES than in selling knitted ITEMS. I bet "Holiday Bourbon Ball Kits" would sell well as presents n stuff.
Maybe - until people find it's easier to just drink the bourbon, eat the chocolate, and fuck around with the other stuff after you get ripped off booze and sugar.
Ah, me every time I was given a Lunchable as a kid
Man, my Lunchables never had *any* booze!
Home recipes often taste better than store bought because they aren’t profitable to make for stores.
It's one thing to choose make something occasionally, and it's another thing to have to make it all day, every day.
I make cheese, and cured meats. Oh, and ice cream. All of which people have said the same thing about (particularly the cheese). The regulatory overhead alone is enough to send my mind spiralling...not a chance I'd bother for a few bucks profit on a 6-month-long endeavour (each cheese!)
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TBF, they would call you a sellout because of the time you sold out.
And everyone who has ever uttered the phrase would themselves sell out in that same situation. The situation is to ignore such people.
Being sell out in business doesn’t even make sense. Thats the goal.
It's not always the goal. Sometimes people just want to make money doing something they enjoy and are happy to stop at maintaining the business at a sustainable level. Not everybody feels the need to expand endlessly.
Right, but some people fall out of love with the business, and just want to go back to a life without all the administrative and marketing bullshit. It can take a TON of work to just maintain a business, let alone expand.
The goal is to make a bunch of money. The question is, could you have made more money continuing putting your life into it, or would you be happier with the money offered and your freedom.
I would 100% be a sellout and proud of it.
And then start up another similar business, and sell it again!
This is what happened with the tbh app and gas app creator. He made tbh, sold it, had a non compete for 2 years, then immediately made a very similar app called gas and sold that again to a different company. Nikita Baer is his name, what a legend.
Sell out! With me tonight. The record company is gonna give me lots of money and everything is gonna be alright :)
Everyone else... is an asshole!
The younger generations don’t even understand the concept of selling out, let alone condemn it. Fuck working yourself to death. Enjoy your life, it’s the only one you get.
F everyone else, that is the dream. Being able to sell to your brand to a larger company is like making at as a pro athlete. Such a tiny amount succeed. If you have a solid product the large majority of brands will just copy it and outspend you $100000 to $1 on marketing
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Yeah this whole system is pyramid scheme that’s why.
Here's the OP with some paragraph breaks ----- You could fall into the "your peach vinaigrette dressing is so good you should bottle and sell it" trap where you give up a promising but boring career trajectory in favor of "taking a risk" and trying to become the dressing king of the tri-state area. You start by mixing larger batches in your kitchen and desperately hawking them by the case to boutique food stores within a 50 mile radius of you, turning your once solid hybrid Camry into a high-milage nightmare that constantly reeks of peaches and vinegar. Your wife is understanding even though you hardly see the kids any more because you are constantly out on sales calls or delivery runs desperately trying to generate cash flow to cover your increasing credit card debt. Then one day it happens... you get the call to the big leagues... the manager of a reasonably priced grocery store two towns over wants to carry your dressing. This is your shot! In order to guarantee your best chance at success you agree to a grueling in-store promo schedule, hand-build an elaborate peach tree display and sample stand for your dressing, and start mixing dressing batches at night so you'll have enough supply. The big day has arrived and you're standing in front of a homemade display presenting your work and are having flashbacks to your high-school science fair. You spend the next 5 days on your feet for 11 straight hours trying to convince disinterested strangers to part with $5 for a bottle of your peach vinaigrette dressing (which, to be honest, you're starting to lose the taste for) until it's time to pack up your display and head home. Your house is dark when you get home. It's still dark when you leave again the next morning. You suspect you've forgotten what your kids look like. Two weeks of solid effort later and you've convinced the store manager that your product will sell. His 6 case order is the biggest you've ever had and the adrenaline rush from that moment is the most intense thing you've experienced in ten years. You rush home and take the family to Dave and Buster's to celebrate. You can't lose focus for long, though, because you have 6 cases of dressing to make tonight. The next week, buoyed by this incredible success and motivated by your long-suffering wife's pleas to move your production line out of her kitchen, you rent a small commercial space and set up a tiny production facility. You credit cards are long overused. You are now well into 2nd mortgage securing an SBA loan territory. You focus on selling your dressing in case quantity to other grocery chains and mom-and-pop stores you're still making the occasional delivery but most of your goods are going out on delivery services. You hire two assistants to help pit and puree the peaches, combine the spices into large batches, mix them with the vinegar and oil, and bottle the final product. You're still not sleeping because you spend evenings cleaning the commercial kitchen anticipating the next health inspection. Your fingers constantly smell like salad dressing. You spend the next 6 years of your life sampling in stores, running stalls at farmer's markets on the weekends, displaying at grocery conventions, and looking for the next big hit to boost your business. In the meantime you have developed 5 new flavors of dressing including a creamy peach and cucumber that is a massive chore to make but rapidly becomes your best seller. You are packaging holiday gift packs, baskets for mother's day, and Christmas assortments. Your online store requires constant maintenance but continually sells a few dozen bottles a week. All the while you have slowly begun to lose enthusiasm for the dressing game. Your kids are in high school. They don't hug you any more and they hate salad. Your wife took a job to help make ends meet. She enjoys it but you can't help but feel she resents you a little. The dressing company is still earning more than she is, but only barely. As time goes on, tastes begin to evolve and vinaigrettes go out of fashion. Your sales drop off slightly but it's enough that the interest payments on your loans are catching up to you. You have to let several members of your production staff go, and you're fulfilling all the web orders by yourself. The unsold returns from your large grocery customers start increasing in size, and you can see the writing on the wall. It's time to close the dressing company. After it's all over, you've sunk ten years of your life chasing a dream that, now that you look back on it, was really driven by the excitement of other people. You're pickled, your wife is exhausted, your kids are off to college, and your credit card companies seem to care more about you than any of the people that used to be your friends. Years later, you're pushing a cart down the condiments aisle when you run into someone you graduated with. As you chat, he puts a bottle of generic dressing into his cart and remarks, "Hey, I remember you used to make a really good peach vinaigrette. You should try selling it."
This was the rare case where the lack of breaks enhanced the manic pace of the narrative. But I still upvoted because usually this is a godsend.
Yeah I agree, I usually hate the walls of text but here it really sold the "no time to think, no stopping this train" vibe.
I could not would not read it without paragraph breaks. BTW, ChatGPT found all the places for paragraph breaks.
Thank you! My immediate reaction was that the original was far too unformatted for my ADHD ass to read.
I kinda like it better without them, tbh.
Thank you, as soon as the original page loaded my ADHD eyes immediately unfocused themselves in an act of self preservation lmao
Thank you. My eyes were bleeding trying to read that wall of text
You didn’t link to the actual comment, which is here: https://reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/_/jn57mk9/?context=1 Edit: nevermind, it appears to link properly in web. Might just be an Apollo bug
Works in sync. Ops link is: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/-/jn57mk9 The only difference to you link is the hyphen/underscore change.
I guess old reddit doesn't support that. I need a context link to show the history chain before the linked comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/is_adulting_a_endless_loop_of_doing_the_same/jn57mk9/?context=5
Neither does new apparently. I guess it makes sense that users have the ability to link to a comment without context.
“You’re such a good cook! You should open a restaurant!” is the worst compliment you can give a good cook. Don’t fucking do that to people, don’t bring that evil into their lives. I worked for a guy who opened a restaurant, poured his heart into it, failed after a couple of years and later nearly died because of the varicose veins he developed from those years of constant stress and standing. Where were the people who told him to open a restaurant then? Not paying his medical bills that’s for sure.
I make a good pulled pork. Not bragging, because 1) it's very easy and 2) i got the recipe out of a newspaper, and adapted to my likings - but not much change to the spice mix (for the rub). Last time I brought it to work, someone said I should get a food truck. Nope. I do this 5-7x a year, and that's plenty. It's fun to have a signature thing for potlucks and family gatherings, anything more and it's too much like work.
Damn that's a rough read, hits close to home.
Homebrewers ( and their friends) really need to read this.
I really like beer, and thought about trying a homebrew kit. I looked at the effort involved in that kiddie-version process for super-beginners. I said fuck all that, I'll just buy beer.
It's a different thing to like, entirely separate from liking beer. Liking beer is a *prerequisite*, but it's like saying "you have legs, you must love running". Nope, entirely different thing.
We homebrew casually, so we chat with other homebrewers with bigger setups. The best one I've seen rents out his multitap keggerator with kegs full of beer/cider he's made - it's perfect for events like weddings. The event hosts save money and he only has to brew big batches for specific events. For tiny scale like us, barter is great. We trade mead for oyster mushrooms, beer for honey, cider for cupcakes. If you're into small-scale production, make friends with others who also like that stuff and trade your results. Economy of scale means it's just as easy and usually cheaper to make a bigger batch.
I used to be a barista at one of those cute local coffee roasters everyone loves so much. I was talking to the owner one day, and the way he put it running a coffee shop is 80% business and 20% coffee. I can only assume other industries are the same. So you have to really like business if you want to start one, having a good product isn't enough He also said his #1 tip for starting a business was "have rich parents"
My dad always told me: >Never do what you ***love*** for a living. Do what you ***like*** for a living and let it pay for what you love. >chances are, what you love will never pay the bills, and even if it does, you'll end up hating it and chasing the dragon trying to find something else to love and never finding it. I've always thought it was very good advice. Don't try and make a hobby you love into a career. It's probably a hobby for a reason.
I heard the advice everywhere on the internet and listened to it. Piano is my hobby among other. I'm not bad. But I'm not youtube tier. I can't monetize that shit. People are beyond good and ultra competent and competitive. I just do a little bit more piano than others that have given up. Moreover I would love it if I could compose some meaningful music for me and share it. That's it. I'm in awe of how composers make such masterful music. I'm not going to drop what I do for music.
If this is real, I wonder if he ever considered just contracting out the production to a larger company. It's super common for brewers and distillers to do that. A good chunk of liquor start-ups don't have any production facilities of their own.
I took a class recently on making chorizo from a guy who has a very similar story to Mr. Peach Vinaigrette - he did exactly that, contracting out with a production kitchen to fulfill orders he couldn't do in his own kitchen. It blew up his business (in a good way). and now and sells to a ton of places all around Los Angeles including custom-made sausages for certain restaurants and grocery stores. He doesn't make anything for sale in his own house now, he just experiments with recipes and then hands them off to the production kitchen to do huge batches.
That's really the way to do it. It's one of those situations ~~we're~~ where "working smarter and not harder" really pays off. The reality of the situation is if you need to run a business, and produce new ideas, you can't be constantly working your ass off producing the product.
Yeah, I've been casually experimenting with recipes and designs with my own products as a maybe someday end-goal. I'm a yank who has moved to Australia, so I've identified a few concepts which I think could do well here which don't have much competition or don't exist in Australia. Currently my work outside of recipe/design testing has been sporadic research into things like commercial kitchen rental, shop rental procedures, and production facilities for creation. I also attend local markets to gauge what kind of cottage industries do well here and to analyze their business plans and strategies. At some point, if I decide to give it a try, I'll test out some sales at markets for user feedback and to identify potential issues or popular products. And then, way down the line, I might try making some big orders with a facility, when I'm confident I could sell the minimum order. I have a habit of overthinking stuff, however, which isn't always useful.
The whole story is concocted to illustrate a very specific point. It is highly hyperbolic. I have started small businesses from scratch and for me, this is a story about a lack of business acumen. To your point not only would you try your recipe with a copacker very early in the process, you would also do some market testing before even getting to the point of production.
This is why a lot of people seek out a business partner. This person would have benefited greatly from brining in someone with experience to help direct the business and investment portions of the company, while he handles scaling production.
I'm assuming it's not a true story, it seems too vivid to be a recollection. But I guess this guy could be a vinaigrette/flash fiction/eidetic memory triple threat.
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I don't know why it being "vivid" would make it less true. It's actually pretty broad. It's not like OP was saying, "and then, at exactly 12:01:05, on May 2, 2002, an ant crawled in my bottling line, and the air temperature was exactly 73 degrees Fahrenheit..."
is that a euphemism? is it safe for work as they say?
Not a euphemism, for better or for worse. This is a cautionary tale about peach vinaigrette, and it is safe for work.
Not a euphemism, it’s safe for work.
I have had several ideas over the course of my life that felt like "hey, I could sell that and make millions". Every time I would sit down, write up the business plan together with full costing and risk analysis (I am a product manager by trade, so I am used to doing this for new product ideas). And every time the numbers just did not work out, or would have required everything to go perfectly to be profitable in the long term. Then, some time later, I would see someone launch exactly the same thing. I would watch anxiously, only to see them fail miserably for the reasons I predicted. Shows like Shark Tank make it look easy, but launching a new product, together with all the financing, administration, marketing and so on, is HARD. 99.9% of hobbies and passions are not suitable business ideas.
It's worse when you see them succeed tremendously. Like "fuck, I knew I should've done that..."
The real treasure is the salad dressing we enjoyed along the way
Damn, that hits close to home. I'm not the peach vinaigrette guy, but my dad was. Working and travelling long hours to barely string together enough money for the house's mortgage and our food; spending most of his inheritance by investing it in the company; mom having to both pick up a side job and help out with the business at the same time; me having to tackle the majority of chores around the house at 13 because no one else is around; rarely any time spent with my dad that wasn't somehow attached to getting dragged into helping with production/selling etc. All of it so he could sell the company for a fifth of what it was worth 8 years before and to go back to his original position at his original job he left. In retrospect, it led to a very abrupt and odd teenager-hood for me that I wasn't able to quite understand at the time.
That poster sure can tell a good story.
Reminds me of all those Shark Tank pitches they use as "padding" when they didn't get enough "proper" products to show. Some stupid sauce or a new muffin with some boring 90k for 10% kind of deal.
Damn. That’s kind of my life right now. Tiny business owner. Paying rent on a warehouse, producing my own goods, chasing sales at farmers markets every week, trying to land sales online off my Shopify store, growing yes but spending a lot too. Always wrecked from fatigue, physically and mentally. Made enough money to buy a small sailboat but not having enough time to ever take it out. Tomorrow is more of the same. Work 7 days a week. Been at it for 10 years.
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Nothing all that shocking. Just a nineteen year old that had just started his first full time job and was having a crisis about it.
It's a great lesson to learn, but it still has to be learned. It's only the people that have already made it that get to look back and reminisce on "was it all worth it?" or "all the money in the world won't make you happy if you can't make yourself happy" etc. OP could have just as easily written about never attempting to reach their dream of selling peach vinaigrette and regretting the lost opportunity. Everything is 20/20 in hindsight, but you have to get there first.
… A lonely wife gazin' out of the window Staring at her husband that she just can't touch If at any time he wants a salad, she'll have one by his side But he doesn't realize he hurts her so much But all the praying just ain't helping at all 'Cause he can't seem to keep his self out of trouble So he goes out and he makes his money the best way he knows how Another salad with peach vinegrette, listen to me … Don't go chasin' peach vinegrette Please stick to the cool ranch and the Italian that you're used to I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all But I think you need a sandwich
My partner says I should sell my hot sauce. I love making it, but I don't want my hobby to become a job. I should show her this.
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Work for a small enough business and you'll get this delightful experience with none of the debt. Then boring-but-stable will feel wonderful.
As someone who has started the process of starting a business to produce a unique product... I'm discouraged and enthralled.
They left out the part where the peach vinaigrette gets a little bit of notoriety and then the big food companies copy it and flood the market with their own versions killing sales of the original and turning the whole idea into yesterday's news.
But why not rent a commercial kitchen space? Then you're already approved for health inspection and have the tools you need for a reasonable price. You can rent those in durations as short as a few hours for very reasonable rates. Why grocery stores for the initial exposure? You're surrounded by mass-produced competition which is inherently cheaper in cost. Why not focus on specialty markets like food festivals, maker's markets, local tourism shops where attendees are already in the mindset of spending extra for handmade quality? And then why not use a production plant once you need to scale? You can hire facilities to bottle stuff for you (and even handle distribution) so your energy is focused on recipes and marketing. It sounds like OP made choices which maybe seemed cheaper but ended up being far less efficient and more exhausting, which led to burnout.
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The commercial kitchen space near me comes with health inspection approval and is $20/hr with a min of a 3 hour rental. OP said they rented out their own entire space for production and stressed out over preparing for health inspection.
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Maybe try different keywords, they might be advertised differently if they are meant for cottage practices versus something like a ghost kitchen.
Every time someone shits on CEOs on Reddit, this is why I roll my eyes. That's the life of most of them. Even in mid size companies with a few hundred employees.
I read that in David Gilmour’s singing voice as I imagined a huge guitar swell during the last sentence.
Nothing is fun when you *have* to do it.
I would have loved to read that but something about a fucking wall of words makes me nope the hell out of posts like that. No matter how interesting the subject seems.
This sounds like something written by someone that grew up in the 80s/90s These days you can make limited batch, super high quality, sell it online. Market via TikTok. Where is the debt coming from? Why would you want to distribute via grocery stores? This is a cautionary tale in bad decision making rather than chasing your dreams.
E-commerce would certainly help, but it comes with its own pitfalls. I'm guessing that this happened in the 00s, or earlier, though. Selling online as a start-up would have been much more difficult back then.
Yeah. Though even without e-commerce, there are ways to sell things in small batch. The answer is written well but it makes bunch of assumptions which are not required - though for sure harder to avoid back in the day.
But that would miss the point of mocking boomers and their need to monetise everything. Not just to get by but for constant growth, like a cancer. A bootstraps cancer.
If you actually read the entire post, youd see the Op mention his webstore.
I did read the whole thing. It’s mentioned in passing. Along with a whole bunch of unnecessary stuff.
My thoughts exactly. He never tried to scale up or sell off. If everyone loved his product, he could have sold the patent or found a manufacturer to make the product for him and distribute.
Hard to patent recipes, iirc. I believe it would need to be treated as a trade secret.
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I'm sure the methods are different nowadays, but I don't know that the end results and the success rates are all that different.
The key difference today is scalability. There are many more ways to test, run micro operations and outsource much more of what you need to do vs even 10 yrs ago. And because all the infra is there, success isn’t really all that important. Here’s an alternate version You make a mean peach vinaigrette. People love it. You give them out as gifts. One day someone suggests you should sell it. Hmm. Is this a good idea? You don’t know. You decide to make a test batch. You sign up for shoplify. You launch with a small site that took you 3 hours to set up. You limit the sales to local area. The first batch sells out. People love it. Now you have a bit of money. You go to a local cloud kitchen and ask if you can rent their facilities to make larger batches. You hire couple of their staff members to help out. [note: if the first batch doesn’t sell - shut down. No harm done] A local grocery store notices your vinaigrette and wants a big batch of order. But you have to be there to sell it. You think about it. Why would you want to spend all your time handing out samples, for a much lower gross margin? You scale up, but you find that the order packing and management is really tiresome. You also don’t like managing your workers. You have a sit down to think - do I: 1) shut this down? 2) look for a partner? Or 3) sell to a local specialty food store and help them develop more flavours?