The bakery specifically was a bunch of lessons in numbers, space, and pricing - and also the limits of bootstrapping.

The numbers of the bakery never made sense - we literally never made enough money lol. It would have closed in 9 months but north was supporting it. One of the reasons we never made any money was because we opened it what, ten years ago? Ten years ago that block was completely different - no restaurants, no gym (though planet fitness opened soon after), no breweries, no bars. Just garages and car repair places, and a private ambulance company. It was certainly residential, but the neighborhood has gotten way wealthier the last decade, and can now support higher prices. At the time I was obsessed with a $5 breakfast sandwich with a coffee. We eventually moved away from that ourselves, but not to the prices point you’d find that for now. Ditto for most of the other stuff.

Part of the issue is the inefficiencies of the space - I leased the space because the rent was dirt cheap (obscenely cheap actually), BUT I had to white box and build the space out myself. Floors, ceilings, walls, plumbing, electrical. This was the first space we built ourselves, and while we used contractors, we made a bunch of design errors - especially with HVAC - that really hurt the space both from a comfort perspective but also a functionality perspective.

I think the biggest lesson though was that for me, I learned that having a space that was open all day seven days and then another open all night seven days was just really difficult for me on all accounts. Other people are better about delegating and training people on the management level - frankly I can teach you to cook, but teaching people to manage, especially back then, is definitely a weakness of mine. I still think that place was special but I needed to spend more time there and just couldn’t.