The single biggest mistake we made was growing too quickly, to multiple cities, before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain. We were motivated by enthusiasm for our mission and eagerness to bring Good Eggs to more people. But the best of intentions were not enough to overcome the complexity.
By Good Eggs - Good Eggs Blog
To grow and sustain local food systems worldwide. That was our mission when we started Good Eggs and we remain driven by it today. In the four years since we began, we’ve built something extremely special in service of that mission. A groundswell of loyal customers have come to rely on us as a different kind of grocery store: the best local food, harvested fresh, delivered to your door.
What we didn’t fully understand when we started was that we were creating a new category that required a different approach to supply chains, logistics, and commerce – all of the pieces of getting food from local producers to the kitchens of our customers. It was, and is, complicated, way more complicated than we ever anticipated. We have learned so many lessons, many of them learned “the hard way” by making mistakes and seeing the consequences. As soon as we realize a mistake, we need to correct it, learn from it, and proceed onwards in service of our mission. When building a software business, hard lessons are learned in code and quickly corrected; when building a food and logistics business, hard lessons involve people, and partners, and are very hard to correct. As CEO I take full responsibility for any and all of our mistakes along the way as well as their consequences.
The single biggest mistake we made was growing too quickly, to multiple cities, before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain. We were motivated by enthusiasm for our mission and eagerness to bring Good Eggs to more people. But the best of intentions were not enough to overcome the complexity. Today we realize that in order to continue innovating in San Francisco, our original market, in order to continue figuring out all the complexity that is required to achieve our mission, we cannot productively maintain operations in other cities.
With a heavy heart I’m announcing that effective Friday, we will be closing our operations in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and New Orleans and reducing staff at our San Francisco HQ. We will be accepting our last orders in LA, New York City and New Orleans today. This is the hardest decision I’ve had to make in my career, but I know it is right for our company and our mission.
We spoke this morning to those employees who will be leaving us. We will help them as much as possible to transition to new opportunities. I want to thank all of our employees for their earnest hard work to support the Good Eggs mission. I also want to thank our dedicated producers and partners in those markets who continue to make food with so much integrity and heart. I am humbled to have worked with them and very sad to part ways.
Good Eggs will move forward. I know we have learned a tremendous amount through this process that will make us a stronger company going forward – these are painful lessons, but extremely valuable ones. We are going to use these lessons and our resources here in San Francisco to build on our strength in our home market, the Bay Area. We’ve seen consistent success here with so many loyal customers, hundreds of amazing producer partners, and a dedicated team that remains 100+ strong. Our partners at Sequoia and Index Ventures continue to support us on our journey and know that this is the right move in service of our long-term prospects. Their support of our company and our mission has been so helpful to me in this process and gives me even more confidence for our future.
Over the coming months we will introduce exciting new product improvements that will make Good Eggs even more convenient, more inspirational, and tastier. We’ll work harder than ever to support the Good Eggs community in the Bay Area and help our phenomenal customers and producers share their love of food and cooking with each other.
When we started Good Eggs, we had a desire to create a company that, at its core, would do something good in the world by supporting local food systems. We remain committed to that philosophy and extremely ambitious in the scope of our vision. We are grateful for your support as we start this next chapter. READ ON GOODEGGS.COM