3 Eye-Opening Lessons From My Failed Salad Shop: How Failure Helped Inform My Entrepreneurial Journey

I owned a local salad shop. It failed spectacularly. Still, I learned a lot (about myself) from the process. Here are some of the highlights.

🥬 No Inventory Forecasting: Produce goes bad. Quickly. I knew this going in but didn’t appreciate how much of a headache this would be. This taught me how much I dislike physical products.

📦 No Small Ticket Physical Products: Our salads were $9-$14. Not bad for nearly all organic and fresh ingredients. However, we needed volume to make the business work. I don’t get excited by selling a lot of small ticket items. I like selling higher-priced products.

🕒 No Time Sensitive Delivery: You must open that salad shop daily. You need to be ready when the customer is ready. This is 100% against my personality. I realized I want the customer value I deliver to be as decoupled from my calendar as possible.

My path isn’t your path. The opposite of my position may be what get’s you excited. That’s great. The takeaway is to understand the dynamics of your business. Only sign up if you’re up for the challenge.

Know thyself.