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Trials and Tribulations….Starting a Small BusinessI think it’s important to start a business based on a passion,
whether that’s a hobby or an interest. You must love what you’re doing to make it a success. I firmly believe that when you do, all the decisions you make, however, subtle, will lead you to success. I was working in financial services with no practical experience or money to fund the business. However, I didn’t let that deter me. My passion for wanting to carve out a niche as a health-nut foodie drove every subsequent decision I made. It took a couple of years to get the experience, planning and funding to get the business off the ground, but it paid off. With NuKitchen, I knew that I wanted to help improve people’s lives and make a difference. That was my primary motivating factor for wanting to start that business. Since I am also a health nut- I had an immense interest in culinary arts and nutrition. Being in New York, I was in the epicenter of global cuisine. While I was fortunate to have lots of inspiration for healthy eateries, there was also lots & lots of competition. There were about 20,000 dining options in New York City at that time. I ultimately partnered with Mark Newhouse, an exceptional individual and longtime friend, who was a true foodie and had relevant experience to make NuKitchen a success In just over 5 years, I built NuKitchen from the ground up, turning it in to a multimillion dollar operation. I served thousands of clients, including influential celebrity New Yorkers such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Marcia Gay Harden, and Mary Louise Parker, who helped me grow the business ,lent me their praise and support In 2008, after five years at the helm, I sold NuKitchen to Nutrisystem, the national one of the nation’s leading diet and& weight- loss companies.
As with starting any new business, there can be some very challenging and seemingly insurmountable challenges. When I was running Nukitchen, I learned a costly lesson by not staying focused. I wanted to expand my food business. At the time of the “lesson,” the business excelled at online meal delivery.This meant that we sold our meals online, prepared them at an offsite kitchen, and then delivered them to directly to our customers. We were asked by a high-end gym chain to open and manage several cafés in their fitness facilities. This seemed like a natural extension of our product at the time. We expected that the strategic alliance would bring us closer to customers and lead to increased sales of our prepared meals. So we went into the restaurant business. We operated several cafés. However, it was so much more than we could have anticipated (I take the blame since I was at the helm and pressed the decision to move forward.) Not all of our strengths as an efficient online business were transferable to the restaurant business. For one thing, our NuKitchen meals didn’t translate well for the grab-and-go gym clientele, so we had to develop an alternative menu of sandwiches and wraps. Next, we were catapulted into operating brick-and-mortar cafés—something we didn’t have experience in—and we didn’t have the right kind of staff for that. Also, we had to quickly learn how to handle cash transactions; for our online business, we only accepted credit cards. Lastly, we needed capital to fund such expenses as point-of-sale systems (i.e., fancy cash registers), signage, new menu development, packaging, and uniforms for our staff. We got out of the café business in a year, but only after nearly going bust— and having our attention diverted from our core business, which ultimately suffered because of this distraction. The big lesson I learned is that we didn’t have the resources to manage both the online food business and the café business while we were still a startup. Fortunately, we didn’t go out of business but we learned a valuable lesson about the importance of staying focused.
         
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Bryan Janeczko is the CEO of WickedStart
