While I was churning through my inbox Monday morning, I was greeted by the UPS man with a hickory-smoked surprise. Benton’s bacon arrived early and my nose knew before I even read the label. I opened the box and even though the bacon was vacuum sealed inside the packaging, the scent started filling the air in the TechStars office. I brought the box over to Rob and Nik to get a whiff and I think I caught Nik trying to get a lick from the outside of the packaging (Nik’s a vegetarian who still has bacon cravings). Maybe that’s an indicator of how good it is, or… maybe just how much Nik misses the taste of bacon. As soon as I can pull away from meetings and all the work on my plate to actually cook, I’m going to be putting it to the test. I’ll be sure to report back as to whether it lives up to all the hype.

On a slightly different yet related note, if you read my initial post about Benton’s, you might have remembered that they gave me a 7 week lead time on the bacon. Although I was eager to get my bacon right away, they set the expectations before I added it to my cart and I was perfectly content waiting until August to enjoy a little slice of bacon heaven. But then a wonderful thing happened, it arrived in 1.5 weeks. Benton’s under-promised and over-delivered. Now there is a good chance they didn’t do this on purpose. They could have merely been too busy making bacon to update the site to reflect the true wait, but regardless, I think what they’ve done in managing expectations is a key ingredient to keeping customers happy.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Zappos, the king of customer service, does a similar thing. They tell you your shoes will arrive in 4-5 days and blow you away when it shows up the next day. I think when you are dealing with anyone, whether it be your customers, investors, parents or employees - exceeding expectations can be a very powerful thing.

Photo Credit: Wendell T. Webber

When I had to pack up my life to move out to Colorado, I also had the painful job of cleaning out my pantry and fridge. Believe it or not, besides the fuzzy stuff, I was actually pretty upset to have to part with most of it. From my days of working in specialty foods (with the benefit of lots of free samples) I was appropriately given the name “Condiment Queen,” and kept my fridge well-stocked with olive tapenades, fig preserves, stone-ground mustards…oh the list goes on. But when I left, most of my goodies were either given away to friends or unfortunately found their way into the trash can. Only a few things were worthy of joining our long journey across the country.

At first I dreaded having to refill my pantry, but when I arrived in Colorado with an empty fridge and a clean slate, it was actually kind of refreshing. I now have the opportunity to rebuild my pantry with a bit more purpose and not go about it so haphazardly.

Of course you always have to have the basics, and my list is right on point with Lydia’s from The Perfect Pantry. I can’t cook without olive oil, coarse sea salt, black peppercorns, soy sauce, honey, canned whole tomatoes and she has about 17 other “must-haves” on her list. But to expand upon that, I like to have products on hand that are multi-purpose, but still don’t sacrifice on taste.

One staple I am definitely reincorporating back into my pantry is my Garlic Expressions salad dressing. It’s a simple, yet absolutely wonderful dressing that’s perfect for green salads, pasta salads or even as a marinade for chicken. With a mixture of oil and cider vinegar and whole cloves of garlic packed in every bottle, you get a light, sweet and tangy dressing with a subtle essence of garlic. It’s the kind of product that’s so good and so versatile, I always buy two or three at a time - never just one. That one was a no-brainer, but I am looking for more products like that as I begin to fill my kitchen. I welcome any great suggestions of pantry staples you just can’t live without!

During our weekly mentor session with Chris Wand last week, he asked us all what we missed from back home in North Carolina and immediately my reaction was Prissy Polly’s BBQ. It’s the classic southern hole-in-the-wall dive, where the sweet tea flows and you get free (really good!) banana pudding if you get the trivia question correct. Needless to say, thinking about Prissy Polly’s had me longing for some goood BBQ. It just so happened that the next day Chris was heading up to Frisco, CO for a BBQ Competition with his girlfriend Tina and some friends and he invited the Foodzie’s to join them.

Chris is a Kansas City BBQ Judge, so we had an expert on hand to help us navigate our way through the festival. There was a ton of BBQ and we tasted a lot of great pulled pork, sausage and chicken, but the highlight was definitely Big Mike’s BBQ.

Chris was wise to get us into the Big Mike’s line early so we could try his famous ribs. His ribs are covered in a zesty dry rub, basted with his special sauce and then slowly smoked over the grill. Big Mike’s was clearly the “peoples choice” by the length of the line that stretched far past his stand for the entire day. We waited about 20 minutes in line for our ribs, but they were absolutely worth it.

Second best to Big Mike’s ribs, had to the be the pig racing. I had never seen anything like it in all my life! The little piggies get corralled into their gates and then when the gates open they waddle their way around the course to see who can get to the oreo cookie at the finish line first!

The whole day was just perfect with a beautiful backdrop of the rockies, a nice cool breeze and plenty of juicy, smoky, tender, wonderful BBQ. Thanks Chris for giving us a little taste of home!

I have been a customer of Zappos for a few years and after just one experience with their service, I was a huge raving fan. I tell everyone about Zappos and won’t buy my shoes anywhere else. Just last week I bought some trail running shoes and although they say they will ship for free in 4-5 days, I ordered my shoes on Sunday and they arrived the next day. I’d say that’s scary fast.

Foodzie plans to have top-notch customer service and as with everything with our company we look to learn from the best. The best is Zappos. Several times when the conversation about customer service came up, we would say…”I wish we would just talk to someone at Zappos.” Recently I began following their CEO Tony Hsieh on Twitter. Last night I thought, what the heck, why not just send Tony a direct message and see what happens? Sure enough, first thing this morning Tony sends me a message back saying he’d be more than happy to help with our customer service questions and gave me his e-mail address. I was shocked at first that he replied to me, but then thought about it some more and realized…if any CEO were going to reply to a DM from some random follower on Twitter, it would the one from Zappos.

The 37Signals’ blog, Signal vs. Noise, has again explained one of the Agile principles that we try very hard to follow, patience. This was articulated outside of any mention of agile software development (or software at all really). It surfaced as a principle that Robert W. Langacker outlined in his new book, Cognitive Grammar; he tries to adhere to it throughout his work. This is a good reminder that Agile concepts can apply to much more than software.

Patience is an unexpected final principle. Being sure not to put the cart before the horse, it means withholding judgment on questions that are premature. As software designers, this means developing a “wait and see” approach that doesn’t indulge in too much speculation. Most feature ideas are speculative. “Wouldn’t it be cool if (x)” is very different from saying “for the last two weeks I’ve been frustrated by (y).” Having patience means putting speculative ideas on a shelf until actual life experience proves they have benefit. Launching a product with “too few” features is a kind of patience. Keeping your team small is a kind of patience.

We’ve often been coached that best way to start business is to find a solution to the “I’ve been frustrated by(y)” question, rather than the “Wouldn’t it be cool if (x)” question.

Foodzie strives very hard to adhere to this both in our business concept and implementation/execution. We’d much rather have a functional core without 10 features you want, rather than a functional core with 3 features you won’t use. 

This is difficult, and we find ourselves wrestling with it on a daily basis. By nature, we want to solve every problem small food producers encounter, but we know we don’t have all the answers yet. We know that trying to solve problems without patience is a waste of time, energy, and a recipe for failure. 

One of the startup tips we learned from David Cohen that helps you to be successful with your business is the idea of “scratching your own itch.” It’s certainly something that resonates with the Foodzie team, because as foodies ourselves we feel like there isn’t a good place out there to discover products from small artisan food producers. The marketplace we are building will solve our own problem. I find that a lot of small food producers tend to do the same.

Two Moms in the Raw is a local Boulder, CO producer who makes raw granola and crackers. Shari, the owner, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and after exploring all options, she looked to heal and improve her condition naturally. Shari believes that food in its natural state without all the additives and pesticides is what the body needs to heal and feel good. Shari is on a raw diet and because of these changes has continued to see her condition improve.

When she looked for raw snacks that she could take on the go, she couldn’t find much, thus Two Moms in the Raw was born! She makes several varieties of granola and crackers and sells them at the Boulder Farmers Market. The booth always seems busy so it seems as though Shari is not only just solving her own problem, but a lot of other people’s too.

If you don’t know what my passion is yet, here’s a hint. When I tried to write a blog post about being passionate, all I could think about was passion fruit. Yes, I am sort of obsessed with food.

When I was a junior in high school, I came home one afternoon and caught an episode of Oprah that was all about finding what you’re passionate about. For some reason it flipped a switch in me and I was determined to find my passion. At the time I was in AP Chemistry with an incredible teacher who fueled my love for science. I was interested in chemistry, I was good at it - so for the next 3 years, chemistry was what I was passionate about. I went on to go to school at Virginia Tech and studied chemistry for the next year or so, until I thought about turning chemistry into a career. I wasn’t very excited about any of the opportunities that were ahead for me. And now looking back, the “passion” I thought I had for chemistry was really just more of an interest. Passion, I found out, is more than just being interested.

Someone once gave me a good piece of advice, “Pay attention to the things you look forward to doing when you get out of work or school and maybe that’s the thing you really should be doing.” I put off my homework to spend time in the kitchen cooking, reading food magazines and tasting new things. Something told me I should be doing more with food. I thought food writing sounded like the right path, so I quickly jumped into Communications, grabbed a minor in Food and Nutrition and started my own food column at the school paper. It wasn’t long before I realized I was truly passionate about food. With some advice from an editor named Kathy Kitchens (yes that is her real name!) from Cooking Light Magazine, I went and took some culinary courses. She said if you want to be a food writer, you need to be an expert in food and know how to write, not the other way around. So I went and took some courses and continued to do some freelance work and in the process realized that I loved food, but needed to be doing more than just writing (I like having my hands in many things). I went on to work for a gourmet grocery store chain doing brand management and eventually e-commerce. All along the way I was involved in tasting panels and was always very closely tied to the food.

Today I am the co-founder of Foodzie and of course it is all about good food. I’m passionate about sharing great products with other foodies and I’m passionate about helping small food producers grow their business and sell more of their wonderful products. The days are long as an entrepreneur, our days average around 16 hours, but I really enjoy every minute of it because this is the stuff that I love.

Earlier this week, Todd Vernon, the CEO and Founder of Lijit and a TechStars mentor, asked us if we would come do some “Reverse Mentoring” for his daughter Darby and her friend Emily. The two of them are working at the Lijit offices this summer and Todd is trying to immerse them in the startup culture at an early age. I hope that the insights I provided them on how we got to this point with our startup was somewhat helpful (I am completely a rookie at the whole mentoring thing…). But hopefully if they remembered just one thing, I hope they think about finding something they’re really passionate about. As cliche as it might sound, when you embark on a startup, where there’s tons of work, lots of risk and long hours, being passionate about what you do makes the process a whole lot more fun!

Term sheets. Reading Feld’s series makes my head want to explode. At the same time, it makes me feel like a student. Of course, I’m learning throughout Techstars, but the mentor relationships feel more like an apprenticeship more than the regular professor/student relationship. Not that I feel like Brad is my professor… even though he does hold office hours. Nonetheless, the comprehensive documentation on the investment process makes me want to study, understand, and internalize much of what is there. Kudos to Brad and Jason for writing this (and anyone else that worked on this). The Foodzie team thanks you :-).

Read this post listening to “I got rhythm” performed by Ella Fitzgerald. Or not.

A small piece of advice that our mentors have given us on more than one occasion is to develop a rhythm. It can be a huge boon when starting a company. It can help track progress, it helps create an flexible structure that will stick with you longer than you might imagine once it’s established. This advice really resonates with the Foodzie team.

While we haven’t adopted all the agile practices, we do have a scrum every morning at 8:00 am. We each get 5 minutes to talk about what we accomplished the day before, we talk about what we will get done today, and we also talk about anything that’s holding us up. We all get on the same page. Our priorities are shared among all three of us, and we help each other whenever possible.

We also celebrate. Each day we celebrate when someone gets something done, even if it’s little, such as writing a certain number of blog posts.

This keeps our confidence up, our goals in line, and keeps us accountable. I’m not sure how we’re going to scale this out, but I’m sure we can find some people to help us when it’s time. For now, it’s working great.

It’ll be interesting to look back in a year and look at how our rhythm has evolved.

Last night, I talked about some of the most solid advice that I’ve heard here at TechStars about hiring top-notch employees. I also wanted to share some seemingly contrarian advice on how to ensure that you’ve found “the best available athlete” from the folks at Zappos.

When Zappos hires a new employee they put them through the rigors of a 4-week training program that familiarizes each employee with the Zappos culture of service. After about a week of intense training, Zappos gives what they call “The Offer.” The company actually tells each new employee “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.”

Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh (well known for being tremendously innovative), began by offering a “quit-now” bonus of $100 and has continued to raise the ante to ensure that all employees share in his unrelenting dedication to the customer. If the new employee takes the offer he knows that they didn’t have the dedication required of a Zappos employee in the first place.

Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit

As an entrepreneur this advice seems invaluable in filtering out potential bad hires, but I think the notion of the “quit-now” bonus is helpful to just about anybody. If you turn the “quit-now” bonus around on yourself, consider whether you would take an offer to leave your current job. If your answer is “yes”… maybe it’s time to consider what you’d be more passionate doing.

Oh, and by the way… how much would it take for you to leave your job?