What did we all do before memes? How did we express ourselves so pointedly? I suppose we’ve always been doing this, and I have a vague recollection from Latin 2 that people were etching sick burns on columns in the Roman forum.
Anyhow, I saw a perfect small business meme the other day:
EBITDA: Earnings before insomnia, therapy, depression and anxiety.
Lollllll.
No shade if you don’t get the joke. EBITDA really stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and it’s basically a calculation of profitability before all the complicated tax and accounting finagling.
If you DO get the joke, it feels spot on.
When my restaurant closed in 20...
I was a cheerleader in middle school. Like many other eighth grade girls, I did it mostly for the outfits, but also because I don’t have much athletic ability, and if I didn’t pick a sport, I had to do P.E. instead of study hall.
Now this was the late 1900’s (as the kids say), and the current brand of seriously athletic cheerleading had not yet made it to
...✨ Welcome to a four part series we’re calling “What makes Pedal so unique and effective in the retail real estate industry.” Otherwise known as “Why we need our own TV show pronto.” ✨
Today we’re discussing point #2:
We know Pedal Retailers’ businesses inside and out.
When I started to draft this newsletter I went to Father Internet because I knew there was some quote about proximity and familiarity. Lo and behold, the first page of search results gave me just what I needed:
“Proximity bred familiarity, and familiarity bred comfort.” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One
Now first of all, I very much do not like Nicholas Sparks
...When things aren’t coming together on a deal, we revisit the “BLTS” with Pedal Retailers to figure out where we can flex. As a reminder, the “BLTS” are the four fundamental pillars of your real estate criteria - budget, location, timing and space criteria. Most of the time, we flex on location and start to look at a different or broader mix of neighborhoods. Sometimes, we flex on the budget or space criteria, but it’s rare that we flex on timing.
When it comes to flexing on timing, Emily, owner of District DabbleLab, could teach a master class.
First, here’s the background on District DabbleLab…
Bethesda native Emily started District DabbleLab in 2019 out of her basement as...
If you're interested in the top ten most critically acclaimed films of all time, then surely you’ve seen Troop Beverly Hills. Okay, so maybe it’s only in my top ten, but it’s a masterpiece, and I’m standing by that claim.
This 1989 cinematic gem provides content for multiple newsletters (yes, Abby and I can relate everything to retail real estate), but we’ll start with a simple one today.
ICYMI: Troop Beverly Hills is about a very fabulous and kind shopaholic, Phyllis Neffler, who becomes the leader of her preteen daughter’s troop of “Wilderness Girls,” which is basically knock-off Girl Scouts. They are all underestimated. They earn patches. They persevere. They learn to believe in t...
📞“Alexis, guess what?! We got the space! It’s yours!”
That phone call was one of the highlights of my time at Pedal. It’s not often that we’re in suspense over whether we’ll “win” a deal definitively, but that’s how it went for Fedwell, Alexis Starkey’s neighborhood farm-to-table comfort food concept.
The experience was all the more amazing because of how close it came to not happening at all. Alexis’ road to finding her dream space was long, winding, and quite literally tragic at times. Nothing ever felt certain.
And yet, here I was, letting Alexis know that she’d 🥇 beaten out two established restaurant concepts for a rare second-generation space right in her own neighborhood, ...
Midway through my last year in college, I bought a six-pack of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I remember how it happened. I was at Sam’s Club with my roommates, and I must have been hungry, because I was seduced by the free sample. So salty. So warm. Of course I’ll buy the entire pack.
Then that same six-pack sat on my shelf of the shared pantry staring at me until I graduated. Every time I looked back at it, I was ashamed of how I’d been seduced by a product that is barely distinguishable from pet food. Occasionally, more motivated by guilt than desire, I’d pick up a can, read the sodium content, then promptly put it down, my face puffing from the number alone.
I freaking love beef stew. The...
Some of the most successful Pedal Retailers are called to open their businesses because they can’t find what they’re looking for anywhere else. District Champagne, Pirouette Cafe and Wine Shop, Merry Pin, and Jurisdiction Clothing all spring to mind. They knew there was demand for their business because they felt it themselves, and when they couldn’t take it anymore, they took action to create what was missing.
Jill Adams’ Pink Moon is one of these businesses that simply had to be born. As a Bethesda mother of three young children, Jill was painfully aware of her (and her friends’) struggle to find time and space to prioritize mental and physical health with a community of other mother...
