When Netflix dropped Nonnas, a "feel-good" Vince Vaughn flick about the restaurant business, we just knew we needed to write about it.

Here’s the synopsis: After losing his beloved mother, a man risks everything to honor her by opening an Italian restaurant with actual nonnas — grandmothers — as the chefs.

Cute premise and who doesn't love Italian food, but what made our blood pressure rise to dangerous Florida PTA book banning levels was the Hollywood treatment of opening a restaurant. Yes, it’s “based on a true story,” but just like Vince Vaughn’s forehead, the story is pumped full of neurotoxins to make opening a restaurant look smooth and carefree.

This is what infuriate...

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...

I’m endlessly amused by the list of symptoms at the end of prescription drug commercials. Watching gracefully aging actors skipping blithely through a meadow with a 🦋 butterfly net, or 🎨 oil painting in a sun-streaked garage studio juxtaposed with the voiceover listing (as quickly as physics and the law allow) the list of dire and bizarre side effects always makes me chuckle. I’m not alone - Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader memorably spoofed these commercials on SNL in 2014… which was four lifetimes ago, yet the joke still works.

I’ve wondered why these commercials exist at all when, most of the time, the side effects get more airtime than the benefits of the drug. You’d think that ⚠️ warning...

📞“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, ...

If at any point you’ve been in a romantic relationship that lasted, let’s say, a year or more, you are surely familiar with the idea that the head-spinning early days of infatuation don’t last forever. In fact, legit scientific studies have shown that this period of “omg he’s so cuuuute chewing with his mouth open” lasts about six months.

Thanks to very real things like brains and human evolution, none of us can outsmart the chemical reactions that happen inside of us when we’re staring down the promise of new, exciting, this-is-definitely-the-thing-I’ve-been-missing love.

😑 But we all know how this story goes. After that first period of flooding dopamine, the drugs wear off, life beg...

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...

Happy 2025, everyone. We hope you got some rest and relaxation over the holidays, since this year is sure to be…well…interesting.

While Abby hosted a houseful of family, I traveled across the pond to London which was, as advertised, unbelievable at Christmastime. We were very fortunate to have had perfect weather and only one mediocre meal, so all in all it was a smashing success. 

On the day of our return flight home, I thought about how the actual travel part of taking a big trip is largely forgotten. In these days of mobile boarding passes, we rarely have the IAD to LHR ticket stubs to keep as mementos. So unless the “getting there” was particularly memorable (like the time my p...