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...

This week I’ve been listening to a four-part series about the Medici on one of my favorite podcasts, The Rest is History. Anyone with a mild interest in art history is surely familiar with the Medici family from Renaissance Florence who commissioned some of the most significant artworks in western history like Donatello’s David (the scrawny one, not Michelangelo’s ripped version) and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. 

Not surprisingly, as the Medici banking business passed from grandpa Cosimo to son Piero and then to his son Lorenzo, the business acumen and attention to detail started to wane as the gout and baller-lifestyles grew. So when a feisty party-pooper friar named Girolamo Savona...

Have you ever enthusiastically told friends about some awesome new local business only to find out it’s a chain? All of a sudden, you get the ick finding out that your authentically great experience was crafted in a conference room. 

Generally speaking, when we call something “corporate,” like “ugh, the hotel looked so corporate,” or “Chad’s haircut is so corporate,” what we really mean is uninteresting or basic and soulless. Definitely not cool. Actual corporate retailers know this – that’s why they’re constantly trying to mimic the heart and personality of indie retailers. Historical photos of your city on the walls of Chicken Salad Chick? Giant photos of local fitness professiona...

Last week I met a boutique owner, and when I told her I worked with retail real estate her face fell. She told me about her terrible landlord who is kicking her business out with basically no notice, and she’s stressed and time-crunched to find a new space.

Abby and I have conversations like this one all the time – it’s part of why we started Pedal in the first place. But when we hear that someone had “basically no notice” that their lease was ending, our antennae go up…because that’s not supposed to happen in a lease. 

When I looked at this boutique owner’s lease, as I had suspected, it wasn’t a lease at all.

It was actually the lease’s second cousin, the license agreement. Oh, ...

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...

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...