What rolls along the ground, smells like a locker room, and has no WiFi?

Can you guess it?? 

It’s the Amtrak train, where I’m currently 2.5 hours into a 7.5 hour journey from Philly to Norfolk. Four cars—mine included—have broken air conditioning and it’s 95 degrees outside.
      

Why don’t I just move to a car with AC? Because I paid for business class tickets, since I’m traveling with my daughter, and unassigned seating gives me anxiety. Plus the seats have footrests which are crucial when you’re five feet tall or under. Oh, and there's a free drink.

So anyway, I’m sitting here in this swamp thinking about how few things are worse than having your HVAC b...

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...

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...

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...

Last week we started our usual Monday morning meeting by asking our summer interns for their thoughts on our trip to Dallas for The Boutique Summit now that we’d all had time to let the Diet Coke leave our systems. 

Intern Ollie remarked that the most notable moment from our trip was during the closing party when Abby and I tag-teamed a conversation with an important contact. We hadn’t expected this encounter and we hadn’t prepared at all; so when we executed a perfectly timed, super sharp elevator pitch it looked (and felt) like we were telepathically communicating.

It was fun to hear that the moment made such an impression, because when it was happening, it really did feel like Abb...

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 weekend I went to Charlottesville for a 30th birthday party. This party, for which I gladly drove two and half hours each way, wasn’t for a dear friend or family member — it was for a business. Not just any business…one of my most favorite retail businesses, Scarpa, a truly one-of-a-kind women’s boutique.

I worked at Scarpa during my last years in college and for a couple years after. I’ve told you many times before that I grew up in a retailing family, so if I was born with the kindling, it was my time at Scarpa that struck the match that lit my bonfire of love for retail.

Scarpa came into being in 1994 when a burgeoning architect in her early twenties, Amy Gardner, recognize...

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...