Sataysfied

Right now, we are not pivoting. We have a business model we believe in that was working (albeit some things have to change). I have no plans to be a catering agency or compete with those guys. I just want to cater to startups with the food we have to offer, that we know our customers love. Going direct in the long term makes the most sense for us but we would not rule out working with agencies at all. As a matter of fact, I appreciate everything they can do to help. Any and all mistakes relating to what happened is that of my own.

Yeah, maybe I will try it the next time around. Thanks so much for your advice. I am willing to try anything at this point, or rather just do my best moving forward.

Honestly, I don't fault the agency. Although I did not mention their name, if anything was wrong, it was probably my fault. I relayed as much and as honestly of the story from my point of view as I can. At this point, I'm putting everything on the table. It may not seem like it but this is an insanely difficult thing for me to even write or admit publicly with my name out there. I don't want to place blame on anyone. At the end of the day, the mistakes were mine and any big or small mistakes along the way (serious or not) does not change the situation. I can only learn and hope to move forward.

Thank you. I am slowly trying to calm down. Definitely don't want to over react. It is incredibly insanely hard for me to open up like this as it leaves me super vulnerable and pretty much puts everything on the table. I wouldn't be doing this if I honestly didn't feel like things were extremely bad and I realize its never good to not be calm about a situation, or any situation. Just hearing some support here has helped more than I can say.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your words at this time.

Just say when and where. I will email tonight. Thank you so much.

I totally agree Larry. I am definitely taking the intiative. My plan of attack right now, unsure if this is the right idea, is to take a large sample to upcoming meetups for people to try my food, hit up companies via email, twitter, etc... past clients that are willing to go direct, and lastly hitting up nearby startups for sure. I am totally committed to doing whatever I can right now. My whole business is at stake. Going to spend all night tonight to strategize and make a list of companies to reach out actually. Appreciate the comments. This is incredibly hard for me to admit public. I will hustle.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I thought it was only a food truck thing.

The honest truth is I didn't know about it. We are a food startup and although we talk to a lot of startups, I guess it never came up. I only know of news sources like Techcrunch.

Sorry, on iPhone so can't type everything out easily. Please see my reply to another commentator on background story on losing the catering agency.

As for the food truck route, unfortunately that is a very high cost (truck and all) and a huge deviation from our business model. I do have plans for a kickstarter like campaign.

I genuinely appreciate your advice.

We don't. We have catered to all sorts of companies including big corps like Apple. Startups has just been easier for us to reach as its hard to make sales with big companies but we are open to any all clients.

Thank you so much for all your suggestions, I am definitely going to hit the streets hard and will look into doing some of the things you suggested. I appreciate it greatly.

Thanks man, you don't know how much this means to me right now.

The mistake I made that made me lose the catering agency was a startup had ordered food with instructions that basically said something like "please leave fish sauce out, someone is allergic". I took that as only one person was and brought a side of fish sauce for the other employees. I did specifically mention that I understood that someone was allergic when I delivered the food but that the side of fish sauce was for anyone else that might have wanted it. The customer told the agency and I was canned. To be fair, in hindsight that was a stupid mistake that could have been pretty bad. The agency has been great and I don't fault them at all. In the past I've had other minor mistakes like being a little late on delivery.

I talked to the CEO of the catering company but he didn't want to over step and I understood. At this point I don't believe it is something salvageable.