It’s only a day away

The date we originally planned to open, believe it or not, was July 15th. Then it was August 1st. Then it was August 17th. After that, we refused to estimate an opening date.

This time, though, it’s not an estimate. We’ve fulfilled all of our legal requirements, and we’re opening tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4pm. We’re not completely ready, of course: a produce display table in the front room is still in the carpenter’s shop, one of our major dry-goods supplier won’t deliver until next Tuesday, and we’re still searching for suppliers for some of the things we really want to carry. But after a few runs to the Chicago International Produce Market in the morning (I’m getting up at 5am), the store will be in good shape and ready to welcome the public.

Some inspiration for our business model (and our name) comes from the open source software community. One tactic often used by open source software developers concerning when to release software is to “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” In other words, don’t hold back the release date because the software isn’t perfect yet; there will be a chance to publish revisions and the customer feedback in the meantime will be more valuable than if your product were still behind closed doors.

We wouldn’t open the store if it wasn’t ready to offer a variety of delicious produce and a keen selection of dried goods, but the store is going to constantly evolve to meet our (changing) customer demands anyway; why delay opening in order to reach some mythical “perfectly ready” state? Expect an empty shelf or two on opening day, and feel free to suggest to us what you would like to see there.

Reminder: we will be open 4pm-8pm Wednesday (those are our normal Wednesday hours), and 11am-11pm every other day of the week. Come stop by and peruse our offerings.