Hard Choices Are Tough But Not Making Them Is Worse

Token CEO

Lemonada Media

Business, Management

4.2 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of WORK, Erika breaks down the massive shift happening at Food52 and Schoolhouse. She talks hard choices, layoffs, and the reality of running a business when the numbers don’t add up. She gets into what went wrong, what had to change, and what’s next.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada.
0:05.7	Good morning. It's Monday, and this is the work podcast. I'm Erica. We're going to do today a little bit differently. I'm recording this on Friday afternoon. We are in the middle of a mega reboot of the company. And I thought it would be best to handle it directly and head on and to talk about how we got here and why we're here and then what happens next.
0:31.4	And then to talk a little bit about a reduction in force and what that means for people and just how that process goes down and what
0:40.6	that feels like inside of a company and then most importantly what it feels like for the people
0:47.6	involved. I've been laid off. It is a gutting, decimating experience. And so my biggest ask is even if you don't listen to this, if you are looking for great
0:58.7	talent, there are great talent on the market today from Food 52 and Schoolhouse.
1:04.8	And there are incredibly special people who gave a lot and who have so much more to give.
1:10.6	And giving those people a chance
1:12.4	would be incredible. So that's my biggest ask from today's episode. So I've been at Food 52
1:18.0	almost a year. I joined last April and I think one of the biggest mistakes I've made in the last
1:26.8	year was thinking that I could outrun a bunch of legacy problems. And I think one of the biggest mistakes I've made in the last year was thinking that I could outrun a bunch of legacy problems.
1:31.4	And I think that was naive.
1:33.5	I think it was a little bit arrogant.
1:35.7	And I also think it was optimistic.
1:37.5	And what I really was endeavoring to do was to bring back the Food 52 brand, to bring back the curation of a beautiful
1:47.6	shop, to grow a media business, to bring life back into the building, to reignite a culture,
1:55.3	to reestablish dance, to find new avenues for sales, to get schoolhouse invested in and up and running with energy
2:04.5	to simplify the business, to streamline the number of skews and the way we took those skews
2:11.3	to market, to stop a really gunked up factory that was drowning in colorways and one-offs and to move from
2:21.1	made to order to made to stock, which we endeavored to do so many things in the past year.
2:27.8	And I think the biggest mistake was thinking we could pull that all off with mega overhead costs and megatech problems
2:38.7	and with no visibility into the data. And that was optimistic and a little bit foolish. And I don't
	...

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