You are reading 3Bits & Change, Joseph's weekly email about building a direct to consumer business and the occasional Web3 issue. Today’s email was written to Apple One and Mr. Zane Lowe. Follow @josephrueter on Instagram or Linkedin. Follow Vivront.com on Instagram and Facebook. If you haven’t already, subscribe!
Good morning,
I did something earlier this week that I’ve not done in years - literally years. I went to a coffee shop with my laptop and wrote. It was early. There were few people around. It was wonderful.
Consider doing something similar if that’s your jam. But, check the hours first. I showed up a half hour before the shop opened at 9AM!
This issue has some school lunch, some ads,
Bit #1 - An afternoon in a lunchroom
I've been learning more about our school nutrition programs as part of the vivront.com 1:1 give back program. I was in a school last week.
Who knows when things will get “back to normal?” I’m going with never and embracing whatever change is current. The lack of normal makes for opportunity.
That was the case last week when I had the chance to volunteer in a school lunchroom. I met 369 kids by way of their eager eyes and mask covered airways standing in a hot lunch line. My job was to make sure they had enough fruit or vegetables (per the .gov guidelines) in their recyclable take away trays and to count each lunch for reimbursement.
Over a few hours I worked alongside two veterans of school nutrition and the district head of nutrition operations. Here are a few memorable points I’m continuing to process:
“Syrup days” are the busiest days. There might be a t-shirt in there.
The staffing shortage at this school is 1-2 people (25-50%) each day. I would not be shocked if it’s like that in most schools nationwide.
The menu and the serving process have both been adjusted to support operating short handed.
The lack of slack in the system for staff and food product heaps pressure on the humans in the kitchen, support staff and the janitors executing specific cleaning protocols after each group of kids roll through, daily.
I could sense prolonged strain.
The current situation is more preferable than the totally silent lunch rooms filled with hard to count, nameless and faceless lunch boxes from the 2020-2021 school year.
Rules are rules. You should come on time. Don’t enter the room a minute early. Keep the gelatin out of the strawberry sauce (use cornstarch instead). There is a way to do things - stick to the process.
Plan for and proactively assist kids with identified food allergies or nutrition constraints.
There are heaps of caring people full of love serving our kids in numerous ways in our schools, not just the lunch rooms. Heaps of them.
Our school staff could use many things to serve kids better, including more hands and support right now.
Consider a simple thanks.
Thank the lunch staff members, janitors and school staff members in your network. Reaching out to share a word of thanks for rolling with changing times and continuing to serve our kids will be meaningful to these teams.
If you don’t have one of these wonderful people in your network, consider simply identifying a school and sending a word of thanks to the lunch room team in a way that makes sense to you.
Here’s to adequately fueled and actively learning minds and bodies, and the teams that serve them.
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Lunch teams, thanks for the service, care and effort you provide our kids day in and day out.
Bit #2 - Ads
They run but they are not performing in a predictable machine like manner on the FB. I want to get to a system where it’s more like a vending machine than a roulette wheel. It’s so much more like gambling than predictable at the moment.
And, yes, I know there have been heaps of changes in the ad networks post iOS blah blah. But still. There is something here to unlock.
It doesn’t take a math wiz to figure that zero purchases from the above 4 days is not sustainable. These prospecting campaigns are still “learning” as it were. We’ll see what they “learn.”
I’m thinking the landing pages must suck or something else is out of sorts. So, we’re adjusting the pages every other day as part of the testing. We have our pixel in there and some remarketing running. But come on. Buy people. :).
We hear tales of these ad tools working to drive business growth. After all the struggle to get live the current results are underwhelming. We see the tools working for peers and other direct to consumer brands. So, we’ll keep jumping the hurdles and working the system. There must be a pony in here somewhere.
The chief mental hurdle now is how we’re paying for so many of these paid social clicks that result in zero time on site. Hello bounce rate. Hello bots? It’s appropriate to expect a few seconds a min, right?
Bit #3 - Sharpening Apprenticeship
We’ve learned a great deal on our own and with the internet and we’ve set up a very adequately functioning sharpening shop. Now it's time to take it up a notch and to be able to increase service volume simultaneously.
In the coming months, we’re going to acquire a commercial sharpening machine as well as apprentice a sharpener with decades of experience. What started as 3 days of initial training has ballooned to a week with more to follow. Let’s do this.
Soon, we’ll also be more equipped to partner with the national opportunities we’ve been negotiating.
Change
We're in a design phase aimed at updating our packaging from the pressboard solution to a fold out shipper. Something like this is likely up next.
How does the package design strike you on first impression?
On Your Way
May your adventures be full of energy and your curiosity never quenched. Go get ‘em.