What's Next for A Bite of Good

Hello Friends and Happy New Year! As we say goodbye to one year and head into another, I have some important A Bite of Good updates to share with all of you. 

Part of the A Bite of Good origin story is and has always been public. I started A Bite of Good in the late Spring of 2020 as just a website - a blog, really - something for me to do to stay busy and help me focus on good things in my life during a VERY scary time. (Remember the Spring of 2020???) Then, when I was officially laid off from my restaurant job in July 2020 and in search of something I could do from home, I started making spice blends in my home kitchen and selling them at my local farmers market. I pretty quickly expanded my product lineup to more spice blends and other types of gourmet goods (hot drink mixes, soup mixes, baking mixes, and cocktail kits) and grew out of my Cottage Food Operation into a commercial kitchen facility. I found an amazing local community of (mostly women) makers and started doing regular pop ups and events, expanding my brand identity (and confidence) enough to pursue getting my products placed in retail establishments all over the United States. A Bite of Good was growing, and I was along for the ride.

But there is another part of the story that fewer people know. When Covid hit in early 2020, my husband and I were several months into fertility treatments, having already tried for nearly two years to conceive. We were forced to put the treatments on hold in March of 2020 due to Covid, but we picked back up in early 2021 when we upshifted our efforts and started IVF. Two years and two miscarriages later, we shifted our family-building efforts again in 2023 toward adoption. And another year after that, in the Spring of 2024, having spent a year working with a national adoption agency to no avail, we decided instead to focus on what we did have - each other - rather than what we didn’t have - children. Our family looks different than what we had once envisioned, but it is complete, and our lives are full of friends and chosen family and, most importantly, love. 

But what, you ask, does any of that have to do with A Bite of Good? Well, having started this business when I did, in the middle of our all-out efforts to build a family, I always envisioned it as something I could step away from when we had kids. I never planned too far in advance or thought too big because my focus was elsewhere. Our decision to remain childfree changed all of that for me, however, and I spent the second half of 2024 examining my business and contemplating what I actually want from it. 

One option would be to really throw myself into it - to expand my operations, hire staff, make more product, get onto the shelves of big name retailers, or maybe even open my own storefront where I could not only manufacture my products but also do things like events and cooking classes. I can see this path pretty clearly, and a younger version of me probably wouldn’t think twice about pursuing it if only because it would be a challenge. And I have never backed down from a challenge. 

But as someone who has already reinvented herself professionally more than once, I know that I don’t have to stay on my current path just because I happen to be heading in a particular direction, and there are a couple of big factors pushing me (and A Bite of Good) in a different direction. 

First, having a product-based business in the current economic and political reality is… difficult, to say the least. I have not raised prices on my products in nearly three years despite increased costs (especially recently). Indeed, the cost of my glass jars alone increased by nearly 30% starting in November 2024. (I will leave it unwritten here what else happened in November that may have had an influence on such things.) My two core customer bases are currently home cooks and small retailers, and the last thing I want to do is raise my prices on people and businesses already struggling with high cost of goods. But in order to maintain my current prices I would, at the very least, have to change my packaging to plastic or something similar - a change which would be directly contradictory to my brand identity and ideals. So... no.

Second, if the past few years has taught me one thing it is that I want to spend more time,

not less, with my loved ones. Growing A Bite of Good into a bigger product-based business would require more time focused on my business, especially during the holiday season. 

Third, and perhaps most importantly, while I do enjoy the process of developing and making my products, what I really love about it is how it allows me to connect with people and inspire them to make their own lives more delicious, and that is what I want to focus on going forward. 

So, starting immediately, I will be winding down the product-based side of A Bite of Good. I will only be making products insofar as I already have the ingredients and jars they require on hand, and once I run out of ingredients and/or packaging materials, those products will no longer be restocked. Depending on how sales go, I anticipate it taking a few months to wind down fully, but that, of course, will depend on all of you.

I know some will read this announcement and find it somehow sad or an indication that I have failed, but I assure you that is not how I feel. On the contrary, choosing to wind down the product-based side of my business is already allowing me to think about future projects and possibilities that I simply would not have time for otherwise, and I’m feeling inspired in a way I haven’t in a while. Indeed, just because I won’t be making A Bite of Good products anymore doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to enjoy them ever again! That’s because the first thing I will be working on once I wind down my product manufacturing is my first real cookbook! That’s right! I’ve spent years and years developing my lineup of small batch spice blends, and I’m going to collect all those recipes into a cookbook and make them available to all of you! It’s going to take some time to bring it all together, but it’s a project I’m really excited about, and I hope you are too!

In the meantime, my Shop is back open, and, as I mentioned earlier, I will be restocking those products for which I have the ingredients on hand. As always, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the support and love you have shown me over the years. It has been an absolute joy to share my love of food with you, and I hope that I can continue to inspire you to find your own bite of good in every day.

Cheers,

Laurel