Not Every Coin Is Mine to Collect. Respectfully.

I don’t want everybody’s money.

There. I said it.

Not every coin is mine to collect. Respectfully.

Now, if your coin happens to belong over here, by all means—welcome. 😂

But somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that everybody who encounters something I create needs to become a customer.

Some people aren’t my people.

Some things I make won’t be their thing.

And maybe I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

THAT’S QUITE ALRIGHT. MMKAY!!

Because trying to appeal to everybody eventually means editing yourself down until there’s not much interesting left.

And I’m not doing that.

I’m a curator, and I’m sensitive about what I sift.

If you know, you know. 😂

I know.

Probably not the first sentence they teach you in Business 101.

Get more customers. Reach more people. Appeal to a wider audience. Grow, grow, grow.

Cool.

I still don’t want everybody to shop here.

Hear me out.

The longer I’ve been an entrepreneur, the more I’ve realized that every dollar isn’t necessarily your dollar. Every person who discovers what you’re building isn’t automatically your customer.

And trying to make everybody your customer?

That sounds exhausting.

Worse, I think it’s a pretty quick way to water down the very thing that made people interested in you in the first place.

I don’t want to do that.

I want my people.

The curious ones.

The “Wait…what’s THAT?” people.

The people who see an ingredient they’ve never heard of and lean in instead of immediately backing away.

The ones who want to know where something came from, how it’s traditionally used, what it tastes like—and then start wondering what else they could do with it.

The people who appreciate something familiar sitting right beside something they’ve never tasted in their lives.

Those are my people.

You don’t have to be a chef.

You don’t need a passport full of stamps.

You definitely don’t have to know what every ingredient is before you get here.

Hell, that would ruin half the fun.

Just bring some curiosity.

We’ll figure out the rest.

And you are absolutely allowed to hate something I love.

Seriously.

There will probably be something I put in this shop eventually that makes you look at me and say:

“RI…girl. No.”

😂

That’s fine.

Taste is personal.

Food is personal.

Culture is personal.

And I think that’s part of what makes all of this so damn interesting.

I’d rather give you something that makes you have an opinion than fill a shop with things so predictable that nobody feels anything about them.

Because “everybody likes it” and “nobody really cares either way” can get dangerously close to one another.

That’s not what I’m trying to build.

Everything doesn’t make the cut.

And since I’ve already declared myself a curator…

I should probably explain what I mean.

I’m not interested in filling shelves just to have full shelves.

If I source it, blend it, make it, recommend it, or put my name somewhere near it, I need to believe it belongs there.

Sometimes that means tasting ten things to find one.

Sometimes it means having a great idea that just doesn’t work once it leaves my head.

Sometimes it means finding something perfectly good and deciding:

Yeah…not for here.

Everything doesn’t make the cut.

That’s the point of curation.

You’re trusting me to sift through some of the noise and bring back the things I think are actually worth putting on the table.

I take that seriously.

Myself?

Slightly less so.

Clearly. 😂

The same goes for customers.

I don’t want to convince somebody to like something they simply don’t.

I don’t want to chase people around the internet screaming:

PLEASE LIKE MY SPICES.

😂

No.

There are people out there who already understand what I’m trying to create.

People who want to taste.

Explore.

Ask questions.

Cook something different.

Learn where something came from.

Make something familiar taste completely new.

Buy something solely because the description made them think, Well damn, now I need to know.

I want to find those people.

And I want those people to find me.

That feels much more interesting than trying to be everything to everybody.

Some people simply aren’t going to get it.

Some people aren’t going to get the humor.

Some won’t understand why I chose that ingredient.

Some will think something is too spicy.

Too different.

Too expensive.

Too whatever.

Somebody is inevitably going to look at something I was ridiculously excited about and go:

Meh.

And somewhere, someone else is going to taste that exact same thing and say:

“WHERE HAS THIS BEEN?”

That’s who it was waiting for.

I don’t need the biggest audience.

I don’t need the biggest table.

I want a good table.

Interesting food.

Good conversation.

A little curiosity.

People who bring something to it.

People willing to taste what somebody else brought.

And enough room to occasionally slide a plate back across the table and say:

Nope. Not for me.

No offense taken.

So, no.

I don’t want everybody to shop here.

I want the people who walk in, look around and think:

Ohhhh. I’m gonna like it here.

And hopefully, we find each other.

And if we don’t?

Well…

Not every coin is mine to collect.

Respectfully.

— RI