This Monday 8/12, we’ll be entering our 3rd year in business and I am super excited. When I look back on what we’ve built, I feel exuberant pride over our accomplishments and joyous excitement for the adventures ahead. All with your support. (I always tell myself: It’s all with their support. It’s all with your support! Can’t ever forget that. Endlessly grateful for your support. Thank you for giving me the freedom to dream wild.)
QUICK PLUG: Come to our 2nd birthday festivities this weekend! Free nitro on Friday, ice cream on Saturday, what more can you ask for?
I wanted to recap our accomplishments to date as a fun way to see the impact of our work, but also because numbers are cool and you like numbers too!
We’ve sold >320,000 bagels since opening. If you stacked them end to end, that’s almost enough to reach the stratosphere (50 km). We’ll probably reach it next month! We’ll never sell enough to reach the moon (we’d need 17,617 months of sales to do that) but I am happy to tackle the layers of the atmosphere. Plenty of headroom to grow!
We’ve sourced over $160,000 worth of ingredients from local producers and suppliers. I sat down to crunch the numbers since we opened and was blown away. 37% of our COGS goes to local farmers, roasters, fermenters, fishmongers, millers and more. With more, new partnerships like Pat’s Pastured and Wright’s Dairy Farm, we expect to drive that number closer to 50%. That’s impact we can all get behind!
We’ve quadrupled the size of our team. At peak, there’s been 25 of us working to make Rebelle happen. And in an industry with a notoriously high turnover rate, I am pleased to have team members who have been with us for over a year, and even a few who have been here since very early days. Eternally grateful to my team!
We’ve met over 30,000 unique customers. This isn’t unique transactions – this number includes all of you who support us multiple times a week, the one-and-dones, and everybody in between! For context, the last US census counted ~28K residents on the East Side of Providence. (And I still meet people who live here and have never heard about us!) I’ve always told people that the service industry really exposes you to the full spectrum of personalities out there, and with that many customers served, who could argue otherwise?
Our most loyal customer has visited 262 times since we opened. That’s about every other day we’re open, on average. Jared, you’re out of control. We love you! (Griffin, you are just a touch behind Jared. Step it up, bud!)
We have so, so much room to grow and I am nothing but excited for what lies ahead for this team. I love having an adventurous audience in you and knowing that we can test wild stuff, and maybe we hit a few speed bumps along the way but you put up with us as we work through the kinks to grow. With your support, we pull off things other business owners wouldn’t dare try for fear of rocking the boat. Cheers to keeping things interesting, friends!
What’s next for us? I have a special side project that I’m not ready to reveal yet but I promise you’re gonna love it and we’ll share details as soon as we’re ready. We’ve also just created a generous 401(k) program for full-time and part-time staff alike (for Rebelle AND the new thing!), and the first 3% are fully funded by the company so our team can build their retirement funds without cramping their current cash flow. I’m not at the shop a whole lot anymore so that the team has room to struggle, blossom and get themselves in and out of trouble all on their own. But you always know where to find me! ;-)