For Starters is the essential weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners. Inspiration and ideas, every Friday – for free. It’s curated by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle and Courier magazines.
Hey, starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ I built a hotel on an island
Advice ➠ Cult famous pizza wisdom
Ideas ➠ No-tipping cafes: good or bad?
Resources ➠ A free job board for chefs
Town Hall ➠ Subscriber shoutouts
➠ Get inspired
Wabi-Sabi Spheres | Credit
1. Designer ice. Luxury ice is a thing, and Leslie Kirchhoff dominates the market. Check out this great profile of Leslie, founder of Disco Cubes, which includes gems like a reference to the ‘ice nerd’ community. 🧊
“There are a couple of things that make Disco Cubes unique. First, they freeze crystal clear. Kirchhoff’s start-to-finish process is a trade secret, an ‘NDA-type thing’ known to only a handful of trusted collaborators. Camper English, author of The Ice Book and one of Kirchhoff’s contemporaries, says Kirchhoff’s methods are the subject of intense speculation in the ‘ice nerd’ community. ‘Leslie’s done something next-level that has everyone guessing,’ he says. ‘She’s developed a technique that everyone is dying to copy.’”
2. A sense of place. On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami Ōshima, between Kyushu and Okinawa, an architect has returned home after years of living in Tokyo, to restore the island’s old-school, often empty wooden homes. The result? An incredible hotel the size of a village. “This is what sense of place looks like when it’s not created up in a boardroom on the 29th floor,” Ru Kotryna writes about the business in her newsletter, A Topography of Taste. Indeed. Read more. 🏝
3. Have fuller days. Elsewhere in Japan, American writer / book-maker / walker / renaissance man Craig Mod has this to say about “full days” — i.e. “one of the wells from which we derive our humanity.” 🧠
“Here’s a secret: The most successful (and certainly most prolific) creative people are pros at protecting and amplifying the number of full days in their lives. Owning your days is a superpower.”
4. Online to IRL. Chyelle Milgrom, who built a following of 200K on IG selling secondhand furniture under the name @fbmarketslut, just opened her own vintage store and cafe in Brooklyn called Chyelle. Oh, and she still has a 9-5 as a UI/UX designer. Starters just make things happen. 🚀
5. NYC vs Texas. As a born and bred New Yorker (albeit now in London), good bagels are my birthright. So it was somewhat painful to read that the ‘best bagel in the world’ (according to the ‘experts’ at the recent New York BagelFest 2025) went to Starship Bagel, a small business in... Dallas. In all seriousness, a big and begrudging congrats to founder Oren Salomon. Going behind enemy lines like that ain’t easy, and winning is even harder. Bravo. 🥯
6. The new lemonade stand. And earlier this year, siblings Matt and Julie d’Albert set up a teeny, tiny matcha stand called sips in the front garden of their house in Leeds. I love the boldness of it: a colourful stall in a sea of traditional residences: red brick house, red brick house, adorable green matcha cart, red brick house, red brick house. The place has been such a success with locals and students that they’ve just built a full-blown ‘matcha hut’ in the same space. 🍵
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