- For Starters
- Posts
- How to get cult famous
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. 🍵
—
➠ Starter wisdom
There’s a tiny spot called Vincenzo’s, just outside London, that makes some of the most hyped pizza in all of the UK. 🍕
Owner Tom Vincent started making pizza during lockdown. After research pilgrimages to New York and Naples, and building a literal Neapolitan dome in his backyard where he dished out outrageously tasty pizza to friends, Tom opened his first brick and mortar in 2022.
Praise followed for the pizza served at that location in Bushey, Hertfordshire — for the quality, the clever brand collabs, and Tom’s infectious energy.
Which brings us to now. In five days Vincenzo’s is expanding. Tom’s opening a second site, this time in east London, just around the corner from Brick Lane. The status of the place at the time of writing is somewhere between a building site and a pizzeria.
→ I called Tom to see how he’s holding up…
Tom Vincent, starter.
💬 Tom! You’re a busy guy right now. Tell us how’s it all going.
It’s quite stressful. Every time I look at my phone, there’s a hundred messages and emails, all day every day, and every time I walk into the shop there’s a million things I’ve gotta check and stuff going wrong…
💬 You’ve still got plenty of time. When’s opening day?
The 26th.
💬 Ah right. So how’d you make the decision to expand? Did you look at a spreadsheet and say now’s the time? Was it a gut feeling?
I meant to expand from day one. The first shop was never big enough, so I’ve been looking ever since. There’s just been a lot of near misses. It was a bit like spinning a wheel and it just happened to stop at the right place… or hopefully the right place.
💬 It’s a great location.
When I was younger we used to go out in East London a lot, back when it was rock and roll gigs and stuff like that. I hadn’t been out here for a long time. I was originally considering places like Stoke Newington or Newington Green. But then this location came up and we thought maybe a slice concept could work here.
💬 You’re gonna get tons of foot traffic. I’ve been in London 15 years now and I’ve seen the pizza game evolve light years. What’s your take on pizza here in London?
It’s one of the best in the world. It’s thriving. There’s so much quality pizza places now, and the good ones are all small, independent, mainly one man bands. Places like Crisp, Doctor Dough, Dough Hands. They’re all one person, really, the face of it at least, and they’ve built a team around them.
The story so far.
💬 It all starts with one person’s passion.
And that’s why they’re better. They’re not just a concept made by someone with money. I hope people would rather spend with people like us. We’re giving them a better product. We’re giving them our heart and soul, you know?
💬 Is that the secret to how Vincenzo’s built a sort of cult famous reputation?
I think so. I’ve got a good product, a good brand, and then me, the personality behind it. I’m not afraid to put myself out there, collaborate with other brands and have fun, you know what I mean?
💬 Collaborations aren’t something every small biz does or has time to do, but obviously it’s been super important for you in how you built the biz.
It’s good for exposure. We just sort of started getting together with other brands and doing things.
💬 What’s the toughest thing about building a brick and mortar biz right now?
Managing time and everyone’s expectations. The pressure on you is enormous. Answering the same questions 25 times a day, every morning when you open up: What’s happening? What’s going on? How long? I’m like… How long? Well, it’s gonna be two weeks plus the amount of time I’ve just spent responding to you!
💬 Love it.
Sorry, that’s a grumpy answer. I’m so lucky that my people care. And I’m the sort of person that responds to every single message and DM I get. But yeah, the challenges are managing time, keeping your head straight, managing doubts. Am I doing the right thing? Have I made the right decision?
Don’t mess up.
💬 Lots of people say that this is an exceedingly difficult time to be in the restaurant business. You agree?
Oh definitely. Fortunately at the moment we’ve been lucky and busy. But London’s a very different place to where I am in Bushey. I’ve got loyal customers there and I’ve got people traveling there. But London’s very fickle. People move on quickly!
💬 So it’s a bit of an experiment for you.
I’ve gotta keep hold of that cult thing we’ve got!
💬 For all the starters reading this, is pizza a good business to get into?
It’s an easy business to get into. But you need talent. You need a good product. You need confidence. You need to research and practice and get good at it. If you’ve got all that, give it a go! It’s also accessible. Find a pub with a kitchen, buy an oven and a mixer, and do a pop-up. Share the pub’s customers and bring new people to it. Start small on a budget with a view to maybe finding a brick and mortar later on... or not. Look at Dough Hands – she’s doing phenomenal. There are ways of doing it without having a brick and mortar. Pizza works like that. Not every food you can say that.
💬 Nice one. Thanks for your time, Tom! See you in the queue next week…
Thanks mate, see you then. ☼
—
➠ Good idea!
1. No tipping cafes → New Vancouver cafe cowdog has a no tip policy, and pays its staff a living wage (starting at $26.50/hour) along with benefits (private healthcare, etc). Cowdog’s owner explains how much $$ they made in their first 6 months of operation: $752,000 CAD and 74,607 drinks!
2. Algae → Beauty’s next hero ingredient?
3. “Personal Business” → A type of business defined by Charles Broskoski, co-founder and CEO of Are.na, inspired by the film You’ve Got Mail:
“A Personal Business is run by people who are truly into what they are doing, and invested enough to offer products, services, and/or experiences that are both high-quality and idiosyncratic. The type of business that both sustains and is sustained by a community. Think of the bodega down the street that will accept your packages for you, or restaurants that have been in operation for as long as you can remember, or a store that you stop in just to chat. These particular attributes aren’t strategic (though they are strengths). Rather, they arise from the people who run it, who are cool and love what they do. Maybe most importantly, a Personal Business is properly scaled. It doesn’t have to be small, but it should grow at a pace that optimizes for its own resilience rather than to dominate a market.”
—
➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
Actually Good, a free-to-use job board and chef consultancy behind some of the best brands in London.
📚️ Reads
From an eccentric gallery in Marfa to a co-op for Black and brown creatives in Chicago, these tastemakers are in the business of finding the brightest new talent out there. Dwell
Designer urns, ash diamonds, boutique mourning: Mourning in China goes lifestyle. Jing Daily
What’s in a Name? A Lot, Actually. Here’s How to Pick the Right One For Your Company. First Round Review
How Piecework Puzzle’s Cofounders Built a Multimillion-Dollar Business While Keeping Their Day Jobs. Shopify
Like Goop, but for Dogs. NYT
🧠 Findings
97% → The proportion of people who can’t tell an AI-generated song from a human-generated one, according to a new survey of 9,000 respondents in 8 countries. Yikes.
39.2% — The proportion of women-owned businesses in the US, according to a new report by Wells Fargo. Additionally: “Between 2019 and 2024, women-owned businesses saw their number of firms increase by 17.1%, their employment increase by 19.5%, and their revenue increase by an impressive 53.8%.”
🙃 Fun
Busy simulator (trust me, just click…)
—
➠ Town Hall
Podcast alert! 🎙️
Not mine (…yet)
You might remember For Starters’ big interview with George Milton, cofounder of Yellowbird, back in September.
After the interview, George graciously invited me onto HIS podcast, and we spent a packed, fun hour talking about For Starters, the purpose of a biz (I don’t think it’s maximizing shareholder value), and the meaning of the good life.
Have a listen! (We really get into the good stuff ~18.00 or so)
—