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Just a little side hustle... till it's not
This is For Starters Issue #5
Daniel Giacopelli
February 21, 2025
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Welcome to Issue #5 👋
Want to see a quintessential starter? Check out Gloria Allorbi. I first met Gloria a few years ago when she was a cosmetic chemist by day, but bootstrapping her own food brand on the side. It was centered on shito – an umami-ish chili oil and Ghana’s national condiment. Her vision was huge and the product was delicious, so it’s no surprise Gloria's Shito is now stocked at retailers like Erewhon and TJ Maxx. Keep reading for Gloria’s advice for you.
We also catch up with Ravneet Gill, who’s building a new restaurant along with a newsletter to bring people on the journey, and Palermo / NYC-based Naomi Accardi, who’s building three businesses at once. Love it.
In housekeeping notes: This community keeps growing. We’ve got the founders of some of the buzziest businesses on the planet, students shopping for ideas, mid-career creatives looking for an edge, investors hunting for the next big (small?) thing, and everyone in-between. Thank you for subscribing. And as ever, lemme know what you think: [email protected]
–Danny
In this week’s issue…
INSPO ↣ Restaurant ride-alongs
TIPS ↣ Start small & slow
IDEAS ↣ Straps: next big thing?
TOOLS ↣ Resources & reads
TOWN HALL ↣ FS shoutouts
Ravneet Gill – author, pastry chef, TV presenter – is opening (and bootstrapping!) a restaurant this year with her husband Mattie Taiano. It’s called Gina. She’s also launching a Substack for people to follow her progress: “No sugarcoating, just the real, raw reality.” Subscribers get a bunch of goodies, including: “Our black book of contacts, a running order of steps you will need to take if you’re thinking of opening a brick and mortar space, business plan, financial models & real costs.”
I caught up with Ravneet for the inside scoop… 👀
Why open a restaurant?
“One is that we want our life to change. We’ve had a baby and we want to live and work locally. Matt’s been a private chef the last couple of years and runs around London all week. I run around London all week. And we just want to live a life where we can walk to the forest in the morning, and then go to work. Not run around like headless chickens. We know it’s not going to be an immediate moneymaker or make us millionaires (the dream!) but we’ve opened restaurants for so many other people, and now we want to do it for ourselves. If we fail, we fail. But hopefully we won’t!”
“We’re also obsessed with Chingford. I moved here 3 or 4 years ago. When I was younger it was the popping place to be and the high street was thriving. Since I’ve moved here a lot of the businesses have shut. But it’s beautiful. I say hello to so many people on the high street in the morning. Everyone waves. The forest is beautiful and so underrated. Yet there’s nothing really bringing the community together, for the newer generation. We wanted to do something that serves the local community. When this site came up, we knew we had to go for it. It was now or never.”
Time to prove them wrong
What are you most excited about?
“Creating a place we’d love to go and eat in, one that’s fun and interesting and delicious. The restaurant was owned by a husband and wife before us, and I think before them too, so we’re happy to step in and be the new family. We want our son to grow up in a restaurant. We think it’ll be really fun (we say that now…). I also want to get my hands dirty again. I’ve really missed baking, cooking and making fresh bread.”
…and nervous?
“The bills, budgeting and projections are the scariest part. I’m looking at the spreadsheet every day, and every day a cost goes up. I’ve underestimated costs before, which is why I’m writing the newsletter; I don’t want people to waste money. You can get bamboozled. Someone tells you, ‘You need X, Y and Z’ and then you get flustered and pay for things you don’t need to pay, or services you don’t need or could have done yourself. But we’re also not taking investment, so we won’t owe anybody money. And we’re being practical and safe when it comes to the numbers; keeping an eye on what we spend so we don’t go too over the top and making sure the menu is priced in a way that’s fair.”
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Meanwhile in Chicago, the South Shore Country Club, founded in 1916, once followed a horrific rule: “No Blacks, no Jews”. Today, gloriously, it's a Black-owned restaurant called NAFSI, the Swahili word for soul. On the menu: “a luxurious spin on classic soul food dishes such as shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, surf and turf, beignets, chicken and waffles.”
In build-a-business-in-paradise news… A 10-acre Scottish island in the middle of nowhere (’one of the least explored areas of the west coast’) is on the market for only £125,000 and I’m doing everything in my power not to draw up plans for a little hotel. (I’m writing this on a train from Glasgow to London; Scotland’s on the mind).
BUT… if crippling isolation isn’t your thing, the slightly less remote Spanish mountain town of Ponga, surrounded by river valleys, is currently offering €2,971 for anyone willing to move there. Sounds like the plot of a Netflix movie where Zac Efron falls in love with the beautiful local restaurant owner. Someone wanna go halfsies on building an artist retreat there? 🎨
Speaking of plots, Shaun Tookey has got a side hustle cleaning graves. The 31 year-old, who runs the TikTok @thegravecleaner, tackles up to four graves a day and charges between $187 for a deep clean to $562 for the full package (repainting letters, etc). He's earned enough to buy a house. 🪦
Look at this cool hand-shaped surfboard business, research lab and ‘curatorial platform’, run by Texas-based surfer and artist Gregory Ruppe. It started as a pandemic project. Also relevant because two weeks from today, The Texas Surf Museum officially opens in Galveston. 🏄♀️
I’m a big sake fan, so I was psyched to read about a new brand popping up from starters Adam Levene, Matt Brunault and Hector Butler. Matt and Hector previously created sake spritz brand Shima, while Adam is an entrepreneur and investor in brands like Surreal, DIRTEA and All Things Butter. Their new brand DREAMSAKE is made in Hyōgo Japan. Popped open a bottle last week and it’s the real deal.
When LA was hit by the wildfires, everyone downloaded an app called Watch Duty. It was created by a software engineer and entrepreneur named John Mills, who gets a new Wired profile here.
And bit further north in Santa Barbara, Byron and Robyn Beck run Campo Vans, which kits out vans for adventures. They also teach other people how to convert vans via a course on their site. 🚚
Speaking of vans, in Manchester, photographer and barista Kai Giraulo operates SWIG, in which he brews delicious coffee out of a kitted-out van… that is, until this week, because he’s just opened a brick and mortar. Congrats!
Congrats, Kai! (Credit: IG: @swigcoffeee)
You received this because you’re subscribed to For Starters, a weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, a New York-born, London-based journalist (ex Monocle/Courier), photographer and starter. Thanks so much for being here.
Gloria Allorbi runs Gloria’s Shito – shito being an umami chili oil, or as Gloria says, the ketchup of Ghana. “I started Gloria’s Shito in my home kitchen out of frustration at the lack of access to my mother’s Ghanaian home cooking,” the US-based starter tells us. “I kept asking myself: Why can’t I go to the grocery store and buy the taste of home? When I couldn’t find an answer, I decided to create that accessibility myself.”
The cool thing: Gloria bootstrapped the brand alongside her day job as a cosmetic chemist, before officially launching it in 2021 and, recently, going full time. Today, you can buy Gloria’s Shito at retailers like Erewhon and TJ Maxx, alongside lots of specialty stores across the US. “Starting a business isn’t about having it all figured out. It won’t always be glamorous. Be willing to go scrappy and elevate as your cash flow grows. I’ve built mine without financial backing or a large sum of money, and you can do it too. The most important thing is to take that first step. You’ve got this!”
Read on for four things Gloria’s learned along the way…
Gloria Allorbi
1. It’s okay to start small and slow. Focus on your first customers; they won’t just support you, they’ll also serve as market testers. Their feedback will help you refine your product. It took me two years to finalize the original recipe for Gloria’s Shito Chili Oil!
2. Separate your business and personal finances. Have a dedicated business bank account from day one to track your expenses and cash flow. Novo is a great option for small businesses. Only spend what you can afford, tempting as it is. Don’t splurge on extras before nailing the essentials.
3. Be resourceful with branding. You don’t need to spend big on marketing early on. Use Canva to create professional looking assets, and know that it’s okay for your branding to evolve over time. When your budget allows, you can invest in a branding agency. Until then, tap into your network for services like graphic design, web development, or photography. Friends and acquaintances often offer fair pricing. If you don’t know anyone, platforms like Fiverr can help you find affordable creatives.
4. Collaborate whenever you can! You never know where your next opportunity will come from. Some of my biggest breaks have come from saying yes to the right opportunity.
Turmeric. Scientists in Spain have just discovered that turmeric might help reduce muscle damage and inflammation after exercise. Will this boost sales of the spice? The muscle-recovery product market is already growing and expected to reach $16.9B by 2034. Why not start a turmeric company called… Golden Gains? Name’s on me. 💪🏼
Straps. While walking around East London the other day, I stumbled upon a new outlet of the Hong Kong-based rock climbing-inspired accessories brand Topologie. Apparently they’re gearing up to open 18 shops this year. A lot of their success is due to the popularity of its collection of clever interchangeable straps. Between bag straps, phone straps (à la String Ting), and camera straps (love these leather ones from UK-based small biz Strapateer, and braided ones from Austria-based COOPH), I reckon the strap market is a good place to be right now.
Biodynamic businesses. Meet the farmers who are taking the principles, ideas and philosophies of biodynamic farming and applying them to their actual businesses.
Plastic alternatives. The US government might stop buying paper straws, but there are other, more sustainable materials you can make straws out of besides plastic. Dezeen’s got a roundup of ten of them.
There’s no such thing as perpetual growth. Yet that’s what traditional business people crave. But what is growth meant to achieve? If Oxford University is so successful, then why isn’t there a branch in Washington D.C.? If a symphony is successful with 120 musicians, why not even more so with 600? ‘To grow bigger’ is not much of an effective business strategy at all.
Resources 🛠️
↣ Creative Boom has just launched The Studio: ‘A private, distraction-free sanctuary for creatives to connect, collaborate, and grow.’
↣ I had the pleasure of grabbing a coffee with Kyle Frost the other day. Kyle is one of the smartest voices in the outdoor space and writes a weekly newsletter for Mountain Gazette called Here & There. If you’re building something in that space, it’s a must-read ⛰️
According to the American Immigration Council, immigrants of all statuses make up 22 percent of the food service industry, and ICE agents are sweeping up everyone in their raids on businesses, even U.S. citizens.
Reads 📚️
↣ “Outlandish community building at New York's only Black-owned outdoor store” / Field Mag
↣ “A tiny press took a big risk on experimental books. It paid off.” / NYT
↣ “This OG tinned fish company has some thoughts on your fancy fish branding” / Fast Company
↣ “Born elsewhere, made in Japan” / The Craftsman
↣ “Big food gets jacked: How protein mania took over the American grocery store” / Grub Street
↣ “Portland studio launches the ‘Netflix of Maine,’ a streaming platform for and about the state” / Press Herald
For fun 🙃
↣ Death by Toys: ‘Handmade junk to die for. Designed, built, and packaged by one deadbeat in Chicago.’
Shoutouts, opportunities and wins from For Starters subscribers
↣ I’ve always been impressed by the taste and editorial sensibility of Naomi Accardi, who’s currently growing THREE businesses. “Call me crazy,” Naomi tells me. In her own words, they are:
1. The first one, let’s call it the mothership, is NONSENSE PROJECTS, a hybrid creative studio and editorial platform that I like to define as an idea incubator. It took us almost 2 years to bring the full website to life (keeping the lights on was more important initially) but we finally launched it last month and I couldn’t be prouder. Nonsense Projects is together with my husband and our associate Art Director Federico Paviani.
2. The second is systemarosa, a project at the intersection of football and fashion with the aim to build a new, female-led narrative around what football can look like. It’s a joint venture with my friend Sam Herzog.
3. The third, really an integral part of Nonsense Projects, is RISERVE, the world’s first public global directory for football-inspired creative talent.
The fact that I married a software engineer with a background in photography helps a lot! He brought all of those websites alive. Working with your spouse is not always the easiest but it’s fun!
Naomi Accardi
↣ And congrats to FS subscriber Kim Darragon, a marketing consultant for small businesses (who also happens to be my wife), for getting invited to speak about the power of personal brand at an Adobe conference in Glasgow this week. Hit up or follow Kim for any of your small biz marketing needs ✨
📩 Share your news & updates: [email protected]
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