Reflecting on the possibility of a new chapter, and new city, at Nugget.

Are meetings good? Are meetings bad? Are we aligned?

Law, order, and yard signs in Orange County, North Carolina.

Over the course of two weeks in the final quarter of 2020, Nugget made its two biggest press appearances in company history: full-on, in-depth profiles in BuzzFeed News and the L.A. Times. I sat back and waited for my life to change overnight. Surely, a call from Ellen would be next. And yet, no call ever came. Sales didn’t spike, or even surge.

Where was the tidal wave of site traffic? Was major press not all it’s cracked up to be? If only there was a parallel lesson from earlier in my life that could guide me…

This week, I did it. I did that insufferable thing that insufferable, progressive business folk do, on those rare occasions when their personal beliefs, the temperature of the moment, and having access to an Instagram audience of 400,000 followers fall into perfect alignment. I wrote and posted a Culturally Progressive Corporate Statement.

There are millions of businesses out there. Many of them are worth learning from and using as reference points. But to a discerning, particular entrepreneur, there may only be a handful that serve as true inspirations and examples for our own work. We’re lucky, then, to have two such examples right here in the state of North Carolina, in East Fork Pottery and New Belgium, both of which were featured today by Mailchimp as part of their year-end annual report (the thing that jogged me to mention them here).

When the first Nugget emerged back in 2014, it was the only one of its kind. There was one company you could buy it from: Nugget. A few years later, in 2018, that was still the case. But a lot has changed in two years — dig into the world of kids furniture today, and a veritable surfeit of fake “Nuggets” (a.k.a. Fuggets) are ready to ensconce you in their soft, foamy embrace.