LOS ANGELES—On Friday, August 7, San Francisco-based company Good Eggs will cease operations in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and New Orleans.
Good Eggs, an organic food delivery startup, was founded in 2011 by Rob Spiro and Alon Salant. Its model combines grocery delivery, like popular online delivery service Fresh Direct, with a sustainable farm-to-table ethos. According to their website, Good Eggs works with “over 300 local farmers and foodmakers” to provide the goods they deliver to their customers. In their words: “You order, they grow, we deliver.”
In 2013, Good Eggs expanded into Brooklyn, and later opened for business in New Orleans and then Los Angeles. With the food culture geared towards sustainable growing and eating and a focus on local produce, Good Eggs saw initial success in their ventures. In its four years of operations, the company has managed to raise approximately $30 million in funds from partners Sequoia and Index Ventures. Those funds allowed Good Eggs to expand rapidly. Back in June, Good Eats announced that they planned to launch a location in Manhattan.
In January 2014, Good Eggs tried to manage the costs of their expansion by cutting back on 15 percent of their workforce nationwide.
In addition to cutting services to Brooklyn, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Good Eggs is laying off 140 employees, reducing their staff by 50 percent.
“The single biggest mistake we made was growing too quickly, to multiple cities, before fully figuring out the challenge of building an entirely new food supply chain,” CEO and co-founder Rob Spiro wrote on the company blog. “We were motivated by enthusiasm for our mission and eagerness to bring Good Eggs to more people. But the best of intentions were not enough to overcome the complexity.”
To “continue figuring out all the complexity that is required to achieve [the company’s] mission,” Good Eggs will narrow its focus to its operations in San Francisco, where their “dedicated team … remains 100+ strong.” Spiro hopes to “continue innovating” and “make Good Eggs even more convenient, more inspirational, and tastier.”
Spiro says that the company will do as much as it can to help laid off employees.
“As CEO I take full responsibility for any and all of our mistakes along the way,” Spiro wrote, “as well as their consequences.”
Spiro says, “[Good Eggs will] work harder than ever to support the … community in the Bay Area and help our phenomenal customers and producers share their love of food and cooking with each other.”
