There is nothing wrong with having high hopes for your small business. Fulfilling a dream usually is what brings us to starting a business, and we get to decide how far and wide that dream will go.
Dreaming big isn’t for every small business, but it’s something that many small businesses aim to grow.
With your head in the clouds…
Take Clover Food Lab, as profiled in this article. On the surface, it’s like a vegetarian alternative to McDonald’s with its menu. Deeper, Clover goes much more into interacting with its customers. Asking their customers for their thoughts on the food and adjusting to what the customer wants, owner Ayr Muir wants to keep his customers while attracting more in the process. He hopes to grow his chain to a nationwide level. “When people go to Clover, they don’t expect the same burger and fries, they expect good food,” wrote Rebecca Greenfield.
Hoping to expand beyond the foodie/food truck world, Muir sees a chance for expansion. By collecting data and feedback from his customers, he hopes to see improvement in his overall product. “There’s this assumption that quality goes down as a restaurant expands or gets bigger,” Muir said. “The more data you have, the better job you can do. As we grow larger, our food quality ought to get much better, not worse.”
A common appeal to food trucks is that you find food that tastes fresher and better than homogenized, mass-appeal fast food. McDonald’s has often been criticized for their big money approach of making unhealthy food taste good and making it cheap. Clover wishes to draw more people by not sacrificing the quality.
That’s a noble wish, but there are sacrifices that often happen with dreaming big.
…And your feet on the ground
It’s important to not expand too fast, too soon. Betting too high on demand could crush your company when you see the actual demand. There is a degree of risk with dreaming big, but it’s important to dream with your feet on the ground.
For Clover, it’s one step at a time with a hope to grow as far as possible. An exciting part of owning your own business is the risk in trying things. How will you know until you try? And if it’s a mistake, do you have a fallback plan?
The key is to dream. And don’t forget to keep dreaming with your business as it expands.
