Molly Patrick has been with Nature’s Express since January 2008. She has a passion for healthy food and for bringing it to the masses. Her personal and professional lives are so similar that she doesn’t realize when she’s working half of the time. You can find her in her spare time cooking or writing for her blog.

I went to an event in San Francisco last week called Failcon. It was just as it sounds, people coming together who have learned from their failures to share their experiences with the attendees.  The focus was on tech companies, but hey, a fail is a fail; unless of course you dissect it and learn from it  -  then it’s a “smart fail.”

We have had our share of failures at Nature’s Express, that much I can tell you. We have also done a few things right, but that stuff isn’t as interesting as the times when we have utterly screwed up.  Let me share a few examples.

We thought it would be a really good idea to offer Boca Burgers as our main burger to cater to people who have a taste for meat but want to try something better for their health. The Boca seemed the closest match to a meat burger out there.

We got slammed for this move, and however well-intentioned that move was on our part, looking back now, I completely agree. We have an unbelievably talented cook, Joel Daniel, who is capable of vegan food magic, so offering a pre-made burger made no sense!

Another time we thought that not putting the descriptions of our menu items on our menu board was the way to go. I can’t even remember the logic behind this one, but it turns out that 95% of the population isn’t familiar with half of our food. Of course we need to put descriptions. Curse of Knowledge anyone?

There was the “Build-your-own-burger” fiasco. We thought that it was a great idea to give people more choices! Yes, people love choices, right? We would have people choose their bun, choose their style, choose their patty, choose, choose, choose! It would be great!

Wrong. We were terribly wrong. It turns out that people only think they want choices; in reality people like to be told what is good and will order that. Makes sense. When I go out to a restaurant, the first thing I scan on their menu is the “house specialty”.  Given that it’s vegan, I’ll order that. I trust the house to know what their best is.

Then there was our tag line, Healthier Fast Food. Oh boy, where do I start with this one? I’ll break it down:

Healthier:

The owner of Nature’s Express, Carl Myers, is a retired oncologist (cancer doctor). He is in the same school of thought as Drs. Esselstyn, Barnard, Fuhrman, and Ornish, and he sits on the Advisory Board of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM.)

I would be lying if I said that Myers isn’t motivated every day by the health crisis resulting from the Standard American Diet (appropriately referred to as SAD.) By starting with the very basic need to eat, Nature’s Express is his answer to the crisis at hand.  After all, food got us into this mess. So healthy was bound to come up in our mission, marketing, messaging, etc.

What we have found is that people are big on talking about being healthier; they have good intentions and will likely buy into something that is even just perceived as being healthy as long “healthy” isn’t part of the messaging. People don’t want to be bombarded with something that they already know they should be doing.

The other issue is that “healthier” coming from a vegan restaurant gives people a flash image of a dry cracker with some seeds and sprouts on top. Not appetizing when you are hungry and want some real food!  We take pride in how many omnivore fans we have – labeling ourselves as healthier was doing a disservice to our food.

Fast Food:

When people hear fast food, they think two minutes or less.  McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and all the rest have set this as a standard. However, there is no possible way to hold to that two minute standard when cooking and prepping fresh food every day.  It has proven not to be technically possible with the quality and freshness of our food.

Can we get our food out in 10-15 minutes? Absolutely! If you order a wrap, it might only take five minutes.  However, we set people’s expectations up way too high when we touted fast food in our tag line and could not get orders out in two minutes or less.

These are all areas in which we have failed. However, they have been smart fails because we were able to stare our mistakes in the face, dissect them, adjust accordingly, and move forward.

We have a passionate team, an excellent leader, and the drive to make a difference in this world. It is only a matter of time before vegan fast-ish food goes mainstream and becomes just another option for people who are hungry.

We would like to be the ones who fill that void.