Every once in a while, a phrase makes it into our global lexicon. These phrases are usually tied to an event or time that we all collectively associate. We can often remember exactly where we were and what we were doing. I remember learning a new phrase shortly soon September 11th, 2001, where all the newspapers and TV shouted “Shock and Awe” on repeat. I’d never heard that before, but suddenly, it was everywhere!
Shortly before that, we added the “Dot-com Bubble” to reference the fall-out from very speculative tech companies after reality settled in that they may not be as important as they thought. Then we added “Great Recession” and learned all sorts of fun new financial words like derivatives, credit default swaps, and subprime. Without wasting time, we quickly added “Occupy Wall Street” and “Top 1%”. Then we moved on very quickly to “Black Lives Matter” and “Cancel Culture”. Finally, we’ve rounded out the last four years with a plethora of phrases regarding “Social Distancing” and “Flattening the Curve”.
One interesting thing reading these phrases is that you can often recognize feelings, images, thoughts, or memories surrounding those very phrases, without me providing any further context whatsoever. With just a few words, we can all remember a singular season of life and where we were or who we spoke to. I remember exactly where I was for the first videos of 9/11, as well as when Washington went into lockdown.
My favorite phrase is “Too Big To Fail” because it is accurate enough to cover all sorts of time periods and events. It’s a timeless truth that can apply to the railroads in the 1800s, the oil companies in the 1900s, the car companies after that, then the telephone companies in the 80s, then finally the banks in 2008. Even now, we could still apply it to the tech companies of 2020s, or CrowdStrike in July 2024. We could even apply it to the United States itself across many individual decades. We could also apply it to the Romans, the Dutch, the British, and many other empires in between. The underlying sentiment is that something becomes so critical, so dependent, that even if it fails, it lives on. Very few other aspects of life get to operate in this spectrum. When my peach tree gets too big, too heavy, too far out from its trunk, and I don’t trim and thin it, the roots give out and it naturally snaps and falls over. As it should, since it can’t support its own weight. Last week, a couple of famous arches in the Utah desert collapsed, and we, so far, have not spent a billion dollars to prop them back up to maintain an unsustainable structure.
Eventually, some companies become a little too big, a little too important, and a little too dependent. The tides slowly turn from producing lots of value for the local economy, to gradually sucking in all the value in a larger and larger radius. When a company starts taking more value than it produces, people are left wondering where it all went, and is it still worth it to maintain it? The cure for this lose-lose situation is to notice these patterns early, get off the train early, and decide that these companies are Too Big To Follow.
In late 2023, Seattle’s local organic chocolatier, Theo’s, was merged into the massive American Licorice Company. To “ensure the future of the company”, they closed their original Seattle manufacturing plant, laid off 60 of the people that got them there, and moved the operations out east. Meanwhile, our friendly rep who worked with us turned into an automated inbox, our chocolate shipped from the East coast instead of Seattle, and the bars arrived further and further after their production date. They published an eye-opening press release of how they became too big and had to cut ties to their roots. That’s how trees fail too.
We will always operate “upside-down” and when something gets Too Big to Follow, we’ll go the other direction and look local, look small. Next week, we will begin offering Miodo Chocolate, from our own backyard of Camano Island. Our friend, Kevin Miodonski, has been making single-origin, small-batch, dark chocolate for over 20 years. Our new fresh bread starting this week from Water Tank Bakery follows a similar pattern, from a small local baker using all Northwest ingredients to get bread to your door right after its baked. Stayed tuned for more hyper-local producers of honey, pasta, meat, pizza dough, salad dressing, hummus, even dishware and nutrition classes! We’re gearing up for a full harvest season!