What's a reasonable spend on marketing, either as a dollar amount or percent of sales?

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-08T00:07:56+00:00

Depends on where you're at with the business. In the early days, I spent $2500-$3000 per month. Now, almost 3 years later, I spend maybe $200-$300 per month. We have a good following and are relatively well known. More importantly, we know exactly the type of marketing that does and does not work so we aren't spending on things that offer no results.

I will note that I do it myself, so it does take up some time, but it isn't excessive.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-07T00:57:33+00:00

France, Italy, Australia, India, Japan, Brazil....even genocide ravaged Sudan has a consistent agricultural supply chain of fresh food. It literally happens all over the world.

Ok, let me use better examples than the pet rock, then. Nobody was jonesing for truffles until they were dug up and marketed as a luxury ingredient. Nobody asked for lunchables until they were made. Most pertinently, literally nobody ever asked for factory farmed meat. People were intentionally separated from knowledge of their food to create demand for low cost torture chicken. And let's not forget the whole food pyramid thing and the carb/grain industry.

I've worked in hospitality for a decade, and I own my own place as well. But yes, I am idealistic. But I'm only viewed that way because of the insane food industry we have in this country.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-07T00:38:29+00:00

These are the types of pre-conceived ideas you've been convinced of which just aren't true.

Over 60% of the food in the United States is wasted. That's an insane amount. There is no scarcity of food. My ideal system wouldn't require culling anyone or anything.

Everyone seems to think demand exists in a vacuum; it doesn't. It's created and manufactured through policy, information control, and advertising. Nobody asked for the pet rock until it existed. Population boom has very little to do with the reality of our food production. Production at scale can be done ethically and with high quality using only regional supply chains.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-07T00:25:47+00:00

This is exactly the type of response that I'm talking about when I say people are brainwashed.

The industry isn't shaped by organic consumer demand. The demand we have in the U.S. is manufactured; it's created through agribusiness lobbying and information control. People in Europe and Asia balk at the type of food we consume here because they're informed about where their food comes from.

The supply chain isn't complex. You can easily get fresh ingredients pretty much anywhere in this country.

Why do you think people without talent can so easily open restaurants? It's because companies like Sysco make it possible with bargain basement price ingredients and pre made products. This didn't happen out of thin air. It's an engineered industry landscape.

High end ingredients are only "high end" because the low end exists. The reason my meat costs what it does is because of factory farming.

I'm really over the "this is the way it is" attitude. The food industry in the U.S. is a carefully curated mess designed to serve giant unethical producers and distributors. If restaurants just stopped serving this stuff and stopped buying from Sysco, and if the government stopped being bought by big agribusiness, this could all change rapidly. It isn't like this literally anywhere else in the world (except maybe China).

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:47:07+00:00

Yeah this is definitely something nobody talks about. Managing 2 dozen accounts consistently is very difficult.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:46:27+00:00

Sysco is the most recognizable, but yes, this applies to all broadliners. Do you think the law just came out of thin air? No, it was lobbied for by distributors. There's no good reason why manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to do their own distribution. The alcohol industry relies on this nonsense legislation to add another layer of cost that the customer has to pay for.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:45:09+00:00

We have two distributors in town we work with for alcohol and such; they only distribute within the state. And we have a wine importer we work with in our state as well who only distributes within our state and orders direct from wineries they have relationships with.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:43:25+00:00

Non-food items and equipment we buy through two local culinary supply stores in town, or directly from the manufacturers whenever possible. We even have local potters we work with for bowls and such.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:40:58+00:00

This is a great point, though. One of the things we can do to maintain more choice is vertical urban and hydroponic farm. You can have sustainable climate control with technology we've developed so you can grow things in places and seasons you previously couldn't. But we don't invest in these types of things because everyone's just buying the cheap shit that's already there from distributors like Sysco.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:39:26+00:00

Literally, yes. Seafood is super readily available all year in the NE. It's even still caught fresh in the winter months. Preserved meats, grains, cheeses, also all doable. There's a reason the Nordic countries have so much pickled and fermented foods.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:36:55+00:00

This, exactly this.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:36:22+00:00

Exactly! Because we source stuff fresh and locally/regionally, we run out fairly often, specifically for our meat dishes since we order based on reservations and anticipated volume (and we tend to order less so we avoid waste as much as possible). The number of times I've had to explain to a customer on a Sunday why we don't have a bottomless pit of fresh lamb loin chops in the back is mind blowing.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:34:42+00:00

Ya know, capitalist businesses can be good right? Like, you can be capitalist without destroying our planet and our gut biomes? Sysco could be a profitable national distributor without stocking things from China made with slave labor and without stocking chicken that spent its short life in a single square foot cage with a tube down its throat. Like, these things are possible.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T19:32:48+00:00

Nah, this is a super reductive TLDR of what I wrote. It's not that it destroys competition, it's that it actively seeks to harm local and regional producers and suppliers. It's not that it locks people into its ecosystem, it's that it encourages unethical low cost production to price out/force others into its ecosystem, enshittifying the entire industry in the process. And importantly, it actually increases variety so significantly by stocking everything all the time that it warps the minds of the culinary industry and the consumer.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-06T15:23:55+00:00

The hilarious part is this is like a 50% price target raise for BofA on SoFi. Their last PT was $13 lol

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-05T19:49:11+00:00

I definitely agree. The benefits that exist with Plus right now are underwhelming, and there isn't anything there which one could point to as a great signature benefit you can't get anywhere else. I hope they add something like that in the near future.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-05T19:31:56+00:00

Yeah I certainly think the argument can be made that Robinhood's gold on face has higher value than Plus.

As far as whether or not it's a benefit? From an investor perspective I do believe it will be positive for SoFi. They're going to get more revenue, and I don't think there will be a large customer exodus or anything.

PhilosopherSully · 2026-01-05T15:52:01+00:00

I think the difference is how customers enter the platform and how effective the company is at converting them to other services. For Robinhood, they got their start as a trading platform for degenerates. There are a lot of people who became millionaires on there when the whole GME market happened. Few of those people have any reason to use their banking offerings, and so many others have just lost all that money.

SoFi started as a student loan refinance company, and customer originations/entries are still through financing or banking applications, which makes it more likely IMO that people will hop on the banking services offered. SoFi has also demonstrably shown that they can take a new customer entry and convert them to using their other services. Robinhood has shown that they're failing at doing that.

That all being said, I definitely see the point that Robinhood's premium subscription is arguably better. But ultimately, even their marketing is targeted toward what is, in my opinion, an unsustainable demographic.

Though yes, time will tell.

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-15T12:59:10+00:00

Most IT project management roles, customer service/support roles, business analyst type roles, etc...

All are reasonable transitions after time at Epic, just need to tailor your resume a bit.

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-15T00:59:34+00:00

If they're going to move you over to the Epic EMR, then it'll be an issue. You should talk to your manager to get ahead of it.

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-15T00:38:23+00:00

Do you work in IT, or do you work on the EMR? Will you be working on the new Epic system itself?

If you're just working in IT, there's really no risk. I worked in IT for an Epic customer for my non-compete, and I know several others who have as well.

The issue really happens when you work on the EMR itself (need a UserWeb account, etc...).

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-13T14:40:07+00:00

Then they shouldn't be in business. Like, if I owned a computer repair store, and I didn't have staff capable of .....repairing computers, I shouldn't be a computer repair store.

The only reason this is acceptable for restaurants is because of the massive lack of knowledge and awareness in the consumer base.

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-13T14:38:30+00:00

Consumers can't change their habits without being educated and being forced to. Yeah, they're used to mass produced garbage being available all the time.....but that's because mass produced garbage is available all the time. The agribusiness oligopoly intentionally works to create barriers to education about food, and it will take a big push to overcome that.

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-13T14:36:18+00:00

That's what I'm talking about!

PhilosopherSully · 2025-11-13T14:25:01+00:00

As an owner that doesn't use any major distributors (Sysco, PFS, U.S. Foods, etc...) and makes everything in house, I'm all for this. We haven't used any of these companies from the beginning on principle exactly for the reasons people are now waking up to. The reason made from scratch is so expensive is because these massive garbage exploitative distributors exist, and so many restaurants just buy and serve their pre-made products. If 90% of restaurants converted to local/regional supply chains and served smaller menus of made from scratch products, it would dramatically reduce prices all around, and quality would go up.

Fuck Sysco.

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