Holy Avocado — Thistle Turns 6!
Ash and Shiri here — we’re so excited to share with you that Thistle is now 6 years old! We wanted to reflect on 4 lessons that we learned throughout our amazing journey since 2013.
Lesson 1: Finding happiness comes from working on things that are meaningful.
We started Thistle motivated by the fact that two of our most intractable challenges — health and sustainability — pointed to a common solution: eating more plants. We realized the urgent need to make plant-forward foods equally accessible, delicious, and affordable as greasy fast foods. We created Thistle to solve this challenge.
Despite the long days and nights and the ups and downs of running a startup together (while raising a daughter!), it’s been so deeply satisfying that it’s made it all worth it. And we know that no matter the outcome, we love working on something we believe in.
Lesson 2: Imperfection is part of the journey.
Getting comfortable with imperfection was something we learned early on. If we insisted on perfection we’d never have launched our products, gotten feedback, iterated and improved as fast as we’ve been able to over the years.
We have made strides in delivering convenient and delicious plant-forward foods, but we realize our products are still out of reach for many. We strive to continuously drive down prices and make our products more accessible — ultimately to make a difference in the health of our customers and the sustainability of our food systems.
Lesson 3: You’re not an avocado: you can’t make everyone happy!
Especially in the world of food and nutrition, it’s impossible to please everyone. The best thing we can do is to go back to our founding principles of accessibility, craveability, and sustainability.
Above all, we believe in the power of plants — including vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, healthy plant oils, and plenty of herbs & spices. We want to provide an easy way to live a healthy, sustainable lifestyle that doesn’t necessarily require you to count every single calorie or macro.
Lesson 4: We’d never be here without you!
We’ve had many scary moments where we didn’t think the business would survive, from losing our largest customer in 2014, to shifting our business model in 2015 (a month after having a baby!), to running out of production space in 2016, 2017, and again in 2018. Despite all of that and more, we’ve gotten through it all with the support of our amazing team and especially our loyal customers.
We continue to be humbled by your support, and cannot believe how far we’ve come on this journey together. Thank you for 6 amazing years — and here’s to 6 more!
With love,
Ash + Shiri
