Good Eggs to close in Brooklyn, elsewhere

In the end it wasn’t a problem with the eggs. They just bit off more than they could chew.
San Francisco-based organic food delivery startup Good Eggs announced Wednesday that it would close down its operations in Brooklyn, New Orleans and Los Angeles effective immediately, and will downsize its San Francisco operation. Company CEO Rob Spiro said the problems were ones of growth: too much, too fast, without enough time to correct mistakes.
He wrote in a blog post yesterday:

What we didn’t fully understand when we started was that we were creating a new category that required a different approach to supply chains, logistics, and commerce – all of the pieces of getting food from local producers to the kitchens of our customers. It was, and is, complicated, way more complicated than we ever anticipated. We have learned so many lessons, many of them learned “the hard way” by making mistakes and seeing the consequences. The single biggest mistake we made was growing too quickly, to multiple cities, before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain. We were motivated by enthusiasm for our mission and eagerness to bring Good Eggs to more people. But the best of intentions were not enough to overcome the complexity.

Our own headlines on Good Eggs tell a story as well:

• November 2013: Good Eggs: local food delivery service now borough-wide, photos of Bed-Stuy HQ
• March 2014: Good Eggs: organic food delivery service launches responsive redesign
• April 2014: Good Eggs now delivers local food in Brooklyn for free
• January 2015: Food delivery startup Good Eggs announces layoffs

Spiro says he has not given up on the company, though, and still believes it can succeed.
“Good Eggs will move forward,” he wrote. “I know we have learned a tremendous amount through this process that will make us a stronger company going forward — these are painful lessons, but extremely valuable ones. We are going to use these lessons and our resources here in San Francisco to build on our strength in our home market, the Bay Area.”