Better done than perfect.

We’ve officially been open for a week. And in that time, we’ve made over 1,000 smoothies.

I’m not sure I knew what to expect from our first week. I had visions - some hopeful, some chaotic, but nothing quite prepares you for the reality of watching strangers walk into something that lived in your head for so long. Then, even more surreal: seeing some of those strangers come back every single day until they’re no longer strangers at all, but familiar faces.

And somewhere between training the team, refining the flow behind the bar, tweaking the recipes last minute, and answering every possible question about functional ingredients, we hit 1,000 smoothies.

And here’s the thing: it hasn’t been perfect.

We’ve already had equipment breaking down, stock headaches, and issues I hadn’t anticipated. I’ve sprinted multiple times to Tesco because we were running low on banana or ice cubes. We’ve solved ten problems for every one we expected.

But that’s exactly why I’m glad we launched when we did.

If I’d waited for perfect, we wouldn’t have learned any of this. We’d still be adjusting things in the background, trying to guess what people might want instead of asking them directly. We wouldn’t have built this momentum and gather the same data points and feedback.

The behind the scene is very messy and last minute (which is very unusual for me) but every day, it gets a little smoother and so does the customer experience. This version of Elevate is far from the final one, and that’s the point. My goal right now isn’t perfection. It’s progress. It’s showing up every day, learning fast, and improving the product and experience with every single order.

So if you’re holding back on something, waiting for the right moment, the perfect version, the final piece to fall into place I’ll say this:

You don’t learn from planning. You learn from doing.
You don’t build a great product in secret. You build it by getting feedback.

Better done than perfect.

PS: if you visited the store and have 2 minutes to give us feedback here, that would be greatly appreciated.