From the beginning, focus has been a superpower of Nugget’s — maybe to a fault.

We’ve made one product, focusing on how to make it better and better, and how to produce enough of them to meet demand, before moving on to the next thing. We’ve operated profitably, year after year, refraining from the seductive, made-for-press logic that top-line revenue is all that matters today, and we can figure out margins tomorrow. And we’ve hired slowly and deliberately, preferring to hire a single candidate who we’ve had the chance to really get to know over two or three who we don’t know so well but we think “might” work out.

Within that cultural context, you might expect a new, major development at Nugget to be trumpeted from the rooftops — after all, they don’t happen that often. It’s not like every other week we’re making investments in wave pool companies or primary schools just to see what sticks. When we do something big, it’s generally rare enough that it’s worth talking about. And yet last week we did something pretty damn big, and hardly said a word about it: we listed open job roles in Atlanta — opening the door, possibly, to a satellite, multi-person Nugget presence in the city of Coke, Chick-Fil-A, Donald Glover and Dominique Wilkins.

There is justification for the lack of fanfare, chief among them that this whole thing could end up not happening. Listing roles is not the same thing as having hired those roles, and we’re under no illusion that putting up job listings in Atlanta is some silver bullet to startup success (if it was, Gary Vee would’ve told everyone to do it already).

I’m not writing this because of any certainty that Nugget Atlanta will take off or happen, but because of, whether it happens or not, what the moment represents.

It of course represents the growth of Nugget, the fact that we are, by way of this decision, prepared to potentially embark upon a new chapter of the business. When a company is just eight years old, there are only so many moments to look at and define as “new chapters.” A few big ones come to mind: the move from our little corner of a gigantic space in Zebulon, NC, rented from a much larger company, to our own building in Durham, in 2015; the expansion to our first true industrial space (read: w/ bathrooms and A/C) in Hillsborough, NC, in 2018; the opening of our current factory in Butner, NC, in 2020. If a critical mass of Nugget staff starts operating out of Atlanta in 2022, it would certainly join that list.

It also represents to me just how much, in a couple of years, the world has changed. Two years ago, as we were opening the Nugget HQ factory in Butner, we dreamed of a single, state-of-the-art, physical Nugget location where everyone would work — from manufacturing to customer experience to creative direction. Like a throwback to businesses from an earlier era, we’d hang our hats on being “all under one roof.” Those words are of course incredibly silly to read, and write, today. We’ve since opened a downtown Durham office to adapt to modern expectations around commuting times and remote work, already a concession that “under one roof” will likely never be the reality of Nugget. An Atlanta presence would be just one step further in that direction.

Lastly, it represents the difficulty (and necessity) in business of confronting and grappling with long-held convictions, of conducting the very inexact science of deducing how we got to where we are today — was it because we did things like hiring only in our area in NC? Or did that have nothing to do with it, and our growth came in spite of that? It’s impossible to know.

We’ve long been believers — again, probably to a fault — that the bouncing ball of “growth” that reporters, investors, and even casual observers like to chase is a trap more often than a reward. Signs of growth can come in many forms, including top-line revenue numbers, headcount numbers, revenue-to-headcount numbers, and yes, even geographic expansions of the workforce, like the exact thing we’re considering right now.

None of these things, in and of themselves, indicate a healthy company. And in fact, an obsession with any one or more of them often signals the exact opposite.

It’s because of that mindset, that predisposition against all things that tend to be superficially used to convey “growth,” that when I first hear about “Nugget Atlanta,” I don’t reflexively feel compelled to celebrate or high-five. I feel the urge to ask, “How do we know this isn’t our version, on a much smaller scale, of Glossier’s foray into being a tech company?” That misadventure ended up in layoffs of as much of a third of employees at a once-promising company, all because of a grievous loss of focus. Could that be the case with Nugget Atlanta?

And even if an RDU-Atlanta Nugget makes business sense, what about when success in Atlanta gets us talking about Charlotte? Or Austin? Or California? When you’ve been hypervigilant about keeping Pandora’s box sealed shut, even cracking it open an inch can feel like blowing a door off its hinges.

Thankfully, those questions and more have been asked, discussed, and debated in recent weeks, and if not fully resolved, at least reasonably addressed. We aren’t doing this for the wrong reasons, like trying to present ourselves to investors or media as a bigger company than we are, like one that’s poised to take over the southeastern U.S. We’re doing it because of a desire to broaden our options in a competitive labor pool, because of a commitment to racial equity and diversity, and because we’re still holding onto a sliver of that initial idealism around seeing each other in person — around being, if not under one roof, at least being under just two or three.

In time, even the conviction on that point might fade, just like the outdated beliefs from two years ago. For now, a short trip down I-85 is our best means of finding out.

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Interested in working at Nugget - whether in Atlanta or North Carolina? You can see all openings here - and there are more to come.

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