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Tim, CEO/Founder here!

Orders have closed, but that doesn’t mean we’re resting. On the contrary, we’re working harder than ever to get orders out!

No orders means we have 0 income right now. Is that scary? Oh yeah, very much so. But, we felt it was something that we should do, because every time we were ramping to catch up, a machine broke, a pickup was missed, or something happened.

Calculations and spreadsheets say one thing, reality says another. Best thing we can do? Stick to reality, hold our breaths, and race against time with no orders and no income.

Just like always, we’re committed to our people, as well as being as transparent as possible.

That means even during this period with no income or anything, everyone will get their regular wages so that they can have income to count on. The only person who will be reducing or getting pay cuts is me, and my job will be figuring out how to work the money to make it through this period, no matter what, without sacrificing people’s livelihoods.

You could say I’ll be living off ramen for this stretch of time :^) How will all this work? Read to the bottom to find out. 

Before I get too far into this, go check out the Kickstarter of our good friend Wyatt, of Winterstellar Studios, who has an incredible project going on! No, we’re not getting paid for this, I just want to help out a good friend!

He’s done amazing work with us so far, like this incredible animation for our collaboration with Eckhart’s Ladder, and is creating a truly visionary work of how 3D animation can be done, trailblazing the way CGI anime can be made.

So go check out his Kickstarter, and help fund him more to bring his project and dream to life! You’d be helping us out a ton too, since the better these projects are made, the more cool stuff we can do with him in the future too, and you know I’m all about making fun, awesome new projects.

Less than 20 days to go, so go support him now!

Support Awesome Vite Friends Here!

 

 

Okay, next up:

We’ll be sharing updates and progress so everyone knows where we’re at! On our front page and shop page, we’ll be posting regular updates to these progress bars so that everyone knows where we’re at.

Let’s break down the bars and their meanings.

 

 

First, the 0-100% is pretty simple: We have the pool of orders, and so this is how much we gotta do. We extrapolated subscriber orders into this as well, for those of you who are subscribed(and we love you <3). 

Second, our operations at the facility are split into three categories:

Production
Packaging
Fulfillment

Production bar is how many noodle bricks we’ve made, and each day we can only make so many, limited by machine speeds, and now, hilariously enough, California Weather.

...Which is wet. Really wet. Unprecedentedly wet.

As you can imagine... All the rain and humidity makes drying things more difficult, which is really annoying. Can we please stop having unprecedented events? I’m getting real tired of them...

After production, the noodle bricks are stored and prepared for packaging. We have a tiny facility, so every time we want to do something, we gotta rearrange the facility.

Our planning process for batches means we need to arrange and pick out what orders are going into what, then designate the amount of each we need of each flavor and types to do before moving them to fulfillment. 

This kind of organization usually takes a bunch of time, but one of the benefits of closing off orders is we can instead take everything as one big batch, and work on it that way.

This also does mean that right now, we’re focusing on one step at a time. There’s certain exceptions on space and certain order priorities, since we can only store so much at a time, and there are certain material limitations, but there’s going to be focus on one thing at a time.

We’ll be updating this daily, or whenever things are happening. Notably, Mondays and Fridays will usually not see updates, as it takes time to get everything plugged in.

Once everything is packed, then it’s time for fulfillment! For efficiency’s sake, we’re going to be trying to produce and package everything before moving to fulfillment in order to expedite processes and make things more efficient.

Which also probably means that the leaning tower of boxes will return, and I’ll have to break down a bunch of boxes again. 

For those of you who were concerned, don’t worry, we do re-use boxes as much as possible until they’re completely worn through, and then they’re recycled. It’s just a matter of where they go while fulfillment is happening, since it’s more efficient to break everything down in one big step.

So, if you see the fulfillment bar at 0% for a long time, don’t worry! That’s all according to plan.

At the moment, we’re projecting that it will take 4-5 weeks to complete this process, so bear with us here! I’m doing everything I can, including rigging up new machinery and processes to speed things up to get everything out faster. 

Whew!

That’s about it for the behind the scenes look on how everything will be working at Vite in the next few days. Thank you all for your wonderful support! 

We’ll make it through this weathered, a bit beaten, but better. Just gotta endure through.

I’ll be back with another update next week, with exciting news about some other new things that we have going on!

-Tim, CEO/Founder Vite Kitchens