There was a time in America, if you can believe it, when you would order a pizza and it would arrive somewhat cold and soggy. A horrifying prospect! Ingrid Kosar was disenchanted with cold delivery pizza too, and she wanted to do something about it. In 1984, she filed a patent for a “thermally insulated food bag,” which is familiar to pizza eaters the world over.
Kosar has a great entrepreneurial origin story. The next three decades of her career don’t make as tidy a narrative. The bags got commoditized; Kosar lost business to lower-priced competitors and her patents eventually expired. But Thermal Bags By Ingrid is still making pizza bags out of its small office in the Chicago suburbs. Ingrid Kosar embodies what it means to survive in business over the long term. She’s come close to losing it all, yet has held on long enough to see sales recover. In fact, after her story ran in The Distance, Kosar told me she hired two new employees for her sewing department—a nice epilogue to a true underdog story.
Read more about Kosar, her business and the history of U.S. pizza delivery at The Distance.
Derick
on 10 Dec 14@ Basecamp / The Distance
What’s the ultimate goal of “The Distance”?
It doesn’t appear to generate revenue.
Is there plans to make it a profitable operations?
Is it a pet project of Jason or DHH?
(I’m not trying to sound negative. I just get concerned when I see something that is non-revenue generating since a future date will inevitably come when someone has to make the hard decision to keep pumping money into it or shut it down)
Wailin
on 10 Dec 14Hi Derick, thanks for your comment. Jason started The Distance because he wanted to read more stories about long-established businesses, especially those operating under the radar that don’t typically receive much, if any, press coverage.
The Distance doesn’t generate revenue. For more background on the publication, you can read the column Jason wrote about it in Inc. In the column, he says this: “We have no plan for selling ads or making a lot of money from The Distance, only gathering wisdom.”
Francis
on 10 Dec 14The Distance / Basecamp
I know this will sound like a troll comment but, the tagline of “The Distance” is:
It seems ironic that a publication which doesn’t generate revenue, which obviously can’t endure the length of time, has that as the tagline.
Francis
on 11 Dec 14@Basecamp
Why is the Chicago Tribune stealing your content?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/hub/chi-distance-ingrids-thermal-bags-bsi-hub-story.html#page=1They straight up reported your article
Wailin
on 11 Dec 14Hi Francis. Basecamp is bringing its resources to bear on The Distance because it believes these stories are worth telling. The publication will exist as long as Basecamp believes it is a worthwhile project, and that worth can be determined in a number of ways other than how much money it generates.
As for the Chicago Tribune, we gave them permission to syndicate The Distance content. We’re excited to see how this builds our readership and reach.
Michael
on 12 Dec 14I really like The Distance and I like that a business with more money than mine is willing to invest in these stories. There used to be a “Kickstarter-for-news” called Spot.us where people could pay for reporting on the kinds of things that interested them. That was a neat model, but having a financially successful business provide a stable platform for a reporter seems better to me.
This discussion is closed.