The Pre-Shift
Great teams make great restaurants. On The Pre-Shift, restaurant operators and industry experts dive into what it takes to build great restaurant teams. We explore their stories, the strategies they use, and valuable lessons on running restaurant teams. Hosted by D. J. Costantino. Presented by 7shifts.
The Pre-Shift
Building Chicago's Thattu with Chef Margaret Pak | Episode 49
Great teams make great restaurants. On The Pre-Shift, restaurant operators and industry experts dive into building great restaurant teams. We explore their stories, their strategies, and valuable lessons on running restaurant teams. Hosted by D.J. Costantino. Presented by 7shifts.
In the latest episode of the Preshift Podcast, host D.J. Costantino chats with Margaret Pak, chef and co-owner of Thattu in Chicago. Pak shares her inspiring transition from corporate life to culinary arts, detailing her journey from selling spicy ketchup to opening a successful food stall and finally establishing an award-winning restaurant. The episode delves into her passion for Kerala cuisine, her experience with food pop-ups, and her innovative no-tip service model. Pak also discusses the significance of transparent menu pricing, equitable staff wages, and her future plans, including participating in prestigious culinary events and creating retail condiments.
00:00 Welcome to the Preshift Podcast
00:17 Meet Margaret Pak: Chef and Co-Owner of Thattu
01:13 From Corporate to Culinary: Margaret's Journey
02:38 Falling in Love with Kerala Cuisine
03:41 From Prep Cook to Pop-Up Success
07:23 The Birth of Thattu: From Food Stall to Restaurant
10:41 Navigating the Pandemic and Reassessing Plans
11:59 Reopening and Expanding Through Pop-Ups
17:15 Innovative Business Model: No Tips, No Service Charge
27:19 Building a Collaborative and Equitable Team
31:06 Advice for Aspiring Restaurateurs
36:42 What's Next for Thattu?
38:21 Closing Remarks and Thank You
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Credits
Host & Producer: D. J. Costantino
Producer: Samantha Fung
Editor: Fina Charleston
About 7shifts
7shifts is a scheduling, payroll, and employee retention app designed to help restaurants thrive. With an easy-to-use app and industry-specific solutions, 7shifts saves time, reduces errors, and helps keep costs in check for more than 50,000 restaurants.
Hello and welcome to the Pre-Shift Podcast, the show featuring real restaurant people, real stories and real advice to build high-performing teams. I'm DJ Costantino and I'll be your host Today on the show. I'm joined by Margaret Pack.
Speaker 2:Hi, my name is Margaret Pack, chef and co-owner of Thotta in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago.
Speaker 1:Margaret Pack is a chef-owner of Thotta, a restaurant that specializes in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago. Margaret Pack is a chef owner of Thatta, a restaurant that specializes in the Southwest Indian coastal cuisine of Kerala that opened in 2023 in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood. After a successful pop-up run as a pop-up, margaret and her partner, vinod, were James Beard Awards semifinalists in 2020 and made the New York Times list of America's best restaurants in 2023. On today's episode, we discuss how Pack fell in love with the cuisine of Kerala, going from ketchup sales to line cook and from successful pop-up to an award-winning brick-and-mortar restaurant. We also dive into their service model, transparent menu pricing and work with Ray's High Road Restaurants. Just a reminder if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow us and sign up for our newsletter, food Runner, to get all the latest episodes and so much more. Margaret, thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So, to kick it off, I really want to learn a little bit more about Tata the restaurant and how you got started. I know it was kind of a later career switch for you and Vinod, your partner, and I'm just curious what brought you to the restaurant industry?
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, first of all, I joined the industry very late in life. It wasn't until 2015,. After working in corporate for a good 12 dozen years, 2015, I got fired for my last desk job. 2015, I got fired from my last desk job and that whole time for the 30 plus years of my life life. Up until that point I've always been an expert eater, loved food, but 2015 was like my big pause of what am I doing with my life. And, by way of a spicy ketchup, I dived into the food industry.
Speaker 2:I first started working in food sales, actually in a self-made sales job for about two years, and through that job I realized I love spicy condiments. But I also absolutely love a very particular cuisine that I married into. I did marry my husband now husband, business partner in all things Vinod in gosh 19 years ago. So this is 2005. And from 2005 onwards, I fell hard in love with cuisine from Kerala. 2005 onwards, I fell hard in love with cuisine from Kerala. And that was the first seed Tasting all of this beautiful cuisine. I mean I could talk about it. It's coconut rich, rice rich. It's not the lentils, butter, chicken, naan that I thought I knew and loved, which I also do Saag paneer also still love that. But that was a big year meeting Vinod and trying this new cuisine and that's when things changed. I was like I love this food, to be honest. It wasn't until after I worked in food sales and started meeting more chefs for a couple of years and just like getting into the whole supply chain of like wait, there is no representation of this cuisine and meeting these great folks it's like I want to cook and get into the kitchen. So truly no kitchen experience.
Speaker 2:I started working in food sales and then I took an even bigger leap and started as a prep cook at a at a Korean Polish restaurant called Kimski on the South side of Chicago. And that was like my crash course of do I want to get into the industry and literally like every week is like I love this, oh my gosh, this is hard. And oh my gosh, I'm cooking for more than just a dinner party and just learning how to cook banchan all the Korean sides, learning how to prep on such a large scale. It's like this is amazing, just to learn this new skill and thinking, 10 years from that point, I would open up a restaurant. I mean, that's how I dived into the industry Food sales, first fell in love with the ketchup Sold.
Speaker 2:Ketchup sold michelada mix. So because of those two things, I got to meet Juan Kim, chef owner of Kimsky, and then after being a prep cook for a couple of years. During that time Juan is such an artist and such an advocate for just trying new things. He had gently pushed to make family meal. I was nervous. I eventually did it.
Speaker 2:I made a very homey egg curry and we're Venotas from the states called Carroll at Southwest Coastal State and coconut is everything. So I brought some coconut milk from home, some fresh curry leaves, but then used everything else that was at Kimsky Eggs, tomatoes, onions, just very basic coriander like spices that were available. And it was because of this staff meal of egg curry that really like, like, started everything. And Juan was like, do you want to do a pop-up? I'm like, oh God, no, I'm. That's scary To the point. I mean I had not even, like, like, done any line cooking at that point. So I went from prep cook for two years and learned as much as I possibly could and what happened was I did do a couple of pop-ups in Bridgeport and then that led to doing a few in West Sloop, another area of Chicago that's very bustly. I was very nervous.
Speaker 2:So after doing a handful of pop-ups, doing a handful of pop-ups that caught the attention of Saigon Sisters, jeff and Mary. She was also a wonderful mentor. She recommended do you want to try out for a food hall? And I was like, ooh, I don't know. Or she asked do you want to open up a restaurant? I was like, oh God, no, that's too much. I'm only a prep cook, I need to learn like all these ranks, all these things. And she goes, oh, it's a food stall. I'm like, okay, maybe. So what ended up happening?
Speaker 2:From those five pop-ups, I pulled together my favorite dishes, six dishes and the ones that I liked, and that was my first tasting. I did a tasting for a food hall. I was in the West Loop of Chicago and that was an immediate fit. And one dish in particular I made was called an op-bom, but it's this rice coconut crepe and it's very concave, it's like made in a mini wok and I think, like for me that was so near and dear Cause that's what I have for breakfast when I go back home to Kerala, just with various curries, but that like they were perplexed and amazed. They're like this is amazing, we need to have this in the food hall. And at the end of that taste, they're like do you want to join us? And I said heck. Yes, without hesitation. And then later that day, I was just this is 2019.
Speaker 2:As a prep cook, I said yes to open up a food stall, which was partially insane, but I also it just felt right.
Speaker 2:And the biggest thing is, I just was so excited and I still am to date to be able to share this very unique Carola cuisine with Chicago. So it was a combination of all of those pop-ups and that tasting and then in 2019 May, between, like, doing my tasting in Feb, we opened in May of 2019. So it was a very quick turnaround and we were open for seven days a week, had a very short and sweet menu and by we, my husband Vinod, did quit his perfectly well-paying job three weeks before opening. I brought him into this and he would work the stall in the front and myself, and like with six others all eight of us we operated this food stall. It's in a shared kitchen and, getting back to our small menu, we had like four curries, two sides, a fried chicken dish and a masala biscuit cookie. So it was very short and sweet and we were there seven days a week. And that's literally how Thought2 was born as a food stall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's quite the journey, starting from just the passion of the food and a staff meal that seemed to really kick everything off, which is just a really cool background for a restaurant. Before we get into the business, I am curious about Kerala in a little bit. When was the first time you traveled there and how often do you go back there?
Speaker 2:now, the first time I went to Kerala is when Vinod and I got married in 2005. That was the first time I mean his family visiting the country, eating on a actual banana leaf for our own wedding feast and feast is called asadia s-a-d-y-a and I was just on overload in every sense, not just meeting the whole family and eating it, but like it was just so hot, tropical and just a lot of fish, a lot of seafood, not just the vegetarian cuisine, but we would also eat beef, beef and these flaky wheat bread frittatas. So that was my first visit and I was there for a good month because, again, that was my first visit and I got to go travel throughout Kerala, bangalore, mumbai and our honeymoon actually was in a tree house in a very beautiful area of Kerala, and then since then we've gone back at least every two years, so in our corporate lives we'd go more often and in total I've been back 13 times now in the 19 years.
Speaker 1:Since 2005. So, yeah, it seems like an average every other year pretty much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, going back to the food stall, we were forced to shut down. We were open for 10 months May of 2019 through March, and so after that, we slept for about two weeks and then we did trying to like, figure out, like cause we were on track to open up a restaurant. We had an investor approach us, we were thinking about it, but the whole point is like we went from like getting some amazing national James Beard recognition, recognition and then just being forced to shut down to like oh, we're not going to open a restaurant, we're not going to do this. So, point being, we took a lot of time to reassess and then we took a few months off and went to India and just to go home because we could. We didn't know what was going to be next. That was a big pause and a great way to spend time at home.
Speaker 1:So during that kind of pause period, you didn't really know what was coming next. Right, you had plans to open a restaurant from this pop-up. Obviously, the world stopped and people weren't opening restaurants for a little bit. So where did the path to opening, I guess, for real this time? How did that start? I believe it was 2021. You were kind of back in the pop-up space, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. So once we came back we're like we missed this, we need to be in Chicago. We started slowly doing pop-ups Very generous restaurant friends between Kim's Gagin and Bridgeport, supercana, and Logan Square. Perilla Steakhouse, like multiple restaurants, reached out. Hey, margaret, do you and your team want to come and pop up? And we're like, yes, please. And so that really started us like getting moving again in every regard, testing new recipes and exploring new restaurant or areas, neighborhoods, because we knew eventually we would want to reopen. We just didn't know where. So we went as far south as Beverly to Two Mile Cafe, which is very like south all the way to Evanston. So it's like a good like 30 plus mile like distance with just within Chicago Events, catering coffee shops, and through that we found a spot. We were referred to a place called Guild Row for a dinner supper club and one of our pop-ups at a super con we did a Onam Sadhya takeout to go and it's a huge vegetarian feast where each person gets like 20 different sides.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:In the middle of pandemic. We packaged this along with two banana leaves.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh Packaging overload, but it was just like the best. It's like a major holiday in Kerala, so it's like we really wanted to do this and this was in 2021, doing that takeout pop-up of all these vegetarian sides that led to creating a sadhya zine and that was just a passion project that we did with a talented food writer her name Maggie Hennessy.
Speaker 2:She had reached out and I thought cookbook is big, too big and scary 20 page zine, absolutely my speed, and after coming back from Carola I was like I really do need and want to document all these recipes that were just like off the cuff, like I just did it for the pop-up Right Because of one time. So we also, after that pop-up, created a zine and through self-publishing Everyday Sadhya, our first zine. We self-funded that and published that and that was like literally what kick kickstarted our self funding movement and keep us busy during pandemic and through that we were able to increase like our range to find our future restaurant space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. It seems like it was really just like one of those just like made to be kind of things in terms of the experience and, you know, doing the pop-up and oh, we have this space and you know it's definitely a cool story. I'm curious about the restaurant and that transition from the pop-up. You know you mentioned the pop-up team. I imagine was quite small. What did it look like going from the pop-up to the fully staffed restaurant? And I guess also curious, like what did you learn in the pop-up to the fully staffed restaurant? And I guess also curious, what did you learn in the pop-up experience that you wanted to bring or not bring to the full-on restaurant?
Speaker 2:Well, first, I mean, our team was everything during pandemic. When it was just catering, that was just Vinod and I, but when we started doing events, that's when Cindy she was with us in 2019. She came back and she was with us throughout the whole journey from 2019 onwards, and then slowly, other members just started coming back. But in terms of the concept, that was kind of the hard part, because I wanted to do like this huge laundry list of things for lunch and dinner. But the reality was like this is our first restaurant, we don't want to do too much. We want to stick to our ethos of sticking to like having a short and sweet menu and doing it well.
Speaker 2:Well, so what we decided was well, from our pop-ups, we absolutely learned a lot of both just how to execute dishes, In other words, like don't fry everything to order, like do a lot of pre-frying to then fry upon service, and just testing out a lot of different dishes of what we enjoyed making more than others. The holdup was, though it was mostly pickup no one's dining in, so that was the obvious thing. It's like okay, what holds well. So I think that was, like, from a menu standpoint, obvious but important changes that we made, I think, aside from like the menu updates, but just learning how to adjust to different kitchen equipment.
Speaker 1:So I do want to dive into and this is all great, I mean I love hearing the stories and you're a great storyteller I am curious a little bit more about the business itself and the way you guys have your menu structure, prices structured and staffing. And you know, I know you guys do no tips, no service charge, kind of this all inclusive price. So if you could just break that down a little bit for me, how you came to those decisions, why you wanted to run your restaurant this way, from being an employer standpoint.
Speaker 2:Sure. So, first and foremost, we do not have tips or a service charge and in fact we have a sign that says so, right when you walk in, and then in parentheses. But we can't do anything about taxes. And I will say, on many fronts from our pop pop-up times, it was very cringy when we're doing takeout and when people could dine in, like ringing them up and then giving them the screen and being like, oh, you can also tip and like I didn't like that and it was an interesting time. But what I would say is that it became evident to us that we didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2:And background my husband and business partner in all things, vinod. He was a CPA and also in his last job was an auditor, so he's very great with numbers and we had gone back and forth about what, if we actually have built-in prices, we don't have the tips and just factor in to our actual menu price everything, because that's how they do it in India, that's how in most places in Europe as well. We were very fortunate to have been able to travel and in some places it's like overseas it's almost considered rude to tip. But that was like some of the background thoughts of what we were thinking and it really became apparent to us that if we're going to open a place, this is our chance to just like, start fresh, start it the way that we want to do it. We literally put our savings and a very significant city grant into the building and creation of our restaurant. So we're very fortunate that we didn't have to worry about investors. It was more like if we're going to do this A, we need to do the research and be very truly calculated about that. So, again with Vinod's background, we did go through our very short and sweet menu, did all of our cost food cost and went through that. And then he built in like what would a quote 20% look like on that? And at the end of the day, we figured out our pricing, worked that out.
Speaker 2:And one of the biggest things is when people come into Dine, we do offer that QR code and people can order that and we, for us, we just want to be fully transparent to the customer of like you literally see what you are ordering. Like there are nothing. There's nothing hiding. The only thing hiding is the tax amount and maybe it's different because you're buying alcohol. That's it. So there's that part part just in terms of having fair pay between our entire team, both in the kitchen and in the front. We do something different where we have a base rate plus a revenue share. So because and that's because we're not taking tips, and so every two weeks Vinod does all these calculations and he has like extra checks of what is our actual revenue for two weeks and then splits that based on hours worked with the entire team. It does require some extra work and he has all of his worksheets and checks too, because you know things and that's revenue, both food, alcohol, events, catering, like off-sites where possible, like where it makes sense, so that it's truly it's for everybody. So that's like how the pay structure is and that was just really important for us to be equitable.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to say like, at first, for hiring in the front, that was a little like different for some of our servers to understand. It's like oh, so what's the tip? Like what's the pay at the end of the day? But the way we, and also what was also important to us, is that their wage would not change week to week, so like if we're having a bad week or a really good week, like we want to guarantee a steady pay and in the front, I mean we've been very fortunate that our turnover has been very low, like one went back to school and another, like went to a different restaurant. I mean it's, I mean that naturally happens. But um, we've been now open for 15 months, which is wild to say, and I will add that before we were opened, um, as part of that research not just all the calculations, but we did reach out to raise high roads and one fair wage.
Speaker 2:We did like, after some research and learning from Jason Hamill, lula Cafe, zoe, shore, split Rail just researching the restaurants where we recognized and liked what they were doing. That led us to those organizations where they worked with and so that was really helpful just to truly talk to other restaurateurs, get their perspective and honey, butter, fried chicken as well, shout out to all of them. I mean they were just so open literally with their like how they do their books and like how they organize. And I think, just from an overall standpoint from our small business, and I think just from an overall standpoint from our small business, it's really important that we have an open book policy. So, as Vinod does the financials every quarter, like we literally open it up, he does the analysis, shares it with the entire team. Some of it's a little information overload, but again, we want to literally know what our whole team to know. Where is this money coming from? What are we selling? Yes, we're selling all these things, but where is that going?
Speaker 1:Does the revenue split? Is that equal or is it dependent on role front of house and back of house? How does that work?
Speaker 2:out A great question because traditionally, or historically I should say, the front would get more. But that's not us. We truly want to make it as equal as possible. So I will say kitchen hours are much higher than what's in the front. So as a result, the bases are respectfully different and this revenue share, it goes back to the fact that we want it to be a consistent wage and we also provide incremental, like we recognize, as people progress, we give that raise on their base pay, but the revenue share, that's where it's split, truly based on the number of hours.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's a flat percent based on hours and then any sort of. You know someone goes from server to a shift leader or captain. However you do it, their base wage will increase, or with merit or seniority or things like that.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but it's truly like hours based.
Speaker 1:Hours based. Awesome. I'm curious, do?
Speaker 2:people still try hours based.
Speaker 1:Hours based awesome. I'm curious. Do people still try and tip diners? I'm curious that the diners um the diner like how they respond to it. Do you get pushback? Do people still say, like I want to leave a tip? How, how has it gone over with the guests?
Speaker 2:so I will say, going into it, I was nervous. Finota was like you know, of course we're going to be nervous people. People will figure it out. And as a percentage, our customers have been amazing. I would say 95%. They're like what do you mean? You don't take tips? And when we say it's already baked, and they're like that's amazing. But we still and they do say, but we still want to leave a tip we're like you don't need to just come back again, bring a friend. At the beginning people just did not listen. They would still put cash down. But I will say that customers, we're attracting the customers that we want, Like they'll keep coming back. What we do with the cash, that the people that don't listen to us. We do keep that. And we took a poll with our team and asked, like how do you want to spend this? Do you want caffeine? Do you want food? I mean, we do buy a lot of caffeine but we do save that for, like, our team outings.
Speaker 1:I'm curious too. You mentioned I think it was in an interview, an article in another podcast that you noticed there was like a tension between people I think this was in the food hall, the tipping screen and the person on the other side of the counter and on the tablet. Is that something that kind of factored in as well to your decision? Through those experiences?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, both from the food hall and through our pop-up time as well, of just like that awkward pause and, in addition, like some people, just wouldn't tip.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I guess that's the point. We don't expect anybody to tip now, right. Which is good, yeah, we just don't want there to be that extra pressure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely the guest impact. Clearly the staff enjoys this structure. You mentioned the turnover being low, but how have you seen it in your experience with the restaurants in general? How have you seen the impact of this wage model on relationships or the way people are at work or what's the kind of impact it's had on the team and their everyday work?
Speaker 2:I float to the front and get to work with the servers and see how that operates. And one thing that's very apparent is that no one quote owns a table or a section. So that's the first and like obvious thing. Like everybody helps each other and if, like someone needs to like something happens, or like somebody needs to go mop something, it's like okay, myself or Edwin or somebody will go swoop in and just like help that table. So from that customer service standpoint it's I do feel like it's more of a cohesive team effort in terms of touching all the tables, talking to people too. Also, if one of our bartenders wasn't feeling well, we do a lot of cross-training so that we are able to have somebody else go and bartend right away, and then a server they can help each other out. So I mean that goes hand in hand with like cross-training. But also everybody's on the same team. They want to like take care of the customers and like make sure, like it's like they can't even tell like something's changed. And then, similarly, I would say in the kitchen um, this it's, it's a all hands on deck.
Speaker 2:We always we tend to have about four in the kitchen plus our dishwasher and a prep, cook, and it's a lot of bodies, and I think as we tweak and make modifications to our menu, we do get insight from all of our team members, and I think it's one of those things where we want to generate different ideas.
Speaker 2:And it's not just all me, it's not just our chef de cuisine, danny, it's truly everybody's contributing me, satya, or Chef de Cuisine Danny, it's truly everybody's contributing. And by having these different specials, it allows us to all collectively like, come together and create different, truly more revenue opportunities for everybody. We just had a soft-shell crab. It was in season for everybody. We just had a soft shell crab, it was in season. So that was a really fun dish that Danny created and that went back to like one of the very first dishes that Vinod had made like 21 years ago, which is really pretty amazing. So, sorry, sorry, I'm getting back to the food, but I guess to the point, to the point that having it more of a collaborative effort and an opportunity for different menu items come up as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So it just seems like what it really does is you know one of the. Or it provides more room for creativity. You know you're not like in the. You know working hard and kind of. You know have room for, for thinking outside of the box. Or you know you're just surviving and getting through the day, but it just allows for more of that time for people to focus on their own development or, like you said, creating specials and just being creative and pushing the envelope, rather than trying to just get through and get through the day to day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean, just like I mentioned for the front, cross trainings, everything like in the kitchen, like everyone's constantly learning all the different stations and can jump in at any time. That's tremendous and it's everything.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, no, I mean it's. It's it allows people to help out and I think the it seems like the revenue sharing and the base wage structure allows people to do that, because they don't have to worry about oh, I'm losing my table if I go help do something else.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I do kind of want to just wrap things up with some of your recommendations for other. You know you mentioned talking to other restaurant owners and people doing similar things in Chicago and how that helped, and that's kind of what I'm trying to do with this show right is be able to have those conversations available to anyone who wants to and is curious about running restaurants in the way that you're doing it or looking to try and do it in a way that's different from the norm or at least the historical norm. So what advice would you give to a restaurant who's looking to explore these alternative wage options not the traditional tipped minimum, or any advice you would give to someone who is apprehensive or thinking of making that change for their business or starting a new business with that?
Speaker 2:in place. First, I mean really identify what your customer base too. I mean like, of course, you know your concept, you know what you're creating, but think about who is your customer and then, at the end of the day, what customer do you want to attract? That's the first part. But then for us I think we, just for nodes, background, knowing and wanting to do all the calculations we're like we can only do so much the organizations one fair wage raise high roads. Those were the first two that we found and, like we, we still go back and I will say that was because we started researching restaurants locally, that we really respect and appreciate what they're doing. And, at the end of the day, we're all doing something different, but we all went to the same resources and I think, at the core of it, just doing what feels right for your business model, for your customers, I think that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 2:And I will say one thing I didn't touch upon too much was using the QR code. You know we were nervous about that and our customer base, like they're into it. And so I think again, it's like, think about, like your, your audience and also just try it. If it doesn't work, pivot. And I'm going to say, like we thought at the beginning we were going to be a counter service. A week into it we're like Nope, we're not, we need to take reservations. And then we started taking reservations and then we just kept going. So those are the two things like reach out, look for organizations and restaurants, or reach out to us, and if something doesn't work, then change it and keep going.
Speaker 1:Were there any big changes that you made quickly?
Speaker 2:or even recently, that just things that weren't working out and you needed to make an adjustment. And then, like it'll be first come, first serve, we had an overwhelming response and we were open for just for lunch and we just didn't feel comfortable. Nor did we. Just we didn't want customers to have to wait for so long and then feel that pressure and we didn't want to have the churn and burn either. And so after like a week and a half, we realized and we were only open for lunch we're like, okay, we need to like pace this out. So we went to the first, we shopped around with the different reservation platforms and immediately got onto one and we've been with them since OpenTable and I'm going to say that that really helped pace out the seat of the customers.
Speaker 2:And I think, to answer your question, like we only opened for lunch when we first opened. So we opened at the end of April and only after a month of being comfortable with lunch, then we're like, okay, we got this. And then we opened up for dinner and then, once we had a dinner, that's when we realized again we need to make some adjustments. So we would make adjustments to our dinner menu. So it was very much an incremental approach for us and then once we tweaked our dinner menu after that, we felt it was very smooth sailing. Just thinking back of any other major changes, since I would say more just menu updates and then our talking points, like as we got to know our customers more, as we had more repeat customers, I think just changing some of our messaging. But I mean, I think I would just like just learning from our customers and just seeing, like what specials do better than others and, for example, so I think, just constantly getting that feedback loop from them as well.
Speaker 1:Very cool, yeah. So just focusing on that, you know that, that feedback loop and making sure that everybody is comfortable with it and everything's working out, and I guess it just comes down to talking to your staff, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly yes. So I think that's and bless our staff, like we're so grateful and we're so like we have an amazing team all around and and our 15 months, like none of it would be possible without all of them. It's, I'm very grateful and I'm so proud of our team. We've accomplished a lot in just a short period of time.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah. So I'm just curious, as we, as we start to kind of wrap up, what's next for you guys? What are you looking forward to this year, or any exciting things that you're working on or things you want to share that you're up to with our audience?
Speaker 2:Sure, actually, as we speak, in just a few weeks I get to travel to New York to represent Chicago for James Beard 20. And there are 20 chefs coming together in New York for this new cohort, and so what it's about this will be in a few weeks, july 24th, and we will be presenting a bite, so that will be amazing. And being able to do more events. There's something called Taste of Nations Share Our Strength, which supports food insecurity. Doing more events like that, it's like we got past our year. One try to do more work with the community. It's like this is our time that we want to start doing more of that. Then the second part building out some of our condiments. So I started in the industry making or selling other people's ketchup. I still love ketchup and I now make a spicy beet ketchup for our lunch menu. So looking into bottling and selling that in our retail space. So hot sauce and beet ketchup in our retail space in our retail space. So hot sauce and beet ketchup in our retail space in our restaurant area.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for checking out this episode of the Pre-Shift. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a review and rating and share it with one of your friends to help the show grow. Also, be sure to subscribe to our Food Runner newsletter. Once a month you get a roundup of resources, practical tips and industry leader insights to learn more quickly. Sign up at 7shiftscom. Slash food runner. Check the link in the description. Until next time.
