Gotham Gal

Food businesses

I see a variety of consumer food businesses.  They are such hard businesses to build but I am always taken with the entrepreneurs and the passion for their products. 

I recently met with the two co-founders of A&B pepper sauce.  They have made some inroads selling  their product and are adding a second sauce soon.  I admit that many of the products I see and taste are good not great.  I understand the void if they are making an interesting drink or something glutten free but remember this is about the product first business second. 

I love the A&B Pepper Sauce.  Am honestly eating it with everything.  It isn't too spicy but just has the perfect amount of bite.  The sauce enhances what you are eating and doesn't take it over.  I am finding myself putting the sauce out for dinner just as I put out salt and pepper. The ingredients are simple too
White Vinegar, Red Chili Pepper, Carrot, Habanero Pepper, Salt.  No sugar which is a big selling point for them.

I am not an investor but I am impressed with the taste profile they have built.  Looking forward to tasting the next product they add to the line.

 

 

Chelsea Market

Chelsea Market has evolved into a pretty remarkable place.  The Nut Box just opened a huge retail space right next door to Num Pang Sandwich Shop.  This is Num Pangs second shop.  Both great additions.  But the absolute best addition is the reopening of the Lobster Place.  

The two guys behind the Lobster Place have done an incredible job.  Super smart well thought out flow.  If you want to know how to build a market where people can also sit down and enjoy the wares this is it.  Very European. I also love the black chalkboard feel with white print.

In the back right corner is the Shack to take out.

The sushi area.  You can sit at the bar, take it to go or just watch.  Around the parameter of the area are Japanese products to buy.

People love to eat lobsters here.  This is great.  All different sizes of steamed lobsters. 

Next to the lobsters is a standing area to dig in and eat your lobster.

Oysters?  You name if they have it.  Sit down and enjoy. 

There are other random areas to sit.  Products are sprinkled around each location too.  Here is one of the cases filled with herring.  They also sell really fresh beautiful raw fish to take home and cook for dinner.

Next door they have built a restaurant called Cull & PIstol, an oyster bar.  I had lunch there. Terrible picture but the vibe in there is warm and inviting.  A cool fish shack.

Really good oysters.

My friend had a lobster roll with old bay fries. 

I went for the whole fish. 

For dessert they serve a little scoop of gelato as part of your meal.  This was creamsickle. I brought Fred back to take a look en route to dinner that night.  Looking forward to returning for dinner very soon. 

 

Kitchensurfing dinner

We went to the Kitchensurfing offices/townhouse in Gowanus for dinner to celebrate the closing of their Series A round.  Those dinners are to celebrate the company moving forward and meet all the people who are involved.  What was really great about this dinner is that everyone involved knows each other fairly well which not only makes for a fun dinner but is exciting that a crew that knows each other personally is involved.

Our dinner was prepared and served to us by Chef Robert Compagnon.  He is an excellent chef.  His bio gives you all the info you need to know. 

After studying Japanese at Columbia University, and spending a year cutting fish and working in a ramen shop in Japan, I decided cooking was for me. I moved to Paris after a year of cooking at Ouest on the UWS. In France I worked in both traditional (Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy), and innovative kitchens like Rino, Spring and Chateaubriand. Five years later, I'm back in NY, working at Brushstroke in Tribeca, brushing up on traditional Japanese Kaiseki cuisine.

The meal was built around lamb after all spring is here (well sorta).  Two pieces of lamb topped with fish roe and tempura lamb brains.  The combo of the lamb with the roe totally worked.  The lamb brains although for many that sounds ghastly but it was absolutely delicious.  It had the same texture as a foie gras and the tempura was airy and crisp. 

Tongue raviolis served in a fish dashi broth with grilled scallions.  The ravioli was light yet packed with a wallop of flavors. 

This was insane.  Mushrooms sauteed in brown butter mixed with crispy deep fried parlsey with a lightly poached egg center stage.  Mix it all up (make it messy) and dig in.  The combination of the flavors and the textures were brilliant.

This was a little more dense.  A smoky eggplant mixture where the eggplant had been mashed with rosemary and lemons.  Over the top was pan fried octopus and crispy burdock root.  Octopus is one of my faves.

A saddle of lamb stuffed with watercress that was sliced for each plate sitting on top of a sweet potato puree and little bites of root veggies.  He had wrapped the lamb with fat in order to char and roast throughly.  A little lamb jus poured over the top. Excellent.

This was incredible.  Lamb belly chasyu served in a bowl of white miso soy ramen.  Chasyu is a mixture of a meat (this time lamb) tied up with string and either boiled or baked with a mixture of spices.  The taste of the chasyu was rich and buttery.  The soup was rich and intense with soba noodles sitting on the bottom.  Amazing.

I am sorry that I can not remember the name of his sous chef who made the desserts because she was also extremely talented.  She made two desserts.  The first was a poached lemon earl grey granita with evaporated milk.  Super creative. 

This was a mixture of three things.  A dense layered cake with chocolate ganache.  Just the right amount.  Then she sprinkled this with crispy honeycombs.  On the side was a thyme flavored ice cream that was out of this world.  Each of the flavors mixed together were a total omg. 

The event was great and just showed all of us the brilliance of Kitchensurfing.  These two people came into the Kitchensurfing home to make a sublime meal where we all sat around the kitchen table talking, drinking and having fun.  We were able to enjoy a restaurant quality meal in our own home and hear from the chef about what we were eating and how it was prepared.  An incredible experience that I highly recommend trying.  A game changer. 

Generation SPF

My Mom had this great idea when I was a young teen that it would be a great experiment if she started me out on the top skincare products at a young age to see what it would do for my skin in the long run.  The idea was that instead of playing the catch-up game when you wake up at 30 and realize that you need to moisturize your skin and take care of your face that you had been doing it all along.  What would happen if you started that at 8?

My Mom never did follow through on that concept but I do think about it from time to time as I get older.  There is no doubt that genes play a huge part on our skin as we age but so does that amount of time we sat in the sun with baby oil and record albums covered with tin foil to reflect the sun for a sun tan. 

There is a great article in WMagazine this month about SPF that made me think about this.  The article is about how 35 years ago the FDA introduced the SPF system.  We began doing early skin cancer screening.  The next generation of kids were covered with sun block when they went out side, went to camp, went to the pool or went to the park.  There became sun block in the diaper bag along with a juice box and a bag of pretzels.  What has happened essentially is the we have saved our face, literally. 

People who are 30 have the skin of a 20 year old because they have taken care of their skin since they were young.  It makes complete sense.  That is why when I met Christy of Willa Skincare that I got it and I invested and got involved.  She has created a product that kids want.  Of course the Moms want it too but you have to get the kids to want the product not the Moms to push it on their kids.  I know my nieces love the products.  If you have young kids and are sending them off to camp this summer make sure to send the Willa products in their camp bag.  When your kid gets older they will thank you.  BTW, I love the products too.

 

Quarterly Co

The Quarterly Co is a quarterly subscription service that sends you curated picks from the contributors of your choice.  It is unique and creative.  I honestly could have subscribed to more than one.  Some of the curators are Food52, Josh Rubin & Evan Orensten from Cool Hunting (something I read daily), Pharrell Williams (musician/entrepreneur), Liz Danico professor extraordinaire/co-founder of the MFA interaction design program and blog Bobulate.  Really interesting creative people.

I signed up for the Food52 quarterly.  I got my first box yesterday.  Both product total winners.  Iberico Ham that can be bought at The Rogers Collection and a roll of linen cocktail napkins that can be bought at Buy My Drap.  I am a huge fan of these napkins and have them in bulk for the summer.  The concept of the box this month is to go on a picnic.

It was a nice surprise to get in the mail.  Looking forward to the next treat.

40:20 Vision

I was invited several times from Christina Vuleta to attend one of her 40:20 events.  I finally went to one. 

There were about 16 people there that night some younger (aka 20) and some older (aka 40).  The idea is to create a forum where people have questions to ask each other sort of like a speed mentorship evening.  Christina was a strategic marketing person with an interesting career and she is the perfect person to lead the night.  Each question is written down on a large piece of paper and she threads them together so the conversation flows intelligently. 

The questions are mostly about the difficulties of being a woman entrepreneur as you live in your own head so advice is helpful.  It can be anything from how to hire, how to raise money, do you need a founder and how to juggle life.  I have found that women are more honest and open about the issues that they face when they are alone in a room with each other.  I see this at the Womens Entrepreneur Festival. 

Christina is doing a great thing connecting groups of women.  Take a look at Christinas site.  It is something she is passionate about and I love that this is something that she did started not long ago.  Her career led her to this and one day she had an aha moment to help younger women to learn from others who are farther along in their careers.  Learning from others who have been there done that is truly a gift. 

The tag line sums it all up:  advice from 40 something women to 20 something women.  Her site is a place where people can start conversations, share experiences and facilitate mentoring between generations.

JC Penney and the every day sale

JC Penney at The Shops at Tanforan in San Bruno, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started my career in retailing and in many ways it has never left my blood.  I learned a tremendous amount from managing to analyzing businesses to strategies for business growth.  Those years have served me well as my career moved forward. 

I am not sure when the One Day Sales began but I lived through many of them.  I'd get to the store by 8 am and leave around midnight.  Here are a few things that I learned.  The customer who shops the One Day Sale is not the loyal customer who comes back a few times a month.  In essence the store had two sets of consumers; bargain hunter and regular priced shopper.

The departments that ran constant sales regardless of the One Day Sale might do it because the merchandise was not selling or they weren't hitting their numbers.  Every day each department worked to beat the numbers from the year before on the same day. The margins go down when the merchandise is not selling at full price but when you are a major department store with large buying power you get the vendor to participate in the cost of the sale.  Many vendors basically give you a check or a massive discount towards the next purchase of goods so you can book those returned dollars against the past season so as a buyer you make your numbers. 

Here is what I learned, this is not a good way to run a business in the long run.  Each consumer has a different mind set.  Some consumers only want to buy something that they perceive to be a deal or discounted.  Other consumers are happy to pay full price if they love it.  Some consumers particularly ones with deeper pockets can be put off by a marked down item because they think there must be a reason it did not sell. Bottom line no matter what type of customer you are if the item is a must have it goes quickly and you buy it at full price.  Unfortunately most of the merchandise manufactured does not fit into that category.

What is interesting to me is that many of the ecommerce models that are being built are one dimensional.  They are going after one particular customer.  I really like these models.  For instance, a site that is only interested in selling product to the top 1% of the population, or a model that is directly devoted to men between 24-40 etc.  What I like about these models is that they do not have to be everything to everybody.  They are targeting one particular consumer. The department stores are built on the model of everything for everybody.  Fifty years ago those regional department stores owned the majority of the market-share.  Many have merged after being purchased to reside under one roof such as Federated Department Stores and with that there is very little differential by store. JW Robinsons was unique to Los Angeles and Dayton Stores were unique to the Midwest but now they are all part of Federated. Their marketshare has slowly shrunk as chains such as the Gap entered the marketplace and now of course ecommerce. 

I do applaud what Ron Johnson was trying to do at JC Penney.  Based on the decisions he made it appears as he was trying to break the old model and move it into a place where the JC Penney customer was loyal to well priced inventory with style.  I remember when I was at Macys the powers that be thought that Macys should start to trade up and capture a higher end customer.  It was a disaster because that was not the person walking in the door and they were losing their bread and butter.  Maybe that was Johnsons strategy.  Now that he has been ousted there is one thing that is obvious is that JC Penney will return to the days of the constant sale to get the customer in the door to buy low margin items in bulk so that they can keep the stock price up and hope that they will capture that small piece of the market each year. 

I do believe that at one point the department store chains will prove that like Lehman they are not too big to fail.

Food 52 partners with Jenis Ice Cream

We love Jenis ice cream in our house.  I know that I have blogged about Jenis ice cream before because I happened to meet Jensi sister.  I was in Los Angeles and a woman came up to me and said "are you the Gotham Gal"?  I am the sister of Jens ice cream.  Loved that. We basically keep an endless supply of Jenis Ice Cream in our house. 

Food 52 partnered with Jenis Ice Cream to do an ice cream content on Food 52.  It is a great example of brand building and smart marketing for both companies.  But more important the flavor sounds amazing.  I just ordered a pint myself.  Olive Oil, Saffron, Orange and Caramel Ice Cream.  I am seriously how good does that sound? 

 

Mass Challenge

I know about the Mass Challenge because one of the women, Reem Yared, who I wrote about on Mondays got to the semi-finals in this challenge.  It set her business of in a completely different direction. 

Here is the info:

MassChallenge is the largest-ever start-up accelerator, and the first to support high-impact, early-stage entrepreneurs with no strings attached. Benefits for startups include:

• 4 month accelerator program – world-class mentorship and training, free office space, access to funding, media and more.
• $1.2 million in cash awards - $10+ million in in-kind support.
• Open to all – any startup can enter, from anywhere in the world, in any industry.
• No strings attached – no equity taken and no restrictions applied.

President Obama honored MassChallenge in January of 2011 as one of the nation's best 

organizations for supporting high-growth entrepreneurs, and MassChallenge was the youngest 

inaugural affiliate of the Startup America Partnership. The 361 startups supported in the three 

MassChallenge accelerator classes have generated nearly $100 million in revenue, raised over 

$362 million in outside funding and created nearly 3,000 new jobs.

Application info:

Top Startups Wanted: MassChallenge 2013

MassChallenge connects entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed immediately with no strings attached. It's the world's largest startup accelerator and is looking for the 125 highest-impact startups from any industry for its 2013 program.

Benefits for startups include world-class mentorship & training, a driven community of fellow entrepreneurs, $10M+ in in-kind deals and $1M+ in grants with no equity taken.

All applicants receive written feedback & scores from the expert judges that evaluate them, regardless of whether they advance to the next round. The application fee is $199, but this is the only fee MassChallenge ever takes from entrepreneurs (never taking equity), and refunds can be found by searching #MCRefunds on twitter.

Applications are due by April 3 - Apply at MassChallenge.org/apply!

Hiho Batik

Hiho Batik is a one of a kind store in Park Slope.  It is not only a retail store selling unique handmade one of a kind batik designed clothing it is always a great place for a party. 

The store is happy.  The place is bright, organized, fun and unique.  I love this mural of brownstones on the wall when you enter the store.

In the back is an area for events.  Might seem like the perfect party place for kids from 6-9 where they get to be totally creative making their own personal shirt but adults have taken the place over too.  A few bottles of wine, some good food, a empty slate of a t-shirt to be creative on. 

When I was a kid my Mom would throw us tie-dye parties.  She would create a few vats of dye.  We would each get a t-shirt and rubberbands.  We'd each wrap the t-shirt randomly with rubberbands.  The dye would not go through the rubberbands so that would be the white area.  We'd dry them and then she'd wash them to set.  At Hiho it is similar in concept but here you use wax and brushes,  Lots more professional. 

Great concept for a store.  Don't be surprised to see Hiho take this show on the road.