Nabeel Alamgir of Lunchbox & Arnold Byun and Stephanie Loo of With Warm Welcome
This week host Eli Kulp has a bonus episode! Listen in as he speaks with founders of two companies innovating the food/restaurant industry.
This week host Eli Kulp has a bonus episode! Listen in as he speaks with founders of two companies innovating the food/restaurant industry.
First, he speaks with Nabeel Alamgir, whose company, Lunchbox, provides restaurants with the tools and tech to get off the predatory third-party apps and reclaim their digital sales and direct to consumer ordering.
Next, Eli interviews Arnold Byun and Stephanie Loo of With Warm Welcome, a community-driven, grassroots organization amplifying Asian American chefs, restaurateurs, and founders through podcasts, pop-ups, and creative endeavors.
More info at:
Nabeel Alamgir of Lunchbox & Arnold Byun and Stephanie Loo of With Warm Welcome
Eli Kulp: [00:00:00] Hey Chef radio listeners at this point, you know, that singer equipment is now a sponsor of the chef radio podcast, which is awesome. But now they decided throughout an amazing offer is exclusively for all you chefs and restaurant folks listening right now. So here's the. You'll get half off your first order when you create an account with singer this summer, any order up to $500.
So now through the end of July only, you'll get 50% off the initial order. Amazing. Right? So to learn more, visit singer equipment.com forward slash podcast chef to claim this offer. And while you're there, sign up for updates from a Philadelphia's number one restaurant, supplier, senior equipment.
everyone. It's Eli. Welcome back to the chef radio podcast. This week is I would say a bonus episode. We're going in a slightly different direction than normal two separate podcasts. We'll be in this one podcast. First off, we're going to be talking about. Nabeel album gear he's from lunchbox. Lunchbox provides restaurants with the tools and tech to get off the predatory third party apps.
And it really lets them reclaim their digital sales and direct to consumer ordering kind of like the old days, right. Where they call the restaurant delivery guy would take it. Well, this is similar to that, but in a new, more, high-tech more efficient way. So if your restaurant does a lot of takeout, you're going to want to listen to this one.
Not only are these third party apps cutting into your profits, but they're also not paying delivery drivers, a livable wage, which makes them rely on tips from the customer, which may or may not even pay for the cost of the delivery. You hear a lot of stories out there from delivery drivers who are so frustrated because you know, these companies, they don't pay them much.
Dylan pay them a couple of bucks per delivery. And then, you know, they might not even get a tip. And if they're driving, you know, long distance, that doesn't even make sense for them. So while these apps like DoorDash, Uber eats and caviar, they've made it very convenient for the customer to order. They are wreaking havoc on restaurants, profits, as well as the people that are delivering it, which are often the most vulnerable of our population.
So the Beal is a super driven guy, super passionate. It was a great entrepreneur, please. Also an immigrant from Bangladesh who also spent time in Kuwait growing up and found his way to a story of Queens where one of his first jobs was busing tables at a restaurant called bear burger. So if you're up in New York, you might recognize that.
And eventually he worked his way up to VP of marketing. His story is one of resilience and passion, which you will definitely want to hear. Secondly on the second half of this podcast, we're going to be talking with Arnold as well as Stephanie's lieu of with warm. Welcome with warm welcome is a community driven grassroots organization that amplifies and humanizes Asian American chefs, restaurant tours, and founders by producing podcasts, programming, experiential projects, and crafting meaningful collaborations.
One of their amazing collaborations, which is coming right here to Philadelphia. And we're going to be talking about today is what they're calling the Baker's box. Which you can sign up by the way right now, but spots are limited. So once you hear this podcast, you want to run and make sure you sign up.
So anyways, they've done this in New York and Chicago, and like I said, now they're bringing it right here to Philly. So what is this thing they're calling the Baker's box. You're probably asking yourself, well, what it is is a really a delicious medium for Asian-American pastry chefs and bakers to share the stories of these talented individuals who are creating their own paths forward in the culinary world.
All you have to do is just go to their website, which is with warm welcome.com and you will immediately start salivating and signing up for this ridiculous pace. Your box. The pictures are amazing. I can't wait to see. You know, these patients shots right here in Philadelphia put together because it's going to be out of this world.
And, um, you know, it's for a great cause. You know, we've all seen this sort of rise and, and hatred in our country, especially towards Asian Americans since COVID hit. And you know, that really wasn't their, their reason for doing this originally. But obviously it really fits in and you know what Arnold has done up there in New York and creating this, you know, he's a hospitality professional that just wants to see, you know, this credit given to Asian Americans, Patriot chefs out there.
So give it a listen because these are both very super relevant solutions to problems that our society faces as well as restaurants themselves. And as always thank you for listing. And if you like what you're hearing, please leave a review because it really helps more than satisfied. All right, everyone.
Enjoy the podcast and have an awesome day.
This s the chef radio podcast. Each week. Groundbreaking chef talks, the chef talks a chef, cooking, hospitality environment food. Is that really what it stands for? I never really knew that Liberty is straight from the minds of the people who shaped the way we eat. It had to believe in the possibility of food over going to discuss these talks, these ideas, and more on the chef radio outcast.
Welcome to the chef radio podcast. It's a, it's a pleasure to meet you. I love your story. I love everything I'm reading about you. I'm stoked to be able to sit in front of you. Uh, even though you're coming from New York and I'm here in Philly. Are you, are you in New York right now?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:06:26] I'm in, I'm in Queens, New York right
Eli Kulp: [00:06:27] now, Queens.
There you go. Is that where you grew up?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:06:31] That's where I grew up. That's where I first came here, like into the country. That's right. Came and I'm, I've lived here since right next to where we're not as grew up. I don't know him at all. He's just an investor, but I like to share that part. There you go. Uh, increases my street street grant.
Eli Kulp: [00:06:45] All right, nausea. Um, so I want to give a little bit of the background and you correct me. If anything comes up that I'm not saying correctly, you're born in Bangladesh and then you were partially raised in Kuwait. And then at seven years old, you came to New York as a teen, a 15, 15, a little bit later. So at 15 you came to New York over the last 20 years or so.
You've gone from a kid who probably was not so confident in, I can imagine not confident, but yet you had to learn everything about living in New York and, and sort of the, the culture and everything. What's that story like? What's that journey.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:07:31] Yeah. Um, you know, I came here at 15 and the next day we get here, I have to go to high school for freshman year and, and I don't speak English.
So, uh, this is it's as scary as it gets and I'm in ESL, but I'm also in some regular classes and it's fast paced. It's, it's scary. It's like a different world right now. I'm a shy kid. I'm super shy. I am super quiet. I like to sit in the back of the class. Um, and then something happens in a year. I absorb as much as I can.
Uh, and I realized that. I got lucky. I wanted a lot of, uh, if you can come anywhere in the U S and transition better as Queens, you know, more languages spoken here than anywhere else. And it's just, it's a great place. It's everyone is new here. And when everyone is Neal, no one cares. You have the newest kid, you're going to be all news very quickly.
And that's what I was looking for. I want to do a similarly, I want to do a job. I want to do be a part of this. And it became so natural. And I started watching a lot of mafia movies. Okay. Scorsese movies. Yeah. So I use my hands a lot and I'm threatening people all the time and I'm speaking faster than I'm supposed to, and I'm picking up English.
And I finally learned some English and I love it. Like if something happens, like something just clicks, like, like a switch. Goes off. And I become this person that I'm so excited to be, which is I test out everything I'm in every club. I mean, talking to every teachers, I'm asking every question, I'm emailing people who are big deals.
I'm trying to, I'm just, I have nothing to do. It was because I grew up with nothing. My dad was a cab driver. Mom was a Dunkin' worker. So I'm shooting on all I'm, I'm finding up on all cylinders and I'm trying everything. And at 17, I get a job in the restaurant industry, and that was the best thing. What was that restaurant?
It's a restaurant I'm actually four blocks away from right now. Korea, Queens. It's called Bareburger. We have Philly at the time. It was 2009 when I was 17. It was our first location and I was a bus boy and, and I met the CEO of the company hit. He had one location and I fell in love with the location. I fell in love with the industry.
I fell in love with. Hospitality. And I've been in this industry since, and I'm 29 now. So everything I know is food and everything I know is it's just insight and the inner workings of being a restaurant tour, which is, it's just amazing. It's an incredible, if you can do restaurants, you can do anything.
If you can run in the kitchen or if you can run it from us, every other job like tech, like this is a joke, this is a walk into a pot.
Eli Kulp: [00:10:17] Nice, nice. That's cool. Yeah. Restaurants definitely, uh, put you through, uh, the, uh, the, the garlic quickly. You learn, you learn,
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:10:28] you know, all about
Eli Kulp: [00:10:29] that. Yeah, absolutely. So why, w w the reason why we're here today, it's because you're doing something really cool.
You've started, uh, you started a few companies, right? And I wanna talk a little bit about that journey as well, but it led you to where you are today, and you have an incredible thing going on. You started a company called lunchbox. Tell us about lunchbox and sort of what the impetus was and what you're trying to accomplish.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:10:59] So remember that job I got as a bus boy. Yeah. Uh, I stayed there for a decade and I worked every job and we opened 50 location in five countries and I love it. And I eventually become a CMO. Uh, so I'm leading marketing technology. And I remember in 2019, we cut a check for $6 million that year in total to grub hub and our chef, you know, how many restaurants that can open with $6 million and you know, how many people we can employ with $6 million.
I wanted to go back to my roots, which is, which is be scared again. Uh, you know, when you work in the same job for 10 years, even though the role keeps changing every month and is growing, I know things was, things were nice. Things became nice and great, and everything was fine. I retired my family, my parents, and I wanted to go ahead and challenge myself again.
And I also want anything else. The impetus for this was I wanted to go. Get back to the roots of one. We had one restaurant and then when we had those, you know, it was still early scrappy days when delivery was so busy, you went and delivered something, you jumped on a bike or walked somewhere and delivered to yourself.
And, and when we saw what Grova was doing to us, we said that doesn't make any sense. Right. That that doesn't seem right. Like, why don't we just do it ourselves? How hard could it be? Absolutely. Right. What we realized was, yeah, we realized was that it wasn't that hard. They made it super complicated and food tech is a nice buzz word.
Tech food has no representation in food. Tech is a bunch of people in Silicon valley, running into show and telling us all we need. Everyone is a hundred bucks here. 200 bucks there, 15% here, 30% there, by the end of it, you're a hell doing nothing but running a business called can clocking out. He thought you started a business to go out and serve for your community.
Open up a beautiful restaurant and hire your friends and run a restaurant. And then you realize that you were just working for Bravo and we wanted to fix that. And that's why we started
Eli Kulp: [00:12:49] a lunchbox. So with bear burger and all the locations, they took $6 million in fees in one year.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:12:58] That a year, just in a year.
Yeah, just in gruff up, the fees are crazy. Right. You know how the margins for running a restaurant. Yeah, the margins are in single digits. You have to get 15 to 30% to grub hub when an order comes in from them. So what are you left with? You're not left with much. And the only reason we do it, two, two reasons we do it for two reasons.
One, we don't get it right. Most of our sales were a dine-in and only 30% was delivery or something like that. And we're like, oh, most of it is pick up somewhere delivery. It's not that bad. It's a discovery channel. And that's second reason. It's a discovery channel. Hopefully people will come and dine in, but the pandemic made everything clear.
The only people who survive are the people who invested in tech and everyone else died. And 110,000 restaurants died in the last year. Mostly mom and pops as some beat people who needed it the most and had the least technology. So we wanted to go ahead and bring equity in
Eli Kulp: [00:13:50] Plainfield. Nice. So what do you, what have you done?
What, tell us about it.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:13:56] Yeah, so we to launch a lunchbox, we started in February, 2019. We signed our first customers in New York, a couple of them, we went out to raise money because you need money to, you know, go ahead and run a business. We got 72 investor rejections and after 72 in venture investor projection, 73rd said, fine.
We'll invest. So that year at the end of that, a year after nine months of prime, we raised some capital. We went to market and we grew 700% during the pandemic. We grew 700% during a pandemic. We tried to help as many restaurants as you could. And we raised a series a for 20 million, just a couple of months ago from a combo of great investors.
Now we're in 30 states. We have thousands of restaurants. We are helping them do what Panera, Chipotle and McDonald's does. We're helping them with technology innovation, ordering delivery. We're also helping them do things like order from the table from your fault, because labor is so hard to get that labor right now.
Why does that have to be something only McDonald's and Chipola has, you can have a, to let us make all of those things digestible for you. And that's what we're doing right now. And on the side, we also started a nonprofit called helped me. Dot org. We have over a hundred thousand restaurants there where you can order directly from any of these restaurants.
We don't make any money on it. It's just consolidating and getting everyone together on one system. So we can go ahead and send love and send orders directly to there's no, there's no fee and all that profitable. Yeah. Okay. And we raised a million dollars in charity there, and I think that's good karma on what's helping our business grow.
Uh, we, we got, whenever we don't know what to do, we just get busy and build things or do something and there you go. And hopefully something sticks.
Eli Kulp: [00:15:37] That's great. So the idea behind lunchbox is that you're going to help restaurants not have to still still do what they do would take out, but effectively eliminate or reduce the fees greatly.
How are you doing that?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:15:57] Yes. So the way we're doing that is we want to charge a restaurant, a flat fee. We don't want to charge. 30% of their, uh, whatever they make us. We don't think that makes sense. We think what makes sense is you pay us in four or five orders. Like our cost should be around four or five orders, like a couple of hundred bucks, right?
Let's say, let's say w we cost you $200 per restaurant per month. And you have a app and web and engagement system that is just as savvy as what a McDonald's has. Right. And we're also going to go and actively work on taking all your brow hub door dash holders, and we're going to work on converting them to have them come directly from your system.
Right. So we're going to go ahead and be your external marketing team and your external technology team. And that's how we'll go ahead and convert direct sales, most restaurants around town. Percent or 15% of all their digital orders directly, our restaurants do 48 to 52% orders directly. And that's what we want.
We want our restaurants to do half their orders that are digital directly from their website, because two things that happen, one is they're much more profitable. Like they're four times more profitable. Right. And number two, you can now collect data on them. You don't get any data on the GrubHub waters.
So that's how we help
Eli Kulp: [00:17:17] restaurants. Okay, nice. So you're charging a fee, a flat fee, which is smart, right? So that way restaurants can plan for it. They can budget for it. They know it, they know what the cost upfront is. Are you also doing delivery or this only for pickup? Yes.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:17:34] Deliver careers around the country.
Most people don't want to do their own delivery. Like restaurant tours are at a place where they're like, Hey, listen, we actually did the math. Uh, it doesn't, it's not profitable for us to do the delivery. So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and put it out there. And recently the news came on at Panera.
I just decided it didn't no longer going to do their own delivery, which is a big deal because they were always doing their own delivery. So the math is clear, which is don't do your own delivery. Try to go ahead and push it out. Uh, so that's what we do. We work with careers around the country. They could be drivers of DoorDash, Uber eats.
They could be drivers to have really, or other third-party companies, someone would come and pick it up. And we go ahead and make sure restaurants don't have to worry about
Eli Kulp: [00:18:22] that. Okay. So you you're, you're tapping into this already in place network of couriers, uh, to help get the food to the customer, which is, which is incredible.
I mean, just to see how that's exploded in itself, you know, this whole industry that it was already getting large, but COVID propelled it. A thousand fold and into the future, from what anybody thought it was, what cities are you in? People in Philadelphia, or you listen to this or New York, how do they, how do they find you?
Like where do they go to order? How do they do it? I know you have a really beautiful app that you guys have called citizen go. And so, so how, how does that work? How do people find it? So
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:19:08] if we chef what's your favorite restaurant in Philly,
right?
Eli Kulp: [00:19:13] Uh, let's see. I would order from federal donuts. Let's say
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:19:18] federal donuts.
If we did our job, right, we don't exist. We don't be, you don't look for us. You look for federal donuts. When you go to federal donuts website or on you look for them on the app store, they're branded app or web ordering that will look immaculate and we'll deliver the food to you in 20 minutes. That will be powered by us.
But it will look very different for each of the restaurants we build it for. So don't look. Yeah. So don't look for us, look for restaurants and go to the restaurants, websites, and order from them directly. And it doesn't have to be lunchbox. There's a lot of awesome competitors. We have out there just as profitable and what I urge people to do.
And I know it's hard to go to the restaurant website and not go and grab a door dash. There's enough people there. If you care about your local restaurants, I'll just go on their website directly. And some of them hopefully are powered by lunch spots.
Eli Kulp: [00:20:10] Yeah. And that's the thing. I think that's where. The convenience factor of touching an app, and then it telling you where you want to, you know, what do I feel like you need?
Right. And we scroll through or is it okay? All right. This catches my eye. All right. I guess I'll do sushi tonight. You know, the convenience factor and the way that we've actually, somehow as humans have been okay with essentially charging $15 to get a $15 item delivered to your house, uh, for the convenience factor.
And these companies in Silicon valley have, have almost made it too easy. How do you, how do you, how do we combat that as an industry? Because it is, it is predatorial and it feels that way. And for restaurants to kind of shake this mentality, like, okay, even big tech is somehow infiltrated and almost we blindly walked into this issue.
Because we felt it was necessary to be competitive. How do we change that mentality? Yeah,
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:21:14] no, absolutely great question. And there's a couple of ways to do that. And you've seen this already, chef you've ordered from places and they say, Hey, they put a card in there, say order from us, our website next time directly.
Uh, that's uh, the smallest example of that, I think some of it falls on tech companies. We need to make sure the product is simple. It's priced properly. It's easy contract where you can opt in and opt out very quickly. And it's not an arm and a leg to go ahead and get something standing. I think it's under restaurants for them to tell their story for them to make the ask for them, to tell their community, Hey, this is what we would like to do.
And also to tell your story, not just in your store, but in your build your digital storefront as well, the best brands out there have a digital storefront, like the sweet green of the world. Like, but, but that shouldn't be limited just to Sweetgreen. It could be. You as well, continuing to tell your story online, uh, and telling your community on what you'd like from them.
70% of guests will order from me directly if you ask them to, right. So why not make that ask and also add value, right? If you're going to lose 30% on DoorDash or GrubHub, why not give some offers on your own system that makes it more compelling, right? If I am a regular edit place, I sometimes get a drink on the house that is very natural.
Why not do that for your regulars digitally as well, uh, with lunchbox or any of our competitors, because you certainly can build that reputation online. Right? And the third one is on technology provided itself as well on us. And again, converting those third party sales, but discovery channels, even though they don't give us data, we can find, still find them on Facebook and Instagram and track them and move them because they already bought something.
Okay doing that, but that's not on the restaurant tours. You're too busy to do that. Right. That's on us to teach them and help them do that. Uh, because they're not sharing data with us, but they do share data with Starbucks and shake, check the groups that needed the least. Right. So those are some of the ways to go and challenge that, uh, the current
Eli Kulp: [00:23:18] system.
Yeah, I think one way I use grub hub or whatever is to sometimes find the restaurant that I want to eat or the food that I want to eat. But then when I do I go to their website or I call the restaurant directly and sort of bypass that because so many times it's easier to navigate through the menu on these online platforms rather than the actual.
Restaurant's website because too often the website is clunky. It's not smooth. It's not clear, you know, there's no big bright order here button. It's like, you have to find the menu. Then at the bottom of the menu, it says, you know, order here. And then you've got to put in new information and your credit card.
And
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:24:01] I told him
Eli Kulp: [00:24:02] that. So I think, I think doing what you're doing, which is streamlined in the same idea and putting the same sort of motions that you go through for a third-party app makes, makes a lot of sense. Do build
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:24:16] things, has communities too, you know, maybe lunchbox can build an online ordering system, like just like grub hub for all restaurants to live on together and make it free.
Right? Like, why not do that? Like, isn't that our response, if we're more successful, isn't that our responsibility to do that. Right? Isn't that our responsibility to go and build that. Put that out there we did that. It would help main street.com. Why not do that again, but better. And so a one place where everyone can order from, and I think that's what we're going to do, chef.
That's what we're working on in the background. And that's what we have to do as a tech community, which is like, we can either go ahead and start the company mission-based and not sell our stolen, continue on that medication. Or we can go ahead and find a middle ground where we make money. And the restaurant we serve make money as blood because ultimately a hundred thousand restaurants closing, what's the point, right?
Why does it like, what are we like? Who are we serving? And why does it matter if we're not building better tech that can actually help these restaurants? Not only survive, but thrive during a pandemic and beyond
Eli Kulp: [00:25:19] this. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. The thought process that you have, uh, of, of blending these two sort of ideas is, is a, is what a lot of companies are doing now.
And, you know, realizing that the human capital is just as important as the monetary. You know, not only are you going to, um, create fans of your product by doing that and that trust factor, I think you're going to have a better chance at longterm success, because if you're doing right by your customers, they're going to do right by you.
And just like you said, if you're a regular somewhere, maybe you get a free drink every once in a while to kind of show the appreciation that this is the same thing as reciprocal. So I liked the way you're thinking, how are you growing this? And how long, what, what can you customers do to kind of help you, you know, continue to grow so that we can relieve independent restaurants, including my restaurants from this, what feels like a parasitic relationship with these third party systems?
Number
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:26:26] one, something that all restaurants can do. Is make sure they have something on their website that is online, their own online ring. It's no longer as complicated or as ugly or as clunky or as expensive as it needs to be. Okay. Uh, like there's so many great out there. If you have only one location, China is a great example.
99 bucks, not a super hassle-free putting on your system. Right. There's a lot of competitors out there similar to that. Okay. And that's important. It's like opening a restaurant, like no opening a restaurant. Sometimes you're packed on first day and sometimes you'll work your way up there to be a packed room.
And it takes six months. It takes three months and it's not, you don't have that honeymoon period. And I've opened restaurants that are both types, and I'm sure you have to, right. And maybe not, maybe your, I think your restaurants are always packed. Uh, but, uh, we will certainly over restaurants that were empty for a while and we had to build momentum.
And this is similar. You have to build momentum, something has to exist. The second way you can help us directly is if you have a amazing restaurant or restaurant or that have amazing mission, amazing values and brand, and they, you know, they have something to tell and they want to build a digital store.
Send them our way. We would love to talk to them. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to build those visual storefronts. They need to be, they don't come with a 10, 10 year real estate timeframe. If you will, they can be built overnight. And we can do that in a very, very, uh, efficient and innovative manner.
So I think those two things and third audit directly or directly from favorite restaurants go pick up the food because on the air we're stuck at home or go get some air. So those are the three ask.
Eli Kulp: [00:28:05] Very cool. Now you partnered with a group called C3. What is that relationship and how, how is that helping you kind of reached that the grid, the bigger audience that you're trying to reach.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:28:20] So great partner of ours and, you know, they are trying to solve for what you mentioned earlier, which is, um, there's so much convenience in being those on those third-party apps. You get to explore, you have to mix and match. You get to decide who you want. So we looked at. So Sam Nazarian, who is the founder of SB, started that big deal in the food world.
Obviously he wanted to go ahead and create virtual food ALS locations that will deliver food, but 10, 20 locations, a virtual locations. And he also wanted to let customers pick and choose. So you could order some Chinese and maybe you and I are hanging out who can not, as I'm Chinese I'll order some burgers, it comes in the same cart.
Okay. So that's what we built with Sam and C3. We build a virtual food hall where you can mix and match. And
Eli Kulp: [00:29:14] even though they're from different restaurants.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:29:16] Yeah. Okay. Exciting. Because like Philly can be a customer who does that. It Philly you can decide, Hey, we're going to be like, there's a one street on Philly food roll.
We'll get all these restaurants up on this one app. So we can do this together and have network effect together.
Eli Kulp: [00:29:34] Oh. So you, you could go to. Let's say a highly dense area of restaurants in the city. And you know, let's say you get 10 or 15 restaurants that are within a certain proximity of each other so that a carrier could pop over and get the burger, get the, get the pizza and get the Chinese food and then deliver it within relatively small, a short, uh, timeframe.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:30:00] Yeah, absolutely. And what that does it that I can make that will not only make it easier for restaurants to have their own delivery drivers for that community. They'll not only have you guys all compete and bring customers together. You're not in the price is not giving away 30% because you're doing that on GrubHub anyways.
Why not do it in a more affordable manner and all come together and build something together?
Eli Kulp: [00:30:23] Yeah. So as, as you're, as you're building your platform more with lunchbox, what have been the most difficult. Barriers for you? What, what are the challenges that you've faced and how have you been able to kind of navigate those challenges?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:30:43] Challenges, not knowing what not knowing what I don't know. Right. Uh, like the company is growing really quickly and I have to be a great leader and I have to be a great leader every day. And I have to make sure I level up and I have level of every three months, everything I did up until this point I have to stop doing, because everything I did up to this point is do whatever that needs to be done.
If I continue doing that. Now, if I didn't do that before I was a bad CEO, if I continue doing that, I'm a bad CEO. Now, right now I have to do the opposite, which is I have to go in and build an awesome team around those, which we did. And they have to go ahead and lead the way so it can scale. That's all what we're, hyper-focused on.
That's where I'm learning. It's scary too. Like I'm 29 I'm I have the stamina to do a lot of it. Why do I want to give it up right now? I don't. Right. But at the same time, I'm expected to be a much more seasoned and mature CEO. If I am to go ahead and do a good job and I have to do that today, I don't get to learn that over the next 20 years, like other great CEOs.
Do I have to learn that today? And the way you do that is just hire amazing leaders. And that's been challenging. That's been rewarding. And that's what we've done in the last three months, but it was, it was painful. I grew up more in the last three months, then the last three years it was, it was, it was tough and fun and I'm just excited to build a leadership
Eli Kulp: [00:32:02] team.
That's cool. How many, uh, how many do you have now on your team? We have one 20 people total. Wow. Okay. Congratulations on that. Thank you. What is some advice that you would give to a young entrepreneur right now? Maybe thinking. Food and technology and you know where we are in today's world with that, because we're in a really weird place right now with, with how restaurants are having to survive.
What would be a, uh, sort of a takeaway that you've had over the last three months, or even, even go back a little further that says, I believe restaurants are right here right now, what they need? What, what would you say?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:32:41] First thing I'd say is don't do it. Don't start a restaurant or don't start a tech company.
That's the first thing I'd say it's a lot of work. No need don't do it. But the second thing I'd say is if you going to do it and don't worry about all the things you don't know, those are your weaknesses. Those are also your strengths. It's your strength. Not to know how companies in Silicon valley operate is a weakness, but it's also a strength.
You can go ahead and look at it from a different vantage point of view. One that is more fair. The customers. So yeah, like everything, you know, about running a restaurant, you don't have to like innovation doesn't happen when you do better. Of what you're doing is when innovation happens, when you say, why can't we just do something completely different?
You know, why can we build a company that never deals build a resonance run that never has to deal with a pandemic? Again, half the sales are dining, exactly. Half are delivery. And why can't we deliver things that have never been delivered? Why does a pandemic afternoon force us to do it? You know, everyone's second credit card.
Why do we have to, why not take cash? Right? You can challenge yourself and ask questions. You've never asked because you sometimes don't know how the world works and how the industry works. Right? You're not, you're
Eli Kulp: [00:33:52] not, you're not subscribing to that sort of dogma. That's there. That's telling you that this is how it works.
You're actually exactly. It's almost nice to have that sort of innocent ignorance, uh, when going into something, because. You're not thinking, oh, it has to be done this way, or I have to use this format or, or this sort of language. You actually can build that language as you're, as you're going now, building something as you're going, like you are now, it feels like you're putting together the parachute as you're dropping.
Right. How do you manage that stress and those expectations from your investors? You know, at the age of 29, you've, you've obviously been exposed to a good leadership practices and growth, and you've been down this road a little bit now, you're, you're more on the tech side Dow then sort of the, the sort of customer facing side, like what's, what's the plan like, you know, you've got investor pressure, you've got, uh, success, pressure, your own pressures that you put on yourself.
How do you manage all those different pressures?
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:34:50] There's a couple of different ways. I manage it once perspective that none of this really matters that much. It's all a game I've defined to make myself feel important and make it feel more meaningful. Right? One is perspective, which is at the end of the health and family are the most important things.
And you can go out and roll back to those two when everything else has complete. So perspective is one second is really good habits. I'm super disciplined habits. I do every day in a meditation affirmation, uh, 30 minutes of cardio, like all the things I do if I don't do them, if I somehow forgot some of them, if their room is not super clean, I will like freak out and I'll not freak out because the room is not clean.
I'll freak out because work is chaos. Everything else needs to be as simplified as possible and as disciplined as possible, I don't get to choose how work ends up, but I get to choose how I end my day and how we start by day. Discipline is second and third is we're from the restaurant industry. This is nothing.
This is whatever, like it's fine. W if you can do Friday nights at a busy restaurant, you can do this. This is in front of a desk. This is less heat. This is. A different kind of challenge, but this is the one I wanted. This is the one I dreamed up and wished for. So I'm here now. Why, why not
Eli Kulp: [00:36:06] deal with it?
That's great, man. I think that's a good perspective and yeah, you're right. You know, at the end of the day, you know, that drop tray of food or, you know, the, uh, the, the customer that sent them back their food twice, or, you know, the other day, it's, it's not a big deal. And often we let it kind of, sort of ruin our day, but you know this, and there's like you said, family and health, two most important things in life, keep that perspective.
And, um, you know, you're going to do great, man. I, I love what you're doing. How can people find out more about what you are and, and, and sort of how to support what you do.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:36:42] The lunchbox out IO or follow us on any of the social. Uh, we're constantly out there not only promoting our product, which we do, or we can be slimy salespeople, but more importantly, we're all assigned with the community in the restaurant industry at large.
So find us on lunchbox.io or any of our social pages.
Eli Kulp: [00:36:57] From there. A restaurant can reach out to you, talk to you about sort of how you can help them manage their online, ordering better. Absolutely.
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:37:05] We all will help you with any your entire delivery ordering, uh, your entire digital commerce stack. We'll help you with the whole nine yards.
Eli Kulp: [00:37:12] Awesome. This has been great. Thank you so much for your time and best of luck. And I look forward to seeing you guys, uh, succeed. This is a great way for, for restaurants to kind of break the chains of this predatory sort of environment we have with these third party apps. I
Nabeel Alamgir: [00:37:31] love it. Thank you so much for bringing attention to this topic.
Eli Kulp: [00:37:34] I appreciate it. I keep doing great things and, uh, stay disciplined.
Hey everyone. You've heard me talk a lot about Maxwell McKinney, our fantastic partners here at chef radio. They represent some of the most important indispensable pieces of equipment that we have our industry today. And you've heard us talk about those here. I was lucky enough to be invited to the Drexel food lab by our friend, Matt McKinney, to show us the newest technology.
That's really changing the way the chefs think about cooking. I'm talking about the UNUC chef top oven and the Ooh Knox. Evero AKA the hot fridge. First. Let's talk about the incredible technology of the UNUC chef top of it. First of all, you can. Think of this as a typical oven that we have known for hundreds of years, I'm done with the ones you turn on, a flame goes up and it cooks at a temperature you need, right?
Rather, you should think of this as an iPhone or computer for your kitchen. That has incredible technologies that have been developed at their research center in Italy technologies like adaptive cooking, which measures the temperature and the amount of food in the cabin and guarantees perfect cooking in all conditions, regardless of the number of trays placed in that cab.
And then there's the climb you Luxe technology that measures the degree of humidity and precisely regulates it to achieve whatever you need. So if you want to have a proofer, Towson bread in there, proof it, it will be perfect if you want to smoke some meat in it. No problem. You have a very high-tech smoker just by adding wood chips, to the spoken tray.
And it's, it's that easy. You need to clean it. It just hit a button and it will be sparkling clean in minutes. There are a lot of combi ovens on the market and they're all really good, but I'll have to say none of them have blown my mind like this one, these others turned traditional cooking methods on their head.
I'm telling you I was like sitting there. This doesn't make sense, but seriously, the other one that really got me was , which is sort of known as a hot fridge, which doesn't make sense again, but just think of the immense amount of applications that this is good for, right. Especially in commercial and institutional cooking, the technology actually vacuum seals, special hotel pans, and keeps them at the optimum temperature for service for long periods of time.
Like I said, 72 hours. Can you believe that is craziness? Best way to see it head over to the Drexel food lab by contacting our friend, Matt McKinney, uh, he'll hook you up. Also there's chef, uh, Knox has her own chef that drives around in a van that can unload his oven, bring it right into your kitchen.
He'll demonstrate it with your products, you know, with your meat, with your chicken, whatever it is, you can see it in real time. Go check it out at www dot dot com. That's U N O x.com or call or text Matt at two one five. 5 1 4 8 3 1 0. To see how this incredible technology can help your kitchen today.
All right. Hope you enjoyed this one with Nabeel. You know, it was a great conversation, you know, he's got a really, uh, just a lot of great things to sort of think about, and he's just a real mover and shaker. So, uh, up next again, we have Arnold and Stephanie who are both coming really to Philadelphia with this Baker's box, which you're going to want to hear about.
So hope you enjoyed it.
music: [00:41:02] Let's do it.
Eli Kulp: [00:41:07] Hi everybody. Welcome back to the chef radio podcast. I'm Eli. I'm here with Stephanie Lou and . This is more, this is kind of a unique podcast in the sense that this is a really about somebodies history, their background, and their career and their journey. We're talking about a very specific thing today and sort of the name of it.
What we're talking about, the focus is called with warm welcome. And would that be said, uh, hello, Stephanie. Hello, Arnold. How are you guys today?
Stephanie Loo: [00:41:36] Hey, chefy Lee. Thanks so much for having us on the chef radio podcast. Really excited to
Arnold Byun: [00:41:39] be here,
Eli Kulp: [00:41:42] Arnold, how are you?
Arnold Byun: [00:41:44] I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. Thanks for having
Eli Kulp: [00:41:46] us.
This is sort of a response to an email that I received from Stephanie and Stephanie used to work for us at the restaurant. She sort of cut her teeth, so to speak as, as a student, uh, you were at Penn, right? What was the degree that you were working that you, that you work
Stephanie Loo: [00:42:05] towards? Yeah, so I was in Philly from 2014, through 2018.
I graduated from Wharton, undergrad, and you know, it got to know Ellen. I worked with Sam Kincade in the pastry kitchen at four and high street on market all four years that I was in school. So yeah, just have such a great fondness for working with you chef and, um, everyone else I'm at high street hospitality
Arnold Byun: [00:42:27] group.
Eli Kulp: [00:42:28] Yeah. That's that's fantastic. And do you have a, you sort of have more front of the house background in restaurants, so you, and you started, you said you started as a sort of dishwasher in your father's restaurant and then you sort of made your way to the front of the house. Tell us a little bit about that a little bit.
Arnold Byun: [00:42:46] It's it's been a long time coming. It's been a long journey, but, um, I guess kind of my timeline is similar to Stephanie. So I moved to New York in 2013 to go to school at NYU from 2013 to 2018. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went to, it was, it was interesting because I grew up in the states and then I actually went back to Korea for high school.
So I had this like reverse culture shock. Yeah. I bet. You know, it was pretty, it was pretty tough at the time, but anyways. Yeah. And then I came to New York for school in 2013 and then, uh, kind of worked all over the city. Uh, namely, uh, I started my career at Morimoto with Steven Starr. And then I kind of moved on to, um, management Myers.
I started at David bullae, so I was an assistant restaurant manager at bullies place when it was still down in Tribeca, the flagship. Um, and then I worked at haka sawn in times square, terrible location, terrible location. And then, um, and then I also opened Tacony is Dumbo, which is a public facing restaurant from the sow house team.
And then after that love Madison Park. And most recently I was with a Korean restaurant called Atomics in New York
Eli Kulp: [00:44:00] city. Fantastic. Yeah. Okay, great. So I mentioned this project that you're working on, uh, with warm welcome. I know this is like community-driven grassroot organization and you, and you're really trying to amplify.
You know, the sort of Asian pastry chefs and sort of what they're doing and making sure that their people are seeing their products and, and really into it are why don't you speak to sort of the origin of this project answer, where it came up and, and sort of, where has it, has it gone now? Because you know, there's been a lot happening within the Asian-American community meal when it comes to, you know, fighting this sort of irrational thinking of hate in our country and, you know, you know, whether it was response to COVID, uh, or other, other reasons people find to hate people tell us that sort of journey with, uh, with warm welcome as far as how it sort of has started and how it's evolved and where you are today.
Arnold Byun: [00:44:58] Yeah, absolutely. So definitely before we get to right now, this current time in America, um, scaling it back. So it was a podcast with unwelcome is still a podcast, but it started as a podcast in October of 2019. And that during that time I was working at Atomics, which is a, the Korean restaurant was telling you about on 30th and park in New York city.
I just kind of had one of those enlightening moments where I, one day I just realized that how cool is it that I'm working for Korean owners? And that this restaurant has two Michelin stars. Like I never thought during my lifetime that I will be working for a Korean two Michelin star restaurant, like that just never entered my mind.
And so for me to be in the passenger seat of this restaurant and see the excellence happen in front of me, I start to look around me and realize that, you know what, we're not alone in this. There's quite a great group of. Asian-American operators, nately New York city. Cause that's what I'm familiar with.
And I realized that there was quite a bit of us, but there wasn't space for us in terms of us telling our stories, owning our narrative and being able to reclaim our cuisine. And so I wanted to provide a platform and the easiest way I thought was a podcast because I thought. You just record something and you publish it and, uh, there you go.
So in my head it seemed easy. Um, little, did I know the amount of work involved, right chef?
Eli Kulp: [00:46:24] Yeah. Listen, I, thankfully I have a team of people that are helping me because people think it's just a quick recording and put it out. There's a lot of editing and there's a lot of background. There's a lot of, you know, uh, rerecording and all that.
So. Yeah. It's, it's not as easy as, as it might seem, uh, seem to be on Facebook in face value.
Arnold Byun: [00:46:45] So, yeah, so that's what I thought initially going into it. But so I started recording and inviting Asian-American chefs and Mr. Tours that I thought were next generation. And what I mean by next generation are people that are around kind of my age, mid, mid twenties, late twenties, early thirties, they're all really young, but you know, we're all really educated.
We've, we've gone to college, we speak English obviously. And I think we are able to kind of bridge the gaps that existed from our previous generation, because a lot of our parents don't really speak English very well. And so for us to be able to articulate our thoughts and then be able to take that into the cooking that we grew up with, we're seeing this modernization of Chinese food, Korean food, Japanese food.
And so, yeah. And so it's, it's just been. That started as a podcast and it's still going strong on that end, but then I guess, to tie it into what we're going to be talking about today, the Baker's box is Baker's box started just in March of this year. So this is around, I want to say three months ago, now it started because again, the whole premise of Witham welcome is to, like you said, amplify Asian, American faces and voices in this industry.
And the biggest box was a response to not really the, um, Asian hate that was happening. But initially it was just purely out of positivity and out of necessity to showcase Asian-American bakers and pastry chefs or females, because March was women's history month. And as we all know on in this room right now, there's a ton of Asian females that are bakers and pastry chefs.
Um, that's something I realized during my time at all these Michelin star restaurants, like I would go to the pastry team. Wait a minute. There was like one white pastry chef and everyone under this person is all Asian. Yeah. And so that's kind of the, the Genesis of the, the Baker's box. I thought that there was, there was plenty of Asian American females that were a pastry chefs and bakers.
Quite frankly, took the leap to ownership because of COVID. Right. So a lot of these sous chefs are very social media savvy. And so we saw the whole DM two order happening. Um, I think Stephanie could speak on this too in a bit, but we saw a boom, uh, perforation of like pastry chefs and bakers that are finally doing what they've always wanted to do, which is run their own business.
And we wanted a way to celebrate that, which is why we created the Baker's box. Um, and then unfortunately during the time in which we were coordinating this myself and Stephanie and a few of the team members that with Hormel com is when we saw just the flood gates open on social media with all these hate crimes and, um, you know, myself, I can't speak on behalf of obviously the entire Asian population, but for me personally, it was very disheartening to see it unfold because it could have been, you know, for me, the first thought was, wow, that could be my grandpa, my grandma.
Right. And it hit really close to home for me. Because I saw my grandparents and basically on my phone and in some way, and this is someone's grandma, right. Um, or grandpa. And so we kind of pivoted a little bit where we, you know, Making money is not important right now with this box. Let's just donate 50% of all the proceeds to an organization called apex for youth, um, which is a nonprofit organization that I personally have worked with since, since I started the podcast, because I love what they do.
Um, but they put their money back into youth programs, uh, leadership programs, mentorship programs with kids that are of Asian heritage that don't have access to education. Um, and so that's kind of how it all began. And then, um, it's evolving into is kind of like a nationwide tour, which we're very excited about.
And with every city, it means it's not 50%, but we still always have a portion of the proceeds go to an Asian-American initiative or nonprofit organization with every box.
Eli Kulp: [00:50:46] Well, let's Stephanie. I want to bring you in here now, the, the, these boxes. So tell the audience sort of what. Like what it is, like what, what they're going to find city to city, kind of what you've seen, uh, as far as the response of, you know, bringing different Asian chefs and pastry chefs and owners into this fold, like, how has that been?
How's that experience been? Because what you're doing is, is essentially creating a sort of logistical nightmare, almost in a lot of ways, but with the greatest of intent. And I know that I'm sure you're getting such amazing responses from these chefs or sous chefs or, you know, whoever it is that you're amplifying over this process.
And then it's a two part thing. And then I want you to finish kind of, how has this experience been over the last few months and seeing this sort of uptake in, um, you know, Hey against Asians or descendants of, you know, you know, Asians in America. So start with that and then finish with the, uh,
Stephanie Loo: [00:51:51] Yeah, definitely.
So, um, each Baker's box that we've done in the cities that we've been in, so first volume was New York and then LA, and then Chicago, this month we'll be in Boston. So we're really excited for that. And each month, um, it's been a box of 18, um, individual desserts. They've all been so unique. Yeah. 18 different desserts.
So yeah, you get quite a spread of a lot of sugar, definitely. But, um, you know, Arnold's sort of the mastermind behind all this and just a lot of intentionality and thought goes into the whole experience, you know, just because it's sort of a grab and go box. We still wanted people to really engage with it and feel that they were connected to the stories of each baker, each pastry chef.
So, you know, when people receive their box, there's a QR code that you scan and it goes to the website and, you know, we provide a bio of each baker. The name of each dessert, the ingredients, things like that. And people have really been enjoying, engaging with that. I was actually one of the participating bakers in the New York box, which was really exciting for me because the way that we thought about it was both established and emerging pastry people.
And so, you know, obviously there's so much talent in New York. For instance, we had Susanna Yoon, she's the chef owner of stick with me sweets and used to be like the head chocolates here at per se. And so she was in that box. Uh, we had a lot of other people who came from the fine dining world, um, as well as people who are just starting out their careers like me.
So, you know, that's been really great in Boston. We have Diane Chang of flower bakery. She's one of our participating acres and, you know, lots of other talent there too. And so, you know, it's really been, I think a community effort, people get. Cited, they tag their friends in the other cities that we're going to in each city.
We've had an amazing group of volunteers, as you can imagine, packaging 18 boxes, a hundred times, you know, wanting them all to look exactly the same and have that great experience requires a lot of labor. So that's been really great. And then I would say the other thing too, is, um, we always have a host location though, you know, a chef or a restaurant or in Philly, it's going to be Ellen, which I think is just so amazing because she's done tremendous work with the one-time project lately and just has done so much for Philly, both as a restaurant server, but also as an Asian American female and, um, you know, being active in that community.
Eli Kulp: [00:54:15] I just wanted to say that for people out there that don't know Ellen know Ellen is, first of all, my friend, my partner in business, we have a lot of you have been together for nine years now and, you know, to see her sort of grow into this. Point person in Philadelphia, or, you know, this leadership role within not just the Asian, uh, sort of community and food, uh, which, which she is, but also just as a, a leader and, and as a, as a, an, a mentor for so many young women that are out there and really taking her experience, because Ellen is unique in the sense that she is sort of single handedly responsible for fork restaurant.
And then, you know, as we grew into other restaurants, you know, she's done so much to, you know, achieve the success that we've we've had. And she's a woman and she's of Asian descent, and she's not doing, you know, she's not doing Asian food, you know what I mean? So she's had to really understand that sort of, that relationship between.
Her background, you know, how people perceive her, you know, uh, as a, as an Asian female and really sort of seeing how the city has embraced her is tremendous. And, you know, she's, she's done so much and I'm honored to be a partner
Arnold Byun: [00:55:39] with her.
Stephanie Loo: [00:55:39] Yeah, no, I think that's a great transition because, um, you know, you're asking how, uh, you know, how I'm thinking about this project being an Asian American.
And I think, um, that for me, you know, someone like Ellen has been a role model mentor for me in the restaurant space, you know, for many years. And so many of these, um, these women and, uh, we've actually expanded and now we do have a couple, um, Pastry chefs that are, that are guys that are participating. Um, but as you know, I think the pastry world tends to be, um, tends to lean very heavily female.
And so, um, it's just been really great, I think for me too, um, I think the biggest benefit has been the community. Just seeing people get really excited about this and then as well as the pastry, you know, as a pastry person, being able to connect with other people in the pastry world who I really look up to and admire.
Um, and yeah, and just seeing a lot of traction around, um, yeah, the amplification of Asian American voices in this space. So, um, you know, I think that's always been Arnold's mission. Um, and everyone on the team with warm welcome, just really wanting to build community and, um, amplify these voices that are often not heard in sort of major media or just, um, you know, in these cities that we're going,
Arnold Byun: [00:56:52] Hey
Eli Kulp: [00:56:52] Arnold, can you speak on the name, uh, with warm welcome kind of what is that where, you know, what was the inspiration on that day?
Arnold Byun: [00:57:01] Yeah, absolutely. So with warm welcome is a name that I came up with. This is actually not autonomous, but when I was at 11 Madison Park. And so is known for creating the welcome conference, which I was a big fan of. So a little bit of inspiration there, but also where I really got it from is the Ritz-Carlton.
So I did an internship at the Ritz Carlton and on day one, they give you a credo card, right? Which is they're like Kool-Aid and you look at it and it says three steps of hospitality or service. It's three steps of service. And so the first step is a warm welcome. Actually it literally says on the credo card, it's like a warm welcome.
And then I think the second step is, uh, anticipating guests needs. And then the third one is fun farewell using the guests name. And so I thought that given that context, wow, how cool is it that a warm welcome is Ritz Carlton's first up a service, but also for me personally, that's how I feel about.
Restaurants as a front of house person. I think it starts with the greeting. It's really how you say things too, right? Like if you go to a restaurant, I was talking to this with a friend of mine, which is when you go to the restaurant, the host is like, oh, we're fully committed tonight. It really depends on how they say it.
It could come off as a complete asshole thing. Like, oh, we're too good for you. Or you say it a different way. Cause like, oh, like we're sorry, but you know, we, we unfortunately can't have this evening or something along those lines. And I think, yeah,
Eli Kulp: [00:58:24] you know, I mean, there's nothing worse. It's like turned away.
Like, you're like, wait, what, what happened is now like, even, even like suggesting other restaurants or, you know, reaching out for, you know, to another restaurant to help find those person, you know, find that, find a place to eat. Like, I don't know. What's wrong with people so crazy. How hard, good hospitality, right.
Oh, it has too hot. Right. You know what I mean? It's just, it's insane. Sometimes nearly you come into a restaurant and you're like, what just
Arnold Byun: [00:58:56] happened?
Eli Kulp: [00:59:01] I'm on your website right now. I'm looking at the video. You guys have these, how you're organizing these books boxes. I'm like, oh my God, this is, this is like, this is like the chocolate box. Yeah. You love to look at the day, which one's, which yeah. Like steroids and on crack. And you know, this isn't, this is
Arnold Byun: [00:59:23] crazy guys.
Crazy operation. Definitely a crazy
Eli Kulp: [00:59:27] beautiful. Beautiful desserts.
Arnold Byun: [00:59:31] Yeah. That's, that's funny. You mentioned a chocolate box because that was the inspiration for those illustrations and the card. Yeah. I mean 10 minutes in the box.
Eli Kulp: [00:59:40] Wow. Yeah, you guys are doing this nice.
Arnold Byun: [00:59:44] No, but you know, like that's, that's kind of like the naming of it, like you said, I think it really comes down to empathy and warmth is just something we want people to feel through the podcast.
But also just the projects that we have is like, that's what, that's the emotion we want to invoke out of people and the welcoming part. It's just like, again, the hospitality aspect of it. And you're probably asking why with warm welcome. The truth is more than welcome was taken. Uh, Instagram was. Warm welcome.com was taken.
So I was like, oh my God, this sucks. I really want to use this name. What should I do? Oh my gosh, what should I do? And I was thinking, and I'm thinking, I'm like, oh, I can add a word in front of it. Yeah. And then I was like
Eli Kulp: [01:00:24] education paying off. Yeah. Yeah.
Arnold Byun: [01:00:26] Finally, no, actually I'm still paying it off. But, uh, the, the width made sense because you know, hospitality, um, should always be a two way street.
You know, it's a dialogue. It's, it's, it's a relationship. And, um, obviously because it was a podcast, I thought it was really cool to have that word with, because it would be like if I had you chef, it'd be like Eli with warm, welcome, you know, Stephanie with warm welcome. And so that's kind of how the name stuck.
And then Instagram was available.com was available. So it was a go, it was a green light and I love alliteration. So with warm welcome three W's. Yeah,
Eli Kulp: [01:01:00] love it. Love it. So if you're listening to this podcast right now, you need to stop what you're doing and go to with warm balkan.com. And you better get the ordering quickly because they're going to be out really, really fast.
Stephanie Loo: [01:01:16] We have sold out very quickly in, in previous cities. So, um, you know, uh, we definitely will be announcing when the boxes are available on talk. Um, and for the Philly one, you know, we're still in the process of curating, um, the 18 bakers. We're really excited about some of the people we have chef Eli. I'm sure, you know, a lot of these people like Carol Hall of okey-dokey donuts, she'll be part of it.
We have Dan Chang of little pop shop. She'll be part of it, Michael tan, ICI macrons, which is also an old city. And actually, you know, a lot of these places are not overtly sort of Asian desserts in Philadelphia. But when we were just doing some outreach and looking into different Asian-American bakers and pastry chefs in Philly, there actually are quite a few.
And so, um, it's been really great to just connect with some of these people. And I think there's going to be a lot of excitement around Philly, especially just having Ellen involved is so great. I mean, for me, It just means a lot to me to have Ellen part of this project and for high street, um, whole high street hospitality group.
So yeah, we're really excited to be coming to Philly. I think it's going to be great. I always say Philly, such a great food city. And I honestly think it's one of the most underrated ones in the country, so really excited to be bringing to Philly.
Arnold Byun: [01:02:32] Oh yeah.
Eli Kulp: [01:02:34] You know, we're, we're really fortunate and it's kind of nice being sort of, you know, sort of in the, uh, in the shadows a little bit, because you got blow up your spot and then everybody knows about it.
So I'm cool with keeping it a little bit quiet. You know what I mean? It's not announced yet when people are able to come and are putting their orders in. Right. When do you think that will be announced and how will people be able to find you guys.
Arnold Byun: [01:03:00] So traditionally, or historically speaking with the last few cities, we've always opened up the reservation is the first week of every month.
So for example, Boston, as we're talking, actually we have one box left to sell, but we open it reservation. Yeah.
Eli Kulp: [01:03:13] Literally one box that's going to be sold.
Arnold Byun: [01:03:18] I'm really stressed, as you could tell. But, uh, Sunday on Sunday, June six is when we opened up the reservations for Boston and Boston pickup is on the 28th of this month.
And so I think just given that pattern for Philadelphia, you can probably expect something that first week of July. And so the way it works is we use talk spelled T O C K. Um, the actual like entire link URL is explore, talk.com backslash with warm welcome. And that's where we take all the pre-orders. And so it's, pre-orders only, um, it's pretty straightforward.
12 to four is like our pickup times. And then you select the time. Do we just do it by the hour? Because we want to stagger the pickup times. We don't want a crowd of people obviously. And so the best way for people to keep in the know or stay in the know is we actually have a newsletter as well that you can sign up to on our website.
As you mentioned home with home, welcome.com, or you can follow us on Instagram with warm welcome. And that's probably the best way to stay in the now. And maybe if you follow chef Eli, we can give him some early access links too. So I should call the chef Eli as well.
Eli Kulp: [01:04:25] Definitely be announcing it. I know that fork and high street, everybody will be blasted out on the platform as well.
So you're, you're, you're doing a hundred per city. That right?
Arnold Byun: [01:04:36] That is correct. I
Eli Kulp: [01:04:37] mean, these aren't, these are not huge desserts Caesar. What, what size, what size in those boxes? That two bites. Yeah, you got
Arnold Byun: [01:04:45] it. It's
Stephanie Loo: [01:04:46] about two and a half by two and a half. All right,
Arnold Byun: [01:04:49] somewhere
Eli Kulp: [01:04:50] in the
Arnold Byun: [01:04:50] middle there. Okay, cool. I'm good.
That was
Eli Kulp: [01:04:51] good. All the wood shop class, I took the, I gotta say the packaging is, is that what you already this packaging for every city?
Arnold Byun: [01:05:05] Yeah. The packaging is actually the store with the packaging is I have another project called Nemo, which is a Korean takeout concept in LA. And I used to use that box for the food that I used to play.
It's actually a Japanese company called Cairo packages. Shout out to Tom. What's up, Tom? He's my boss. He's my book's dealer. He's my box dealer. I don't have many dealers have a box dealer. Yeah. And so he he's really good friends, family, friends with KU package, which is a Japanese company and they started importing it to the states just a few months ago.
So super, super small company, but, um, you know, we love them. It's a hundred percent bamboo wood and it feels really nice cause they do a nice coating on the wood too. It's like a really nice finish and I feel that it's just perfect for what we're doing. It has compartments, but that you saw in the video that we build.
So it's like nine desserts fit into one box. And so each order includes two boxes. So for a total of 18 desserts and total,
Eli Kulp: [01:06:05] all right, well, before we get off, I want to make sure that we touch on everything. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about? Do you want to get a little bit more into sort of what's going on as far as.
You know the world today. Is there anything else that you'd like to bring up?
Stephanie Loo: [01:06:21] I just wanted to mention that for the Philly box, we're going to be donating 10% of the proceeds to a local nonprofit in Philadelphia called AAU Asian-Americans United. And they work primarily in youth leadership, culture and community.
And they've been around since 1985. So definitely do a lot of work in the Chinatown area and just with a lot of different Asian American communities to really build up youth arts culture and investing in the next generation. So they were recommended to us by, by some of my friends in Philly who are really involved in different like grassroots organizations and in the Asian-American community.
So we're really excited to be partnering with them and donating a percentage of proceeds to their
Eli Kulp: [01:07:04] that's amazing. I think that's, that's brilliant. You know, you hear that. Know, Asians are the model citizens. Right. And I think, uh, our motto model immigrants, I think it was that that is a word thrown around yet.
People don't realize, you know, in the inner city and, you know, and especially in, you know, areas like Chinatown, like people aren't trying to get out of poverty and there's, there's not this sort of, um, you know, not everybody's going to be educated and, you know, wealthy family. Like that's not how it is. I think that's, that's a sort of false statement.
I know that a lot of people are still, you know, these community centers, these charities, wherever the non-profits, you know, they're needed, they're needed to help individuals sort of find their way through life and, and, you know, have a good education and everything else. So Arnold, anything else from you?
Arnold Byun: [01:07:55] Oh, no. I mean, I appreciate you and your allyship. I think that's something that's very important to consider. As we move forward, you know, obviously maze over may was, uh, AAPI heritage month. And I'll be honest. Like we got a lot of visibility and eyeballs and, and the work that we do, and I cannot tell you the amount of emails I was, I got that one thing.
I was like, Hey, let's collab. Hey, let's collab. Listen. I hope to see those emails this month too. And I hope that we continue talking about Asian Americans, especially at least from the culinary standpoint. I think that there's a lot of talent, especially in restaurants. We're going to continue doing this work because we feel like it's important.
And my only hope for people just listening is, you know, we, we, during this time, I think we saw a lot of those signs or sayings about you love our food, but not our people in some ways, because let's, let's admit it. Asian food is delicious, but Asian people are just as awesome. And I hope that, you know, people are curious about our stories too.
Cause like you said, it's not just, you know, crazy rich. Honestly. Yeah. I'm actually looking forward to the SQL crazy poor Asians. Um, I'm hoping that comes out next to show the, to show the wealth gap and disparity that lies within the Asian population, because yeah, you're right. The, the model minority myth is, is I think what they say and it's, it's, it's true.
Like we're not just all like, you know, Ivy league grads and doctors and nurses. Like, that's just not what this is. And I guess what we're trying to do is provide that voice and platform for the unconventional path to which is restaurants. And unfortunately, restaurant work is still looked down upon in Asian culture.
Uh, and my dad is like, what are you, what are you still doing in this industry? But, you know, we love it. We do it for a reason. So thank you so much for, for giving us the platform and the opportunity to talk about what we're doing. Yeah. It was a really, really awesome time.
Eli Kulp: [01:09:42] Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to it.
All right. There's an Arnold, Stephanie, both of you. Thank you for taking the time. Um, and, and join us on the podcast. I, I, I feel like this is, this is going to be a resounding success and look forward to seeing it all come together.
Arnold Byun: [01:10:03] Thank you so much.
Eli Kulp: [01:10:06] Thanks for listening to the chef radio podcast. If you'd like to support the show, please leave us a review.
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