Kristen Barnett, Founder of Hungry House | S1E23

This episode was originally published as part of the Restaurant Growth Podcast. It has been rebranded as part of The Pre-Shift Podcast as of January 2023. The information presented may no longer be up-to-date and may differ from the viewpoints and insights currently shared on The Pre-Shift Podcast.

Ghost kitchens are hot. But that doesn’t mean they’re for every operator.

Kristen Barnett joins us on this episode of the Restaurant Growth Podcast. Kristen knows ghost kitchens well—and after a stint at Zuul, she went to found her own ghost kitchen, Hungry House. We get into:

• Ghost kitchen myths
• When the ghost kitchen model is a good idea for an operator
• What you need to know to be successful with this restaurant model
• Why Hungry House is called an “anti” ghost kitchen
• And more!

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts and hosted by DJ Costantino.

Meet Kristen Barnett
Kristen Barnett is the founder & CEO of Hungry House, a NYC-based startup that partners with digitally-native chefs to bring their culinary ideas into reality through the Hungry House platform. 

Kristen started her career in the New York City office of The Boston Consulting Group. She unfortunately soon began to struggle with her health after contracting Chronic Lyme disease and she became seriously ill. Desperate to feel better, she turned to dietary change to feel better and she had miraculous results. Determined to make a bigger impact, she left consulting to pursue a career in the food industry. Since then, she’s worked at DIG (formerly Dig Inn) where she was Director of Strategic Operations and led supply chain strategy, menu development and their food delivery and ghost kitchen business. Kristen then went on to join Zuul, a ghost kitchen tech startup where she served as Chief Operating Officer and led product strategy to develop a proprietary tech platform and multiple virtual brands. After Zuul was acquired by ghost kitchen competitor, Kitchen United in summer 2021, she went on to found Hungry House. Having borne witness to the explosive growth in the ghost kitchen industry, mainly with a commoditized and unhealthy product offering, she decided to found Hungry House in summer 2021 to create the first direct-to-consumer ghost kitchen company focusing on sustainability, diversity, quality & transparency.

Kristen graduated from Cornell University magna cum laude and is passionate about plant-based eating and supporting other women in the food industry through a semiregular women-in-food dinner series.

About 7shifts
Since 2014, 7shifts has helped restaurant managers schedule, evaluate, and communicate with their workforce. Our team is comprised of people who live and breathe restaurant culture and strive to help our customers simplify team manage

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Credits
Host & Executive Producer: D.J. Costantino
Editor: Fina Charleston
Producer: Samantha Fung
Designer: Jake Sinclair

Transcript

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[00:00:00] DJ Costantino: Hey everybody, what is going on? My name is DJ, and this is the restaurant growth podcast presented by seven shifts on this show, we sit down with the best minds and hospitality to bringing new insights and big ideas to help your restaurant grow. Kristen Barnett joins us on the show today to chat about her exciting new ghost kitchen concept of hungry house.

[00:00:18] DJ Costantino: Kristen has a number of years experience working in ghost kitchen ops, and we dive into the dos don'ts whys and hows of getting into the ghost kitchen, kitchen business. We also get into why she calls hung house, the Antigo kitchen as always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated. Tell us what you think, who you wanna hear from and anything else, or shooting us an email to podcast@sevenshifts.com.

[00:00:36] DJ Costantino: And with that, here's my chat with Kristen. Hey Kristen, how are you

[00:00:41] Kristen Barnett: today? I'm good. How are

[00:00:42] DJ Costantino: you? I'm doing well. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So to just kick it right off, how did you get started in the hospitality and restaurant business?

[00:00:54] Kristen's career path

[00:00:54] Kristen Barnett: Yeah, so I started my career actually originally as a management consultant, I worked for Boston consulting group here in their New York city office and really envisioned I would have a somewhat traditional business career.

[00:01:09] Kristen Barnett: Like I envisioned going to business school and all of that. I studied business under. And my career ended up taking a different turn. I had been struggling with chronic Lyme disease for a few years at that point, and it became really difficult to manage while I was. Doing all the traveling with management consulting and just the, the pace of that lifestyle, difficult to manage when you're healthy, extra difficult to manage when you have a chronic illness.

[00:01:34] Kristen Barnett: And so for sure, I essentially just became desperate to feel better. The medicine wasn't working. And I finally turned to dietary change and I went raw vegan, not for the Fano heart. It was pretty in times. But I had a, a really miraculous recovery. I went from barely being able to walk to walking with no pain in 20 days.

[00:01:57] Kristen Barnett: And so, wow. Naturally I rethought a lot of things in my life that really changed my perspective. And I decided I wanted to dedicate my career to working in the food industry and, you know, fundamentally being able to answer the question of how to make good food at scale. And so that's how we got started.

[00:02:13] Kristen Barnett: I joined dig in now dig, um, based here in New York. Yeah. And. Got in right as the company was gearing up for some pretty immense growth. And over the next few years, while I was there, the company tripled in size and I had the opportunity to run multiple teams and really just had that perfect, like immersive bootcamp and the food business and so many components of it.

[00:02:35] Kristen Barnett: So that was great.

[00:02:38] DJ Costantino: That's awesome. And then from dig, you know, how many years did you spend, uh, out there when it was dig in dig now during that growth period,

[00:02:46] Kristen Barnett: I was there for three and a half.

[00:02:48] DJ Costantino: Excellent. And then from there, um, is that when you made the move over to zoo, is that

[00:02:53] Kristen Barnett: correct or correct? Yes. I'd actually met Cory and Sean, the co-founders of Zul, uh, while it was that dig, then we ended up reconnecting after I'd left and they learned about what they were doing and the rest was history.

[00:03:07] Kristen Barnett: I was . I was completely obsessed with food delivery and ghost kitchens, and I just knew that that was. Where I wanted to be, I had this feeling, it was just the next big thing and no one was taking it seriously. This was pre pandemic, of course. And so, yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, I joined right as we opened the actual large ghost kitchen facility based in Soho.

[00:03:29] DJ Costantino: Very cool. And so did you kind of, um, get a picture of the delivery scene and, and start getting interested in that and your time at Dick?

[00:03:35] The growing delivery market

[00:03:35] Kristen Barnett: Absolutely. While I was there, delivery was growing 20% year over year without. Investing in marketing that program are really just generally thinking about it and it's optimization.

[00:03:49] Kristen Barnett: We just knew like our restaurants were getting busier and busier both with the customers, but also now with all these delivery orders and it was really disruptive. To our business, especially when you thought about the guest perspective, they're walking down the line, they want their food, but they see everyone really busy with this huge amount of tickets of delivery orders to these customers.

[00:04:11] Kristen Barnett: And they're like, what's going on? So, you know, it did, we had a. You know, longstanding project and strategic initiative to, uh, enhance and optimize our delivery business, leveraging hub kitchens across the city that could have yeah. Intersecting delivery zones. And I was very fortunate to be a part of that project.

[00:04:30] Kristen Barnett: Ultimately. We launched our own virtual brand, which didn't even call a virtual brand at that time, we just called it like, our new food delivery concept. You know, it wasn't yeah, there weren't these defined terms as there are now. And, um, that was my first real immersion because it was becoming more and more important for the business as consumer behavior shifted as these apps where in their ultra high growth phases and we had to respond.

[00:04:58] DJ Costantino: Yeah. It just had to, and this was pre pandemic. It was just starting to gain steam. Yeah. Um, and then of course it became the only way to get food for a little bit, for a lot of people. Yes. Yes. So tell me a little bit more about that transition over to Zul and I guess what Z is for those who don't know.

[00:05:15] DJ Costantino: And then I guess also we'll get into what you're doing now, but maybe the story from zoo to, to hungry house.

[00:05:21] From Zuul to Hungry House

[00:05:21] Kristen Barnett: Absolutely. So Zul New York city base, ghost kitchen infrastructure and technology startup, which was acquired last fall by kitchen United. And essentially when I joined the company, we just opened the ghost kitchen facility and we were in the midst of acquiring a small tech company in Philly.

[00:05:43] Kristen Barnett: Cool called entree, which after acquisition became really the basis of our proprietary multi-brand multi operator coast kitchen tech stack. I was brought on to. Essentially speak the language of all the restaurants we were working with, understanding that business inside and out, helping them optimize it to ensure that they were successful in a dark kitchen format.

[00:06:06] Kristen Barnett: So yeah, going through with the owners or the, you know, directors of ops, here's how the P's gonna look. This is the importance of your native delivery channel. This is how your labor model might change. Let's explore the streamlining of your menu, you know, have you leveraged another restaurant and you have in the city as a commissary.

[00:06:24] Kristen Barnett: All of those strategic questions to really ensure that the lighter format ops of a dark kitchen and the nuance in the revenue channel breakdown. Yeah. You know, was going to work for them. My directive was, you know, let's make these restaurants really successful and. You know, super quickly we realized the number one thing we could do was drive more demand to them, you know, help them discover and acquire more customers and make sure that people knew they were around it.

[00:06:55] Kristen Barnett: So that was a huge focus for us with our technology. It's ultimately, you know, what went into a lot of the strategy with our partnership model and everything we're doing with commercial landlords across the city. Yeah. So I was largely, uh, leading product there while at.

[00:07:10] DJ Costantino: Very cool. So that was more Zul the model was kind of these ghost kitchen hubs where multiple brands could live at the.

[00:07:17] DJ Costantino: Time when you could order from multiple brands, I could order from a pizza brand. And my, you know, my wife could order from a taco place that we could get that all together, like a virtual food hall.

[00:07:27] Kristen Barnett: Exactly. And that was powered by our network of facilities, either the one that we ran and Soho or others that we were licensing to that housed these multiple operators, you know, operating separately, but then us actually bundling all of those orders together.

[00:07:44] Kristen Barnett: Enabled buyer technology, but obviously powered by the teams there as well.

[00:07:48] DJ Costantino: Nice. And then that kind of transitioned into what you're doing now with hungry house. Is that

[00:07:52] Kristen Barnett: correct? Yeah, you could say so. I mean, a lot of what hung house is built on as a foundation was informed by my learnings at Zul. I was so fortunate to have this front row seat to the ghost kitchen craze of 20, 20 and 2021, what a buzzword.

[00:08:13] Kristen Barnett: Right. And so I had pretty much seen every. Different P and L every different operating model had yeah. A good understanding of what worked, what didn't and wanted to build. What was the perfect ghost kitchen operator really focusing on the actual execution of the food.

[00:08:32] DJ Costantino: And that seems to be one of the biggest things too, with ghost kitchens is that quality execution and quality control.

[00:08:38] DJ Costantino: Of

[00:08:38] Kristen Barnett: course. I mean, it's just the biggest thing in the food industry in general, right? In general. Yeah, of course. Um, that's how that's literally bare minimum of what you need to do, but I. I think it's been such an active debate among the ghost kitchen industry because of the variety of operating models.

[00:08:54] Kristen Barnett: Right. And the fact that there are so many yeah. Brands now that are entering into these licensing deals, there are being launched across the country, licensed to a variety of independent, uh, Chains and being executed within another person's kitchen, obviously quality control is going to be something to talk about because absolutely that is a operational feat to be able to do that, run those networks successfully and deliver a consistent experience to your customers.

[00:09:26] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And so what does, what separates, uh, hungry house now from the, I guess what you would call traditional ghost kitchen concept of just having a brand that's cooked out of a commissary UN brand. You know, and delivered based on, on that, um, like an offsite location, um, what separates you from that single unit restaurant model?

[00:09:45] Why Hungry House is an "anti" ghost kitchen

[00:09:45] Kristen Barnett: Well, um, a few things. So one, we, you know, call ourselves in a very tongue and cheek way, but the Antigo anti yeah. um, but it only in the sense that just from a business, yes, it's cheeky, but it does have connections to how we think about. Our strategy from a real estate perspective, from a brand perspective and from an ops perspective.

[00:10:08] Kristen Barnett: So starting from the. Piece, what we do is we cook all of these brands simultaneously within our kitchen. There is nothing that innovative about it, but always good to clarify, because there are the various different ghost kitchen models, and we are vertically integrated in that sense. The main differentiator though, is that we're really the first direct to consumer ghost kitchen.

[00:10:31] Kristen Barnett: Okay. We wanted customers to know who hungry house was from day one and what we stood for, why we picked the brands we worked with and what they meant to the consumer. Now, why this was important was because, you know, otherwise. How are you going to organize these brands together? Why would customers come to your website versus going to door dash?

[00:10:55] Kristen Barnett: All of that. Right. And it also allows us to actually create a really cohesive experience between digital and physical pickup walk-in orders that we also feature. So this kind of brings me to the second piece, which is, we also really believe in having pickup and kiosk quarters. We want our. To see us to know us and to be able to interact with our operation.

[00:11:21] Kristen Barnett: Hungry house has a sign, an, a counter. We are out there. Um, yeah, and, and it mimics the design and brand architecture of our website where you're ordering off the hungry house website, picking from one of the different collabs that we have with our various chefs. Now same thing happens when you walk up to order from our kiosk, you go up to the counter, you'll click the kiosk to order.

[00:11:44] Kristen Barnett: You're looking at beautiful photos from the variety of chefs that we have. And so without that, you know, you just hear about the stories of people going and looking for their food for Mr. Beberg and it's coming out of, you know, God knows where like an establishment, the customer is not. Doesn't expect to be buying food from, and there's a lot of dissonance and that experience, you know, I think that what we're doing and what I'm trying to build with hungry house is fundamentally remembering what gets people to decide to purchase food.

[00:12:19] Kristen Barnett: It's a story. It's hospitality. It's feeling connected to the why this food's existence. And I felt that. The ghost kitchen industry over indexed on all the amazing supply chain and tech innovations, but forgot why people order food, which is, you know, what, either a cultural connection like us having learned about it through a video on Instagram and or understanding the chef's story and how hard they've worked to get where they are....

[00:12:48] Kristen Barnett: and so yeah, all of those things went into us really reimagining from top to bottom. What a ghost kitchen could be.

[00:12:55] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. One thing, um, that you mentioned that I'm, I'm curious about, you mentioned all of the brands are cooked out of the same kitchen, is that correct? That's correct. So I'm curious from a like food inventory standpoint, are they all working off of the same?

[00:13:09] How Hungry House works

[00:13:09] Kristen Barnett: So, yes, we go through a pretty intensive commercialization process with each of our chefs. They're okay. Submitting three to 10 recipes to us, we select the best ones after evaluating them, either strategically based on, you know, targeting our local customer base, the lunch day part or looking at cost or apart, we're looking at costs.

[00:13:29] Kristen Barnett: We're looking at operational simplicity to be able to execute it successfully in our kitchen, but we also have supply. Constraints. We have our standardized distributors that we work with, that we have very strong relationships with and great sourcing programs. We then are open to bringing in specific items for a given brand, but we do really look to have 85% overlap of our supply chain of any given brand with the rest to ensure that we're not needlessly increasing complexity.

[00:13:59] Kristen Barnett: And we find that. A huge advantage of our model is just the amount of control we have over what we actually cook in our kitchen to make it all work together.

[00:14:09] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And just getting the chefs like in, on it and collaborating together, like, and how to do this in the most efficient way. So it's not like, you know, too many cooks for, for lack of a better for lack of a better term.

[00:14:19] DJ Costantino: Yeah.

[00:14:20] Kristen Barnett: And they, they want at the end of the day to see their menu items successfully executed. Yeah. And they also want to see hungry house be successful and grow because they also share in that success through our agreements with them. So I feel like we set up a architecture that just aligns incentives on many different points throughout the business.

[00:14:44] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And then going back as well to the Antigo kitchen kind of slogan, um, and philosophy that you have. So that's really just taking out the, kind of the ghost part where it's trying to hide behind, because a lot of, like you mentioned with the Mr. Beast being cooked somewhere else, it's like, I remember seeing like during the pandemic, when ghost kitchen started popping up crazy, it was like, this is actually just Chucky cheese.

[00:15:06] DJ Costantino: And like people were making talks about it and they were like, right, right. So, so shocked. And it's like, you're not going to build Goodwill. It, it, it's not like lying directly, but it's like, we're not being transparent about where this is really coming from. And I think that's what, where the kind of ghost kitchens find that they're not successful.

[00:15:26] DJ Costantino: Um, and then you're just trying to kind of flip that on its head and say, well, we're actually gonna share what we're doing and we're gonna show you what we're really all about. And we're not shy about the fact that this is a ghost kitchen. Right.

[00:15:37] Kristen Barnett: And I was trying to explain. What we did in the beginning, or come up with a different name for our model.

[00:15:44] Kristen Barnett: And I still ended up sticking with ghost kitchen. I just dropped the anti in front of it to. Say why like that we are different, but I really didn't have a different name for what we're creating, you know, at the end of the day, yeah. Our chefs are licensing their recipes to us. They're not there every day.

[00:15:59] Kristen Barnett: The difference is though that customers know who hungry house is and our team feels like they're a part of the hungry house team. That mission, vision, and values is very clear to them. And it ends up being just a more holistic experience. And also, you know, when we think about. The customer ordering from Chucky cheese and being confused.

[00:16:18] Kristen Barnett: What's going on? As you said, that has a really negative impact on brand equity. Yep. But when you order from hungry house and you're coming through the website, you're seeing all the extra content about who these people are, why these dishes exist. We're not building. When you think of a typical influencer led ghost kitchen brand, we're not building something kitchy order.

[00:16:39] Kristen Barnett: Once we're building a food business where you become a regular. And what's really interesting is that we've seen by the time the customer orders a second time. 65% of them are actually trying a different brand on the menu. That, to me, shows that they're becoming hungry house customers. They trust us for the curation.

[00:16:58] Kristen Barnett: They like our offering and yes, maybe they've heard about us through the chef and that's what got their attention. But then they're saying, oh, Like I would eat here again. And that's really critical, you know, I think a lot of ghost kitchens catch a lot of flack for just being like, oh, you know, my 10 year old told me I had whatever 14 year old told me I had to order this thing.

[00:17:22] Kristen Barnett: Yeah. And that's, that's great. I that's a great. It's it's a amazing indicator of the marketing power of leveraging the creator economy. Yes, but I want it to be here to stay for the long term. I want a sustainable business. I don't wanna have to pay crazy amounts to acquire customers. I wanna build something that's good people like, and they come back to.

[00:17:38] The keys to ghost kitchen success

[00:17:38] DJ Costantino: Yeah. That's something that you hit on that, that I was going to, to ask about as well, was like the one and done thing where it seems like a lot of the celebrity brands are built to kind of be that like, oh, I like my son likes Mr. Beast. So I'm gonna order this once and probably never again. Right. But you're trying to build that repeat customer, which I think, you know, any restaurants I will tell you is like, where, where success is.

[00:17:59] DJ Costantino: For a chef, like for the chefs that you feature, um, and the food, the food people that you feature, when would you say is the right time for a restaurant or a chef? Someone who wants their own food business to go with the ghost kitchen route versus opening a brick and mortar.

[00:18:15] Kristen Barnett: So I think what's absolutely critical when thinking about ghost kitchens as a solution for your business is defining your customers.

[00:18:24] Kristen Barnett: And starting from that point, I've seen a lot of successful ghost kitchen businesses come into existence because they were, maybe had a restaurant and they were offloading a lot of demand that they couldn't handle there, whether it was catering, certain production needs, et cetera. If you need to go and move your production to another place, still accessing customers, but you don't require the front of house experience.

[00:18:48] Kristen Barnett: That's a great. because you're not in the business of acquiring new customers. Now, what also might be a good fit? Let's say if you're a chef, is if you've built a large social following, or if you have a huge email list that wants your products again, defining the customers is just absolutely critical here.

[00:19:08] Kristen Barnett: If you are dropping into a dark kitchen and your strategy for customer acquisition is I'm gonna list on the third party apps, I would strongly recommend you don't do that. Okay. It's going to be. Very difficult to only leverage those platforms for customer acquisition based on the fact. There is an extreme amount of concepts on these platforms.

[00:19:30] Kristen Barnett: Now it's very crowded. The algorithm is challenging to get good placement at the top and oftentimes will be charged extra for it. Not to mention if a hundred percent of your revenue is coming through third party platforms, at least at the beginning. That's a hundred percent of your revenue already ripping out 20 to 25% of your bottom line.

[00:19:50] Kristen Barnett: And, and if you've been in the food business, you really know how challenging it is to turn a profit and, and that has a significant impact on your operating success. Um, area success with operating model. And so those are two scenarios I'd say is probably really good for you to go and explore. It has to be that social media connection, or it has to be a predetermined set of customers.

[00:20:14] Kristen Barnett: And then from there you can build your business around it, but even so I would just be very careful about entering into those contracts, making sure that it is the right place and the economics work.

[00:20:28] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. So, so what I'm kind of gathering is don't expect it to be a brand building thing or a demand driving thing.

[00:20:35] DJ Costantino: If the demand isn't already there because of how crowded the space

[00:20:39] Building a brand for your concept

[00:20:39] Kristen Barnett: actually is. Yeah. I mean, I would say that one of the big key learnings that I've had being in the industry now is I think we all underestimate the value of a storefront, your billboard, and telling customers in a local community that you are there without that it's very hard.

[00:20:57] Kristen Barnett: There are barely any other cheaper ways to tell people, search for me, even in the delivery apps or on Google to order for delivery. If you don't have that, it's very challenging. This is where I think you can build a really great business. By first, starting with a popup series, validate the concept, get people interested, build the social media, get email addresses, take pre-orders capture data and refine the recipes, but don't get into a larger financial commitment until you've seen proven demand for what you do.

[00:21:29] Kristen Barnett: Yeah. And so I think social media. Provided the most amazing platform for validation. We saw this happen throughout the pandemic. People selling like bread out of their apartments, you know? Yeah. You're in New York DJ, so yeah, you've probably seen all those amazing stories. I have friends who have. For, for fifth fire escape, they were like handing down burritos in a bucket, you know, on a string, outta their apartment.

[00:21:59] Kristen Barnett: Yeah. It's just examples of ways to connect with people and validate concepts and build hype with a more, I think it it's like going an overall better risk profile as a chef starting out.

[00:22:11] DJ Costantino: Yeah. And I, I definitely bought some things off of Instagram. Absolutely. I think I bought. Some different thing bread.

[00:22:18] DJ Costantino: I definitely bought avocados. I had someone bring avocados to my house. So , um, there's definitely a, a market out there, especially for food. Yes. Especially for food. Yeah. But yeah. So I think the, the key kind of takeaway is, um, building your brand before you enter into kind of one of these ghost kitchen concepts, or go or go that route.

[00:22:39] DJ Costantino: Do any of your chefs, um, in your lineup right now, do they have brick and murder location?

[00:22:44] Kristen Barnett: The only one is apocalypse burger and it's a brand based in Indiana. They started there during the pandemic, have an amazing social presence and is a brand that I feel really speaks to a city like New York. It's about a great attitude.

[00:23:01] Kristen Barnett: It's. Exceptional design and not to mention the product and quality was very aligned with what we focus on as hungry house. We source special beef from happy valley meat. The cheese is like this house made cheese sauce. It was exactly the way we wanted to do a burger led by Martha Hoover, who is.

[00:23:23] Kristen Barnett: Champion of farm to table, you know, supporting her hospitality workforce and just as an overall incredible collaborator to work with. Yeah.

[00:23:32] DJ Costantino: And they look absolutely fantastic. I'm I'm on the website right now, so, and I think, I think you deliver to, to me. So, um, maybe, maybe that'll be on the menus. There you go.

[00:23:41] DJ Costantino: Yeah. And what do you look for when you're kind of vetting and deciding, um, who to feature in your, in, in your lineup at hung house? Are there any kind of key. Key aspects or core values that you look to with the chefs that you feature? Yeah,

[00:23:54] Kristen Barnett: for us looking at the chefs, I mean, this is where I like to say this part of the business is more art than science, but we are looking to work with young ascendant voices that.

[00:24:08] Kristen Barnett: Are sharing content and stories about food that are clearly resonating with a group of people. Like we're not going to partner with someone earlier in their journey, maybe still figuring out their voice, like a few hundred followers. It's just not going to be the right time for us to leverage our platform to really take it to the next level.

[00:24:27] Kristen Barnett: So we work with chefs who. Micro influencers and above we have a wide range. I think that's actually the beauty of our platform. And we look for people who have had a proof of concept before that people want to buy their food. So they must have already done a popup or released some sort of product and shown that they're following is passion enough to be motivated to go.

[00:24:50] Kristen Barnett: Travel somewhere to buy it. That is incredible, right? Yeah. And so for us, it's a strong indicator that there's pent up demand for this chef. What they're doing, people are interested and then we'll usually be matching up based on what our cuisine gaps might be, what we think our local customers want, what they've requested.

[00:25:10] Kristen Barnett: And that's where we really start to do the menu construction of putting together what the over all hungry house lineup is gonna look like.

[00:25:17] DJ Costantino: Very cool. So just finding those people that have the following already proof of concept, like you mentioned before, being one of the keys to kind of ghost kitchen success as well.

[00:25:26] DJ Costantino: Yeah.

[00:25:26] Kristen Barnett: And I think one other layer, which is important to us is the fact that we have an incredibly diverse line up. We want to make sure that we are featuring voices that maybe haven't been highlighted in the food industry before. You know, I think we're in the midst of a really exciting. Revolution and like food media as absolutely, you know, TV becomes less important and our phones become more important.

[00:25:54] Kristen Barnett: Who are we all watching, who is gonna move the needle in terms of discovering some new cuisine? That could be the next big thing in the us. Yep. Um, these are the types of kind of touch points I wanna create for the hungry house customers, but also the types of voices that I feel like. Are underserved when it comes to food media.

[00:26:15] Kristen Barnett: And I think it's so important that our lineup reflects what the future should be, and we're gonna work really hard to always stay true and ensure that our lineup is a very strong representation of a more diverse and equitable food industry.

[00:26:36] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And just giving a platform to those who maybe wouldn't be able to open brick and mortars yet, or go that like route and get the funding to do that, or have the large following to do

[00:26:45] Kristen Barnett: so.

[00:26:46] Kristen Barnett: Yeah. We hope we are a, you know, step on the journey to them becoming a huge star and absolutely. Um, you know, that's like our entire ethos is how can we uplift the chefs that we work with because I think. Everything we do at hung house has just been created with the idea that even though technology is changing everything about food, we can still tell amazing inspirational stories.

[00:27:16] Kristen Barnett: And these chefs have 'em and like people are excited to gain access to their, their worlds as well.

[00:27:24] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And I think taking it a step further to, um, I mean, my background was in food media as. But like not only just giving a platform and highlighting, but giving them a chance to actually, you know, make money and, and do what they do and make a living off.

[00:27:36] Kristen Barnett: Yeah. Let's not forget that, like being a chef, like I think, I think chefs are. At least in my conversations with people, the community here in New York, everyone's rethinking their whole career and food, you know, and I think that what social media has offered chefs is instead of the traditional career path, cutting your teeth for 20 years and like 14 hour days and kitchen basements, that's no longer the only path.

[00:28:02] Kristen Barnett: And there are certainly still chefs out there really amazing industry leaders. Who think that that's what it needs to be. But the young people I'm talking to, the leaders I'm speaking with and the chefs that we work with, they're thinking about it completely differently. You know, these chefs are omnichannel food brands, right?

[00:28:20] Kristen Barnett: Like, yeah, they're building a movement and it can be a variety of different things. Touchpoint activations, it's popups, it's a hungry house partnership. It's, you know, limited edition swag. All of it, but like it's all centered around food and then being a chef, got it. And then being a creative and using food as a medium to inspire people.

[00:28:40] Kristen Barnett: And so I could rant on this forever. I'm excited about it. I think the old guard is changing and I think everyone's gonna have to adapt to the new norm because things are shifting as we speak.

[00:28:53] DJ Costantino: Absolutely. And, and instead of like the, the chef to restaurant pipeline, like I cut my teeth and it opened my place, the restaurant.

[00:29:01] DJ Costantino: Maybe they don't even have a restaurant, right. Or the restaurant is just kind of a big part of the larger creative, just like their whole creator persona and their brand. Absolutely.

[00:29:12] Kristen Barnett: A lot of, a lot of other things, a lot of chefs who are releasing cookbooks have maybe like never cooked extensively in restaurants.

[00:29:21] Kristen Barnett: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's trying to pay attention to, and it's something that, you know, we're obviously looking at and thinking about at hungry house.

[00:29:30] DJ Costantino: Of course and yeah, and I guess my last kind of big big question here for today is there's been some press lately in like the industry press, um, that ghost kitchens and virtual brands have kind of ended up.

[00:29:42] DJ Costantino: As I, as I think the quote in the article was like a dead end for a lot of restaurants at a lot of brands. Um, what do you kind of make of that? And, and what is your kind of take on that?

[00:29:52] Are ghost kitchens a dead end?

[00:29:52] Kristen Barnett: Yeah, I mean, my take on it is these brands weren't built to be long term successes. Anyways, when you look at the investment and the overall quality in the actual concept itself, right?

[00:30:08] Kristen Barnett: It doesn't have staying power and that's okay. It was kind of meant to be launched and probably have a pop, but not necessarily be the forever answer. I also think that, and I've always thought about this, like restaurants. I thought about this as dining came back, right, restaurants are busy and there's an extreme labor crunch.

[00:30:27] Kristen Barnett: It's going to become less and less attractive to layer on all these virtual brands when you can barely get through your dinner service. Right. And so I. That these brands be, you know, they add inventory complexity, they add complexity to your team's day. They, you know, are gonna take you away from critical moments in your dinner service, whatever it is, they are fundamentally and will always be additive, but not core.

[00:30:52] Kristen Barnett: And so. You know, when I think about the licensing business, it's a great business, of course, but you are so limited in what the capabilities are to create a true brand with meaning like longevity with a dedicated and loyal customer base because of the, the Tenness of its existence. It was never meant to be something around for a hundred years.

[00:31:15] Kristen Barnett: And that's okay in many ways, because it's layered on, and it's a supply chain hack and it helps that restaurant. Get more customers, especially, you know, during the pandemic when there were extreme times of need. But I do think that now as we face the new operating reality, which is that restaurants are busier than ever, and it's never been more difficult from a staffing perspective, a lot of owners are gonna be reconsidering that equation.

[00:31:44] Kristen Barnett: And it might not always work out in the balance of the virtual brand to continue to be a part of it. And so, you know, that's where I've thought about, you know, us being an operator, being able to provide that type of security and longevity and ongoing quality control to the chefs we work with is incredibly valuable.

[00:32:02] Kristen Barnett: And I think will only become more valuable as we look at perhaps the addressable pool of restaurants, willing to license a virtual brand that might be slim. Absolutely.

[00:32:13] DJ Costantino: And that's, uh, that's where the anti comes in

[00:32:18] DJ Costantino: oh, yes. And with that, I think that's about the, uh, time we have for today. But, um, for those who are interested in hungry house, where can people find both you and the Brandon? Where can people order? So

[00:32:27] Kristen Barnett: you can find me on LinkedIn, Kristen Barnett, or you can find hungry house on our instagram@orderhungryhouseorourwebsiteorderhungryhouse.com.

[00:32:39] DJ Costantino: Awesome. Well, Kristen, thanks so much for hopping on the podcast.

[00:32:42] Kristen Barnett: Thanks so much, DJ. I really appreciate it.

[00:32:46] DJ Costantino: Thanks again for checking out the restaurant growth podcast presented by seven shifts. We're so grateful to our listeners and we'd love to hear from all of you. Send us an email to podcast@sevenshift.com and check us out on social we're at seven shifts on all platforms.

[00:32:58] DJ Costantino: Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next week.