S2E22: YMI Talking to Jeff Virojanapa from Notch, White Orchids, Little Orchids

We cooked up a new episode with Jeff Virojanapa, owner of Notch, Little Orchids, and White Orchids! After sponsoring Season 1, he is back as a guest!

This week on the YMI Talking Podcast, Jeff shares how he transitioned from a career in engineering to restaurant ownership. His restaurants are more than the amazing food: they have ambiance, decor, and atmosphere. AKA the ultimate dining experience!

Not only is Jeff an amazing business owner, but he is a fantastic Dad! Tune in to find out how he balances owning three restaurants with being a father of four. 

For more info on YMI insurance visit our website at ymiagency.com

Or give us a call at 610-868-8762 to see how we can better protect your business and family.

Transcript

1:00:04

But at that time, I remember that first week was 85 hours working and day in, day out, and having lots of mess ups, lots of wait times in the kitchen. We didn't have, oh, you're supposed to have side work sheets? You're supposed to have a routine for servers to do when they're finished up the night? You're supposed to check out at the other night with all your tips and your tables. That was something we were doing on the fly. I did that from high school to college and all that stuff. So I had a good idea of ins and outs, but actually to do it by ourselves and then figuring out the computer system, do that. It was a lot of rolling with the punches, but at the same time, I think also we had a lot of family friends. All right, this is the episode I have been waiting for since I started the podcast. This is unreal. We finally nailed you down. Season one of the podcast was sponsored by Notch Modern Kitchen and Bar. We are currently at Notch Modern Kitchen and Bar with the owner, the head chef, the main man of Notch Modern Kitchen and Bar, Jeff Virojanapa. Thank you so much for coming on. You found me. First off, thank you for sponsoring season one. It was awesome to go into having a podcast with a sponsor and I couldn't think of a better sponsor than you. Thank you. Anytime. Absolutely. The segment that we would do was such a hit. Everyone loved hearing what everyone's favorite drinks were. When we had guests on, that would be the question. At the end of the week, what is your drink? And people would give us answers. So that's where you got that from. That's cool. It was given Notch a shout out because I'm a big fan. Thank you. So Notch is not your only baby, right? You've got a lot of babies. My baby baby, my original is White Orchids over at the Promenade Center Valley. We've been there for seven, 18 years now. You're like one of the OGs there, right? Like the original. Yeah, we were like the second restaurant open. I think was Red Robin first. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a brand new lifestyle center mall that the Valley didn't really have yet at the time. And yeah, it was really great. There weren't too many restaurants in the area back then, 17, 18 years ago. Now there's a ton of restaurants everywhere, super saturated. But I was going to say, is that a good thing or a bad thing for you as a restaurateur? Do you call yourself a restaurateur? I feel like it's a really cool thing to call yourself. And I would if I'm in the restaurant. Yeah, I guess restaurateur is a good word. It is. I think that saturated is just the way it's going and is a good thing. They just have to work around, you know? Yeah. Everything coming at you. This is what I guess everyone does when things are saturated with stuff. And I think it's good from the standpoint that there's an appetite in the Lehigh Valley for independent locally cooked food and an elevated dining experience. But there's a whole bunch of those restaurants that probably makes it challenging to stand out. But I think you guys do a good job. What have you guys done, whether it's at White Orchid or here at Notch, to make yourself stand out? I think focusing on as many aspects as you can to kind of make it tight and as excellent as you can have it, in terms of not only just service, food, ambiance, cocktails, bar. I think the more you have locked and ready to go and in the best you can, I think that hits all the different bullet points for I think most people are going out to eat. I think if you're kind of short on one of them, then it's a downside. If you can kind of nail all of them, then that's a good reason for people to come back to a very saturated market. And you're right, there are so many different elements to a restaurant. I just think, "Oh, you make good food." But it's so much more than that. The bar here, we just did a fun little segment with Hannah O'Reilly. The bar here is top notch and the drinks you guys make are incredible. The food's out of this world. And the ambiance, obviously, the decor, it's all really good. What goes into getting all of those things right? I think with Notch, first and foremost, with White Orchids, that was kind of the family, baby, the recipes, the culture. Everything was built upon our family and growing that and growing with Notch here. We wanted to also have it be very much coming from the creativity of the chefs of the restaurant, the sous chefs, the team that you see behind us, as well as the bar program as well to bring on some of the best bartenders. You can say mixologist, some people don't like that word as a bartender, but yeah, just bringing people on that can provide that creativity and letting them roll and create. I think that's what I kind of envision Notch to be, is something that is being able to have different things that are special and unique to Notch. And you'd have to hopefully see elsewhere because the creativity comes from the staff and then not necessarily from being, you know, I'll definitely be helping to run and steer the ship, but personnel is where it's at in terms of guests coming to see certain bartenders day in, day out or a certain night, of the week or servers or coming to a chef's table because they had a chef that has been doing it for them for the past each anniversary for three years. I was going to say, can we call out the chef's table where we are right now? Yeah. So we're in Notch and Notch is obviously incredible and the decor is amazing, but you have this special room that is kind of separated from everything. It's like quiet, it's an oasis and the best part is the view. Right behind you is the actual kitchen where you can see the chefs cooking. To the chefs like that, by the way, or they like, I don't want people watching me while I'm working. I think, you know, coming and working here, you kind of know that that's what I'm going to get into. I'm going to be getting into people, you know, looking at me, you know, but I think, you know, there are a lot of restaurants that have like an open kitchen and the guests to see directly into the kitchen. And then there's restaurants that, you know, you can't see anything in the kitchen. So I think with Notch, we wanted to kind of like I was saying showcase the staff and their creativity. And I think, you know, when we on a really busy Friday night or, you know, Saturday night, it's a fun spectacle to watch with a lot of bodies moving around and all these plays going in the kitchen and the garnish and the finish of each dish and seeing, you know, different moving parts coming from different sides of the kitchen and all that getting put together. The chef's table is even probably a little bit cooler because you can kind of see the dishes that are just being made for the just the special occasion, just the chef's table where it's not something that you, you know, it's not going to be a pad thai coming off the walk. It's going to be, you know, hey, you know, I requested from the chef that I love, you know, seafood and I love, you know, scallops. So they're going to make a five course meal curated on your interests or sometimes people have like, you know, hey, you know, we're vegetarian and vegan. So the chefs just make a special menu just for that night. Just for the you get the menu. It's catered to your interests and you get to see them putting them, those dishes together. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. We get, we get good, like, you know, nice emails coming back there when, or sometimes you get the, we had a birthday party at like, this room was like 10 people chef's table and you know, standing ovation for the chefs and the team, you know, that's something that I think the crew love where, you know, if you can't, you know, if you're in a kitchen or you can't see anything, you can't see them, then you can't also be appreciated. You know, so I think that that's also a good shout out or acknowledgement to the team. Yeah. That's a good thing for being part of in terms of our back to our crew. And it is so cool to have this intimate experience here and to be able to, you know, learn more about the course and what you're eating here at the chef's table. So that's awesome. I will say I've been watching the bear a lot lately and I expected a lot more yelling back there. It seems like you have a staff and this I think comes back to you, right? Like a culture where people want to be here and they enjoy working here. How do you cultivate that and make that happen? I think it comes from, you know, the team that's put together and of course you want to have like that team kind of mimic what kind of personality you'd like to have the restaurant and the business like resemble. And just kind of work on that day in, day out is just, you know, you want to see that part of the culture carried out by the staff. And I think that's just like probably, you know, your business as well. You want to bring on people that kind of carry, you know, your philosophies and your way of work and your way of life. And if you have those kind of people around you, then they kind of also mimic that. And then they have a team of people that also do that. And then you have then you have like a little ecosystem of Jimmy's running around. All of you don't share the same. That's exactly why Avery's leaving us. There's an ecosystem of Jimi's running around. But no, I think that makes total sense. And what I love is, you know, you and I have a lot of similarities in the sense that it's family business. But I like that neither of us started in these businesses, right? You are not a restaurateur by trade. And where you were before, I'll let you tell it, but it's such a different focus and speciality than restaurants. Tell us about that transition for you. I mean, it was it's kind of it felt. I mean, now it sounds like a big transition. But, you know, I think with being young and youthful at the time and, you know, out of college and it felt like your typical kid trying to figure out what they like doing. And then I think that's kind of, you know, the I went to went to school and, you know, growing up, you know, working in restaurants and, you know, making some money on the, you know, in restaurants, but also really enjoying being in the culture and being social. That that kind of was something that I just loved in the restaurant industry and, you know, going to college and still having, you know, restaurants to come back to in the summer or like, you know, that has always been kind of something I never like, even though I didn't work, say, like during like the school year or something, I'd come back and doing that. That was always something that I was so excited to do. Yeah. And, you know, I went I graduated with an engineering degree, moved out to California and I was in Silicon Valley for a couple of years. And I still always had like, you know, favorite things to do on the, you know, in my past, I would be going out to dinner or like, you know, spending the weekend checking out some really cool restaurants, you know, googling them up and stuff like that. And just just really being engulfing myself in like food and, you know, what's what's cool to drink early over there at that time was was wine was just such a big thing. And being like, you know, by, you know, Napa, Sonoma, you know, we do weekend trips just to see how many wineries we hit before we couldn't hit anymore. And you know, so that was always a part of, you know, my little side quest, you know, as well, too, besides just going back to sitting in a cubicle or going to like, you know, the production floor and teaching people how to make, you know, fiber up the cables, you know, so and then one of the most fun things I did in college was take an entrepreneurship class, an engineering entrepreneurship class. And that got me more on the thinking of like the business side of things and how to create a startup, you know, optical engineering company with like some classmates. And, you know, when I finished school, I kind of also, you know, had that in the back of my mind that, you know, this would be really cool one day to do that. And maybe I'll go get my master's and open up a business down the line. And I know that my dad also, you know, growing up, he was an engineer as well. He's always wanted to have his own business. And during that time, I think the tech bubble burst in like 2000-ish and my dad had been working in the Valley, you know, with Bell Labs and spun off to Lucent, the Gear, you know, all the spinoffs of that company. And he was like, hey, I know that you down the line want to, you know, have your own, maybe your restaurant down the line. You know, I don't want to be interviewing for a job. You know, at 50, he flew out to California because he was interviewing for a job because they're cutting a lot of people and they're, you know, shopping the seniors and the, you know, the higher salary people and stuff like that. And he was like, you want to move back and we can kind of get this going. So, you know, cut my thought of, oh, I'll get my master's. I'll know a little bit more about business. And we, last year, I took my startup company for this optical engineering thing that I was working on my senior year and completely gutted it, turned into a restaurant, you know, idea and we fine tuned it. And that became the White Orchids business plan and then fiber optics and pad tied. We seem to go together. But if you delete a couple of words, then it gets there. But I think then we went to Lehigh Valley's, Lehigh University's Small Business Development Center and, you know, they took a look at the business plan and the numbers and, you know, we were able to get some loans for it. And that was kind of the start of White Orchids. And yeah, do you know the stat? I know it's like always given of like the number of restaurants that don't make it out of the first year. It's, it's, yeah, it's a big one. I think that, you know, we talked about the market being like really saturated. I think, you know, 17, 18 years ago, there wasn't a lot of restaurants in the valley here. I think that was a blessing because, you know, we have two engineers and my mom was a nurse, you know, at the time. And you know, we were given a lot of chances. Yeah. We were, you know, and it was great because that first, you know, opening little orchids now, you know, you have to have a lot of things. All the reps have to be like pretty good. And like, but at that time, I remember that first week was, was, you know, 85 hours working and day in, day out and, and, you know, having lots of mess ups, you know, lots of wait times in the kitchen, lots of, you know, we didn't have, oh, you know, oh, you're supposed to have sign-out sheets. Like, you're supposed to have like, like a routine for servers to do. Like when, when you, like they're finished up the night, you know, like, oh, you're supposed to check out at the other night with like all your tips and then your tables. And, you know, that was like something that we learned that we were doing on the fly. I mean, I, I, I did that from, you know, high school to college and all that stuff. So I kind of had a good idea of like ins and outs, but, but actually to do it by ourself and then figuring out the computer system. So like, do that, you know, it was kind of like a lot of rolling with the punches, but at the same time, like I think also it was a, we had a lot of family friends and family that we brought on. Like I think my opening staff was my sister had just finished school. So as my sister was serving and all her friends, friend, friend, friend from college and my wife's younger brother and all his friends from, from, from the graduate as well too. So it was like, you know, these kids that, that gave me a lot of chances because, because, you know, they're a family and then, you know, I knew them and they knew me growing up and stuff like that. So it was really cool. When we say it's a family business, it's really, it was, I mean, yeah, I mean, we had some family chefs that, that came from, from California and they're like, Oh, you know, like we, we only need four people in the kitchen because like at the restaurant in California, we have the same amount of seats, but you know, when we opened in center Valley, we were just had such so much more volume than where, you know, in California, they have a, you know, a Thai restaurant every two blocks, right? You know, so, so we definitely misjudged that. And then we didn't have a full staff kitchen. And you know, I very quickly hopped into the kitchen, learned, you know, all the cooking that my mom hopped in. She left her nursing job. My dad was in the kitchen. So we were all like living in the kitchen for like three, four years. And that would kind of helped us learn ins and outs very quickly and how to do everything. Yeah. From talking to you, I know your mom is sort of the heart of the food. Is that right? Yeah. And I think a lot of the recipes are from her and our original chefs and a blend of the two and also a blend of over the 17, 18 years of fine tuning to what the guests of White Orhids enjoyed. You know, not as we started off the food with like a little bit spicier, not as, you know, not as sweet. But as you know, she walked in and said, Hey, this is too spicy for us. Yeah. But you know, now, you know, people are getting things a lot spicier, like a little orchids. I'm surprised that I'm going through so much more fresh chilies over there than over at White Orchids. Like people want things medium hot, hot, high hot. And that's something that I didn't expect. Yeah. The third restaurant. Let's talk about little orchids. Let's give that a shout out here because that's a big deal. And it just happened. I know it's been in the works for a while, but tell everyone, you know, what little orchids is and what they can expect there. I think little orchids is kind of my access point to checking out the other restaurants, checking out the original wet orchids or checking out notch. It's kind of our take of a light version. It's to me a little bit more approachable. Little orchid. Yeah. It's a little bit more, I think, approachable in terms of like price point. We deconstruct a lot of our presentation dishes at both places so that it could be... The guests can choose. Like, for example, we have our pineapple fried rice at White Orchids is one of our most popular dishes. So over $25 and it has lots of different seafood in it. So we deconstructed it. I just want to give that a plug. I love that. Yeah. So we just deconstructed it and took out all the different seafood out of it. It's a $15 dish over at Little Orchids and it's more of an avenue for people if they want to check it out for what we have and what we represent. And if they go there, then they're like, "Oh, you know, let's go to a special occasion to notch. Check out." Yeah. We really like the chow mein we had at Little Orchids. The menu and the bar look awesome at notch and looks like they have a lot of really cool special occasion stuff like the chef's table or private events upstairs. So it's kind of like a little, I think, a little gateway, I think, to the other restaurants to an access point. That's kind of like the thought with Little Orchids. It's also kind of hearkens back to White Orchids when we first open up as well. The first two years, we didn't have a bar there. We only had half the size of the restaurant where you see now where the bar starts and goes over to the right hand side. That wasn't part of the whole entire scheme of the first... So yeah, I think that was more, only about 30 tables. At the time, the original White Orchids. So I wanted to kind of do that, kind of make it quaint and welcoming and hearken back to the original White Orchids. If we were to do maybe a fourth restaurant down the line or something, then we'd probably just clone Little Orchids and see maybe where it can go from there, I think. One of the coolest things being at Little Orchids now for the past, living at Little Orchids, the past three weeks is hearing people. We love going to White Orchids. We go there once every four months, but it's like a 40-minute drive or a 45-minute drive. And now you guys are so much closer. It's like 20 minutes to us. And I didn't realize how much of our reach people will go out to check out some of the different restaurants and stuff like that. So making it an availability for people that doesn't have to be a special once every four months. We're going to White Orchids. We can do it. Go to Little Orchids and then if you still want to go to the original or to your White Orchids to notch, you can do that. So that's kind of the coolest thing that I've taken away with the third spot so far. I want to hit something that you talked about previously, which was all the different points that go into a restaurant, the food, the ambiance, the bar. Little Orchids is so beautiful inside. It's unreal. The bar is so... I obviously know very little about design, but it looks incredible. You just feel like you have an elevated experience. And so how do you go about thinking about that? I feel like each location has its own feel, but Little Orchids just looks so nice inside. Yeah, we wanted to have the red line of each of the other restaurants in Little Orchids. Of course, we wanted to make the bar look really nice and clean, sharp. We wanted to have that... We wanted to harken to notch. And notch's bar program is great. People know and love notch's drinks. We've run Best Bar in our town. Best cocktail bar in the Valley from morning call year in and year out, which is really cool. So we wanted to make sure that we have to make the bar look semi-nice. You need to have it. Otherwise, that doesn't look well on the other restaurants. But I think we wanted to have a red line of each. We wanted to have the dark blue and gold tones of notch. We wanted to have some of the purples and light blues from White Orchids. But we also wanted to combine them all, but also make it more soft and welcoming. So all those colors that are there are just a little bit lighter than the strong tones here. And at White Orchids, we kind of make it similar in that color palette, but softer and welcoming. It really comes together nicely. Thanks. We have this mural that is behind the bar over at notch. I mean, at Little Orchids. We went through probably 14 different looks of, "Hey, do you like this one better? Do you like this one better?" And everything just seemed a little bit more too strong or too bold. So we finally got the one we liked. It just made everything come together even that much. It's just a really cool thing to look at. The mural is really soft. It's got some really nice... It just screams. I want to sit here. I feel comfortable. Yeah. Approachable. Yeah. It gives that energy for sure. What did the kids say? It gives. It slaps. It slaps. Yeah. There we go. It slaps. So, you mentioned maybe opening a fourth location one day. Do you think I could be a bartender at your restaurant? You know, I've been auditioning pretty hard. You've been doing a pretty good job. I've seen you bartend. My performance against Hannah over there was a little disappointing. I think that's a strike against me. I think doing some podcasts behind a bar counter or a cold brew counter would be really cool. I am in. Let's make that happen. That sounds great. We should do one live at a little orchid or something. Sure. Yeah. I think we're on to something here. Can I ask you something? It's a podcast, so I guess the answer is yes. I've gotten to know you and your family. You are truly... I don't know how you do it. You are truly one of the best dads out there. You care for your family and you do such a good job with four children. Yeah. Yeah. Four children. Free to catch up. Oh no. We are done, Jeff. And you run now three restaurants and they're all well... two are very well established. Very good. And now a third that you just launched. How do you balance everything? How do you make it work? I think if you probably sum it up in just a couple words, I think that just having understanding. I think Becky is very understanding. The kids are understanding. I think also include them in the process of helping decide some different things and then showing simple menus as we're going off with it. It can be just a couple minutes. A little quick chat, but then they feel like part of it or invested in it. And also the same thing with the restaurants. When we were getting little orchids off the ground, we wanted to make sure that our key players are also in the know. And if they were interested in being a part of little orchids. I think we did Thursday meetings and Saturday night after this was on, we'll just go grab a drink and we'll chat, talk about,"Hey, this is really cool. I have a third location." And getting the key players in place. And once the ball starts rolling, then people that are part of it have already been through. They're part of it, even though my kids might not know that they're part of it. So when it comes together, then my kids are like, "Oh, I haven't seen daddy in like two weeks." But then they know because they've been part of that process. Do they think it's cool? We pass your restaurants and my kids go, "That's Kyan Brody's restaurant." And then we pass my office and we go, "Oh, that's cool." Do you kids think it's as cool as it is that you own and run these restaurants? I think for kids and stuff like that, food's always a good thing. People need food and people need need drinks. Yeah, like what my kids love are boba drinks and stuff like that. Some of the teachers say, "My favorite dish is this." That your folks' place, yeah. I think they think it's a cool thing. And that's the one thing that I really enjoy about restaurants growing up and being in that event and going to them is that you go to a restaurant and almost all the time you're going in there for a good experience. You don't really go in there for a bad experience. You're either going for a celebration, hanging out with family or celebrating something cool or going on date night that you haven't had for a while. So it always starts off good. And then if the restaurant can execute just some of those 50% criteria, you can't really go negative unless you go really negative with what you're outputting. So I think that's one of the coolest things is that it typically has a good connotation to it already. One thing I wanted to say is that you embody the restaurant. Wherever I go, you bring a drink or drinks for everybody. You bring food to that point of it being a good experience and a good time. That's just who you are, which is great. I was also going to say that you also know everybody. Anytime I'm like, "Hey," you're like, "Oh yeah, I know this person." So ingrained into the community, which is awesome. Two things though. We have to give a shout out to our sponsor. In season one, our sponsor was Notch Modern Kitchen and Bar. I don't know if it's been there, but they do this awesome thing. They make incredible cocktails, basically. You tell them what kind of spirit you want in there and what kind of mood you're in and they can come up with this custom cocktail. I love it. It's one of my favorite places. You should definitely check it out sometime. What we did season one was we would say that and then we would ask someone, "It's the end of a long work week." So you opened up a brand new restaurant and you're not maybe 85 hours, but you're doing lots of hours there. It's the end of the week. What is Jeff reaching for? What is his drink? It's typically a bourbon. Yeah, I know. Just a bourbon. Being in the kitchen too and in the night we're cleaning up and it's just a bourbon on the rocks with a splash of water. It goes to right now, I've been working with our sous chef over at Little Orch. It's quite a bit so it's always bringing one for him as well too. We're wrapping up the night. That's my go-to right now. It's perfect. All right. And then this season we have a new sponsor, Hocus Pocus Cleaning Services. They're truly magical. Everything they do makes your place look incredible. And so they're so magical. I ask all my guests, "If you could have one magical ability, what would it be?" I think it would be being at any place at any given time. I think teleportation. Yeah. With three locations, I feel like that would be helpful. Yeah, I mean we have these crossover managers that sometimes I see them at one spot and then all of a sudden we see them at different spots. I'm like, "Hey, how'd you get over here?" So I think that'd be my little power. That's awesome. Anything we didn't hit that we should hit. There's so much we didn't that I want to hit, so we're going to have you back. But in the meantime, is there anything we didn't hit? No. I mean, this has been a really fun time and I don't know why I didn't do it earlier. Like I said, this was my white whale. This was my Moby Dick. I've been trying to get you on here and finally got you and it was everything I hoped for. So thank you, Jeff. I'm looking at the camera. If you haven't been to Little Orchid yet, get there. It is awesome. It's one of a kind. And everything you guys do is great. So thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Boom.