We were lucky to catch up with David King recently and have shared our conversation below.
David, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Adaptability, resiliency, and luck. Often, I feel like business owners think they have complete control over the success of their business. This can lead to despair and wasting money by continuing to invest in a business that isn’t working out how they envision. Or conversely, it can lead to an over confidence if a business is rapidly successful, which can make the business owner take unnecessary risks. Either way is a recipe for failure.
I owned an Italian aperitivo themed restaurant in Little Tokyo named Baldoria. We started with a lot of fanfare, and for the first couple of years seemed fairly busy, yet we weren’t making the profit margins I felt we should and I was never able to step away from the restaurant. Therefore, I knew we had to evolve. We participated in Smorgasbourg; started to teach pizza, cocktail and wine classes; partnered with local community organizations like LTSC and JACCC; and placed a new emphasis on catering offsite events. This all helped. We were just starting to turn a corner financially when a local court case expanded the defined area of Skid Row past our doorstep. Unfortunately, this decimated the business. I’d like to think I could have predicted it, and possibly sold or pivoted somehow before the court case was decided. But honestly, I think it was just bad luck.
Which brings me to resiliency… At Baldoria, we started a bottled cocktail program where all of our cocktails were pre-batched and bottled before serving. As Baldoria was winding down, my friend and beverage director at Baldoria, Matt Bostick, and I, took this bottled cocktail idea and started B&K Classic Cocktails. We were one of the RTD Old Fashioned in the market, winning a Gold Medal at the San Francisco Wine & Spirits competition in 2019. B&K is still operating today.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I tell my mom I’m a professional drinker, which I technically think I am… Joking aside, I started in the hospitality industry when I was 17. After completing my degrees at the University of Texas, I decided I did not want to pursue my previous plan of becoming an English professor. Somehow, I wound up in Los Angeles, thinking I would try to write and act, but not really having a definitive plan. I was extremely lucky to get a serving job at a little Italian restaurant and market on La Brea called Cube. There, I discovered my love for Italian wine. I quickly progressed to the beverage director position at Cube just as the restaurant was getting praise from the late, great Jonathan Gold. This propelled my career to a different stratosphere, eventually landing me in places like the Michelin starred Osteria Mozza, stocking cellars for Jay-Z, Songbird, Seoul Sausage, etc. All the while I was saving money and working towards my dream of owning my own restaurant. That dream became reality in 2016 when I opened Baldoria in downtown LA. As previously mentioned, we had a lot of success at Baldoria by most metrics, but eventually I was forced to close the restaurant due to difficulties arising from the expansion of Skid Row. Nevertheless, out of Baldoria, came a new RTD cocktail business named B&K Classic Cocktails, which is still in operation today. Also, as it seems like I am irrationally drawn to school, I am currently finishing my WSET Diploma in Wine (level 4) with plans to enter the Master of Wine program next year. I think I will always be drawn to learning about wine and spirits, and I hope this passion comes across to anyone who is considering one of my products or whom I have the pleasure of working with.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Funding a restaurant is tough. I held investment dinners, sent pitch decks, worked with a consultant, developed and re-developed business plans, etc. over the course of 3-4 years. Throughout the entire process I had identified approximated 15-20 potential locations, all of which had their own unique business considerations. Eventually, I applied for a Small Business Administration loan. While it was a ton of paperwork, the ability to obtain 100% percent ownership of my company was too good to pass up. And surprisingly, the bank offering the loan was relatively flexible, with us having to change our location and the financials of the business plan after the loan was approved. The main point I got from both private investors and the bank, though, was that they wanted a significant investment percentage in cash from me. Luckily, I had been saving for several years with this goal in mind.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Every person is unique. What motivates one person will not motivate another. Therefore it is extremely important to know your team and have good managers under you that know their direct reports. I wish I could say there was one aspect that I could focus on that would make all of my employees happy, but this isn’t the case. So, I think the best advice I could give would be to understand that all of your employees are different people, and you have to make certain that each one is being heard.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bkclassiccocktails.com/
- Instagram: @bkclassiccocktails