We recently connected with Isaac Perlman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Isaac, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

My business is significantly larger than when I started in 2013. I started cooking privately in clients houses out of my trunk. I essentially got to running a full on catering with just and SUV and an igloo cooler on wheels. Doing bridal showers, corporate dinners, and even wedding dinners with a team I would call for that event and we would cook out of the clients home or a rental kitchen I would bring and set up shop if it was a venue without a kitchen. As they say you really do need to fake it until you make it. Clients want to feel comfortable that the company they are hiring is large enough to satisfy their event. One thing I did always make sure of was to serve outstanding food with unparalleled service which would bring the wows and questions of who was catering? And when the client was asked they would proudly say Chef IP and introduce me. I made sure to impress everyone because the best way to get new clients is through word of mouth. Once you penetrate certain social circles everyone wants to use you. Obviously my obstacles where always the fact that we had no commissary kitchen and we would have to prep everything from scratch the day of the event at the clients house/venue. I guess that’s where the tactic of “bringing the restaurant to you” came from. Eventually I needed to scale up so we looked for space and we opened PERL by Chef IP – a restaurant open to the public for lunch and dinner which also houses my commissary kitchen for our private event sector.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into the industry when I was 16 years old. It was summertime and my father asked what I would be doing that summer and since he saw my passion for cooking/hospitality he mentioned he could put me in touch with his cousin Chef Harry Sasson in Bogota, Colombia who could give me a summer internship. I took the opportunity and started my cooking career. I then went back another couple summers to work with him and Bogota’s best restauranteur Leo Katz. Those internships really showed me that I really loved the industry and I got fully submerged by going to Hospitality School in FIU which is one of the nations best. At the same time I was working a part time line cook job at Seagrill in North Miami and then in Swine Southern Table & Bar in Coral Gables. In 2013 graduation from FIU was closing in and I started thinking what my next move would be? A friend of a friend called me to see if I could cater her birthday in her condo in Aventura – I initially thought to myself this is strange. Why would I cook for her? Then I did the numbers and decided hey what can I loose? I ended up doing it, everyone loved it, and I walked home with a check that was equivalent to a weeks worth pay of being an entry level line cook at a restaurant. This got me thinking ‘”I have myself a business here…” I eventually started doing larger dinners and realizing this was something I loved but most importantly the clients loved. There was no such thing as a private chef events in Miami in 2013 – I would say I was one of the first. From private chef it also turned into in-house catering. Now Chef IP has a catering department, a private chef department, and the flagship restaurant called PERL in North Miami Beach/Aventura area.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I always made sure to use the very best ingredients and buy them fresh that day. I would also make sure to go to different vendors who might be better in certain sectors. At the time I would go to maybe 6-7 markets just to shop for 1 private dinner. I would buy the fish in one place, the meat in one place, the asian specialty at the oriental market, and so on. People really realized that my quality was unparalleled to any catering company or takeout since my product was fresh from that day and being cooked fresh in their home. I made sure to leave their kitchens clean and to impress their guests time after time. IF you do that people talk and you start to get referred real quickly.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

After 7+ years of doing private cooking/private catering in 2020 came the global pandemic. No one wanted to host dinner parties so I was essentially jobless. After maybe 2 weeks of sitting home and cooking/cleaning 3 times a day I was telling myself Im sure people are not enjoying this as much as I do. So I created a dinner delivery service with rotating menus from different regions of the world. We began with Mexican food as the first day we did it happened to land on Cinco de Mayo (May 5, 2020). I reached out to my network of clients and the response was insane – hundred of orders in under a few hours. I had officially invented a new business for the time. It only lasted 6-7 months but it certainly worked. Life came back to usual and then I opened my new restaurant called PERL in December of 2020

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.chef-ip.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chef.ip/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaac-perlman-93b3066b/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/perl-by-chef-ip-miami
• Other: https://www.perlrestaurant.com

Image Credits
Photographers – Zina Perlman & Jenny Abrams