We recently connected with Jerrod Lemmons and have shared our conversation below.
Jerrod, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.
Every month since January of 2024, we’ve hosted and co-operated our restaurant with an up-and-coming chef, giving them the space, equipment, technology, data, exposure, staffing, and mentorship they need to launch, grow, or scale their food concepts. We cover all of their startup costs and overhead expenses, so even if things don’t go as well as they’d hoped financially, our chefs never owe us anything for believing in themselves enough to try.
Some chefs don’t have the funds, following, or team to graduate from their food trucks and catering businesses; others have backgrounds that prevent them from breaking into the industry on their own, or limit their access to capital and commercial leases.
We know that culinary talent is everywhere, but real opportunities for business ownership, job creation, community impact, and wealth building are not. Our mission is to eliminate the biggest barriers to entry and success for deserving entrepreneurs that are often overlooked by investors, bankers, and other partners in the restaurant industry.
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.
For foodies who are about supporting small businesses, Kitchen Combine is a one-stop shop for them to discover and enjoy a new food concept every month. You can follow us on social media to see what concepts are coming soon, and you can even nominate a business whose owner and menu deserve to have a bigger platform.
For chefs with a food concept they aspire to bring to the world, Kitchen Combine is the fastest, cheapest, and easiest platform to launch, grow, and scale their restaurant businesses. By partnering with our chefs, we save them an immense amount of money and time by making what normally requires hundreds of thousands of dollars and several months without revenue possible within days on little cash reserves. We also give grants to aspiring restaurateurs and connect them with key stakeholders in the food industry to accelerate their success.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’ve never had a smooth road in any entrepreneurial venture, and this was no different. Kitchen Combine was literally born out of what looked and felt like failure.
We realized fairly early on that our first restaurant was not going to be as successful as we hoped as early on as we had hoped, and rather than drag it on any further, we decided to shut it down to regroup and focus on finding a more sustainable model.
We had the work ethic, the product, and intentionality surrounding customer service, yet there was still something missing.
When we closed, our customers were confused by our decision because things seemed to be going well. Our employees – many of whom are family members and close friends – were worried as we tried to find work for them in our other businesses. Everyone looked at us like we were crazy for months. Regardless, we leaned into the hard lessons we learned and began to think critically about how to move forward.
As we sat looking at our restaurant and all the potential it possessed, we realized there were some inherent challenges to the brick-and-mortar restaurant model that would be hard for any new restaurant to overcome, including us. Food and labor costs are often rising more quickly than prices, and with all the money that goes into getting a restaurant off the ground, in addition to ever-increasing overhead expenses, breaking even can take a long time, if it ever is achieved at all. This can be especially difficult when a chef or restaurant owner does not already have a significant customer base.
Some of our mentors in the food industry saw success with alternative models like ghost kitchens and pop-ups, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. This idea, connected with our desire to support chefs who are interested in longevity, ushered us into a thought about how great it would be if you could have the best of all worlds: a restaurant that is as visible as a brick-and-mortar storefront, as easy to open as a ghost kitchen, and as trendy as a pop-up.
We quickly realized that it didn’t exist, and that’s when we focused our energies on ironing out the Kitchen Combine concept. This opportunity may have been born out of failure, but we managed to do what any good entrepreneur would. We failed forward.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
Every person who comes to Kitchen Combine as a customer, as an employee, or as a partner knows that eating here is about more than just about breaking up the monotony of their everyday food choices.
While traditional marketing channels like social media, email campaigns, and strategic partnerships help us reach new supporters, the #1 thing we do to foster loyalty is to stay visible and available to the community.
This isn’t the type of business where we can just disappear and let the machine run itself. We are constantly taking feedback from the people who care about our mission, and our willingness to their ideas helps us build trust with our customers, staff, chefs, partners, and friends. One key example of this is our VIP subscription where anyone who sees the impact of what we do and wants to see small business owners succeed can commit one meal a month to dining with us without even knowing who we’re bringing, when, and what they’re serving.
One of my favorite quotes by Simon Sinek is that “The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kitchencombine.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kitchencombine/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kitchencombine
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kitchencombine/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kitchen.combine
Image Credits
Pepsi Dig In & Odyssey Creations