We recently connected with Max Heigh and have shared our conversation below.

Max , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I learned about the food & beverage industry early in my life, because my single mother of three managed several different concessions/brands throughout our come up. My first job was at a chain pizza place, making pizzas, then I moved up to a barista job. When I turned 18, I hopped into serving; and actually made some pretty good money. While I was cocktail serving, I was also going to community college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with life.

I was never a good student and although I may not have gained the book knowledge like many of my peers, I learned the skill of networking. After I got my associates degree I knew continuing education wasn’t for me, so I was dedicated to learn how to run a business.

At the time I didn’t really want to be in the restaurant business, because I had been around it my whole life, but I wanted to own my own business so I had to get that knowledge from somewhere. My family had a sandwich shop that opened in the early 2000’s, so this was my stepping stone to gaining the knowledge I needed to pursue my future ventures. From this point I hopped right in the family business and worked side by side with my the fam for a few years soaking up all I could working with my mom and sister. Working with family is not easy, but the hands on approach really worked for me.

After a few years of cutting bagels, making salads, and managing a team of about 20 I felt it was time to step into my own. I had some money saved up and i was able to get enough in personal loans to start up my own business outside of food & beverage.

I took plunge into the retail world and decided to open up a mens boutique. At this time I had the understandings of how to start a business and what I needed to do, but I didn’t have any real retail/clothing knowledge. All I knew is I loved shoes, streetwear, and art, so somehow it was going to come together.

This is where the power of network came in, I had a family friend of mine who I knew was partnered in an up in coming clothing brand. I hadn’t talked to Rex since I was in the play pin, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to reach out to him on myspace, so thats what I did! I reached out to him out of the blue, so when he actually replied back I was feeling very positive.

I took him our for some Thai food and I literally asked him everything he knew about retail and he shared valuable info about trade shows, buying, etc. A few months later I went to my first trade show and he joined my team. The clothing venture did pretty well and we managed to open two locations in a few years, we also did some pretty big collaborations with some well known designers who are still in the game today. We had writers from all over the world talking about us, so it was going in the right direction. However, after a few years of doing it, I realized it wasn’t for me! I enjoyed the creative side of it a lot, I liked creating interesting collaborations, and marketing, so for me that was the big gain. Really understanding the things that I liked about the business was the first step to my next ventures.

My family was going through some issues at the same time I had closed DELI mens boutique, so I hopped back in the restaurant business and tried to help where I was needed. Life is a roller coaster sometimes and I just had to go with it for a while. Fast forward a year later, I’m still doing the same thing and then I discovered food trucks!

I didn’t want to be in food & beverage industry, but when I saw the cool things food trucks were doing I was hooked. I grew up eating off of taco trucks, but I never saw much beyond that. After taking a trip down to Portland and seeing all the amazing food being served I latched on to the idea. From here I purposely made trips down to San Franciso & LA just to soak up more food truck knowledge. I started hunting down the best trucks in Seattle to watch how they moved and soon after that my mission to open a food truck began.

I didn’t know anyone who owned a food truck and there wasn’t a stock of ready to go food trucks for purchase at this time. I reached out to a contractor friend of mine about building a truck for me and he agreed, although, he had never actually built a truck. Building the truck was a whole entire job on its own.

I know its backwards but, Before even establishing a menu or brand I started having the truck built. I had so many different styles of food I wanted to do, but I had only really worked in fast food, so I didn’t feel confident in building a menu.

One day I flipped on the food network and I seen this chef from Hawai’i and he was competing in a food competition. I remember thinking this guy is awesome I wish I could throw down like that. Come to find out that chefs brother was a friend to my folks, so I asked to be connected. I didn’t know this before that I just started talking about him one day and things started coming together. Once I got his contact I sent him a email thinking it was a long shot, but he actually got back to me. Things moved very quickly from here! I was introduced to Chef Sam Choy in 2010, pitched an idea, and then a few months later we started developing a menu, a concept, and all. I have family ties in Hawai’i and grew up eating and loving a lot of the food he made, so opening a Hawaiian style food truck really hit home for me.

We started this business on a shoe string budget, but I knew the only way we could get this business really off the floor was by expanding our foot print. Within 4-5 months of being open I had a friend who connected me with another friend, who’s brother just so happen to be selling a food truck. The truck was only $9k so I knew I checked it out. The truck ran and all but it had so many issues, it didn’t even back up for the first months, so I had to push it out of parking stalls. Either way my mentality was if I can make this work for a few months I could get everything fixed and slowly but surely thats what happened.

The idea was to grow a fleet of food trucks and I wanted to take over the streets and for a period of time we did just that. I was able to get a few other trucks opened and a long the way I found some really great help. My team and my family have been a huge part of the businesses success and couldn’t have been done without there support.

We were able to build a business with a single food truck and now we have a handful of brick & mortar locations as well as some other newly developed concepts.

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

Growing up I had no clue what I was going to do with my life! I made a lot of really unwise choices as a youth, because I grew up in a time where you had to be a hard or you were looked down on. I saw a lot of people in my neighborhood making money the wrong way as a young guy, so for a period time I thought that was the only way.

My family has always been supportive and I realized I didn’t want to disappoint them by going to jail or even worse, so I worked hard to shake that small minded thinking. I started meeting new people and started to understand that this world is a big place, so if I wanted to see it I had to start planning ahead. I set goals to buy my first house before I was 21 and I did just that! This really made me realize if I’m patient and work hard anything can happen.

I had some great mentors, so I’m very lucky, but it was up to me too push things forward. I don’t claim to know all the answers, I’m still a student to this thing we call life, but one of the most valuable things my folks taught me was to never be afraid to ask questions. Asking questions is something that has helped me achieve some really cool things in life and connected me with a lot of great people.

I still have a lot of life to live and I’m still hustling, but everything my team and I have accomplished so far I am very proud of. I have had to sacrifice a lot of time, but I am proud of every bump and bruise I’ve had take in along the way.Things may not always work out the way you hoped, but don’t give up.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

When the covid-19 pandemic happened, I thought It was going to be the end of our business! I remember meeting with my team and telling them we had to lay off 90% of our staff, including them. Our food truck business relied on business parks, but no one was in the office. We had just opened our SeaTac airport location a few months before the pandemic began and they shut down air travel, so things weren’t promising there either. Our other locations shut down because people were scared to come out of the house. One by one things were closing down and it really didn’t look like we were going to come back from it. Once I was able to regroup, I met with the small group of people that were still willing to work at the time and we created processes to create a safe working environment. It was scary, but I had to put my game face for the crew otherwise we could have gone under.

As weeks when on the two locations we had opened were slowly picking up traction from take out orders and we even implemented a delivery service for while too. What really made this hard was the only two drivers at the time were me and my step dad. But, it didn’t matter we did it.

After a few months of the stay home order but “essential workers” were still working I was able to slowly bring back people in the team. When I realized people didn’t want to go inside places, I didn’t know how we would survive through that, so I started brainstorming and we came up with some pretty neat ideas that helped us carry through.

I pitched a few menu ideas to my local chef and we created a handful of pop ups that caught on. Because I had these food trucks that weren’t moving, we turned each one into a different theme (ramen, chicken wings, seafood, etc) and we set them outside the parking lot of my brick and mortar restaurant..almost like a outdoor food court. This idea caught on and people started to come out. There wasn’t a lot going on so timing in that regard worked out and gave people something safe to do. We were serving great food and we were outside. Luckily as time went on we were able to bring back people who were laid off and get the rest of the operation open again.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

I realized how much people loved sweets during the height of pandemic. I remember seeing new tick tock videos everyday of some sort of trending dish. At first I didn’t think much of it, but I started seeing how happy it made people when they indulged into a sweet treat. I always loved ice cream, so we did some searching on how to make it and we started a small batch ice cream brand.

We always offered sweets that were outsourced and they sold well for us, but since we started Lainas Ice Cream we have been able to offer a item we are very proud of and it compliments are other offerings. Its really cool to see people come into our locations just for the ice cream.

Contact Info:

• Website: heighconnectsfoodgroup.com
• Instagram: @heighconnectsfood
• Facebook: heighconnectsfood