We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rolan Pongpuntara. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with rolan below.

Rolan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your business and how did you resolve those issues?

Being a business owner, you’re bound to encounter problems so its important to be a problem solver. You’ll have to fix things and deal with them because there’s always a point A, a point B, and a point C, and so on. You just have to be ready to fix the situation and move forward. For example, if an order is supposed to get there at 11 am, but the driver gets there a certain time because of traffic or running late, you just have to adjust the time earlier and leave extra time for incidents like these.

Rolan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been a food entrepreneur for several years, with hands-on kitchen experience and a deep passion for using food to heal and bring people together. I started in 2013, and opened my own restaurant in 2014, and catering business in 2017. My career has always been about more than just cooking—it’s about building experiences around meals, healing and moments that people remember.

We offer meal prep, catering, popups, events, and end-to-end event management. Our meal prep and catering services are tailored to individual dietary needs and schedules, with group catering for everything from small gatherings to large corporate functions. On the event side, we handle setup, decor, ambience, table styling, and full staffing—chefs, servers, and support roles—so clients don’t have to worry about a thing. We design seasonal menus and custom menus, and we’re committed to on-site service.
The value we bring is stress-free events. Clients can trust that every detail—from menus and décor to staffing and cleanup.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is something I’ve faced multiple times in this industry but 2020 was the clearest test. When everything shut down and offices emptied, I had to find new way to service since my main clients were tech companies with teams working from home. Pivoting meant shifting from events to meal services, and it was incredibly scary and hard. Despite the fear, I persisted and found a path forward that kept the business afloat and laid the groundwork for resilience in the years that followed.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

The first time I bought a storefront, I had to build everything from scratch—brand, name, and so on—which made it a much more challenging journey. I started with a clean slate, launching the business as a new entity. This meant creating the brand identity, systems, and operations from zero. Despite the hard work, I was able to pay off the loan in ten months. .

The second time around I bought a kitchen that was already built out and an existing business that was already running. That made the process alot easier—there was less waiting on build-out, fewer unknowns, and a quicker path to getting operations moving. It allowed me to focus more on refining the brand and scale, rather than assembling the entire foundation from scratch.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sidekitch.com
• Instagram: sidekitch
• Facebook: sidekitch
• Linkedin: sidekitch
• Yelp: sidekitch