This is not my LinkedIn profile

These days, I find myself telling “my story” a lot. Naturally, the story I tell is an edited-down version of 15+ years of working. I love storytelling, and I always wish I had a platform to share the annotations (indented below) of my professional experience. For those of you I’m meeting for the first time, this is a crash course in my professional experience. For those of you I’ve known for a long time outside of work, there’s a test at the end. Most importantly, for those of you who think you know my career, you’ll undoubtedly learn a new thing or two. Also, thanks to Kuan for the inspiration. 

I’ll start from the beginning:

When I graduated college, I joined a management consulting firm. After a couple years, I realized I needed to be a bit more passionate about my work.

Katzenbach Partners taught me everything I’ll ever need to know about workplace culture. It was an intellectual playground where principals, designers, and receptionists were all treated equally and celebrated. A very specific recruiting process fed into this culture; everyone who walked in the door started with an A+. I got to experience this firsthand working with Kristen on the recruiting team. She screwed me over by setting the bar way too high for future managers. Over fifteen years later, I would never hesitate to ask a Katzenbacher for help, and I’m always happy to return the favor. 

I knew I wanted to work in food, but I didn’t know what part, so I joined the events team at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I also trained in the dining room, worked on the farm, and helped with the programming team. I realized pretty quickly that I loved the energy of being on the floor of a restaurant, so I left the farm to join Andrew Carmellini’s newest opening, The Dutch. 

Across all of my friends and family, I knew one… only one… person who worked in food, Jake of Dickson's Farmstand Meats. He was gracious enough to meet (meat, HA) with me. He doesn’t know this, but his story lit a fire within me. He was the first person I had ever met who followed their passion into the professional world. Everyone else I knew had a job because they were supposed to make money or have a certain title. He just did the thing he wanted to do. I still remember the feeling I had after talking to him and realizing that I, too, could follow my passion. 

He was very connected in the farm-to-table movement, which, at the time, was only starting to take hold. I knew that movement was where I needed to start my journey, so I applied for an apprenticeship program at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I was accepted to the program (before you ooo and ahhh, it was unpaid, so I don’t think it was particularly competitive), but after I got in, they told me that there was an opening on the events team if I wanted a paying job. I asked if I could do both, and they said yes (free labor? sure). It was the first time I had to clock into a job. My clock-in number was 305, and every single time I clocked in/out, I thought “take it to the house” in my head. No, I’m not kidding.

When most of my friends were getting their MBAs, I was a host making $13/hour, and it was the best decision of my life. I quickly rose through the ranks from Maitre d’ to Manager to Director of Guest Relations, and I opened eight restaurants in five years with what became NoHo Hospitality Group. 

Oof, where to start. I’m tired just thinking about those years. There’s no better way to spend your 20s in New York City than opening restaurants. First, the opening team at The Dutch was brilliant. I could easily dedicate an entire newsletter to Colin, Deb, Ricci, Chad, BQ, Jamie, and the crew. I also met my best friend Aly there. I could regale you with stories about food critics, a debaucherous La Paulée afterparty, or Beyoncé (she touched my arm!)... actually, I’m getting the sense I do really need a whole post about this. 

Those of us who work in tech think about scale a lot, but physical and emotional scale is an entirely different beast. Eight restaurants later, I kept running into Brandon (who I vaguely knew through the industry). He was taking meetings in the new hotel we had opened. One day, I saw him in the lobby cafe, the next in the bar, the following for breakfast in the restaurant. He convinced me that if I joined Resy I’d be the first person to improve my work-life balance by joining a startup. He was right, but not by much. 

There was a new wave of hospitality tech companies popping up, and I joined Resy as the Director of Hospitality. What does a Director of Hospitality do as employee seven at a tech startup? I still don’t know. When Resy pivoted from being a concierge platform to a full reservations platform, Ben looked at me and said: “You’re the product manager, you should tell the engineers what to build.” I Googled “what’s a product manager,” and luckily my team of engineers guided me from there. With our small-but-mighty squad, ResyOS went from seating one million guests a year to one million guests a month. 

This job set me on a new course. Ben believed in me and pushed me; Paul, Eric, Joe (Roux co-founder!), and Mike patiently taught me how to build a product (and insisted I never learn CS); Stephanie, Ryan and I formed a connection between sales, CS, and product that I talk about every.single.time I give a talk about early-stage teams (“the Google sheet” is infamous).

After a couple years, I joined WeWork with the hopes of learning from career product professionals. Despite all the headlines, there were some incredibly talented people there, and I was able to learn from quite a few. 

I realized I wasn’t quite done with hospitality tech, so I left to create my first startup, a business intelligence tool for restaurants. I was ready to launch my first beta when the pandemic hit. Restaurants were decimated in those early days, so the product got shelved. 

Oy, what a time. The only good part of this chapter is that it freed me up to think about silly, frivolous (read, fun) things, so what started as weekly check-ins with Emily to mourn the collapse of the industry turned into a sweet, lighthearted experience that put smiles on people’s faces. We built a simple website where people could write a love letter to their favorite restaurant and share a beautiful memory from the before times. We hit about 500 Love Letters, and the concept was powerful enough that Cointreau ripped it off and made it into a Superbowl ad. Yep. 

In the fall of 2020, I joined DEMI, a culinary community platform where creators monetized their followings via group chats. Unfortunately, we never found product-market fit, but the experience gave me exposure to a different side of the culinary industry and reminded me how much I loved building early-stage products.

DEMI reminded me that people are OBSESSED with food. The quality of engagement in these chats was off the charts and blew standard consumer retention targets out of the water. The pandemic was a unique moment in time when people went back to basics, and cooking was a major part of that. But the chats were more than momentary hobbyists; they were filled with chronic dinner party hosts, recent cooking school graduates, and backyard BBQ pros. The time I spent chatting with DEMI users breathed new life into me and showed me that the culinary community was bursting at the seams for a better consumer experience. 

I’ve known Krystle for many years; we collaborated in the early days of BentoBox on new restaurant launches (Resy’s reservation widget was embedded on a restaurant’s BentoBox-powered website). We always wanted to work together, and even though I knew Roux was around the corner, we decided that post-Fiserv acquisition would be a great time for me to join BentoBox in an interim role. I originally signed on as VP of Product for six months, although I ended up staying a year and six months thanks to an incredible team. 

BentoBox was the first later-stage company I ever worked for that I thought I could be happy at longterm. 80% of BentoBox employees have worked in the restaurant industry, which means there is customer empathy up and down the organization - and it shows. It was such an honor to lead a team of all-star product managers, product designers, and product operations managers (there are too many of you to name, but you know who you are). Acquisitions are (very) hard, but crafting a vision for a unified restaurant tech stack was a major milestone in my hospitality-centric career. I’m honored that vision is still being implemented today. On my last day, Krystle looked at me and said “wow, that was fun” - and honestly, it was.

And that’s where Part 1 ends. Each of these roles, these people, these companies has gifted me a tool to build Part 2. The culture of Katzenbach, the ethos of Blue Hill, the energy of The Dutch, the team at Resy, the expertise at WeWork, the community from DEMI, and the leadership at BentoBox. That’s a recipe for success (sorry/not sorry).

Food for thought

I just surveyed over 350 people and learned A LOT. For starters…

87% of respondent said they discover recipes on Instagram 

43% of respondent said they save recipes on Instagram

72% of respondents said they search for a recipe when there’s a specific ingredient they want to use 

75% of respondents said they search for a recipe when there’s a style of meal they want to cook (dinner party, holiday meal, weekly meal prep, etc.)

So… let the people search, right?

When it comes to cooking, people want (need?) to be in control. They need robust search functionality to accommodate their unique preferences and needs. There’s an enormous gap in today’s market between what we’re served, and what we want.

I don’t need to explain that this is a half thought. If you want it to be closer to a three-quarter thought, let me know in the comments.