Transcript

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, Founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

We're so excited to have Andrew Black with us here today. Andrew is the Chief Culinary Officer of Counter Service, which is an exciting new concept that we're going to hear more about. Andrew, welcome.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Thank you, very happy to be here. I have a lot of love for Culinary Agents, so I'm excited to be a part of this.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Thank you. Hopefully our tool gives you love back. Well, we're going to get to the cool stuff you're working on now. But this show is all about how you got here and stuff, advice you picked up along the way. So tell me about how you got started in hospitality.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, when I think back on it, it's a lot of my upbringing. So both my parents were artists. My dad is a painter. My mom's a photographer. And so my sister and I grew up cooking a lot. There was a lot of this creative energy in the house. We grew a lot of food that we ate. We cooked nearly every meal together. My dad baked a lot of bread. And so I just grew up with that as a natural sort of way of eating, and we followed a lot of this macrobiotic diet, which was a bit unusual for a kid my age in Arizona where I'm from, of all places to eat, but it was just natural to me. And so I think a lot of that has sort of followed through in my way of thinking about food now, and what I appreciate about ingredients, and the way I think about eating.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That was very forward thinking. It's like, you know, that was just normal for you. But the rest of the world was just catching up with like, wait, food is fuel and what you put in your body actually makes a difference.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, no, I was eating sprouted grains and tofu and rice milk and all this stuff that is kind of cool now, but is healthy and it was just sort of normal for us. I look back and I'm really thankful for that, that my parents ingrained that in us and we weren't eating like tons of processed food or anything. But it's been fun to sort of rediscover my roots through food in that way.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, so clearly you were exposed to it in a different way or in, should I say, the right way? And you're growing up, did you think, “Oh, I want to do something in food?” or is that just like, “That's life,” and, you know, “I'm going to go do stuff”?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah. So I was a pretty good student, and I had an opportunity to basically have a full ride to the local college in Tucson. When the time came to decide, nothing really interested me other than food. I basically looked for–this is in high school–I looked for jobs in the industry and worked at some very casual things that were local. But I wanted to do something more in food, and there was a Le Cordon Bleu branch a few hours from where I grew up. And I enrolled for a baking competition and I got first place. And so that was sort of the impetus for like, okay, I can do this. I like the energy here and what a fun opportunity to explore professionally.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Nice. So you went to Le Cordon Bleu for school and then from there it looks like you went straight into hotels.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, so there was a hiring fair at Le Cordon Bleu, and I hadn't worked in any professional kitchens at the time, and I thought that was maybe a safe way to get started. And I worked at some nicer hotels, like resorts in the Scottsdale area. But I always had a drive and a passion for fine dining at that point in my life and wanted to work for the best chefs and so I worked for Laurent Tourondel for a while. He opened a steakhouse, which is a little more upscale. And there was a connection to New York there actually as well. So I'd come and visit some friends and we would eat at the steakhouse, and he sort of treated it like a VIP very early on in my career, which is this strange, like… I don't know, for me it was so fun and eye-opening, like the industry can be so hospitable and generous. And I really love that. 

And then got inspired to work for this guy, Kevin Binkley, who really was like my mentor. He's an amazing chef. He worked at The French Laundry and brought that sort of intensity and organization of kitchens to this remote little kitchen in the desert. And we worked side by side with a small team, and he really taught me how to cook and season and source ingredients and work with really high quality ingredients. And it was really inspiring to see him do that in an environment where he was really the only one taking that level of attention and care to food at that time in Arizona. And he would always come to New York for award ceremonies and things and inspired me to really take the next step to come here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's just a great example of how people go get experience in other places and then bring that to other areas. That's something really unique, I think, in this industry. And you kind of got an indirect experience or master class, if you will, of what it's like to work in French Laundry, right? And that, think, just, you know, that's incredible.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Thanks. Yeah, it was a fun time. It was so hard. I was finishing culinary school. I was working there a lot. I was sleeping in my car in the parking lot to not miss class in the morning. It was brutal. And I was like, oh, God, this is hard, but I love it. And I think it really ingrained some strong work ethics from the beginning for me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Nice, nice. I keep seeing this kind of reference to “New York, New York.” So is that how you're like, “I need to get to New York”?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, so I knew that, again, I wanted to work for great chefs and I knew that New York was a place that had a lot of them. Let's see, this was a long time ago. I came in and crashed on my friend’s couch, who was not a chef, but was generous enough to have me come stay for a few nights. And I did a trial, a stage at Eleven Madison where I really wanted to work, cooked for Daniel and did the whole thing and wasn't offered a job. They're like, “Yes, you know, it's good, but we don't really have any availability now.” So, OK, well, I really, you know, I keep following up until you offer me something, basically. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

And so I ended up moving here just hell-bent on working there and didn't have a job, didn't have a plan really, just a hope. And it was a couple months before I got anything locked down, but I ended up working a few other jobs for some great chefs in the meantime and really got my first taste of kitchen culture in New York, which was really fun.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, not too shabby. I see Aldea here–I just saw George–and also Lincoln, under Benno? Under chef Benno? 

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, Benno was there, yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Nice. Nice. See, you know, you got to be persistent. You got to just take the leap. 

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, kept following up. Pretty much.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You got to move cross country.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, yeah. The energy of the city really grew on me. I was very excited to be here, very young and eager. And I just kept following up with, I think it was Daniel Humm’s assistant at the time and James Kent and finally was offered a position and started from the bottom. I went in thinking I knew a lot, but really quickly learned that I didn't really know much. And it was an amazing time to be there. I mean, so much talent, so many chefs now that are successful in their own ways.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah. Do you remember one thing or one of the wow moments when you got there that was like, “Whoa, I wasn't prepared for that” or “I didn't know that's how that happened”?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah. I mean, I'd never worked in restaurants that had such prestige and were on their trajectory to be something huge and or even on a team that was so big. And so having this camaraderie to work towards this goal that was really hard to achieve but we were going to get there was a feeling that I had never felt. And it was pretty amazing to get that really soon after I started.

They were four stars in the New York Times and then they were one Michelin star at the time, got three. There was a cookbook, they were opening Nomad. I mean, there was so much going on and it was amazing to be there then.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Do you remember one thing that you took away from when you left that kitchen?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK 

Oh man.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Probably many things, right?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

There's so many things, yeah. One really impactful thing came from James Kent, actually. He, I think, was an amazing leader. He offered me the job and made a big impact on a lot of people, obviously. I remember him saying, “To be a good leader, you have to have empathy.” And as a young cook, I didn't even know what that meant. Like, I was selfish and would do whatever I needed to do to make my station set up. And he was inspiring in the sense of leading this team. He had so many people that respected him and his word and really taught me how to lead, you know, as a sous chef there, and lead teams across the stations, and really understood that if you have a connection with the people on your team and you feel their pain and you listen to them and really have some sort of connection that isn't so transactional, you can build a lot of strength and have them be more productive and all in just making the team more more strong in the long run. That was something that sticks with me today.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, thank you for sharing. He definitely had a huge impact on the industry and people, and everyone's carrying out his legacy today. So you spent several years at EMP and then you went to do something totally different.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, at that point I was really tired. I was kind of burnt out. I had worked in higher end restaurants mostly my whole career and wanted to do something different but still in food. And I really just needed a break basically. So working at EMP, you meet a lot of international chefs, and I was lucky to make connections with a handful of them. And so I traveled for a while. I volunteered in Southeast Asia for a long time, got to know that food and was incredibly eye-opening. Like everything I thought was the right way to do something was the wrong way over there. And it was so fascinating to me. And I just have a deep love for spicy food and those flavors.

And so took a nice break and then came back and wanted to still do something with food, something that's a little nicer but still learn, and took a chocolate maker job at Mast. At the time, they had their factory in Williamsburg, not far from where I lived, and started just making chocolate with them. And they were on a trajectory to do great things and open more locations, and they brought me on to help with that. So I became the head chocolate maker there and helped coordinate expansion in Brooklyn, London, Los Angeles, new production lines, new SKUs for them. And it was really fun. It was eye-opening for sure, working with just a handful of ingredients, making a lot of different things with those ingredients. They had an amazing following at the time.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That's so interesting. I'm going to say something that’s maybe kind of ignorant here, but you were savory. And I know you won a baking competition when you were younger, but then you went on to the savory side, and then you do all this stuff, and now you're the head chocolate maker. So I guess you've got savory and sweet both under your belt.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I love baking things. Like I said, I grew up baking a lot with my dad. And I love the precision of it and definitely learned a lot from them. But it was different in the sense, like, chocolate is its own beast. Like there are so many variables and ways to get it to the final product. And we really treated it like food. Something they did was wrap it in butcher's paper. It wasn't this precious thing that you see commercials on TV for Lindt or something like that. And they had a different way of approaching it, which I appreciated.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Great, so you did that for a couple years, traveling. Looks like you traveled a lot, geez. And then you did what I feel like a lot of people sometimes dream to do. You went to be a private chef for a while.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, I missed cooking. I missed, you know, a lot of the aspects of cooking at that point and knew that I didn't really want to get back into fine dining but still had a passion for quality ingredients and things like that. And I tried it out, and it was tough and fun and challenging in new ways. And I definitely learned a lot about myself and what I'm capable of doing. And yeah, I did that for a few years, and it was really fun. Got to see other parts of the world, and I think now it's become so common for chefs to take that path, right?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. So for the listeners who are like, “Wow, I want to do that,” or maybe are dreaming to do that, but don't know how to or don't know how to get started, do you have any tips for them? Like, how did you get into that? Did you connect with a person or a family or an agency or something?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

There's plenty of agencies, but I think the best way to get into something like that where you're going to have a good connection is word of mouth. And so this is from a friend in the industry who I helped with a dinner one night and was like, “Hey, you know, I would do this again, do you know anybody?” And kind of like the next day he's like, “Yeah, this guy.” 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Nice.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

And one thing led to another, and it really is a small industry, but it's such a small world, like when it comes to that part of the industry. And one thing led to another and ended up working for a few people and having a great time doing it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I would say make it known what you want, because you never know who's listening. You never know who they know because people enjoy great food, and there definitely are people out there who have the means to have that great food come to them.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, I mean it's rewarding for you as a chef too. Like you get to work with ingredients that maybe you didn't get to in the past, or try something you've never had a chance to, or go somewhere you've never had a chance to. So it's not for everyone, that's for sure. But I think if you keep an open mind and try it out at least once, then it's worth it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Great, great advice. Okay, now fast forward to some of the cool things you've been doing in the past couple years and then what you're doing now. So take me there.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah. Sure. So let's see. I helped start this restaurant concept called Kernel, and it was very automation-forward. There's a lot of tech and robotics and things like that, and we were serving a plant-based menu which I was really excited about, I still am very excited about. But there's this model where we have a central kitchen that produced food from scratch with real chefs making delicious stuff all day, and then we would deliver it to our restaurants around the city throughout the day to make sure it's always fresh and consistent, and then it would be essentially finished in the restaurants. And so this hub and spoke model works pretty well. But the menu, I think, was a little late in resonating with the plant-forward movement. And it just didn't stick quite like we wanted to. And it was an amazing learning experience. 

But late last year, we decided to pivot a little bit. And so now here we are making sandwiches, which are delicious. It is working how we want it to now, and the customer base is super excited, and the team is thrilled to build this, and we have one location now, but we're going to be opening some more this year.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and I'm going to brag about it a little bit more. Fill in some of the mysterious blanks that you've left. Your, I'll call it the leadership team and the founding folks at Kernel is Steve Ellis, right, of Chipotle. How did you connect with this group?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, gosh, I mean, I think it was again through mutual friends in the industry. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Word of mouth.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

I mean, Steve is an amazing chef. I mean, he and I are interested in the same things. He knows how to cook. He's a great cook, appreciates quality ingredients and was really passionate at the time about creating the next generation of restaurants. So we got together and started talking about it and tried a lot of different things. And here we are. I mean, it's really busy now. We are figuring out a lot of things as we go, but we also are lucky to have some infrastructure in place through him and his connections to hopefully make this a super successful chain of restaurants here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, it will be. I am going to draw a parallel here into the tech startup world, because for those of you who may or may not have known about the initial concept Kernel with their tech-forward, they also had the robotic arm. Is that the way to describe it? I'm sure there's a better technical term for it. But the testing out a new way for basically, like you said, having the hub and spoke is central like delivery and then finishing at the restaurant locations and then utilizing and using robotics and technology in a different way. And then obviously with that came a lot of different challenges. I think I read somewhere or listened to somewhere that literally in Manhattan, when you have to put the arm into the ground, depending on the building and the location, how the cement is placed on the floor, like there are just so many other things that you wouldn't even think about.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And so after that had it had its thing and true to like, I guess, any kind of startup or entrepreneurial journey, you take a step back and you're like, “OK, you know, is this really the best way forward? Is there a different way? Is our mission and our purpose still the same? And how can we go about it a different way?” And as a result, Counter Service, which is kind of the 2.0 of the business, if you will, making high quality, delicious sandwiches that are finished at the restaurant locations, right, but prepared and portioned and everything at a central location, nd so you can have quality control. You can–I'm making some of this up but I'm seeing you nodding. So it's probably true, right?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

You're right. You're totally right. Yeah, no, you've got it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

You can do your four-day marinades, whatever you want to do, and make sure that the proteins are prepared a specific way. And then you have your execution manual at the end and probably allow your workers to focus more on the guest experience rather than cooking.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK 

Exactly. That's exactly right. And it gives us a lot more control over the quality of the food that we're serving, having this central production kitchen. And we don't need a hood for the restaurant, so we can go into really small locations. It's a pretty tight little setup, especially here on 14th Street. It's pretty scrappy.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I keep hearing about these egg sandwiches. All I keep hearing about these egg sandwiches.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, you know, the food is good. It's like everyone knows what a sandwich is, and we just make, we think, what are good versions of them. And there's breakfast, there's lunch. The menu is pretty small. There's less than 20 items, a couple of snacks. You know, sometimes people come for breakfast and lunch on the same day. Like we're so excited to be able to serve this to people who are excited about it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I love this as, you know, highlighting your career path of how you started and then the time you spent in fine dining and then bringing it back to a more casual setting, if you will. Right? But still with high quality and still doing what you want and love. And I'm sure you have a hand in what's getting created, how it's being done, etc. So that's really cool.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, we bring a lot of the same attention to detail to what we're making as you would in a fancy restaurant. I mean, we still weigh everything in grams, and there's recipes for everything, and we follow them strictly. But I mean, none of this would be possible without the amazing team we have. We have great cooks and chefs and our culinary director, Neil Stetz is amazing. And it's coming together. And I think there's an opportunity here to create some high quality sandwiches at a scale that hasn't really been done before.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sure a lot of people are, but I'm curious to see how this continues to unfold. I mean, for those of you who are out there listening, are going through their careers, want to open either your own restaurant one day or your own business. I think it's kind of important to think about, you know, all of these different ways that you can have a business, right? A restaurant can be fine dining, can be fast casual, can be, you know, whatever.

Clearly, your leadership has experience with growing a concept and taking that and growing it and at a high scale and massive. So that definitely is a growth mindset. But for folks who are thinking about, “What next? What do I want to do next?” Or “How do I take my experience and my learning and take it into another direction or something that is mine?” You know, these are really interesting examples of different ways.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK 

Yeah. I mean, I never thought I would open a sandwich shop or be making sandwiches like this, but I think having an open mind and saying yes to things that maybe you wouldn't necessarily always be interested in, it can lead you down a path that's pretty amazing.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's the most challenging thing right now that you're kind of thinking about?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Well, this is where you come in. This is bringing in good people. You know, part of this concept is a lower labor model. You know, we are practicing that now, but I'm also still there basically every day making sandwiches. That can't be how it is for long term, even though I really enjoy it. So we really want to find good people who are passionate about the industry, who love food, who are genuinely excited about what we're doing, and create an environment that is a little different than your average sandwich shop or casual restaurant. I mean, we're building a culture that's different, and we have great benefits and we compensate really well. And so these are all intentional things because we want the best people, we want people that are going to help us grow and can provide feedback and really important parts of growing a young business.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Great. Well, we at Culinary Agents are looking forward to supporting all of those things. But that's super important, you hit on it, right? The culture, like when in the beginning, this is where you're setting the groundwork. This is what essentially is a huge pillar in the long term success and growth of your company. And the answer in a way, in many ways, for your team to find leadership and so that you all can take a step back and focus on the future and the strategic things while people are executing and you want them to be happy and part of it.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, we want them to be happy and provide us feedback as the leaders of the company to make their jobs better and easier and more enjoyable. For so long as cooks in nice restaurants, you're just kind of trained to just not say anything and just bear and grin. And that has a place, I guess, but that's not what we want. We want people to help us grow. And I think that's part of the culture that I'm really driving home, is empowering the team to do their jobs, but also help me help them set them up for success. Because if I'm not doing that, then I'm not doing my job.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I love it. That's a perfect segue into quick fire. 

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Here we go.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

All right. What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Have more compassion for myself and others and maybe not freak out about little details so much.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Take a step back, go on a trip, splurge on a meal and just take a breather, because the industry is so big and there's so many opportunities. Maybe you're just not in the part of the industry that is the right fit for you.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Listen to your team. I mean, have empathy. Again, talking back to James, try to build a connection with your team, because the more you invest in them, the more they're going to want to work with you.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Thank you so much. And on that note, Andrew, we are so excited to see what’s next from you and your team. And thank you so much for taking the time for sharing.

GUEST: ANDREW BLACK

Thank you Alice, it's great to be here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG
Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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