Chad Franzen 19:03
Sure. Sure. So given all — given all of the challenges that you just talked about? How has the expansion of four additional locations come about?
James Choi 19:19
So I’ve, whenever people ask me, like, how many Cafe Dules do you want? Like, there’s no no, we never opened it because we were trying to expand. I think anytime we’ve expanded was kind of it’s based off of kind of a necessity. And not a necessity of like, oh, I need to open this location, but it was either due to a relationship or because and usually things kind of magically worked out too. So it was either because like our USC expansion, we had capital st a little cocaine. We had a small little coffee bar, which is fine, nothing crazy. But, uh, so hold on one second, there’s a questionable character walking with him with his hand in his pocket, and I was like this. So I’m in Los Angeles,
Chad Franzen 20:17
I was gonna say, yeah.
James Choi 20:20
So and then when USC opportunities came about, it was right when I had a couple of guys who are graduating from college. And they were looking to, they really wanted to stay in hospitality. And so they needed space to grow. So I was like, Oh, this is a great opportunity, we can open up USC, it will, that will allow them to stay, continue to be in hospitality. And, and so I was like, Cool. So we have the people and, and then, you know, I think there’s comes a time to like my main kitchen person, like main kitchen guy that runs USC right now. He was with us for five, six years in Little Tokyo, and he wanted to grow too. So it was a great opportunity to expand and give our core team members an opportunity to grow. And then the fourth location happened because one of our investors for the USC location had a project that he built, and he was like, hey, I really want a cafe here. But please do it, let’s just partner in this location. So we kind of did that one. So it’s very organic growth, there was never really a strategic plan to get to x and x location there were targeting specialization. So kind of like our menu, like our the growth of our location has been very organic. I think because of that. Sure, we’ve definitely had growing pains. But in terms of our core management team, it’s been pretty solid. Like we’ve the same manager for our second location, being the CO manager became the managers, both the fourth location, the Vernon location in that one. And he’s been with us for 10 years. Or USC location, the guys there have been with us for since the beginning of UFC, but even before that, because he brought him on to help the main people kind of go on until they have kind of grown into that position. So it’s been that’s, I think the most challenging part of growing is your, your HR team, or your human resources. And so we’ve been blessed to be able to retain a lot of people and grow with them, or they’ve grown with that.
Chad Franzen 22:28
So, yeah, is there a key to that? I mean, most people, I’m sure Starbucks probably doesn’t have like people who stay for 10 years, most of their employees, or whatever.
James Choi 22:39
Um, I think focusing on culture has been a very, very important thing for us. I know, like, it’s probably a very cliché to say that because, you know, all organizations want to focus on culture and grow that, and what have you, but I think I do. I mean, my team sees how hard I work. And so they’re in the trenches with I’m in the trenches with them. And so I think that helped retention, because it’s not some, some men that working for and that person takes all the profits while they’re all slaving, right. So it’s, they, they know how much I work alongside them. And then I filter is one thing too, but at the end of the day, everybody needs to pay bills, everybody wants to be good financially. So I always try and say that, and this is where I hate. Like the free market getting a bad name. It’s greedy owners all the time. Because for me, it’s like, I don’t want to lose them. So if it doesn’t work for them financially, it’s not going to work for me financially. And so, man, I don’t know where this can get published. But hopefully, no one sees this. Like, one of the guys that have served with us for you know, for an hourly wage $13 bucks an hour. He gets paid well into the 16 years. No, no high school education. You know, no, no college degree, no high school education. I mean, he gets paid a healthy in the six figures. But it’s because it he’s, that person is so key to us. If he wasn’t there, then I don’t do. I don’t know what we do. And granted, you can’t just pay that right. Just because you feel like it. The location is busy enough to where it warrants having one of the key people neither and and it’s kind of like he’s, he’s kind of a lynchpin for our back house. So it’s like, yeah, absolutely. So he’s getting paid like an executive chef would at some, you know, fine dining restaurant. And so I think that’s part of it, too, is that, you know, I’ve always tried to try and pay. Try and be as generous as I can. When I can in addition to the cultural aspect of it, and then like, I don’t know, like Tony Hsieh was famous for Zappos, he, I think he had a data company where he said, if they hire you, they’re gonna do everything they can to retain, he’ll never fire an employee, because they’re not performing up to, you know, what you expect them to, it’s probably something that you’re falling short on. So like, that’s not true. Like, I’ve definitely had people, but we, you know, we do everything we can to retain people, and coach them and give them the resources and like the support, whether it’s emotional or technical, or whatever else it is, but um, I think those kind of things kind of have helped us retain people. And yeah, we’ve been lucky.
Chad Franzen 25:49
So you, you have a couple of other things going on. Besides Cafe Dulce now. Can you tell me about those?
James Choi 25:57
Sure. So the the superette, which is the logo, just our daughter was amused for the padding on this one. So we there was a locate, there’s a coffee shop in Little Tokyo costume capital, Sarah, first one called bicycle coffee. And they actually they did okay. And I think during the pandemic, either the lease was up or whatever, I don’t know what the background is, but they actually left. And so the space is open. And I know they had a coffee roastery there and I had and then so it was like, The cafe was in the front. And the back of the cafe, there was a kind of a shared space with a co working office called Central Office. And that was there like working in a cafe networking space. And during the pandemic, I actually rented a desk there. So I could work and have a quiet place to get away from my that time three year old daughter. And so I was there. And then I was like, hey, what do you get to the I got pushed off to the Hey, what are you guys doing down there? Say nothing. It’s kind of open storage space. And I was like, Okay, do you mind if I go down there and do jiu jitsu with because all the gyms are closed, I said, I’ll be responsible. It’d be a small, close knit community. And, you know, never more than eight people. And we’ll all keep each other accountable, we’ll test and all the things you like, that’s fine. And so during the pandemic, we were using that place to to, to roll, which is, you know, training jiu jitsu. And I was looking at the place, I was like, man, we could roast you, his bison, coffee syrups. And we’ve always kind of wanted to bring roasting in house. I think that was the next logical evolution of capital, say, because we serve so much coffee, I think you’d be brought roasting and how soon do you probably, we’d save a lot in terms of like, kind of a cost or cost basis. And then we always like to, they’re gonna just lease it out to some other coffee shop anyhow. So why don’t we control it, and figure out what we can do with the space. And so we figured out and then you know, going back to labor being so expensive. We figured, hey, what’s the business model that we could serve coffee, and only stop it with like one person if we have to? And so we’re like, why don’t we do a little mini market where you can get like neighborhood knick knacks, groceries, gifts and stuff like that, that, that. And then whatever, the community, whatever, because we’ve lived in the community for such a long time. Like, where do you buy a greeting card? Nowhere, like there’s nowhere to buy. Let’s do greeting cards. Let’s do stationery, let’s do you know, a few books and stuff. And then instead of trying to create everything that we sell in the store, what was cool, I think I briefly mentioned that it was kind of born out of COVID One of the cool things that we found was there was a lot of brand new entrepreneurs that came out of coding. Everyone was working from home, they all started side hustles and so they’re making these great products, like locally which screeches like mochi rice krispies. There’s an ice cream vendor that’s like, just some of the most amazing ice creams and snacks. Snack people and like dog treats and stuff like that. And so we’re like, so for them to open up a store, like sign a lease, build a store and open up for one, one or two for that particular product didn’t make sense. We were like, Why don’t we become a launching platform for all these like early entrepreneurs? And so each week we partner with a couple of places that bring in pop up shops, so we have like, we have space in the back. Who will do that. And then we become we kind of dependent incubator for other small businesses. Instead of us trying to create everything new. There’s people that are already doing it. Why can’t we be the source of that? So that’s our yellow Superette. And then we roast right there. And then there’s that extra space where we were doing jujitsu. I was like, “Man, I’d love to do two — it’d be cool if we just create like, what do we do with that space that species weird?” Just to have seating there is odd. It’s gonna be really hard for retail. Do we lease it out and sublease it for office space? Probably — why don’t we do something interesting where we put down mats, and we say it’s a little Tokyo Fight Club. And then it’ll be this weird thing where you come into this really cute, well curated, beautiful superette, like gift shop. And in the back dish, people tend to choke each other out. And armlock each other. And so we do that, like yesterday was the first Sunday of the month is a public open that mean we had 60 people come through from all over California, Corona, San Diego, like people come from all over. And it’s been really cool to see kind of that community grow. The landlord’s, right, actually very skeptical about this. They’re like, is it a liability, like, what’s going to happen? No one’s gotten hurt. And so, and then I was like, I think it’ll be cool, because somebody, somewhere is gonna write us up and be like, oh, there’s just cafe. With a fight club in the back. I mean, if nothing else, there’s, I thought that there was probably some sort of value embedded in like, being able to say the Superette has a fight club in the back. That’s been kind of cool. Someone did write us up for that. That was nice. And then we will talk your fight club itself is, I think fairly brandable even though we don’t make money on the space. I think the way we’ll be able to monetize that is through the brand and creating merchandise surrounding wealth to bike club. So that’ll be fun. And then the thing that we opened most recently is this noodle shop. That’s one of my, one of my my other investor for the USC cafe. He’s, he’s Japanese, and we always frequented this other. Really specialty is a kya, in Little Tokyo called Kenjiro. And Kenjiro. I always tell people is one of the most underrated restaurants in Los Angeles. It’s the food is phenomenal. It’s I’ve never taken anyone there that hasn’t like been blown away by the food. And Jonathan Gould wrote wrote about him and, and I was just like, he doesn’t need alkaloids, because he actually can’t take any more people. So publicity doesn’t help him. But he has a very unique, Joon who’s the owner of enduro, he’s got a very unique experience with food through Japan, and what have you. And we’ve always talked about creating a ramen concept. And so kinda like how I said Cafe d’Orsay, we never wanted to accept something that we thought about scaling, I actually think it’s very, very difficult to scale. And jeans restaurant is not scalable. Also, because it’s so chef driven. It’s a very unique one off store. When that Chef retires, he’s closing the store, it’s like, it’s one of those very beautiful, like, if you get to experience it, lucky for you. And so learning every taking everything that we learned about what, what keeps us from being able to scale our businesses, we said, hey, why don’t we create some that we can scale? And so if you’re thinking about the Danny Meyer, kind of world of restaurants, you know, he was very much like, Union Square Cafe that was one and then gravity TAVR and 11, Madison Park and tobblo. Like, kind of grown and then I guess the MoMA? Yeah, so he kind of grew based off of need. And then he had this one pocket that he scaled and when I appeal with which was Shake Shack, and so that, even though that started off with like very, like hospitality roots going like, Hey, can we make hospitality scalable? We’re hoping that this new this ramen concept can kind of be that we want to scale it to a certain degree and hopefully have a monetizing event. If not, if it just grows, and it’s just released and we can create a system where it that’s the scalable concept and that allows us to do like great unique cafes and restaurants on an aside I think that’s kind of our dreams for a Roman Catholic, which is called nudes.
Chad Franzen 33:57
Okay, very nice. I have one more question for you. But first, tell me how people can find out more about Cafe Dulce and everything else. Everything else that you have going on.
James Choi 34:07
I think our best so going back to lawsuits, I got our website got sued. Because our website I got sued for our website because our website was not designed for the like, like visually impaired and legally blind. And so I was like okay, well I’m just gonna take down my website but we don’t have a website we so basically we just communicate most of our things through our Instagram so CafeDulceLA, or Los Angeles is kind of our cafes website. And then Yoboseyo! Superette that’s hard to spell so we just took the kind of an acronym ybsy_superette and you can find it on Instagram there as well. Little Tokyo Fight Club is just all spelled out. On Instagram. You can see what we do there.
Chad Franzen 35:01
Yeah yeah, very nice very nice. Hey last question for you What when you go to Cafe Dulce what is your kind of go to item or combination of items?
James Choi 35:11
Oh yeah I asked this question a lot so personally I I’ll tell you based off category when I when it comes to coffee, I’m always trying to be espresso because I that’s kind of the base of a lot of our drinks so I’m always you’re giving them distress so anytime I walk into any of our cafes I’ll I’ll have a shot of espresso. And then I love kind of my go to it’s just a really great cup of coffee. We try and focus on single origin so they’re kind of Florida on like, if our location is offering a job Pro, which is kind of like the you know, the professional barista coffee then have one of those as usually nice delicate and floral. But for everyone else that wants to try something that’s like so those are my go like that’s what I drink when they’re coffee but and I have I used to drink like sweeter coffee and then kind of came full circle but have an interesting thing to say about that Burnham fun I guess. But so that but for people that wants something sweeter, more dessert like something that’s unique to us or Dulce lightning is really good, which is you can get that hot or cold. But it’s basically sweetened condensed milk, espresso and your choice of milk. Because it condensed milk, it does have dairy in it always. And so that’s really delicious. And then our matcha lattes are really popular. We have a proprietary blend for a regular matcha latte, and then our blueberry matcha latte is quite good as well. And then when it comes to our pastries, my favorite is our hazelnut crumble. Partly because it’s an aesthetic issue for me. I remember my mom, it’s I think it’s one of the first species I remember my mom ever getting. And it’s because and in Korean culture, it’s called mukbang which is it’s a bread with like a crackly top on it. It’s like kind of ugly bread. But it’s like peanut buttery and crumbly. And it’s like sweet and nutty. So we did our version of that. So we put a hazelnut butter cream right in the middle of it. And so that, you know, reminds me of my mom. And it’s something I grew up eating. So I always recommend that that was my favorite. And then if you’re at the USC location, or guava cheese issues going on more than foodwise are Korean Korean cheese steak sandwich. I think it’s really good. It’s not as cheesy as you’d think there’s like a couple of slices, a few slice of provolone on there. But it’s with a family recipe for the Google game, which is the marinated beef on there. And then and then we do a merit like a grill pan, pan grill pan grill like sauteed kimchi, and then a secret wing sauce that we adapted to put on the sandwich. So that kind of has me mixed into that sandwich. It’s good. It’s sweet. It’s slightly spicy. savory. It’s it’s got a lot going on. So
Chad Franzen 38:11
That sounds fantastic. I’m starving now. Hey, James. It’s been great to talk to you. I really appreciate your time and all of your insights and your stories. I can’t thank you enough. Best of luck in the future.
James Choi 38:22
Thank you, Chad. I really appreciate it.
Chad Franzen 38:25
So long everybody.
Outro 38:26
Thanks for listening to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25. Visit rise25.com to check out more episodes of the show and to learn more about how you can start your own podcast