Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Breaking the Restaurant Mold: Ji-Hye Kim's Mission to Transform Workplace Culture | Restaurants & Franchises Series

Transcript

Breaking the Restaurant Mold: Ji-Hye Kim's Mission to Transform Workplace Culture | Restaurants & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:17
  the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
• 0:20
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:24
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:26
  My name is Anthony Cotespotti and today's guest is Jihe Kim,
• 0:30
  who is the managing Partner and Chef at Miss Kim, a Korean
• 0:34
  restaurant that's part of the Zingerman's community of
• 0:36
  businesses in in Ann Arbor, MI. Miss Kim is dedicated to
• 0:42
  bringing traditional Korean flavors to the community, using
• 0:46
  seasonal, local ingredients and time honored cooking techniques
• 0:50
  to create delicious and unique dishes.
• 0:53
  Under Jihei's leadership, Miss Kim has gained recognition for
• 0:56
  its outstanding contributions to the culinary seeing, offering a
• 1:00
  fresh perspective on Korean Korean cuisine.
• 1:04
  Tell you what, we're going to start over.
• 1:07
  I got a little tongue tied twice in there.
• 1:09
  That's all right. Go ahead.
• 1:15
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 1:19
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 1:22
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 1:25
  adversity. My name is Anthony Cotespotti
• 1:27
  and today's guest is Jihei Kim, who is the Managing Partner and
• 1:31
  Chef at Miss Kim, a Korean restaurant that's part of the
• 1:35
  Zingerman's community of businesses in Ann Arbor, MI.
• 1:39
  Miss Kim is dedicated to bringing traditional Korean
• 1:42
  flavors to the community, using seasonal local ingredients and
• 1:46
  time honored cooking techniques to create delicious and unique
• 1:50
  dishes. Under her leadership, Miss Kim
• 1:53
  has gained recognition for its outstanding contributions to the
• 1:56
  culinary scene, offering a fresh perspective on Korean cuisine.
• 2:02
  Jihe herself has been celebrated for her innovative approach and
• 2:06
  commitment to excellence in the kitchen, and before becoming a
• 2:09
  chef, she earned her BA in Economics and Political Science.
• 2:14
  She has experience in operational management within
• 2:17
  healthcare and food services, including serving as Executive
• 2:21
  Director at D&H Billing Company. Her diverse background has
• 2:26
  enabled her to bring a unique blend of business acumen and
• 2:29
  culinary passion to her role at Miss Kim.
• 2:32
  And we'll also get to talk about her new location that she's
• 2:35
  about to open. Now before we get into all that
• 2:37
  good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
• 2:40
  Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD back benefitsagency.com. All right now, back to our guest
• 3:08
  today, the Chef and Managing Partner at Miss Kim Gee.
• 3:12
  Hey Kim, I appreciate you making the time to Share your story
• 3:14
  today. Anthony, thank you for having
• 3:16
  me. So, Jay, tell us a little bit
• 3:19
  about your experiences before Zingerman's and Miss Kim's.
• 3:23
  You had a bit of a different background than food.
• 3:25
  Service. Yeah, yeah, after I graduated
• 3:27
  from University of Michigan I mean, I, I studied political
• 3:31
  science and economics. I didn't study like a culinary
• 3:34
  degree. I went back to my home state,
• 3:37
  New Jersey, and I was basically accounts manager to start.
• 3:43
  So I worked a lot on accounts receivable and eventually I
• 3:47
  headed a accounts receivable company for hospitals.
• 3:51
  And there I was able to do not just receivables, but like
• 3:55
  payables and set policy and and you know, decide on benefit
• 4:00
  package. I sat in the board meetings for
• 4:04
  like the owner performance reviews.
• 4:08
  It was a multifaceted. So how did you get from that
• 4:13
  type of work to food? What's the bridge there there?
• 4:18
  Those aren't, in most people's minds, closely related.
• 4:21
  There, there's no bridge. There's.
• 4:24
  No, you just took a jump. Yeah, there's.
• 4:26
  No bridge there upset. But I mean like one thing I can
• 4:28
  say is that I did that work for five years and I was doing well.
• 4:32
  Like to be in mid 20s and with only bachelor's degree and I
• 4:37
  started making six figures. So that was really fantastic.
• 4:40
  And what I liked about it was that you get to do a little bit
• 4:44
  of everything, like you have to delegate and maintain many
• 4:48
  different things because it was a smaller startup company.
• 4:52
  What I didn't like was the industry, like I didn't want to
• 4:55
  be in a healthcare or insurance industry.
• 4:57
  And and I also had self realization that I love working.
• 5:02
  So I was working at the time. I was also young, I was working
• 5:07
  at the time like 75 hours week on salary and I didn't feel
• 5:12
  tired at all and enjoyed it very much.
• 5:15
  And then and then I read this article.
• 5:17
  I, I don't even remember who wrote it.
• 5:19
  That like a happiness of a person really depends on who you
• 5:24
  work with because that's who you spend most time with.
• 5:29
  You spend more time with your Co workers than your family members
• 5:34
  that you may not see very often or you may see just for dinner.
• 5:38
  And that kind of struck a note. And then I started thinking
• 5:42
  like, I went into that industry because I graduated right after
• 5:47
  911 and at the time I, I didn't have a, a, a citizenship.
• 5:54
  So it was extremely difficult to find a job.
• 5:56
  So I basically got a job that was there that that was open and
• 6:01
  and then did really well there. So once I was able to make some
• 6:06
  money and take a breather and gain some work experience, I
• 6:10
  asked myself like, what did like I, I feel like I've spent the
• 6:14
  entire entirety of my life up until that point doing stuff
• 6:19
  that was asked of me. The question was like what do I
• 6:23
  have to do? What do I have to do to graduate
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  high school? What do I have to do to keep my
• 6:30
  student visa? And what do I what major do I
• 6:33
  have to get to get the job the easiest which will lead to green
• 6:39
  card etcetera. And I finally had room to
• 6:42
  breathe and finally asked myself what is it that I want to do?
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  Like what is like if I'm spending majority of my life at
• 6:52
  work, then is this industry worthy of my time and effort?
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  So that's when I started thinking like I didn't want to
• 7:00
  be in this industry. And then I arrived at food
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  because around that time I got married and I moved back to
• 7:06
  Michigan because my ex-husband was at University of Michigan.
• 7:12
  So once I moved there, you know, I, I was like, maybe I want to
• 7:21
  do something that's more tactile and hands on because the
• 7:26
  insurance work, it's not like I talk to patients all the time.
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  So it seemed like very paper heavy and once removed and then
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  at the same time, I missed my mother's cooking a lot because
• 7:37
  she cooks everything from scratch.
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  Even then after 14 hour days and she's an amazing cook.
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  And I had all my life taken for Korean food for granted.
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  And I started missing home cooked food and Korean food a
• 7:49
  lot. And so then I decided to go work
• 7:54
  for Zimmerman's community of businesses because it's, they
• 7:58
  have great food. And then I also thought that
• 8:01
  they had create management and leadership programs and, and
• 8:06
  principles. So I figured food wasn't
• 8:10
  supposed to be like the final destination.
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  It was something that I was going to do for like 2 to three
• 8:16
  years and see if I like it. If I didn't like it, I would
• 8:21
  have still had like a kind of a crash course on how to run a
• 8:25
  small business, and I thought those skills were transportable.
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  So that's how I ended up at Zingerman's community of
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  businesses. Did you have Did you spend a lot
• 8:36
  of time with your mother in Korea making her traditional
• 8:39
  food? Were you already familiar with
• 8:42
  how to crank out these recipes? Or did you spend a lot of time
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  on the phone with her trying to get her help?
• 8:47
  Nope. So my mom, so she's a first born
• 8:52
  who's married into first born. So that means that all the
• 8:55
  holiday cooking falls on her plate.
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  And she felt very strongly that I do not learn how to cook
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  because in her traditional mind, I'm going to have to learn how
• 9:07
  to cook once I become a wife and a mother anyway.
• 9:10
  So she's like, oh, you don't have to learn to cook now as a
• 9:14
  girl. Like go enjoy your childhood.
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  And then once you get married, then then you know, you'll have
• 9:20
  to learn. She didn't know that time has
• 9:24
  changed and I'm going to need to learn how to cook for different
• 9:27
  reasons. So she never really taught me.
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  But I grew up eating homemade food and I grew up watching how
• 9:33
  to cook. So when I started cooking, I
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  noticed that I was picking up Korean food recipes really fast.
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  And I was, in comparison, struggling with, for example,
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  like Italian recipes. I had to do it like multiple
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  times more than if I had to do it Korean cuisine.
• 9:50
  So something rubbed off, but she didn't teach me.
• 9:53
  OK, So what exactly is Zingerman's?
• 9:56
  Zingerman's you know the the proper long name is Zingerman's
• 10:00
  community of businesses and that should tell you some idea.
• 10:04
  It's multiple different businesses.
• 10:05
  We're only located in Washtenaw County because we're very
• 10:08
  dedicated to our local community and it's a food related
• 10:12
  businesses in Washtenaw County. That's like, you know,
• 10:19
  individually owned and we are only coming together because we
• 10:24
  decided to work together as a community and under the same
• 10:30
  mission and guiding principles in how we run our businesses.
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  So the structure is not quite franchised because we don't
• 10:38
  duplicate like Cinnamon's Delicatessen is the first one
• 10:41
  that started and it's like immensely popular.
• 10:43
  But there's no second telly. There is a coffee company, there
• 10:48
  is bakery, there is a sit down American restaurant that does
• 10:51
  quite a bit of BBQ food. And there's me that do Korean
• 10:54
  food. And there is a business
• 10:56
  consulting company and the wedding, wedding, wedding
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  catering business in a wedding hall.
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  And there's there's like Creamery and mail order.
• 11:08
  There's a lot of different businesses, but there's no two
• 11:11
  of the same kind and we just work together.
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  And so when you say you work together, it's it's sort of like
• 11:18
  a marketing Co-op, like you sort of put shared dollars into a
• 11:22
  pool to kind of help promote the larger collective.
• 11:24
  Close. So our, so Zingerman's was
• 11:28
  founded by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weizenbach and those two
• 11:33
  founding partners have a stake in every single business.
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  But I for example do not have any stake in any other business
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  and they're the founding partners and they're investing
• 11:42
  partners and they hold the intellectual property and the
• 11:45
  branding and I am the managing partner.
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  I am the one doing the day-to-day operation of my
• 11:51
  business. We're tied that way.
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  And then another way that we're tied is that we have a thing
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  called service network where they handle HR and IT and
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  accounting and and creative services.
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  So a lot of illustrations and branding work and those services
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  are shared maximize like it would be impossible.
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  Well, it would have been very expensive for me as a starting
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  small restaurant to have all those services.
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  But because it's shared, then I get to have a good HR support.
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  I get to have a accountant that's looking at my numbers
• 12:25
  every month so I don't have to cut corners that small
• 12:28
  businesses often have to because the cost of those things add up
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  and become prohibitively expensive.
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  So there's economies of scale, obviously.
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  Then when everybody can kind of share the same HR team or the
• 12:42
  same legal support, you get access to better resources than
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  you would be able to on your own.
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  Sounds like a pretty, pretty smart model.
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  And so you decided that you're going to start a restaurant.
• 12:57
  What was the first day like opening up your doors?
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  It's not like we put up a sign and then did a grand opening.
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  We did a soft opening and I remember the first dinner and it
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  was, it was challenging because instead of having people stagger
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  in, we had a party of 20 join us.
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  So I would say it was definitely a learning experience.
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  And then since then, like we invited people to come and help
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  us practice food and service for about 3 weeks before we opened
• 13:33
  to public. And then once we opened to
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  public, we haven't taken a breather.
• 13:37
  We just kept going and we've learned a lot through the years.
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  What's? One of your biggest lessons?
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  My biggest lesson I think is really about sales, like it's
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  about top line sales because we had a lot of challenges with
• 13:54
  labor cost. We had challenges with food
• 13:57
  cost. And when you have labor costs at
• 14:02
  like at one point our labor cost was 70%.
• 14:05
  There was only one week, but it was a shockingly high number,
• 14:08
  especially considering independent restaurants have a
• 14:11
  razor thin margins, like maybe 5% is considered success.
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  So when your profit margin is 5% or less, but your labor cost is
• 14:18
  70%, it's really easy to focus on labor cost, but it's all
• 14:23
  percentage. So I made a active choice to
• 14:29
  leave the labor like I mean we like we kind of tightened it,
• 14:32
  but not just focus on labor costs, we really focused on
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  increasing sales because if the pie gets bigger then labor costs
• 14:40
  will get smaller percentage wise.
• 14:43
  And that was I think the biggest learning that I've had to like
• 14:49
  look at the P&L every month and decide strategically where
• 14:54
  you're going to focus and then keep focusing on it until you
• 14:57
  see a turn around. What were some of the most
• 15:02
  impactful things that you did early on to boost sales so that
• 15:06
  you could help bring down that percentage of Labor cost?
• 15:08
  This is this is a decision that I made, you know, as we opened
• 15:15
  and it became the biggest problem for first three years
• 15:20
  and then it became the biggest money saver these days.
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  So I think that's a interesting one.
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  So in most American restaurants other than seven states that do
• 15:31
  not do tip credit the servers. So the restaurant is the people
• 15:38
  who you see in the dining room, they're called front of the
• 15:42
  house. And then people who are in the
• 15:44
  kitchen are called back of the house and front of the house.
• 15:47
  And the back of the house, even though they work under the same
• 15:49
  restaurant or same company, are paid very differently.
• 15:53
  So the cooks are paid like, you know, regular hourly.
• 15:57
  Most of the times maybe a management will be paid salary.
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  Very rarely they have benefits. The front of the house also do
• 16:05
  not have benefits, but they're on something called tip credit.
• 16:09
  So these are sub minimum wages for hourly wages their base pay.
• 16:13
  So minimum wage may be like $11.00 an hour or $12.00 an
• 16:17
  hour, but they're paid like consistently 2 and 3 dollars and
• 16:21
  change in most states. And the majority of their income
• 16:25
  gets supplemented by tips. That's coming from the tables
• 16:28
  that they take care of. And this poses a couple
• 16:31
  different problems. I think there is a lot of like
• 16:35
  theories written about why this is really bad and what history,
• 16:39
  how it came about. But I'm not going to go into
• 16:41
  that. I'm just going to talk about my
• 16:42
  current business practices. The problem that I've seen,
• 16:46
  because I've been a server and I've been a cook, is the
• 16:50
  disparity between front of the house and the back of the house,
• 16:52
  even though they're supposed to play as one team.
• 16:55
  So take a Friday night where it's extremely busy and servers
• 17:00
  can walk away with 200 dollars $300.00 in tips, whereas cooks
• 17:06
  make the same hourly wage whether they had to work really
• 17:09
  hard or whether they had to chill out.
• 17:12
  They can chill out on a snowy day, but like a snowy Monday
• 17:16
  lunch, the servers can make barely a minimum wage, if not
• 17:21
  even less, and the cooks will make the same wage.
• 17:24
  This creates like, an environment that's not very
• 17:27
  conducive to teamwork. Yeah.
• 17:30
  And then it keeps the cooks separated from the guests that
• 17:33
  they're serving. So it sort of creates a
• 17:37
  environment for apathy for people who have like, dietary
• 17:41
  restrictions, for example. Like, it's vital for the service
• 17:45
  to make sure the diet dietary restrictions are assured and
• 17:48
  communicated, right. But the cooks are once removed,
• 17:51
  and it doesn't impact their income directly.
• 17:53
  So they may be, they may do the work, but they may roll their
• 17:57
  eyes or they may complain about it because it makes their job
• 18:00
  harder and they're not getting paid any more money.
• 18:02
  So in the beginning of from the beginning of the restaurant
• 18:07
  opening, I decided that we're not going to do that.
• 18:09
  We're going to put the front of the house and the back of the
• 18:11
  house in the exact same pay scale because they're supposed
• 18:15
  to work as a team. And I wanted to do away with the
• 18:18
  inequity and the pay system. So then we decided to pay way
• 18:24
  above minimum wage as base pay for both front of the house and
• 18:27
  the back of the house. And then when we first started,
• 18:30
  we didn't take tips at all. So we, we decided the starting
• 18:34
  wage will be the same as living wage for the county that we're
• 18:38
  in. And at the time, I think it was
• 18:41
  about $14.00 an hour. And that's, it's definitely more
• 18:47
  than $2.00 and change. So that's what created super
• 18:52
  high labor cost for us. Because if you have, if you take
• 18:57
  tip credit, what you're actually essentially doing is
• 18:59
  transferring labor cost as a burden to your staff and the
• 19:04
  customers who tip them. So we were like, OK, let's share
• 19:07
  a burden. So, so we saw first, first year
• 19:11
  we saw labor cost go up to 70% because sales were not building
• 19:15
  fast enough to cover for the labor cost.
• 19:18
  So that was kind of challenging to say the least.
• 19:22
  And and then we had like another problem.
• 19:25
  The guest kept wanting to tip even though we were not taking
• 19:28
  tips. And then at the same time they
• 19:30
  were complaining about the prices even though at the end of
• 19:33
  the final check after the tips that are added like we would
• 19:37
  have been comparable with other restaurants on Main Street.
• 19:40
  So, but menu prices are, it looks inflated because it has
• 19:44
  labor costs already included in it instead of like having labor
• 19:48
  costs taken out and then it gets added as a tip at the end.
• 19:51
  So we struggled mightily for the first three years with this.
• 19:56
  I believed in this system. I believe that eventually it's
• 20:02
  going to be profitable. It's going to add to profit of
• 20:04
  the restaurant. I believe that it was the better
• 20:06
  way to go as an industry as a whole and and more sustainable.
• 20:10
  I thought that it would be a better retention.
• 20:13
  And I also thought that when you do something that's so like
• 20:19
  going against the stream of where everybody's going, I
• 20:21
  thought I needed to give it at least two years instead of
• 20:25
  that's a long time. That's a long time when?
• 20:28
  That's a long time when you're seeing, you know, your labor
• 20:30
  costs are sky high as a percentage and you're struggling
• 20:34
  to to build the customer base to get the sales up to where they
• 20:37
  need to be. Two years is a long time.
• 20:39
  To, to stick to your guns, we sort of like crunched the
• 20:44
  numbers and we crunched the numbers a different way than how
• 20:47
  profit and loss statement is done.
• 20:49
  So profit and loss statements often like sales cost of goods
• 20:52
  sold and operational cost. And then like, you know, profit,
• 20:56
  we did it in a different way. We saw what's the minimum cost
• 20:59
  that we have to incur to run the restaurant, not just the
• 21:04
  operational cost like rent, you pay the rent anyway, but we
• 21:07
  cannot not have any staff in there.
• 21:09
  So what's the minimum number of staff that we have to get in
• 21:11
  there? When we crunched the numbers,
• 21:13
  what we saw was that the high menu cost was actually keeping
• 21:19
  the sales higher than it would have been.
• 21:23
  And what we need is really like industry term, it's butts in the
• 21:27
  seats. So what we really needed was
• 21:29
  butts in the seat. That's very technical.
• 21:31
  You're gonna very technical. Yeah, very technical.
• 21:35
  Hospitality linguist like we needed more butts in the seats.
• 21:38
  Labor cost looks like a problem right now because the sales are
• 21:43
  low. So.
• 21:44
  OK, so then I decided, OK, for two years, I'm gonna give it two
• 21:49
  years. I'm gonna really focus on sales.
• 21:51
  And then and then another thing that we did was we modified how
• 21:58
  we paid this. So we heard our guests concerned
• 22:03
  that they would like to leave tips.
• 22:04
  So we decreased the menu prices just a tiny bit and then we
• 22:09
  allowed the the guests to leave tips.
• 22:12
  And that was sort of a game changer because that added
• 22:18
  income, extra income on top of the base pay for our staff.
• 22:23
  And, and then I can see the staff feeling like better about
• 22:29
  their wage. And, and I'm not talking about
• 22:32
  one particular step like staff through the years, as the
• 22:35
  members of the staff change, we started getting better and
• 22:38
  better candidates and people stayed longer and longer.
• 22:42
  And I think that helped quite a bit with keeping the food
• 22:46
  quality and service quality high.
• 22:49
  And, and then, and then what happened was that the pandemic
• 22:53
  hit like before the pandemic, we were doing a lot of things to
• 22:59
  increase the sales. So we did like a, we did like a
• 23:03
  news, marketing and social media.
• 23:05
  Those are basic. And then we started doing like a
• 23:07
  monthly guest shift dinners where were monthly cycling pick
• 23:12
  dinners where food cost was very low and labor cost was low for
• 23:15
  that party that dinner. But the sales, sales was much
• 23:20
  higher. So we had better margins for
• 23:22
  those. So we started doing more of
• 23:23
  those. We started adjusting our hours.
• 23:26
  So we opened a little later and then closed a little earlier to
• 23:29
  save labor that way. But we didn't really cut
• 23:32
  people's hours and we definitely didn't cut the dollar amount of
• 23:35
  the base pay. And then when the pandemic hit,
• 23:40
  that's when I started seeing the system really pay off.
• 23:45
  Sales were going up to a point that by 2019, I think we were,
• 23:50
  we were on a good projection to start breaking even and do
• 23:55
  better. And we had a sister restaurant
• 23:58
  who was in a tip credit system and they also took for about
• 24:03
  four years to break even. So we were on par with our
• 24:06
  sister restaurant on a different tip scale.
• 24:09
  But then when the pandemic hit, what happened was, you know,
• 24:14
  restaurants were the only businesses they were allowed to
• 24:16
  open for a while. All the other business stores
• 24:19
  were shut down and we started getting a lot of to go orders,
• 24:24
  but we didn't have anybody in the dining room.
• 24:26
  And what other restaurants had to do often is lay off the
• 24:30
  entire server staff. But what we did was we cross
• 24:36
  trained our server staff to be our cooks.
• 24:41
  Yeah, so like some of the staff decided not to continue working,
• 24:47
  some had pre-existing conditions, some were students
• 24:50
  that are going back home, so that was fine.
• 24:53
  And then couple staff wouldn't want to train in the kitchen.
• 24:56
  We were able to send them to Zingerman's mail order because
• 24:59
  mail order businesses were suddenly very, very busy because
• 25:02
  people are just ordering everything online.
• 25:04
  And we moved servers to be cooks because it was an easy transfer.
• 25:09
  There was just a change of job description and title because
• 25:12
  the pay was on the same level. So nobody had to go into like a
• 25:16
  complete different pay system to have a different job title.
• 25:20
  So we were able to transfer access front of the house staff
• 25:24
  to short staffed back of the house.
• 25:28
  And if I looked at other industry trends at the time,
• 25:31
  cooks they were, we were like the industry wide restaurants
• 25:35
  were always short staffed with cooks and had a lot of servers
• 25:39
  over like laid off. And it was also helpful that we
• 25:43
  had a higher base pay because that means that they qualify for
• 25:47
  unemployment. If you're a server and you are
• 25:50
  at $2.00 and change and you're tempted to underreport your tips
• 25:55
  and you have been, then when time to get unemployment, you
• 26:00
  made so little money that you didn't really get a lot of
• 26:03
  unemployment at all. So that helped quite a bit to
• 26:07
  have a stable staff who are being saved and then got
• 26:11
  transferred and really wanted to be working.
• 26:14
  And from then on, as we got busy and as the dining rooms
• 26:19
  reopened, what happened was that shortage of the crooks have
• 26:23
  gotten to a point that we started increasing the hourly
• 26:28
  wage for the cooks, like go higher and higher and higher.
• 26:32
  So at least in our town, maybe like $13.00 an hour, $14.00 an
• 26:37
  hour was the norm for like cooks with not a lot of experience.
• 26:43
  Now they were getting like 17, eighteen, $19.00 an hour.
• 26:49
  But our cooks, because their base pay is they're, they're
• 26:53
  getting paid in base pay and share tips, they were already at
• 26:56
  $22.00 an hour. Wow.
• 26:59
  So they were one of the highest paid cooks and dishwashers in
• 27:03
  our town, which means that we attracted more stable qualified
• 27:07
  candidates. And once they joined, they also
• 27:11
  got health insurance because we have full benefit package
• 27:14
  through Zinami's community of businesses.
• 27:17
  So that also helped. So generally, we had a better
• 27:22
  total package being offered and health care insurance.
• 27:26
  Health insurance suddenly took on more importance for young
• 27:29
  people with the pandemic. Yeah.
• 27:33
  So what so? At what point in all of this GA
• 27:37
  did you think, OK, this is working?
• 27:39
  Like we've got something here, this is sustainable, we're going
• 27:43
  to be profitable, we're going to make it.
• 27:45
  Systematically, operationally, 2020, financially 2021, yeah, We
• 27:51
  came out of the pandemic really having well adjusted and
• 27:57
  pandemic for us, while it was challenging, it was an
• 28:00
  opportunity. And financially, we started
• 28:04
  seeing things turn around in 2021 and we've been profitable
• 28:09
  and more profitable than industry average since then and
• 28:15
  still being able to pay people more and provide the full
• 28:19
  benefit package, paid time off, all of that.
• 28:24
  So we've got a picture of sort of this arc of your plan and
• 28:29
  that that ultimately has worked out really well to take care of
• 28:32
  the employees in a different compensation structure and it's
• 28:38
  worked really well. I want to talk about the new
• 28:41
  location that you're working on, but before we get there, I want
• 28:45
  to paint a picture for folks who haven't been to Miss Kim.
• 28:49
  What what is the experience like?
• 28:51
  What is describe the cuisine, describe the the the setting,
• 28:55
  the ambience kind of paint a picture for.
• 28:57
  Us sure. The location that we're in is
• 29:00
  Kerrytown marketing shop. So it's like a cute little
• 29:03
  neighborhood, a mall like a shop where there's a bunch of little
• 29:08
  independently owned shop. There are a couple restaurants
• 29:11
  and everything is walkable. We're a block away from farmers
• 29:15
  market. Farmers market opens every
• 29:17
  Wednesday and Wednesdays and Saturdays.
• 29:20
  And before that it was always a French Bistro to like kind of
• 29:25
  give you an idea of what the inside looks like.
• 29:27
  Exposed brick walls, clean lines.
• 29:32
  But I, I think when you walk in, I think what you would notice is
• 29:35
  that the staff generally look not super stressed and they're
• 29:39
  welcoming and some of our staff are inexperienced.
• 29:43
  But I can say this about all of our staff.
• 29:45
  They really want to make sure that you have a warm, nice
• 29:49
  dining experience and when you sit down because our cuisine is
• 29:54
  not a straightforward Korean food that people may have
• 29:58
  experienced, especially in a smaller town like Ann Arbor.
• 30:03
  You may have questions about the cuisine because our food is
• 30:08
  equally inspired by my Korean ancestors.
• 30:10
  I look at the story and history of the cuisine and the dishes,
• 30:15
  as well as what we can get from Michigan farmers and producers.
• 30:20
  Because like any traditional cuisine, Korean food dictates
• 30:25
  that you use things that are in season and locally available.
• 30:30
  And being outside of Korea and being located in Midwest
• 30:35
  America, that's going to have some impact on how Korean food
• 30:39
  looks like in Michigan, right. So we we like to say it's like a
• 30:42
  Michigan Korean food and. Yeah.
• 30:45
  And and you know, any questions you may have, servers will be
• 30:51
  able to answer for you. We our, our sort of principle is
• 30:58
  that they're here as our guest and it's our responsibility to
• 31:03
  make sure that they have a good time.
• 31:04
  And then they have delicious food.
• 31:06
  If they have bunch of allergies, as long as they communicate what
• 31:10
  those are, it's our job to make sure that we produce something
• 31:13
  beautiful and delicious. So you'll find very smiley,
• 31:19
  kind, accommodating staff and hopefully the food is also full
• 31:24
  flavored and fresh. And then you walk away feeling
• 31:28
  like you had a wonderful time. So I hear what you're saying
• 31:32
  about you're not going to be able to get all the same
• 31:35
  ingredients in the Midwest, the USA that you would in Korea.
• 31:41
  What? Give me an example, maybe one or
• 31:42
  two kind of if you call them substitutions, but changes that
• 31:46
  you had to make sure. We use beets and broccolini a
• 31:51
  lot and those are not made of the Korea and they use it now,
• 31:58
  but it's still fairly new vegetables.
• 32:00
  These are not good like broccoli, broccolini,
• 32:02
  cauliflower, beets. These are not vegetables that I
• 32:06
  saw growing up in Korea in the 80s and 90s.
• 32:11
  We, we make ample use of that because Michigan produces a lot.
• 32:15
  And these are, these are, these are more available because the
• 32:19
  winters in Michigan's longer like the fall season, fall,
• 32:22
  winter going into spring, it's almost half a year.
• 32:25
  Whereas Korea every season is like exactly 3 months.
• 32:30
  So we may have like, broccolini tossed in fish sauce and chili
• 32:37
  flakes and garlic. That might have been a cabbage
• 32:41
  dish or chive dish in Korea. So we're taking the dish and the
• 32:46
  flavors and then just using different vegetables from
• 32:48
  Michigan we use. Let me see what else.
• 32:57
  But we do try to use like non-GMO tofu.
• 33:00
  We try to use we have a rotating special.
• 33:05
  So during the summer our salad selection goes from one salad to
• 33:10
  like 4 salad. And we use a lot of local corn.
• 33:14
  The corn in Korea tradition like like heirloom corn or like a
• 33:18
  very traditional Korean corn is sticky and less sweet.
• 33:23
  But in Midwest it's sweet yellow corn.
• 33:25
  So that's what we use for sweet yellow corn.
• 33:28
  But it gets tossed in fermented soy paste and and we add a
• 33:33
  little bit of butter to it and then it gets locally grown
• 33:36
  microgreens. It may have been scallions in
• 33:40
  Korea we use wasabi greens or or pea shoots.
• 33:43
  So in my mind, we're not taking that much that many liberties.
• 33:50
  But if you look at it you it would definitely look different
• 33:53
  than like your mom and pop Korean restaurant in a college
• 33:59
  town. Somebody who's a hardcore purist
• 34:02
  of you know what Korean food is and should be will notice some
• 34:07
  slight differences, but the way that you're describing it sounds
• 34:11
  like these would be fun and interesting nuances to
• 34:15
  experiment. With yeah, I sure hope so.
• 34:17
  I mean like, and then there are different ways of serving like
• 34:20
  Korean table, traditionally it's full of kimchi and side dishes
• 34:24
  and Pickles and you get all of that free in America.
• 34:29
  But like Korean food in, in Korea, you get very cheap food
• 34:33
  to very high end food and there's all Korean food and
• 34:36
  sometimes you get one side dish in Pickles or sometimes you get
• 34:40
  12 side dishes or sometimes you don't get any side dishes at
• 34:43
  all. So I think if you looked at if
• 34:47
  you're a Korean American growing up and and what you saw, what
• 34:50
  you really enjoyed was your grandmother's cooking, it's not
• 34:54
  going to look the same. But if you are from Korea,
• 34:57
  you'll be able to see like you'll be able to understand
• 35:00
  it's like 1 type of Korean food. There's a multiple kind of
• 35:03
  Korean food and diversity of Korean food in Korea, perhaps a
• 35:07
  little less so in America, even though it's like changing for
• 35:11
  more. Korean Midwest fusion.
• 35:15
  Yeah. Yeah, so when did the idea for
• 35:19
  the second location first pop into your head?
• 35:24
  2020, actually 2020-2021, yeah. I suddenly had a lot of time,
• 35:31
  extra time on my hand with the pandemic.
• 35:33
  So I was chosen as a cohort for Women's Entrepreneurship and
• 35:39
  Leadership program at James Beard.
• 35:42
  And our final project, we learned many different things,
• 35:46
  but our final project is doing a new business idea or a new big
• 35:50
  project idea. And I was thinking about what to
• 35:55
  do and then what I thought was we use a lot of vegetables.
• 36:00
  And every time I go to farmers market to pick something up,
• 36:03
  there are new vegetables or new farmers that I want to try.
• 36:06
  But I am very loyal to farmers that we've been going to for the
• 36:09
  past 10 years, right? So my carbon refrain became
• 36:13
  like, I wish I can buy more vegetables from you.
• 36:16
  So that's one motivation. Another motivation is one of the
• 36:19
  things that we did to increase the sales was this special
• 36:23
  dinners, like buffet style dinners, like I try to build it
• 36:27
  like if if I were to invite you for a dinner party and I had a
• 36:30
  bunch of food just laid out and then you were, you were eating
• 36:33
  whatever you'd like, what they would look like.
• 36:36
  And one of the dinners that we started doing was vegetarian
• 36:39
  dinners. And what I noticed was that our
• 36:43
  food cost is about 25%, which is, which is actually good.
• 36:49
  But for vegetarian dinners, the food cost was like 10%.
• 36:56
  Because even the best local, yeah, even the best local
• 36:59
  vegetable is going to be cheaper than like a mediocre beef by a
• 37:03
  lot. And tofu is delicious.
• 37:06
  And I know how to work with tofu.
• 37:09
  And I thought that's a differentiator.
• 37:12
  Like we're not trying to create veg.
• 37:14
  Like I wasn't trying to create vegetarian dishes that are beef
• 37:17
  substitute. I wasn't doing like turducken or
• 37:21
  like Impossible meat or like fake burgers or like fake
• 37:24
  chicken Nuggets. These are vegetarian dishes that
• 37:30
  Korean people just enjoy, even if they're not vegetarians and
• 37:34
  have history of the dish goes like hundred 200 years.
• 37:39
  What that tells me is that people had time to recipe test
• 37:42
  that thing instead of like coming up with a newfangled
• 37:46
  thing. So I thought, you know, food
• 37:49
  cost is low and I was going to do my current restaurant is full
• 37:55
  service and I was going to do counter service.
• 37:57
  Counter service usually takes fewer number of people.
• 38:00
  So then I can make labor costs low and and competition smaller
• 38:07
  because there are fewer vegetarian only restaurants
• 38:10
  versus all the other different kind of food.
• 38:12
  And I thought the vegetarian food that I can offer was really
• 38:16
  delicious and different than all the other vegetarian offerings
• 38:19
  in town. So I had this idea in 2020-2021,
• 38:24
  presented it as a project. And then last year I was
• 38:29
  accepted as one of the fellows for Tory Burch woman, Tory Burch
• 38:34
  Foundation Fellow. And there we created a pitch
• 38:38
  deck as our final, final project.
• 38:41
  So then I did the investment investor pitch deck for the same
• 38:44
  project. I didn't end up needing an
• 38:47
  investor because my current business partners are like,
• 38:51
  that's a great idea, let's go in and it doesn't have to be such a
• 38:53
  big project that we're going to need outside investor.
• 38:56
  So, so now it's going to come to reality hopefully in my first
• 39:02
  quarter of 2025. Oh, so you're close.
• 39:07
  I mean, here we are recording this December 2024.
• 39:11
  You're talking about, you know, just a few months away that this
• 39:13
  could open. Yeah.
• 39:14
  I, we just got the building department permit, which is the
• 39:18
  most time consuming part. So hopefully within first
• 39:21
  quarter, we'll be open. Is it in the same geography?
• 39:26
  Is it nearby where your original location?
• 39:28
  Yes, our neighbor restaurant just across the alleyway.
• 39:33
  It's really like 5 steps away from our main door to their main
• 39:37
  door. They decided to shut the doors
• 39:40
  and that space became available. And at the same time we've
• 39:44
  gotten so busy that we were running out of our walking space
• 39:48
  or prep tables and and I could not have more number of people
• 39:53
  in there. So I figured that if we had a
• 39:56
  location that's very next door, then we can use that for our
• 40:02
  advantage. We can cross train the staff and
• 40:04
  share the staff. We can cross.
• 40:06
  We can. Do all the vegetable preps in
• 40:09
  the vegetarian place and do only meat prep in the Miskim
• 40:12
  restaurant and still share. So I thought there was a lot of
• 40:16
  advantage in having two locations close together and the
• 40:20
  fact that the service style is different.
• 40:24
  Like one's a full service restaurant, entrees are about 30
• 40:27
  dollars $2932.00 and then the other one is fast casual and
• 40:32
  about $14.00. I thought even though they're
• 40:36
  next to each other, I can set it up in a way that it does not
• 40:39
  cannibalize the our current customer base, but it expand our
• 40:44
  the market to include new customer base.
• 40:49
  Yeah, with such a different price point, it's going to
• 40:52
  appeal to different folks. Yeah.
• 40:55
  And So what? What's the, what's the name?
• 40:57
  Is it, is it sharing the Miss Kim name?
• 40:59
  Is it a little different or? It's a little different.
• 41:03
  Lil' Kim. Yeah, it's Lil' Kim.
• 41:05
  I like that. It's like, you know, when you go
• 41:07
  to Business School and you do like your guest persona.
• 41:09
  I imagine that as a Gen. Z vegetarian, younger sister of
• 41:16
  Miss Kim, really conscious of environment and sustainability.
• 41:20
  They may not be fallen vegetarian or vegan, but they're
• 41:23
  eating more and more vegetarian vegans.
• 41:25
  So they're flexitarian and they may want to bring their their
• 41:30
  family members to try actually tasty vegetarian foods,
• 41:34
  according to meat eaters. OK, fun stuff.
• 41:39
  Well, we look forward to following that and the the
• 41:41
  successful opening here coming in the following months.
• 41:44
  Shifting gears a little bit on you, Jihe, I would like to hear
• 41:48
  about a serious challenge that you've overcome, personal or
• 41:51
  professional, and maybe some lessons that you learned going
• 41:54
  through that. I mean, we've already covered
• 41:57
  the going against the grid and doing a different labor
• 42:01
  structure. That was really the biggest
• 42:04
  challenge. We had to borrow money,
• 42:06
  operational cash to cover payroll in couple months, at
• 42:11
  least few months. And I think how we overcame it
• 42:14
  is listen to the staff, especially when there is a big
• 42:19
  thing going on like the pandemic, but we have a staff
• 42:22
  meeting every week where everybody's invited and they're
• 42:26
  paid to be there. It's not, it's not required,
• 42:30
  it's optional. But if you do come, you're paid
• 42:33
  for your time to participate. And that's how we made
• 42:36
  adjustments that worked for us. So the way that we started it,
• 42:41
  we started one way where there's a rigid base pay and then
• 42:46
  there's no tip shared at all. And then we switched to shared
• 42:49
  tips and we switched to different roles and we we
• 42:53
  adjusted based on the staff feedback and what our customers
• 42:57
  are telling us. And then I think that
• 42:59
  flexibility is really the biggest tool that we had to make
• 43:02
  it the make it work the way it is now, because if we kept the
• 43:06
  first iteration, we would have gone down, that wouldn't have
• 43:09
  worked. But because we kept sort of
• 43:12
  adjusting it and customizing it to our market and our need and
• 43:17
  our customer base, I think we were able to get to a point
• 43:21
  where that was really working for us.
• 43:22
  So I think that's one. And then personally, in the
• 43:27
  middle of everything, I had to go through divorce.
• 43:33
  Yeah. And it wasn't a contentious
• 43:36
  divorce, but divorce is still very like has an impact in your
• 43:40
  life. And I let my partners know my
• 43:46
  investing partner is Pulinari. And I was like, but that's OK.
• 43:50
  Like Carl and I are not fighting.
• 43:53
  It's just a matter of like filing it and then just going
• 43:56
  through the division of assets. I'll be OK.
• 43:58
  And my partner Paul really encouraged me to take some time
• 44:03
  off, take time off, take time to grieve, take time to take care
• 44:10
  of myself and my my finances or whatever I needed.
• 44:16
  He thought I needed the time and I I resisted it.
• 44:19
  I said I cannot do that and the staff needs me and all of that
• 44:23
  stuff. And then he stopped me and said
• 44:26
  they will step up for you and it's OK to show that you're
• 44:32
  going through stuff and sharing vulnerability is a leadership
• 44:35
  act and you it's time for you to model that behavior for your
• 44:41
  staff. So I called the staff meeting.
• 44:46
  I share the difficult news and I, I don't share my personal
• 44:51
  business very often with the staff, but I, I sat everybody
• 44:54
  down and I told them I am going through a divorce.
• 44:57
  I'm going to be stepping way back.
• 44:58
  So before I was working like 70 hours a week, but I think I cut
• 45:02
  that, cut it down to maybe 25 hours a week.
• 45:05
  So I was in there enough, but I was like I, I am going to need
• 45:09
  you guys to step up and and run this restaurant without me being
• 45:16
  present as much. And, and then I told the staff
• 45:19
  that I really trusted them that they will do a good job.
• 45:23
  I think at the time when I said it, I only have to leave it.
• 45:26
  It was more like a hope because I.
• 45:30
  Make it till you make it. Yeah, in my mind, but I didn't
• 45:33
  tell them that. That was just my negative voice
• 45:36
  talking. And what ended up happening was
• 45:38
  I, no, it wasn't perfect, but it was way better than I thought it
• 45:44
  was going to be. People really did step up and
• 45:46
  then they try to do a good job and they communicated amongst
• 45:49
  themselves. And what that ended up happening
• 45:52
  was I think if you are a founder and you're the, you're the only
• 45:57
  owner, like only operating owner, and then you're running a
• 46:00
  small business, you have your hands on everything.
• 46:03
  And delegating is very difficult and creating system that
• 46:08
  supports a delegation, it's like it always goes into the back
• 46:12
  burner because you're so you're so busy dealing with trials and
• 46:17
  tribulations of everyday operation.
• 46:20
  But it gave our entire team an opportunity to build the
• 46:25
  leadership team and build better systems and do it on their own.
• 46:29
  And it's sort of inadvertently empowered them to be more
• 46:34
  engaged and have their voices heard more than before.
• 46:39
  And that wouldn't have happened if I took this like a personally
• 46:44
  difficult time and then get heard my partner's advice and
• 46:48
  then took a step back. So that I, I think those two,
• 46:53
  those two things really stand out for me.
• 46:58
  So it's interesting, you know, as I talked to a lot of
• 47:00
  restaurateurs, this idea of delegation kind of gets forced
• 47:06
  on them when they open a new location, right?
• 47:09
  And then maybe 1/3 or 4th or 5th.
• 47:11
  And each time that they expand further, they kind of have to
• 47:15
  readjust what their role is and you know, how everybody else
• 47:20
  gets involved. And so it's interesting to hear
• 47:23
  in your case that that delegation moment was kind of
• 47:27
  forced by the challenging life situation that you were going
• 47:31
  through with your divorce. And I can only imagine, I mean,
• 47:36
  it's great that it wasn't a contentious divorce, but it's
• 47:38
  still a divorce. Somebody that you were with for
• 47:40
  a long time and your lives were intertwined.
• 47:42
  And there's, you know, a lot of practical things that need to be
• 47:47
  attended to, but there's also a lot of emotional things that
• 47:50
  that need to be. Yeah, I in retrospect, I really
• 47:52
  needed the time. I've been with my ex-husband
• 47:54
  like for 17 years. We've been married for 12 years,
• 47:57
  together for five years before then.
• 47:59
  So it was a a huge adjustment. It was also a huge adjustment
• 48:04
  because I don't have a single family member in Michigan.
• 48:08
  Like I came back to Michigan to be in this marriage and the
• 48:14
  marriage was ending. So I had to sort of sort through
• 48:18
  all of that, like emotionally and also intellectually, like
• 48:22
  questioning again, like who, who's my community and, and
• 48:28
  what's my personal life look like?
• 48:30
  Like all those things need to be considered and be answered.
• 48:34
  And it really gave me time to think about that and, and set me
• 48:38
  up to better adjust adjustment because this happened in 2019
• 48:43
  and then 2020 pandemic hit. If I didn't prep myself to ask
• 48:48
  those questions and give myself time to heal and grieve and heal
• 48:53
  and then get used to the idea of being alone again, going through
• 48:58
  the pandemic without that would have been even way more
• 49:01
  difficult to adjust. So was there ever any
• 49:06
  consideration to sort of pack it in and head back to New Jersey
• 49:09
  where you know you've got the support of family there?
• 49:12
  Actually, yes, because my old boss called.
• 49:16
  My old boss called and she asked how I was doing and then she
• 49:20
  offered a lot of money. Like compared to what a
• 49:25
  independent restaurant owner can make when when you're still
• 49:28
  struggling. I think at the time, what she
• 49:32
  offered was 2 1/2 times more than my current salary.
• 49:37
  Yeah. And so I had a time to think
• 49:41
  about it. Like I envisioned what my life
• 49:44
  would look like if I went back and like discarded my connection
• 49:49
  to food and running a small business and then went back to
• 49:51
  working for someone and, and doing something that felt a
• 49:57
  little bit like soul sucking when I was in it before.
• 50:03
  And then I decided that I, I think I even when I'm not making
• 50:07
  enough money, like I rather just stick with what I have going on
• 50:11
  here. And that was actually great
• 50:14
  because then it didn't make me feel it felt, made me feel less
• 50:18
  like I was stuck because I thought about the options and I
• 50:22
  made a conscious choice to stick with Michigan and my business
• 50:26
  rather than kind of like having a faint like runaway fantasy and
• 50:33
  hoping for greener pastures without actually having any
• 50:36
  practical way of thinking about it.
• 50:40
  It's good to have options, you know, if for no other reason
• 50:43
  then you feel much better about the choice that you have
• 50:47
  ultimately committed to. Absolutely.
• 50:49
  And it also made me feel a little more bold, but it made me
• 50:53
  feel more bold to take that next step of like opening another
• 50:57
  restaurant or take the next step to go to Korea for a month
• 51:03
  without the without being checking into the staff because
• 51:07
  I'm going to Korea like 2 weeks to a month every year because I
• 51:12
  am leading a culinary tour to Korea.
• 51:14
  So it made me feel emboldened to do that because I felt like if
• 51:19
  if things really crashed and burned, I had an option to go
• 51:22
  back to. So it felt like an insurance
• 51:24
  policy. Like psychologically, whether
• 51:27
  it's really not real or not, I'm not sure.
• 51:30
  But like, yeah, that was a good thing that happened.
• 51:33
  You know, I want to go back to the innovative approach that you
• 51:38
  took to paying your employees because I, I, as I'm listening
• 51:43
  to you tell the story now a couple of times in our
• 51:46
  interview, it strikes me that there's, there's a duality there
• 51:54
  in your thought process that is very commendable looking back.
• 51:59
  But in the moment, I imagine had to be a difficult struggle
• 52:02
  because you're doing something that is very different than the
• 52:05
  norm, right? And you are committed to seeing
• 52:09
  this through. You really believe in your heart
• 52:12
  of hearts, it's going to work. But then you're seeing that it
• 52:16
  needs some tweaks. And it needs some changes, you
• 52:19
  know, rather than sort of throwing the whole structure
• 52:21
  away when you see that your labor costs are way higher than
• 52:24
  they should be by industry norms, You know, that would have
• 52:28
  been the easy thing to do, sort of scrap it and go to what
• 52:30
  everybody else is doing. Tried and true, but you wanted
• 52:33
  to stay with it and you had the flexibility to make tweaks to
• 52:36
  it. I mean, talk, talk to me about
• 52:39
  kind of how the the conversation was going in your head during
• 52:42
  this period. The question that I consistently
• 52:45
  asked was have we done everything else before scrapping
• 52:50
  this all together? Because I did really believe
• 52:54
  that was a better way to do it. I mean like what other industry
• 52:57
  in America or in the world that has labor cost transfer to a
• 53:01
  customer To that end, when sales people get bonuses for their
• 53:06
  their sales achievements, they don't get their salary cut to
• 53:10
  $20,000. And then everything comes from
• 53:13
  the bonus in, in America, like you're used to it, but in any,
• 53:21
  any other place, it just looks weird.
• 53:23
  In Europe, you do like you, you tip a little bit as a show of
• 53:27
  appreciation, but it's not like 20% of your paycheck.
• 53:31
  I mean, not paycheck got your entire dining check.
• 53:34
  So I think it helped that I really believe that that was the
• 53:38
  right way to do it and treat our workers.
• 53:40
  And it also helped that I believe that industry will head
• 53:45
  that way and it's slow. Slowly but surely more states
• 53:49
  are doing away with tip credit. More restaurants are finding
• 53:54
  their own customized way to deal with this.
• 53:57
  You must see more restaurants doing service charges, for
• 54:00
  example, or they have like certain percentage of tips or a
• 54:04
  certain like sometimes they call it like a benefit fee.
• 54:09
  So you see more fees being included in your check.
• 54:12
  So I just knew that tide was going to eventually turn that
• 54:17
  way in practical day-to-day operation because I believe this
• 54:23
  strongly. I didn't rule out that we are
• 54:27
  going to scrap it if it get comes to comes to that.
• 54:32
  But I was committed to doing like trying everything else
• 54:35
  before we scrap it. So the knowledge that I talked
• 54:38
  to my partners ahead of time when it was really challenging
• 54:41
  and said, let's scrap it if nothing else works.
• 54:45
  So scraping was always an option.
• 54:47
  So that actually made me feel more comfortable with continuing
• 54:51
  to do it, as paradoxical as it is.
• 54:54
  And then I kept thinking of like different ways to like adjust a
• 54:59
  little here and change a little there and, and experiment and
• 55:02
  see what happens. So I think that being open to
• 55:06
  experimentation and giving time to play out the experimentation
• 55:10
  and then then kind of following it with the data really helped.
• 55:16
  Were you studying somebody else's set up or you know, being
• 55:19
  able to learn from somebody who had made a similar transition?
• 55:24
  I did work with this nonprofit organization.
• 55:27
  They're called the two different nonprofit now they split.
• 55:32
  One is a rock which is called Restaurant Opportunity Center
• 55:35
  and the other one is called Raise.
• 55:38
  So rock is the worker side, workers rights and workers
• 55:41
  better pay raise is the we or sometimes they're known as High
• 55:46
  Road kitchens. They're the a group of
• 55:49
  restauranteurs and restaurant owners who's committed to paying
• 55:53
  the staff better and treating them better.
• 55:55
  So I had AI had people that I can call.
• 55:59
  But I think at the end of the day, like every market is
• 56:03
  different. Every every every staff pull is
• 56:06
  different. So see like hearing what people
• 56:10
  did and getting ideas from that, but like customizing and
• 56:15
  creating your own plan rather than using somebody else's
• 56:18
  experiment as a blueprint, I think really helped.
• 56:22
  Our first iteration was the blueprint that didn't work.
• 56:25
  So then we kept changing it and changing it and changing it.
• 56:30
  Let's hear about the Korean culinary tours.
• 56:33
  OK? Yeah, this sounds interesting.
• 56:36
  How does this work? Our, one of our system
• 56:39
  businesses is called Zingerman's Food Tours.
• 56:41
  So they, what they do is, is actually really fun.
• 56:47
  I'm, I'm really hoping to go to one of the Italian ones,
• 56:51
  Zingerman's Delicatessen and Zingerman's mail order import a
• 56:57
  lot of artisanal products from Europe.
• 57:00
  And with that, they have relationships with like families
• 57:06
  that had made balsamic vinegar for generations or Parm
• 57:11
  consortium that make sure all the Parm Parmigiano Reggiano in
• 57:14
  Italy is made correctly and tasting correctly.
• 57:18
  And using those connections. Zingerman's food tours make a
• 57:22
  customized culinary tour. So you're not just going to a
• 57:26
  bunch of restaurants, you're actually meeting the makers and
• 57:30
  looking at the process and hearing their stories.
• 57:34
  And when I saw this going on and the business has been going for
• 57:37
  a few years, I always say, well, we should have a Korean one.
• 57:40
  We only go to Europe and, and I, I know artisans in Korea.
• 57:47
  So we had our first Test 1 this past October and we have two
• 57:52
  scheduled in May and June. We're going to go meet kimchi
• 57:57
  master and and learn how to make kimchi.
• 58:00
  We're going to go to Chong Master.
• 58:03
  Those are fermented mothers, sources of Korean.
• 58:05
  And coincidentally, it just became inducted into intangible
• 58:10
  cultural heritage by UNESCO. And we're going to go meet a
• 58:14
  woman who's been making that for generations and see her facility
• 58:19
  and try making it ourselves. And hopefully we'll be able to
• 58:23
  bring it in. I don't know.
• 58:25
  And, and we're going to, weather permitting, swim with the sea
• 58:29
  women of Cheju who are the sea foragers.
• 58:33
  And, and like, unlike the rest of the country, they have been
• 58:38
  breadwinners for, for generations as women because
• 58:45
  before, like in everywhere else, women were kept as like a
• 58:48
  domestic partner, so to speak. And they were not going out
• 58:54
  earning their own income, but these women did.
• 58:57
  And they're free divers. So we're not going to free dive
• 59:00
  per SE, but we're going to meet them and we're going to swim
• 59:03
  with them and learn their story, weather permitting, so.
• 59:07
  What is it that they're diving to get?
• 59:10
  It differs based on seasons, so abalone is a big one.
• 59:13
  Conch various different kind of shellfish.
• 59:16
  So they're just diving and grabbing those and then coming
• 59:20
  up and sell it. So these are not farmed seafood.
• 59:24
  These are all natural seafood and and we get to forage for
• 59:31
  those and then taste it at the end of the swimming session.
• 59:34
  And these are the kind of experiences that it's very not
• 59:37
  as easy to book as a foreign traveler unless you knew someone
• 59:42
  who knew someone and then set you up through introduction.
• 59:47
  So how can somebody take part in this or learn more about it?
• 59:51
  Go to their website. I think it's what's the website
• 59:54
  address? I think it's, let me double
• 59:56
  check ithinkitszingermansfoodtours.com.
• 59:58
  But you definitely can just yeah, you can definitely just
• 1:00:05
  Google it. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:06
  zingermansfoodtours.com. Zingermansfoodtours.com if you
• 1:00:10
  want to check this out and they've got ones to Korea that
• 1:00:13
  that you lead and they've got ones to different parts of
• 1:00:15
  Europe as well, if that's. Somebody, they have multiple
• 1:00:18
  ones in Italy, they have Canary Island, Spain, Copenhagen.
• 1:00:23
  I think in Copenhagen you have a bike tour of eating tour.
• 1:00:27
  So it's like really reflecting local food culture and local
• 1:00:31
  artisans for that experience. Gee, are there any mentors or
• 1:00:38
  books that have been helpful to you and your trajectory that you
• 1:00:41
  might want to call out? Yeah, for for books.
• 1:00:45
  I mean, I, I'm lucky enough to still read and write Koreans, so
• 1:00:50
  I get quite a bit of Korean books.
• 1:00:52
  But the most inspirational Korean books have been the
• 1:00:58
  republished Korean cookbooks from 18th century, 19th century.
• 1:01:05
  We have ones. I, I think the oldest one that I
• 1:01:07
  have is a, a reprint of AI think maybe like 14 hundreds, but it's
• 1:01:13
  mostly how to ferment everything.
• 1:01:16
  And when you see 18th century and 19th century cookbooks, it
• 1:01:19
  gets, it starts to get really, really interesting because you
• 1:01:22
  can see the previous iterations of kimchi or dapokia or billing
• 1:01:28
  Bob and what that look like. And it usually comes with a
• 1:01:30
  story. So that's, that's one of I, I
• 1:01:34
  treat it like it's a storybook. So that's for books that for
• 1:01:40
  mentor. I have a woman who is in
• 1:01:44
  Chengcheng in Korea and that's the, that's where the Winter
• 1:01:48
  Olympics were. So it's a mountainous region in
• 1:01:51
  Korea, in the eastern seaboard. And the area is really well
• 1:01:57
  suited for the vegetables. So because the temperature
• 1:02:04
  difference between the daytime and the nighttime is significant
• 1:02:08
  because it's a mountainous region, which makes the
• 1:02:10
  vegetables to work extra hard, which makes the vegetables more
• 1:02:14
  tasty. It's similar to like wine
• 1:02:16
  growing regions, like wine vine, wine vines that struggle a
• 1:02:20
  little more may yield a little less, but the flavor is better.
• 1:02:24
  And in that region, there is this woman who makes the most
• 1:02:27
  amazing kimchi in Korea. And her name is Pakwangi, and
• 1:02:34
  she's my mentor. And it's really fun to chat with
• 1:02:38
  her because, one, she knows so much about kimchi and she's
• 1:02:42
  still always researching and developing.
• 1:02:45
  So she's looking at all cookbooks, She's talking to food
• 1:02:48
  chemists, and she's having her kimchi analyzed.
• 1:02:51
  So those are really fun. And then two, because she knows
• 1:02:56
  everybody in Korea that's a food artisan and she can point me to
• 1:03:00
  the right direction if I want to go talk to somebody who want,
• 1:03:03
  who makes kochujang or tanjang or soy sauce, or if I wanted to
• 1:03:08
  learn about Korean Buddhist cuisine, I can ask her who to go
• 1:03:12
  to. And she and I talk like weekly,
• 1:03:15
  if not like multiple times a week, and I go see her twice a
• 1:03:19
  year so that like she would be my mentor.
• 1:03:24
  That's great. Gee, hey, I've just got one more
• 1:03:26
  question for you. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:03:28
  do 2 things for everybody listening today.
• 1:03:30
  I know that you love today's content.
• 1:03:32
  Hit the like, share or Subscribe button on your favorite podcast
• 1:03:35
  app. Gee, hey, I also want to let
• 1:03:37
  people know the best way to get in touch with you.
• 1:03:39
  We've got Miss Kim annarbor.com for your restaurant.
• 1:03:43
  Well, how else would you like people to connect with you?
• 1:03:46
  Misskeymanarbor.com has a form you can fill out and we
• 1:03:48
  definitely monitor that. But the best way to reach me is
• 1:03:51
  actually through Instagram messaging.
• 1:03:54
  So if you go to Chef Jihe Kim on Instagram, then you'll or you
• 1:04:01
  can go to Miss Kim Ann Arbor and then and then in the profile you
• 1:04:05
  can see my profile link to it. If you send me a message, I
• 1:04:09
  answer it. And Jihei is spelled JIHYE for
• 1:04:16
  those listening. And on our website when we post
• 1:04:19
  this, we'll have links to all of her profiles in the show notes,
• 1:04:22
  folks. So be easy for you to get to.
• 1:04:25
  OK. So last question for you, Jiha,
• 1:04:26
  I'm curious how you see your business evolving and say I
• 1:04:30
  don't know the next two to five years.
• 1:04:32
  What do you think the changes are that are coming?
• 1:04:35
  I think one thing I want to say about the wisdom of working with
• 1:04:41
  Zingerman's community of business is that we experiment,
• 1:04:46
  but we don't necessarily make fast changes and everything we
• 1:04:52
  do starts with the vision. So this year is a big year for
• 1:04:58
  Miss Kim as well as the new restaurant little Kim in a sense
• 1:05:01
  that it's time to update our five year vision on where we're
• 1:05:05
  headed. And my guess is that, you know,
• 1:05:08
  I, I told you that I had a idea for Little Kim in 2020-2021 and
• 1:05:14
  it's only coming to fruition 4-5 years later.
• 1:05:17
  And Miss Kim also took about five years from ideation to
• 1:05:21
  brick and mortar restaurant. So I have to sort through some
• 1:05:25
  of these ideas. And a lot of these ideas came
• 1:05:28
  about during the pandemic because we were asked to pivot
• 1:05:32
  so much as an industry and we tried many different things.
• 1:05:35
  So the biggest vision that I have is that Miss Kim and Little
• 1:05:41
  Kim continue to improve and do what we do really well and that
• 1:05:45
  will show in customer service experience as well as the staff
• 1:05:50
  experience. So I want to see higher staff
• 1:05:53
  retention and maybe more benefits offered.
• 1:05:56
  I want to see customers having a really good time.
• 1:05:59
  And besides that, we want to think about consumer packaged
• 1:06:04
  products or sauces that we have that everybody's always trying
• 1:06:07
  to buy in bulk. And I think unlike the brick and
• 1:06:12
  mortar locations that we are asked to stay in our county,
• 1:06:19
  consumer packaged products, the market's a lot bigger than our
• 1:06:22
  local market. So I think that would be really
• 1:06:24
  interesting. I want to continue to expand my
• 1:06:30
  network and community of like minded chefs and then have them
• 1:06:34
  come and, and try collaboration dinners with me and, and, and
• 1:06:41
  then I go to their restaurant and then so there is this
• 1:06:44
  exchange of food and ideas and community.
• 1:06:47
  So that's one of the ideas. And then like operationally, I
• 1:06:51
  want to continue to grow the leadership team and refine the
• 1:06:56
  processes and systems that we have so we make things easier
• 1:07:02
  for people to do what they do well.
• 1:07:06
  That's terrific. Well, GA, I want to be the first
• 1:07:08
  one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
• 1:07:11
  with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:07:13
  Anthony, thank you so much for having me and hearing my story.
• 1:07:17
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:07:19
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:07:21
  today.