Kristen Barnett Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to, as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. As for me, I'm the founder of The Eden Place, a community that's all about gathering people intentionally around food. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech. Today's guest is Kristen Barnett. Kristen is the founder and CEO of Hungry House, a New York City based startup that partners with digitally native chefs and food personalities to bring their culinary ideas to life. I'm excited to chat with Kristen about her transition from consulting to culinary, the creator economy, and the new model for ghost kitchens. Don't know what a ghost kitchen is? Stay tuned.
The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network has another show I'd love to tell you about. It's called She's My Cherry Pie, and it's all about baking. Each Saturday, host Jessie Sheehan chats with world-class bakers and does a deep dive into their signature baked goods. If you love baking, this is definitely the show for you. It's also a relaxing listen and pairs perfectly with your morning coffee. I love this show and I think you will too. You can catch Jessie in conversation with baking experts like pastry chef Claudia Fleming, sticky bun savant Joanne Chang, macaron queen Christina Ha, and more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find the transcripts on cherrybombe.com. One other thing, I would love a rating and a review for The Future Of Food Is You. Tell me what you think so far since we're a new podcast, and let me know of any suggestions for future guests. I'd love to know your thoughts and thank you in advance.
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Now, let's check in with today's guests. Kristen, welcome to The Future Of Food Is You podcast.
Kristen Barnett:
Thank you so much for having me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Tell us about your childhood and how food showed up in your life.
Kristen Barnett:
Great place to start. My childhood was in a small town in Massachusetts. I grew up on a nature reserve, so a network of trails, wooded trails, I grew up playing with salamanders…nature girl. Horse girl vibes. I don't often share that, but I was frolicking around. And food, contrary to what my life looks like now in terms of living in New York City, obviously going out to restaurants and engaging with all the amazing cultural events of the city. Then, we barely went out ever. It was always home cooking. My mom, making all these meals for me and my little sister, and so I really understood food as primarily like a ‘from scratch’ endeavor. Every Saturday and Sunday we'd have pancakes and waffles. And eventually when I was 11 or 12, I started getting into baking.
I just loved quick breads, banana breads, pumpkin breads, blueberry muffins, whatever, and that then began my journey cooking more savory food and sharing it with friends, getting people together. I didn't even really understand how big and vibrant the restaurant and hospitality industry was. Eventually I went to college. I was like, "Why is there a hospitality school?"
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. And I mean, that's a perfect segue because you ended up going to the hospitality school in the country at Cornell.
Kristen Barnett:
I actually went to the agriculture school, which is where they have the business school. I now go back and lecture in the hospitality school. When I showed up though, I was like, "Why does that school exist?" I had stayed in a couple motels, maybe a hotel here and there, but travel and going out to eat at restaurants just really wasn't a part of my childhood. We were camping in the woods, going on hiking trips and staying at huts.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You were doing nature's hospitality.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So, you ended up going to the agricultural school at Cornell University, but then you ended up discovering the hospitality industry there. So, what was it like studying agriculture at Cornell?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah, so the business school originates in the agriculture school because originally that was the economy of the United States. This was the backbone of how business was done when we were an agriculture based economy. It was awesome because I was able to take traditional business classes, but then also go into food policy, and understand farming, and understand development internationally and how crops played a role in these smaller communities. And so, it was this balance where I started to actually go deeper from an intellectual perspective on food, and so I would take classes at the hotel school when I could. I had this amazing senior year project where I did a whole paper just on the growing cider industry. Like hard cider was starting to take off then.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Which is perfect for that part of the country too, wine tasting?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I was really fortunate to get that traditional business education, but then because of the breadth of the program at the school, go really deep into food in addition to that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. What were some of the classes you took at the hotel school? I'm always so intrigued.
Kristen Barnett:
It was about future trends in food and beverage, but my actual favorite class was in the agriculture school and it was about grocery stores.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love grocery stores. What do you learn? Do you have to go to a grocery store for class? You're just like-
Kristen Barnett:
I wish, I would have. No, but it was run by this amazing guy, Rod, and basically he'd bring in executives from Kroger, Costco, and they would talk about trends they were seeing in consumer behavior. My favorite parts were learning about the growth in white label products, like Trader Joe's model and-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Costco even.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. And then Costco, building these huge brands, and sourcing almonds from Africa, and what that meant to their supply chains and the goals there. It was a big change then because white label products by grocery stores originally had always been seen as these off-label things. And then Wegmans started doing it, Trader Joe's, and now it's normal. Completely normal to buy a grocery store branded bag of something. It was cool probably studying that about 10 years ago and seeing it really come to fruition.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. I'm sure he wasn't like, "Meet me in aisle seven for class." That's what I was thinking when you said-
Kristen Barnett:
I think I did go to an Aldi in Ithaca, New York, though. I don't know if you've ever been to an Aldi-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I've been to Aldi and to Ithaca.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah, the grocery store, we were studying aisle design because you can only go one way through it. Anyways, fascinating.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
One of my favorite books that I've read is The Secret Life Of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, I believe.
Kristen Barnett:
I would love it, I'm sure.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, you would. I've always loved grocery stores. I'm the person on vacation who's like-
Kristen Barnett:
Same. Oh, got to go.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... museum, grocery store, restaurant. And it's so fascinating how much they've shaped food culture and all that. But before you get into food, I feel like many people on the podcast, you had another life in consulting. Did any of the things that you learned in consulting help spur the motivation to get out of there and start doubling down in food?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I mean, really what consulting did for me was, and I will acknowledge it was an amazing place to start my career. Of course, I learned incredibly structured thinking, deep analytical skills, and all of that ended up really aiding me later on. But it, for me, pushed me physically in a way that I couldn't actually handle. The reason I work in the food industry is because I have chronic Lyme disease actually. And so, I got diagnosed very late while I was in college. Much of my college years were spent on multiple rounds of antibiotics, combining antibiotics and antimalarials, just trying to feel better, and I really struggled. I was somewhat better, and I started my job at the Boston Consulting Group here in New York, with all the travel and the stress of being a first year associate. It's a pretty intense role. I ended up relapsing really bad.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.
Kristen Barnett:
It was shocking just how quickly it was happening. I couldn't stay awake more than 45 minutes at a point. I couldn't walk more than a block without just excruciating pains. And I had done years of antibiotics at that point, and I was like, "Okay, there's got to be a different way. This is insane. The side effects are terrible. I keep getting sick anyways." And so, I quite honestly very desperate turned to dietary change. I ended up going to this very alternative program predominantly for chronically ill cancer patients, but they were experimenting with the effects on Lyme, and it was a raw vegan program for 20 days. Truly raw vegan, so no sugar, no fruit, even.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nothing processed or cooked. Yeah.
Kristen Barnett:
Nothing processed. Dessert was eating a raw piece of corn on the cob.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Is that good for your body?
Kristen Barnett:
At that point? Yes. I was like, "This is dessert." But it didn't matter because I was desperate. It was truly food as a medical intervention, not just food is wellness. And it was fascinating, and in 20 days I was able to walk without pain. A miracle.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's incredible. After that, you then end up going to work at DIG.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I was like, "Wait, I got to go see what this is all about." No, it was more like I felt like I had found my passion. It was the sign, you can dedicate your brain to solving these problems and you're probably going to actually enjoy it, and be happier, and healthier if you follow this passion. And so, I decided at that moment I wanted to understand how to do good food at scale. What does that look like? That's what took me to DIG.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. And so, you were at DIG while it was still Dig Inn.
Kristen Barnett:
Yes. Still at the Inn.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And now's just DIG. And you were the Director of Strategic Operations. What does that mean?
Kristen Barnett:
It's a really great catch-all phrase used in a startup when a lot's going on and a lot of problems to fix. I came at a really fortunate time, I felt, where I saw the company triple in size over the three and a half years I was there, and I did everything from running the whole supply chain with only four months experience. Then ultimately supporting the entire menu development process with the chief culinary officer. So, having a yin yang relationship where I could be the project manager for all of those different initiatives we had going on. And then ultimately was overseeing the ghost kitchen and food delivery business, which was exploding at the time. This is like 2018, 2019, and I started to see just how important the shift that technology was having for all of us, how big that impact was for consumers and a business.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's incredible. So, that was the impetus for you deciding to work in ghost kitchens. Can you tell our audience what a ghost kitchen is?
Kristen Barnett:
Sure. So, a ghost kitchen is typically known for being a restaurant that you can order from. I'm doing air quotes, restaurant that you can order from that doesn't have a storefront. So, you can access it online for delivery on the apps usually, and you can have the food delivered to your home but you might not be able to go visit it or actually go and eat in at that location.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What sparked the inception for ghost kitchens in the restaurant world?
Kristen Barnett:
Well, I think that a lot of it was consumers discovering the power of food delivery and the convenience of it. Originally, for me, food delivery as a consultant and an intern in finance, and all that, it was like the late night bites you'd get at the office, and that's the only real time you did it. And consumers themselves, just restaurants, the good restaurants maybe weren't available, not everyone was doing it. There weren't courier networks. You have to think 10 years ago DoorDash barely existed maybe. There was incredible product market fit for consumers who wanted this type of convenience. And in the beginning, obviously investors saw this rapid fire growth that was primarily led by DoorDash, but also then Uber Eats. They were able to put so much cash into these companies that consumers also didn't have to pay fees. So, it kind of was the same price and you're like, "Whoa, this is so convenient, not that expensive."
It really just caught on like absolute wildfire. For restaurants, this is a roundabout answer to ghost kitchens and how we arrived there, but restaurants then suddenly had so much delivery demand and it was incongruent with their existing operating model. So, what you had was couriers battling the lines of customers at lunch to pick up food, and customers being like, "Oh my God, this is terrible and it's crowded," and the ticket's not being managed correctly on all the different sales channels. They were trying to make all this food off the same lines. It was very chaotic. And so, a lot of restaurants who saw success with their food selling on delivery were like, "What if I put all this demand into a dedicated kitchen that can actually support this operating model, like this business model selling food online?" That's where a lot of the ghost kitchens started to proliferate was actually a solution to offloading excess demand, and making sure that from an operational perspective you kept your business highly organized to meet the various needs of your different customer bases.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You talked a little bit about supply chains. How did working in supply chains help inform how you wanted to decide working on ghost kitchens?
Kristen Barnett:
For me, it's been this journey of answering that question of how to make really good food at scale. Where you start is at the farm. And at DIG, when we were designing our culinary programs six, nine months in advance, it was like, "Wow, all right. We want to grow broccoli and have broccoli three ways," where it was using the floret, the stem, and the stock, and we would go and walk the fields with the farmer and actually say, "We want X amount of inches of the stock packed in these boxes," and designing dishes from there. But then as I got further in the journey at DIG, I realized, well, actually good food at scale is about how you communicate it and get it to customers. It became this journey outwards. Ultimately, the delivery mechanisms by which we receive our food are part of the supply chain. It's part of this whole chain of events.
And so, I went from the earliest, how do you actually grow crops and then translate that into a dish, to everything I feel like I've been working on now the last three years, which has been what's the branding, the communication, the ordering mechanisms, the delivery mechanisms? And all the pieces that need to, one, convince a customer it's worth to order, that they believe in the quality of the food, but then also how it's going to actually get to them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And what's the state of supply chains, particularly for food in America? I know we're seeing so much news about things being expensive in all corners of the country.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I mean, we noticed this certainly over the three and a half years I was there where we started to build in more volatility into our financial models for how we thought about price fluctuations due to, wow, the avocado season ended early, or cauliflower is coming up late. For X, Y, and Z reasons you have to bridge those gaps, and you don't access your lower contracted pricing for a certain amount of time. We saw financially those impacts starting to hit. It's like that, but tenfold over the last three years now in a post pandemic world where the supply chains broke down for any number of reasons, whether it was related to the actual transportation of the crops, obviously ongoing climate change related issues. But even just the impact of labor too and seeing that, wow, when factories in China get shut down for two months because of a lockdown policy, that backs up the entire paper goods supply chain, and you feel those effects like six to eight months later.
It's really changed how you think about purchasing. It's bad practice, but you can see why people's stockpile ingredients now when you have them in stock because they might not be in stock in the future. And so, it's created a lot of topsy turvy-ness in terms of purchasing behavior, and a lot of hedging against the risk of the disruptions that now are so multi-dimensional.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Are there industry standards to make supply chains more sustainable? I know we talk about farmer's markets. What I've always been impressed with by DIG is their commitment to really partnering with farms to build those relationships, but educate consumers of your sweet potato's coming from here, or your corn's coming from here, or the chicken in your bowl is coming from here.
Kristen Barnett:
So, it's hard to say industry standards in any way, especially referring to restaurants because it's very dependent on what you stand for as a company and what your goals are, what your brand is for customers. And I wish there were industry standards when it came to sustainable sourcing and partnerships with farms, but it's just not every owner's interest, which I think is a real shame and it should change. It is often the harder path to take. For Digital, it required significant investment. I mean, we had an entire distribution facility in Hunt's Point in the Bronx where we pre-processed and prepped a lot of the ingredients so that, one, it was easier for farms to land it and have one place instead of delivering to our 22 restaurants in the city. And then also it enabled our restaurant locations to actually hold more product because it was already partially broken down.
That was just a massive undertaking to do it. But what I realized more than anything that I feel always was acknowledged more was that when it comes to supply chain sustainability and really working towards a future where you are better connecting maybe local farms with the actual end product, all of this comes down to purchasing power. It's your budget, it's the dollars. So, whoever's in charge of that for a given restaurant chain, that's a really important role, and it really needs to be a thoughtful leader that is thinking strategically about the future. And I know that I felt the responsibility of our budget when we looked at where are we going to allocate this spend?
Because ultimately, whenever we picked a farm to work with, they were like, "Thank you for this contract. I now understand that I have this much less risk in my business this year." And so, it was a real honor and responsibility to make those decisions, and I think I just gained a lot of perspective in terms of how you actually move the needle. And that's like, yeah, we have X millions of dollars. Where are we going to spend it? That is important. That is really important.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, because it's not just us to where that money's going, but how does that money affect the brand, affect relationships, affect the whole ecosystem?
Kristen Barnett:
And you're outsourcing sustainability to the hundreds of thousands of customers we had. That's the thing is they are purchasing then that food, but we're ensuring that purchase, at least that one in their day, is going and supporting these farms who are doing great regenerative farming practices, or they're diverse farmers. And we're helping create a more just and equitable farming system.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Absolutely. I want to talk to you about technology's impact on sustainability and hospitality. How do you think ghost kitchens are impacting consumer hospitality as we speak?
Kristen Barnett:
Oh my. Well, I think it's both been good and bad because the systems were not built to handle these tech-enabled restaurant brands and ghost kitchens without a storefront. I remember back in 2019, there was actually a hearing on ghost kitchens in New York City that the founders of the company I was working for at the time, Zuul, they were there as well as a couple reporters. And it was looking at some really interesting dynamics that had popped up, which was, all right, you're cooking out of this unlabeled kitchen essentially anywhere. No storefront, whatever. You could be cooking under 10, 15 different brands, but when consumers go and look up on the DOH [department of health] website what's the health score, none of those brands will exist. There was a lack of transparency and also a lack of understanding by our city government on how to actually really regulate and create awareness of what these new business models are in terms of how they've shifted maybe sustainability or not.
I mean, I think initially it was not a great thing because there wasn't transparency. And so, in terms of being able to hold brands to standards or really understand what's going in the food and where it's coming from is some very basic questions couldn't be answered about a lot of the brands that were popping up in those early years. Now I think brands are better built out, but even so, it's much more of a marketing play than something that's based on necessarily the quality of the food. And I think that's been a shortcoming in the ghost kitchen industry that I personally reacted very strongly to and thought needed to change.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. And again, another perfect transition because you dub Hungry House as the anti-ghost ghost kitchen, because you have decided to partner with creators and basically have added a face at the ghost kitchen. So, I'm curious, after you worked at Zuul what was the inspiration for going out on your own and starting Hungry House?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah, so after DIG I joined Zuul, which had just opened a ghost kitchen in the city, soon after that we acquired a tech company and started building out our own ghost kitchen technology platform, which was back of house fulfillment, and then a curated white label ordering platform for offices to basically access the selection from our ghost kitchen. I essentially joined this company, four months later the pandemic hits and it was like, whoa. All right, everyone's talking about ghost kitchens. How can we help? How can we play a role in this? And I just had this incredible front row seat to practically every single ghost kitchen project that was coming up in those early years, understanding that there was, I felt, always creativity being left on the table table. I saw DJ Khaled launches another wings, and Mariah Carey has cookies, and Mr. Beast Burger obviously is the biggest ghost kitchen brand-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's like the flagship ghost kitchen. Yeah.
Kristen Barnett:
I really saw the power of existing in this digital only world, in leveraging these built-in audiences that these people had to sell food digitally. For me, it felt, wow, that's a really obvious thing to do because they're going to primarily promote it through social media, and then you click and you're like suddenly on DoorDash ordering that burger. All of the actual food was very simplistic, usually commoditized frozen chicken wings dropped in a fryer, or burgers, and they're being licensed to all these restaurants across the country so you don't really know who's cooking it. The quality of the beef? Doesn't matter. Where the chicken wings are coming from? Who knows. They're frozen, whatever. I thought, "Wow, this is so inspiring from a marketing perspective," but it's built on kind of a low quality or a quick and easy approach. They had certain operational constraints that made it so that, yes, that's how they need to cook their burgers.
That's how you need to do those chicken wings. And I started to get approached by more and more of my friends who were culinary creators, who were chefs who had cookbooks, or maybe a restaurant and then maybe not, or just pure play influencers. And they were like, "Hey, kind of feel like I should work with a ghost kitchen. I'm going to be on this TV show next month and I don't have a restaurant to market, but what if I could still sell my food? What's my product?" And kept getting this inquiry. And so, I was like, "Huh, who could they work with?" And I didn't really have a good answer. None of the ghost kitchens for me at the time felt like something I would peg my personal brand to, and I felt like none of them were actually targeting culinarians, chefs who care about quality and transparency. When you work in food, you're doing it out of passion, out of telling a story. Ghost kitchens at that time, this is 2020, 2021, it felt honestly a lot of tech bro nonsense.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's how some of this stuff starts, right? Yeah. There's no heart in it.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I was like, "Where's the soul? Where's the story?" I love the tech. I think it's fascinating. I'm working in this space, but you can't just algorithm optimize everything-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Especially food.
Kristen Barnett:
Especially food. And so, I was like, "Man, someone's going to start this, right?" And then no one was starting it. So, I was like, "Well ..."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Looking around in the room, you're the only one.
Kristen Barnett:
I guess I'm going to. Yeah. And Zuul, we got acquired by Kitchen United, a larger ghost kitchen player. And so, it was a really perfect jumping off point for me to imagine finally starting my own company, which I'd always known I wanted to do. For me, it felt like a real gap to come in and fill.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love Hungry House, not only because you're giving creators a chance to showcase themselves, but also the food that you have. I've been so lucky to try some of the stuff by Woldy Kusina, who's one of the chefs there, and Chile Con Miel, who's another great chef there. And it's been amazing. It's like something that you would get at a Sweetgreen or a Cava, but it's nice to know that, oh wow, this creator that I've been following for so long, this is their personality in their food. I'm curious to hear why it was important for you to create a healthy ghost kitchen.
Kristen Barnett:
Well, it's not exclusively healthy. We do have burgers. I think that it's important to have a whole range of offering here-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Or health forward, let's say that.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah, health forward or even just higher and quality. I'm proud of our burgers and the sourcing of the ingredients, and every component of that for that brand. And I wanted range. We have this amazing breadth on the menu. The thought behind that was I felt like there were so many food stories to tell online, so many incredible voices that are leading the charge on social media and shifting the way that we think about food and culture. And these stories could benefit from having a platform to actually share that food in a physical way with people ultimately being culinary voices. It's about the food. We really initially took steps to find creators who first really identified with a lot of our values and understood what we were trying to do. We are doing something completely new, completely new, but what we care about is quality, and the supply chain, and diversity of voices.
And then ultimately the transparency so that we all can acknowledge that we're building this together. And we've been really fortunate to find some incredible people to partner with on this mission. And in honoring each of their voices, we've been able to make a ghost kitchen that, one, is much higher quality in terms of the food. I think that's important just because they are culinary voices, and this is what I want to eat. Great. And then obviously the people themselves anchoring the brands. It gives food meaning, and without that we'd all be chugging soylent, and that's not good. Not in this house.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Not in this house. That's right. I'm so fascinated by the creator model. I'm curious to hear, how do you decide on the creators that you want to be partnered with?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah, so we've been really fortunate in that all of our creators thus far have been referrals or inbound. So, we already know to a certain extent, they've self-selected for really identifying with the things that drive our company forward as Hungry House. We typically are looking for creators that are up and coming, and known in New York. So, we really feel like food is a local game. You have to plug into your community and resonate in that way. And so, working with chefs who have done popups before New York, or have a broader presence here has been really important. We've done a range in terms of follower accounts. That's actually not that important to us, because more than anything it's about the concept in the person. And so, we've allowed ourselves to not be so formulaic about that. And then finally, it's are they a great person?
We're going into business together. Inevitably, I always say, "Something will go wrong." I want to know that you and I can look at each other in the eyes and say, "I believe you did your best and we're going to fix this." And that is a level of trust that I think has to underpin every relationship. And we look to establish that really early on and understand that we're here, we invest a lot in each brand. I'm dedicating R&D [research and development] from my culinary team. We're training our staff in the kitchens. They're getting really hyped. We're obviously dedicating a lot of marketing to telling their story as well. And so, we look for an even exchange in the understanding that we both together are going to uplift this narrative, and it's a very collaborative effort.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's so beautiful. I'm really curious to hear how do you scale a creator's concept? Because again, a lot of these creators, their offerings are incredibly visual. It's what we're seeing on Instagram, there's a little bit of embellishment, there's a little bit of editing involved for color brightness or for whatever the recipe is meant to be. So, how have you supported creators in-
Kristen Barnett:
With the translation?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, and getting what looks like something on screen to something that is being able to produce 70, 80, 90 times over in a day?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. So, that process is really important, obviously, as you can imagine. But it's actually better and easier than if I were trying to replicate a restaurant into a ghost kitchen setting. So, let me tell you what I saw a lot in the ghost kitchen space, 2020, 2021, it's all these restaurant brands being like, "Wow, I could license my brand into a ghost kitchen operator in this market and test it out." But the problem is that as a restaurant, you have pretty formulaic IP. We're in the game of IP, intellectual property, really acknowledging chef as artist, and they are creating this, and it's special and you need to honor it. When you're copying a restaurant, it's pretty set in stone. And so, you actually have more room for error in the eyes of the consumer because they've already experienced perhaps an in-person setting in a dining room, with the server, and the menu, and then they get something from a ghost kitchen.
They're like, "Wait, this doesn't match up." And so, you're much more susceptible to issues. So, what we identified was actually working with creators with more malleable IP, you are actually better positioned for success in the execution of that concept in our format, because consumers don't really have a preconceived notion of what it's going to look like when it shows up for delivery. They're just excited to finally be able to access it. We'll take inspirational elements from popups that chef's done before, or recipes that are on their blog, or posted on other websites, but ultimately it's going to look different. And we actually like that a lot because it might have been served family style, but we're trying to make food excessively priced for the everyday consumer.
And so, we always ask, "What if that was translated into a cafe?" What if you had a cute little cafe and you had 100 of them? What would the food be there? We imagine for them too, our prompt is you are a celebrity chef, you now have 100 cafes. What's that cute little menu going to be? Knowing that you're still going to go crazy at your popups, and it's going to be all these incredibly bright, vivacious images and plating that's nuts, and that's what it should be because that's a really important part of your brand, but this is also one expression of the brand just through a very specific channel.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, that's so exciting. And I'm curious how your creators or the creators you've partnered with have thought about the partnerships model that you've set up.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. So, we enter into a royalty structure, and so essentially when we win, they win. I always look for this in business. How can we align incentives here? So, it's quite simple. The more items they sell, the more that they get paid out on a given month. The structure themselves, this is oftentimes the first time they might be entering into something like this. So, we really work to make sure that the contract feels fair. Both of us, if it's going wrong, can get out of it at any time. We don't want to force anyone to work with us. We really want this partnership to work, and so we structure it that way. Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's so exciting. And you mentioned that a lot of your creators have been inbound or referrals. Are there any creators that are out there on the scene right now that you would love to do a partnership with for Hungry House?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I mean, I would love to work with Dan Pelosi from GrossyPelosi.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I adore him.
Kristen Barnett:
Oh my God, I just already can see that menu. It'd be so fun. Or even I like a Sophia Roe. I mean, her food for me is, I don't even know how we would translate it, it's so beautiful. And I just love the way that she makes the videos in an apartment. So, I'm obsessed.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, we're manifesting that. But I want to talk to you as well, because you're also a female founder who also raised venture capital, which is super interesting. I feel like the food world is one, because of the high margins and because of the dynamics it's often one where it's really hard for venture capital to even consider investing, or even for food entrepreneurs to find that footing. So, how is navigating the fundraising and developments phase of getting Hungry House out in the world?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. I mean, listen. It's difficult. Anyone who tells you otherwise will be lying. I mean, in general it's been a journey, but when you find people who believe in you and the brand, and what you're building, and that vision, it's absolutely incredible. It's hard. The numbers are stacked against you, and that's real. You just start to feel it, especially when you look at figures that are so disheartening where venture capital investment in female founding teams went down from 2.4% to 1.9%. This happens when there's economic instability because you go back to what you know. That's not even talking about the conversations I'm having with people about work for DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] onboards, and getting women onboards, and making sure that corporate leadership is diverse, it is all getting thrown out the window, unfortunately in these times, because everyone's like, "I just got to make my money."
And unfortunately, that doesn't allow you to, in their mind, take a riskier bet. This is obviously not explicit. This is all also subconscious. And so, the process of raising capital as a female founder, you're often wondering, "What could I have said differently?" Because you're going to get perfectly constructed thoughtful feedback on why they didn't invest in you. But then at the same time, you're going to probably go and see a peers' company who it might be male founded and they did raise 3X as you. And you wonder, "What did they say in that room?" Or, "Did they go out to lunch?" You just don't know.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Was it a casual conversation? Yeah.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. And it's hard because you're never going to have the counter narrative. You don't know actually. And so, all you can do is keep going. It is harder to build successful companies when you do just actually have less capital. The model itself for VC [venture capital], I mean, these are 1,000 X nets. They want to take a 100 X. Yeah, whatever. They want a huge return. It's also very specific type of capital that can oftentimes clash with the model of the food industry where to grow and scale these businesses thoughtfully it requires a more intentional roadmap of growth, because ultimately this is a very fickle product, oftentimes also really impacted by the people on your team that are involved in the production of it. And so, that requires a certain degree of intentionality that also sometimes that VC model can be difficult to ensure a good match.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, it's like it's great in the short term to get you the funding, but in the long term it's always hard to be able to play that catch up. But I'm really curious, when you think about the food community and especially the female founder food community, how have you found community and support as you've been navigating building this?
Kristen Barnett:
Oh my gosh. I mean, it's like my favorite thing ever to hang out with other female founders. Oh, it is such a blessing to have community on this journey where you can say the things that you're like, "Oh my God, I'm so miserable sometimes." And you just need to say those words and then suddenly it's less scary. It's primarily been reaching out to others who I just think have really cool businesses and being like, "Hey, we should finally get coffee. I've heard your name 100 times, I admire you so much." Or something that's a lot harder, which is asking for help. I have learned that lesson 1,000 times over in this journey, just how valuable it is to ask for help. And it's something that for me has not been easy. If you're in the type A grind and you're like the hustle, you're not trained to show weakness or even understand that vulnerability can actually be a strength.
And I've found even just in the most recent months, really asking for help in the way that I have has completely turned my expectations of what I can get from a community-based support. It's turned it on its head because I've realized that being vulnerable and asking for help actually just has made me more confident in myself because I've had more people to validate that I am okay, that I'm doing a good job. And as a solo founder too, or female founder, you just never hear those words. And it's sometimes just all you need to hear is someone saying, "You are trying your best. You're doing okay."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. You're doing amazing, sweetie. Yeah. You post these semi-regular dinners with other female founders. How have you found that support? How have you found creating that initiative has helped support or helped at least change the industry for those other founders that are coming in?
Kristen Barnett:
Oh my gosh. What's actually kind of cool about it over the years, because I've had years where I've done it more and then-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What happened?
Kristen Barnett:
... being a founder has been a little more difficult. But I've worked with other founders through it to co-host and hosted for a few years with Edie Feinstein of GEM, which is an incredible company, and then Daniel Gould of Food Tech Connect. And what's been so cool is that the people who come to them eventually go on to be founders themselves, which is like me. Then you have these friends who are there, who are already founders, and you can call on them as you navigate the journey. And so, it's actually been cool because I always thought about these dinners when I would host them as having the backroom conversations that a lot of men are having. But because we are a rarer breed, we just have less access, one, to those spaces, but also containers that are just female founders.
You finally have a space to talk about business, and that's the prompt in the context, we're all here doing something meaningful. Let's talk about your equity package. Let's talk about navigating something with a board member. Let's talk about these things in a more casual setting over a glass of nice natural wine. You can really gain a lot of context and perspective. And I've always thought that my journey as a woman in the business world, it's always been an informational disadvantage. And so, I constantly seek out ways to create more context, get more information, ask more questions, to educate myself, and that has usually been the catalyst of taking the next big step in my career.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, that's really refreshing. How do you hope to see Hungry House and its unique model transform the food industry and then also transform how we come to view ghost kitchens? Because I feel like the sentiments right now, I think because-
Kristen Barnett:
It's iffy, let me tell you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And I think it's because of the food that they're serving-
Kristen Barnett:
Of course.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... it's because if you're just serving burgers and fries, but the only thing you're really making unique is who's selling it, then people don't feel as connected to it. Whereas I feel like the model that you've created has allowed one to gain a closer connection to someone that they normally wouldn't traditionally be able to see in a restaurant or anything.
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. So, starting with the first part of that in terms of the food industry, I think that we are in the midst of a huge shift where culinary voices that traditionally would've been anchored by a restaurant are now floating out in the world, building these crazy omnichannel careers that are so diverse in terms of the types of projects you can take on, and yet still largely unrecognized by the traditional food industry. I think that divide is starting to get bridged a little bit, but I believe that honoring the voices of this next generation that are using social media in this way is a valid and important endeavor. And more systems need to be created to support these voices that also, let's be real, are more diverse than the past because they are no longer getting forced to come up through these French trained white male run kitchens that historically have been incredibly toxic and disenfranchising environments for the younger workers that come up through them.
As we engage in this shift, I hope that Hungry House is lending culinary credibility to this next generation saying, "These voices matter. We need to support them, we need to honor their stories, and let's go deeper and understanding why they are telling the stories that they are, and what it can mean for our collective food future." We're getting to learn about so many different types of cuisine, how it's passed down through generations. I'm just obsessed with it all, and I feel so fortunate and so lucky to be in a position where I can help push those stories out there further. So, I hope that we're a part of that shift towards a more diverse array of voices in the room that maybe came from restaurants or didn't, regardless are valid and important. In terms of how we can change the ghost kitchen industry, I mean, I launched hot out of the gate calling myself the anti-ghost kitchen.
And it really for me was like a call to action saying, "Hey industry, I love you. I am you. I am a ghost kitchen, and yet I think we can do better by consumers to really focus on quality and the stories that underpin the food we're putting out." I think that ultimately you need to anchor any food item out there by a reason to believe, and I felt that was missing. I didn't really believe in any of the food that my industry peers were pushing out there, and I know that we have been referenced as a model. We're really the first ghost kitchen company that has a consumer brand as Hungry House. Consumers know it. They can walk up and pick up the food. I wouldn't do that for any of the other ghost kitchen companies out there because their brands don't mean anything to me.
They don't have a unifying approach to why that food exists within their premises, and I hope that we can continue to stand for something in a way that proves to others it is possible to be playing in a completely tech-driven environment, but still find soul and also create products of quality.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What's the future of Hungry House? You're two years in, you've built such great partnerships, you're allowing these creators to have a tangible means of expressing themselves. Where do you see Hungry House in the next five to seven years?
Kristen Barnett:
Yeah. So I mean, in its most simplistic form it's more creators, more talent, and more locations too. Talking to our talent, there is just a lot of opportunity to have a Hungry House model in other cities that maybe their audience is, so it's that like New York, L.A., Miami type of thing, but continuing to place ourselves at the center of food and culture, leveraging technology to make it all go further and come together in a really cohesive way is the plan. I think that happens through increasing our distribution, through continuing to work with incredible talent, and then hopefully helping them even go further. We're helping test sauces that could be bottled and distributed. We just want to go as far as we can to be a creator centric company, and what that might mean is all these different opportunities for them to expand their brand. And so, I hope to see us doing that in the future and really making an impact as the world continues to shift to creator led brands and creator led movements, I feel.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. That's so exciting. Well Kristen, we're about to do our fun Future Of Food Is You tradition. We call it the Future Flash Five. Let's do it, Kristen. The future of plant-based eating.
Kristen Barnett:
Real ingredients.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future for female founders.
Kristen Barnett:
Community.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of social media.
Kristen Barnett:
Authenticity.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of grocery stores.
Kristen Barnett:
Storytelling.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And lastly, the future of ghost kitchens.
Kristen Barnett:
Transparency.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Kristen, thanks so much for joining us on the show. If we want to hear more about you and continue to support you and Hungry House, we're the best places to find you?
Kristen Barnett:
You can always connect with me on LinkedIn. I love sharing what we're up to there, and then Hungry House is on Instagram @OrderHungryHouse or orderhungryhouse.com.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Thanks so much.
Kristen Barnett:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail at The Future Of Food Is You mailbox, just talking to themselves 10 years from now. You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Kristen Barnett:
Hey, Kristen. It feels big and scary right now being a founder, a solo founder at that, and a woman on top of that too, among these uncertain economic times and all the instability that comes with having a startup. I am telling myself, I guess now, that it's all going to work out, and I hope that you 10 years from now are chuckling to yourself saying that, "Yeah, of course it did." I hope that you were able though to find joy, to connect your work back to your souls calling and find a way to use your voice to its fullest extent. I'm sure you'll look back on all of this and realize it was the challenges that made the next decade so rich. I hope this is true, and I'm taking a step forward each day to make it happen no matter how hard it is. I hope that you have a fridge full of pickled goodies, maybe a garden, and a rich community of friends who inspire and support you.
I hope that you continue to find your unique angle in the food world, and build things that matter to you, but also so importantly to others. I hope that you continued to learn how to slow down, to savor the good moments, and quite honestly I hope you got tons of traveling after a very bleak period of those pandemic years. And I guess finally, I just hope that you found joy, that you always made magic, and that you soaked up every second of this journey.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. Do you know someone who you think is the future of food? Tell us about them. Nominate them at the link in our show notes, or leave us a rating and a review, and tell me about them in the review. I can't wait to read more about them. Thanks to Kerrygold for sponsoring the show. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for more. The Future Of Food Is You is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers, Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and associate producer Jenna Sadhu. Catch you on a future flip.