Hi Square Sellers, It’s Neil again, Square’s Culinary Lead (I’m a former seller myself btw). For this week’s Future of Food interview I spoke with Evan Bloom, owner of Wise Sons Deli. He talks about the growth of his 6 unit business, navigating the new food landscape, and his success with marketing. A key takeaway for me was whenever possible, it’s really smart to work towards revenue stream diversification as a hedge against certain segments being adversely impacted. Not an easy lift by any means but interesting for long-term planning.
Hope you enjoy and add your thoughts in the comments. Happy to provide additional context whenever possible.
Tell us about your business.
Wise Sons started as a pop-up for Off the Grid on Saturdays in 2009. I had been cooking in my backyard and we realized there was a need for the food we were making. We transitioned to a once a week stand at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. Finally in 2012, we opened our first brick and mortar on 24th St in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Growth of the business
We didn’t plan to grow Wise Sons initially but good opportunities came our way. We were approached by the Contemporary Jewish Museum so that became our second location. We opened our first commissary in 2013. It was designed to power our bagel concept. The building actually caught fire in 2014. We were somehow able to come back stronger. Hardships can bring your team together and bring focus to your business. You end up having to ask, ‘What are the things we do well? What truly matters to our customers?’
Tokyo shop
We opened a location in Tokyo in 2018. It was an opportunity to expand the reach of Jewish comfort food in an area you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find bagels and pastrami or a traditional Jewish deli. We were also forced to refine all our systems. We had to organize our recipes with precision, create comprehensive systems and guidelines for employees to follow. That was a big side benefit to that expansion. We’re doing bagel bento boxes there! Lots of opportunity to be creative and still stick to our brand.
Your business seems especially resilient during this crisis.
Being diversified has really been such an important component to how we’ve been able to adapt. We have our restaurants, we have a full catering program, and we have a wholesale business that sells to about 30 local grocery stores. There’s been many moments where we felt stretched too thin but now I’m very grateful for it. All that being said, so much of our food is social and nostalgic. There is something lost when you don’t eat our food around people. It changes the customer experience.
What’s your current operations?
A couple of our locations like in Marin County are temporarily closed. The Contemporary Jewish Museum itself is closed so that came offline too. We currently have three locations operating. We’re focusing on keeping our employees safe in terms of social distancing and proper spacing for the team. We have one entrance at each location, so dealing with the onslaught of delivery drivers and having them safely pick-up orders is really difficult. We’ve had a lot of success in packages designed for our customers. We’ve put our catering team to work and they’re driving some great results.
Marketing
We did a Square Marketing email blast for our new packages and we got tons of demand instantly. We have 30,000-35,000 subscribers at this point so it’s become super impactful. You are essentially hitting everyone whose gotten a receipt at the restaurant. They can obviously opt-out of the list but most people want to hear from us. It’s been really great. It moves the needle much more than any mailing list we’ve used in the past. We on boarded Loyalty at same time.
Product/Feature Requests
We went contact-less but tips is a really big deal for employees in the service industry. It’s essential to not disrupt that component of their compensation. The customer still needs to touch the screen. That would be my big ask, find a way for people to tip from their phones.
How do you see the future of the restaurant industry?
There’s a lot of creative people in the restaurant industry that have nothing to lose at this point and a lot to gain. I’m hoping we will see a return to grass-roots, exciting food businesses. Some refreshing new ideas and concepts. A lot of restaurateurs are starting from scratch, with just their skeleton chef crew, and they’re making different food than they have ever done. Some really interesting new things are going to come out of this crisis. There’s no reason a lot of these solutions can’t last long term. We’re definitely going to be turning over every stone.
There’s going to be a ton of surprises. Unfortunately, I think a lot of legacy businesses may not survive. They weren’t able to adapt for whatever reason, their product or their physical space wasn’t amenable to a significant shift. I’m curious what’s going to happen with fine dining. I know some that have moved to a more approachable price point for delivery and it’s working. A lot of multi-unit companies will take the opportunity to not reopen underperforming restaurants. I think menus are going to get smaller, because you’ll have less staff most likely.
What’s Next?
We’re thinking about a cookbook club. When someone buys our cookbook, we’d have digital content available, video tutorials and such to make certain recipes. We’d also have ingredient kits available for delivery. Tracking down all the items you need can be a challenge.
Great to chat! Thank you Evan.
