. It was a way to keep chefs in a space, but try out new concepts that might work better.
What felt like the crucial component for Buford Pellegrin and Chefstable CEO Kurt Huffman was to make sure all of the restaurant concepts really came from the chefs in the space. “It wasn’t going to be Kurt and I going, ‘Okay, we need burritos, fried chicken,’” she says. “We wanted to make sure the chefs came up with the ideas.”Chefstable / OfficialCharlie’s. He followed it up with a salad concept, Waldorf & Cobb.
That anonymity didn’t sit right with Diane Lam, the owner of 2020 breakaway hit Sunshine Noodles, either. “These ghost kitchen brands are so sterile,” she says. Lam, who previously worked as the chef de cuisine at the now-closed Revelry, was working on a bit of market research: She ordered from places like Man vs. Fries and Sunny & Fine’s Breakfast Burritos, and she noticed something missing from the experience.
So she started talking with two other people outside the industry: Nicole Chow from Nike and Sarah Khogyani at Lyft, both friends of hers. Together, they came up with a delivery-only restaurant concept:, a fried chicken and rice business. The fried chicken, popularized at Sunshine Noodles, would come with a choice of sauces and an assortment of rice options to accompany them. When it launches on January 15, it’ll run as just a traditional “pandemic pivot” through March.