Food Entrepreneurs Have Menu for Underserved

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Food Entrepreneurs Have Menu for Underserved
Foster

A clean, white-walled restaurant with large windows trimmed in turquoise stands out among the local mom-and-pop shops with graffiti-lined walls in South Los Angeles.

The space is occupied by grab-and-go restaurant Everytable, which opened last week. But the eatery’s modern look isn’t the only thing turning heads. Everytable is employing a variable pricing model, offering meals to low-income communities for $4 while planning to charge $8 for the same item at stores in more affluent neighborhoods.

Sam Polk, co-founder and chief executive of Everytable, said the idea was to offer families healthy food that could be picked up in a pinch.

“We started to think – is there a business model that could work that could bring in healthy food at a more affordable price than a McDonald’s?” said Polk, who launched the company with David Foster, who had been a vice president at Westwood private equity firm Aurora Capital Group.

The quick-serve restaurant offers food prepared off-site, offering diners a selection of cold bowls such as its Kale Chicken Caesar Salad with cherry tomatoes and whole-wheat croutons, as well as hot bowls including a Yucatan chili with mushroom and zucchini that can be heated up in a self-serve microwave inside the shop.

Everytable is joining a growing number of restaurants in South Los Angeles offering inexpensive, healthy food, including Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson’s Locol in Watts, and With Love Market & Café near University Park.

However, Everytable’s pricing structure presents unique challenges requiring the owners to trim budgetary fat. That means food is prepared in a central kitchen and store employees are capped at two.

The model also necessitates scale. Everytable’s second outpost in downtown will open in November with bowls priced at about $8. Foster said the company has been able to raise enough investment to open at least four more locations, which it hopes to do early next year in cities such as Inglewood, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood. Foster and Polk declined to say how much had been raised but did say the money was provided by an initial seed round from more than 50 investors that included New York venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Toms Social Entrepreneurship Fund.

Everytable will determine pricing at each store based on an analysis of per-capita income data for each ZIP code.

Foster pointed out that even its $8 items will cost less than meals found at similar eateries in Santa Monica or Culver City. And even at $4 in South Los Angeles, he said Everytable would make a profit on each sale, albeit a small one.

“We’re basically at the floor of where we can get to for the (South L.A.) store and still generate a tiny margin,” he said. “Four dollars across the board doesn’t really work as a business. … But you don’t need to make a huge margin on every customer that walks in through the door.”

Darren Tristano, president of Chicago research firm Technomic Inc., said Everytable’s model is efficient and could be scaled, likening it to methods employed by convenience stores. The key, he said, is preparing meals at a central kitchen, which cuts operational costs and makes the business more efficient.

“One big kitchen is cheaper than a bunch of small kitchens in terms of ordering ingredients and taking deliveries and refrigerating product,” he said. “Downside is if you’re making food to order and don’t sell it you may have leftovers.”

Fresh Food

Polk said the idea for Everytable grew out of his three-year-old nonprofit Groceryships, which operates a six-month program for low-income families offering temporary financial support and education on healthy living. The restaurant operates in the same building.

“David and I were sitting in this office hearing parents say things like, ‘I’m a single mom, I’ve got four kids and two jobs and I need to get food on the go sometimes because I just don’t have the time,’” said Polk.

The two spent nearly two years developing the menu with Craig Hopson, Everytable’s executive chef, formerly of Le Cirque in New York.

Meals are priced from $2.95 for a kids’ meal to $4.50 for a hot bowl. Polk said the food is prepared at the central kitchen in Redondo Beach by a staff of 15 and delivered fresh to the restaurant every morning. The food is sourced from local farms and organic ingredients are used whenever possible. Seasonal menu items also help keep costs down, he said.

Foster said the plan is to grow quickly with each location offering the same menu.

“We want to prove the model and demonstrate that there’s traction in both of these markets,” Foster said. “The goal is grow to 10 by the end of (next) year.”

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