Chef Kyle Shankman on His Home-Based Speak Easy Supper Club

This week on Chefs Without Restaurants we have chef Kyle Shankman. Kyle is the chef and owner of Speak Easy Supper Club, an exclusive dining experience in the Atlanta area. As tickets for Speak Easy are hard to come by, Chef Shankman also finds a way to feed folks as a private chef and cooking class instructor.

A chef for two decades, Kyle has run multiple restaurant kitchens as an executive chef and consultant, taught hundreds of cooking classes for home cooks, been the personal chef to A-List celebrities, and has been the on-camera talent in both live and produced segments for several national brands.

On the show, we discuss starting the supper club in his residential home with his 15-year-old son. We talk about the inspiration for his menus, how his diners find him, and the pros and cons of running a supper club. 

 If you'd like to hear Kyle discuss why hiring an assistant was a game-changer for his business, check out the mini-episode here.

KYLE SHANKMAN

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Transcript

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Chris Spear: 0:00

Hey, Kyle, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on.

Kyle Shankman: 0:03

Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Spear: 0:04

You are someone who works like me as a personal chef. And I think today is gonna be a really beneficial, hopefully kind of tactical conversation for our listeners. And I'm really interested, you also have a speakeasy style Supper Club, which I think is going to be interesting for a lot of people. I think we should just jump right in, you know, you've had a number of years working in restaurants and the food industry. And now you work as a personal chef. So why did you make that jump?

Kyle Shankman: 0:33

Well, so I actually made the jump twice. I got my first executive chef job when I was 21. Back in the back in the early 2000s. And it was admittedly a lot like it was, it was my first restaurant that I'd ever worked in, like I started there as a dishwasher, then move out to prep cook, and Garma J saute grill, sous chef, and then just sort of the, all the right things had to happen for me to then get to executive chef. But that didn't change the fact that I was 21. And after a while, like this was like a big country club. And during the summer, we were feeding, you know, a couple 1000 people a day, between all the things. And I was like running the kitchen with a walkie talkie. And losing my mind. And I mean, I was making a lot of money, but I wasn't having any time to spend it. And I wasn't cooking. And you know, so I had like this moment of like, I need to just kind of stop and, and cook, and I willfully left and went and just asked somebody to hire me as like, like a cook. I was like, I just want to cook and I want to learn. And I was there for like six months. And then the 2008 financial collapse happened in their restaurant close. Just about overnight, like he gave me like a few days notice. And again, at the time, I guess I was 22 when that close. And I left the industry altogether, with sort of initially the plan to come back. But I left to go learn sales. Because I didn't understand why his restaurant closed. Like I'm this 22 year old Cook, watching, watching a kitchen doing everything from my perspective. That was right. Like we're bringing in, you know, a new farmer, you know, every single day, like we get like, like crates of greens. And we're, we're wrapping our pork tenderloins and call fat and we're, we're doing like, We're doing everything. From my perspective, food wise, that was correct. And we just couldn't be couldn't get a customer in the restaurant across the street was doing fine. And so I figured, like, I must be missing something, some element of this. Because if somebody handed me$100,000 to open a restaurant, like, yeah, I would have made the same choices that he did that freaked me out. And so like I left to go just do sales, like I went into, like, door to door business to business office supply sales. That was like straight from mission.

Chris Spear: 3:11

That's a very big, like difference from the food world.

Kyle Shankman: 3:14

Well, I mean, I was looking at the restaurants that were that were hiring, and it wasn't the type of foods that I wanted to cook and, and I just had this weird experience of like, kind of getting too big, too fast in the industry. And I was like, You know what, I'm still young enough and flexible enough that, you know, maybe this isn't, you know, the right thing for me, like I fell into, you know, the culinary world, almost accidentally in the first place. Like I went to school for architecture. And so I was like, I just need to like understand, I guess base level marketing, like what it is that impulses people to make certain decisions. Why would they choose this restaurant over that restaurant. And I would eventually learned that, that a lot of the decision making that we make as customers is transferable from product to product, you know, restaurants or restaurant. And so I left and I did that and I found a lot of success with it. And I did that for three years. I have my own office, I moved out of state opened a sales and marketing firm in South Carolina. And then like once we were kinda like, comfortable. I was like, gosh, I feel like I understand some things a little bit better. I'm ready to come back. sold my company. We moved back to Atlanta. I started working for the for the Ritz Carlton for a little while. And I was an executive chef somewhere else within six months. It was far from perfect, but it was closer to what I wanted to do and I you know, randomly got this. This job offer two or rather an interview offer to come and audition as a as a resident chef for a national cookware store where we're doing like public classes and demonstrations and so on. And I went, and I did that. And, you know, apparently did well in that interview, and I was hired. And I had this sort of, like, perspective shift, where I was, you know, I was cooking professionally, I was around food, doing what I love. But I wasn't working seven days a week, I wasn't working 80 hours, like, nine o'clock was a late night, all of a sudden, I wasn't, you know, and like, I didn't feel like my body, like starting starting to fail me, you know, midweek. And, you know, I never really went back to restaurants in a traditional sense. After that, I would stay, you know, doing the doing the cooking classes, I did that exclusively for about six years. But I was still cooking somebody else's recipe. And I kind of missed developing my own content. And that's when I started doing like, private, private chef work around the same time the supper club started, sort of accidentally. And, you know, and I've been doing a combination of those things ever since?

Chris Spear: 6:05

What was the first personal chef event dinner? Like? Like, how did you do that? What was the leap of like, I want to create my own food and do dinners for people? How did you put that out into the world and land your first gig?

Kyle Shankman: 6:19

Well, you know, I, I had, you know, friends and acquaintances that, that knew I did it. And once I kind of was, was free, I, you know, I kind of put out the bat signal and said, Hey, anybody who's, who's still interested in beauty of social media, as you can talk to a lot of people all at once, and nothing sustainable came out of that, really, I mean, there were a handful of like little dinner parties for me to like, cut my teeth on. And so I went and interviewed with a company that is sort of like a personal chef company here in Atlanta that has like a team of chefs. They have this existing, you know, chunk of clientele that they distribute us to. And it's funny, I think, in our industry, we're all very, like, especially restaurants just are very, like grass was greener attitudes all the time, where it's like, oh, that sounds so much better. I think restaurant chefs go to just go and be able to cook for one family. You know, a few nights a week. That's like the dream. And then you go and do it. And you realize how, how lonely it is, sometimes, how not gratifying it can be when you're doing, we were doing mostly meal prep, you know, so I'm showing up, I'm making a bunch of food, cooling it down, putting it in containers, tossing it in their fridge, it gave me a lot of freedom. But Colin airily speaking, didn't give me a lot of like, creative satisfaction. It wasn't until I left that company, and had speakeasy, the supper clubs sort of starting to take off. But I was really able to do the types of the type of private chef work that I think I always hoped I would be able to get into. So the supper clubs sort of ended up feeding the private chef business, in a lot of ways.

Chris Spear: 8:21

I've never done a single day of meal prep, like to me that is just it seems like soul crushing it and you know it. It's great to work for yourself. I mean, it's not for everyone. But I didn't want to work for myself at any cost. And if that just meant like prepping out a week's worth of like, grilled chicken, broccoli dinners, I was like, I can't do that, which is, you know, I kind of modeled my business as almost like a, you know, a restaurant experience in people's homes, kind of doing the food like you do with the speakeasy. So the speakeasy, I want to get into the nuts and bolts of that, because I think that's sounds really cool. So how does the speakeasy work like, where are you doing them? What's the reception been talk through that because I think that's something that's really interesting, at least to me, and I'm sure our listeners would love to hear about that.

Kyle Shankman: 9:11

So we do them in our home. It we kind of turn our house into a restaurant, three to four times a week, for up to 14 people at a time. It's all sort of one communal space right there. Right there where the kitchen is. It started as a side project for my son, Trevor, who was, gosh, he was 15. At the time, I started working for that that personal chef company. He had expressed interest in the industry, and I didn't want to be that Chef who's like, don't don't do it. Don't do it. You'll you'll hate it. I didn't want that to be the reason that he you know, got turned off to the industry. I didn't want him to resent me if he ended up doing something else and hating it. That being said he was 15 would be difficult for him to like go cook his own food somewhere. And he was doing well with the house like he was cooking genuinely impressive stuff without my help. And I said, why don't we just invite some friends over. And you can ask them to like donate, you know, a certain amount of money, give him like a minimum donation request. So that you don't lose money. But you own the whole thing. Like you, you light the menu, you do the shopping, and you prepare the meal, like, I'll just I'll provide you with a space to do it. And I'll help you with dishes. And I'll help you serving. And we did one of those. He loved it, the reception was really great. And then people started, like, didn't know, the minus first table, everybody I knew. And then strangers started, like reaching out to me on like Facebook and Instagram asking me when the next one was. And I was like, gosh, I didn't think I didn't think there was going to be a next one. So I asked Trevor, if you wanted to keep doing it, and he said, Yeah. And we would do, you know, one here and there, it took him a full month to develop one menu, because he was he was nervous, and a kid. And I didn't need it, you know, really, it was just kind of for him. And then it starts started sort of organically taking off to the point where there was after, after a year, there were a few 100 People like kind of on our mailing list to reach out. And around that time, he started getting admittedly a little bit burnout on it. He wanted to leave high school, he wanted to finish high school year early, and like buckled down on school. And I had started doing some brunches with speakeasy to kind of like keep people engaged. And so it was taking him a month to like, push out one menu. And, you know, I was like, you know, Trevor, I'm going to keep this going, should you decide to come back to it, because I'd hate to like lose these hundreds of people, you know, who are who are interested in this. You never came back to it, you starting his own in the spring of 2023. Because now he's 20. He'll be he'll be 22 in October. And so he's got he's on his own. And he wanted to kind of do his own thing. So I kept it going. We moved houses, I knew that we wanted to kind of keep doing this. And so we were admittedly looking for a house that kind of had the right setup for it. This one has a much better setup than the last one. It's almost seems built for it. And then we just sort of got, you know, a few 1000 people. Now who are getting these, these emails, and that's really how it works. People will get on our email list, we'll send out one blast per month, saying, here are the feedings for next month. This is the date the city and the time, that's all we tell people. And then it sort of first come first serve, you can like a hyperlink to a to a page to sort of finalize the reservation. And then we get like, you know, a roomful of strangers show up to our house to come. Do a seven course usually a seven course tasting.

Chris Spear: 13:06

So many questions, so many questions before it. Yeah. First and foremost, is this legal? Where you are like not to throw you to the wolves or something. But this would absolutely not fly in any means where I am. Because this is I think this is one of those things that a lot of us do. They don't want to talk about. So I'd love for anything you feel comfortable, like my department of health here won't even let us technically rent an Airbnb and sell tickets to a dinner. And it kind of goes county to county around here. Like how are you able to do this? Is this something you can talk about? Because I know that's the burning question out there for everyone who's listening, thinking like, Oh, can I have people over my house and charge them for dinners?

Kyle Shankman: 13:47

So, so yes, and no, like every every municipality is a little bit different. And if you literally went to the Department of Health and tried to explain what you were doing, there is no specific language in Georgia that addresses specifically what we do. So they'll apply, you know, like Party Rentals and catering regulations to to this. What we started, what we started doing is basically putting in the language on our website, that you are, you're being invited to a private party in a residential space. That is what your ticket as for there happens to be food there. So we're not, you know, in a, in a technical sense selling food, we're selling admission to a to a party, which at its face value is is legal. And then you get into sort of this, you know that this sort of question as to whether or not it would even be worth the health department's time

Chris Spear: 14:54

here. They weren't here they would they would find your place and show up because that's how it is around here. It's been In ridiculous because I, you know, again, I love that idea. I don't think my wife is down with having a bunch of strangers in our house. But yeah, you know, when I started Chefs Without Restaurants, a big part of it was going to be collaborative pop up dinners. And I, you know, I have a friend who has an Airbnb and we rented it for the night. And we invited a bunch of people, and we got a lot of media attention, which I thought was amazing. It was the cover story of our local magazine. And then you get contacted that you need to stop running your illegal underground restaurant, or there's gonna be repercussions. And then and then miraculously, someone actually noticed something potentially illegal going on at the Airbnb, and then that flagged inspectors to show up to this woman's business and cite her for other things. So there was some, I feel like retribution. Yeah, you know, and I don't want to get anyone in trouble. So. So I was just like, you know, we need to kind of table this for now. But I would love to be doing more of this. Maybe not in my home, though.

Kyle Shankman: 15:55

Well, so the way I the way we look at it is we treat this very much so like a, like a dinner party, that that you get hired to go do in somebody's home, right? Like, which is perfectly legal for you as a as a, as a private chef, to go bring some food to a residential space. A bunch of people come and they pay, and they have a party, like a private chef

Chris Spear: 16:23

part. That's my whole my whole business model.

Kyle Shankman: 16:25

Yeah. You know, when we develop our LLC, and I went through, you know, categorizing what our business is, it's a private chef service that hosts dinner parties. And as far as the powers that be at least down here, look at it, we're just doing private chef parties, the fact that it's in my home, is sort of irrelevant, because it can be in anybody's home. Like if we have one of our we've done this several times, where people who, who are regulars and frequent speakeasy have said like, Hey, could you do this at my house? And, you know, I have to ask them, Can I invite strangers to your house, and they go, Yeah,

Chris Spear: 17:07

you're good friends. And, and a good family to,

Kyle Shankman: 17:11

ya know, my family's very family is super understanding. But I think, you know, my wife has known me since that first executive chef job. So we've been together for like, pushing two decades now. And she knows what she knows what it's like, when I'm working full time in a restaurant, and the give and take of like, you know, me, me having to, you know, attend our house a few times a month, to turn it into a restaurant is worth it. Because I'm generally speaking here a heck of a lot more often than I was when I was in kitchen.

Chris Spear: 17:47

I would love to be able to just do it all in my house and not have to leave and schlep stuff everywhere. Like that's the dream. And you know, I have been looking at what are the options? Like, is it feasible? Is it even allowed to, like make a my garage, like a licensed commercial kitchen? Like, I've, I've kind of looked at this, because I would just love to not have to go out somewhere and do this. So really cool. I'm super impressed that you're doing it because like, that would be my ideal dream. If someone asked me, if I could do anything, what would it be, and it would be something along these lines.

Kyle Shankman: 18:18

It's very cool that as I said before, we do tend to be grass was greener in this industry. And the times like last night, we had to schlep our whole kitchen over to a party in the city. And it was almost a relief after doing several here at the house in a row to not have to. I mean, it's a lot we we've got, you know, we've got a we've got a toddler, like it's a lived in house, you know, that needs to part of the charm of it is that it looks like a lived in house, but not to, you know, not to like a crazy degree, like your toys can't be out in the middle of the living room, you know, so we have to, you know, we have to do a lot to make sure that everything is clean and safe and, and attractive and still feels a lot like a restaurant experience when people sit down. So it is kind of a nice change of pace when we do get to leave the house to

Chris Spear: 19:10

looking on your website. It looks like you're selling out your events, which is fantastic. How hard is that? How much of a push is it last weekend I went up to New Jersey did a collab pop up dinner with a friend and it seemed like it was pulling teeth to get people to commit and maybe because we were in a smaller area, it wasn't as big a city with more people to draw from but I just felt like every single day we're like pushing this out. They're like we've got this dinner or buy tickets, you know, we're just trying to do two seedings and an Airbnb. And I can't imagine like my whole business model just being trying to push to get all these individual people come as it is. It's I mean, you've been doing it for quite a while now. So how has that changed? Were you having more trouble when you started and now it's an easy sell?

Kyle Shankman: 19:51

Yes, to both question is knock on wood, not difficult at all to sell out? Now, like we don't do a push beyond, we send one email, and an entire month will be sold in an hour, sometimes, sometimes 10 minutes, depending on, depending on it's like a themed dinner or something like that. And that was not the case. In the beginning, we had we probably put up eight dinners in the first year and only ran four of them. The other four couldn't sell seats, too. So we cancelled them. Then the next year,

Chris Spear: 20:35

people are you trying to get into a dinner like, what's the headcount?

Kyle Shankman: 20:39

Now it's 1414. Is is the 14th time any weekend fit. And it's also kind of what we have the infrastructure for. Because it's still it's one oven, one, one, you know, five burner range,

Chris Spear: 20:53

you're still rocking the one off in your house, come on, customer, I only have one as well. But I go into so many houses where they have to I'm like, that would be the dream for me.

Kyle Shankman: 21:01

Yeah. I mean, we have like a little like warming drawer that actually works as an oven underneath our oven for like one sheet pan, which is, you know, helpful. But yeah, I mean, the second year, we did a little bit better. And I think I did restaurant consulting for a little while. And something that was, you know, that was always so frustrating when I would talk to restaurant chefs and restaurant tours, was just sort of this, this idea that if you're not getting the response that you want, right away, you must be doing something wrong, and something needs to change. And you'll start seeing restaurants like, you know, a few months after opening, like introducing things that were clearly not part of the initial business strategy. Like, they're not adding brunch, because it was part of the plan, they're adding brunch, because, like, they're panicking, and they need the revenue. Sometimes that's not not the case. But generally speaking, you start seeing them, changing the menu, changing the style of service, grasping at straws, because it's not busy as they hoped it would be early on. And I think the reality of it is, is that in this industry is as competitive as it is, and how many restaurants and food choices there are for people, especially in like major metropolitan areas, it just takes time. Like, if you're doing something well, that does not, you know, presuppose that people are gonna pick up on it, and respond to it right away, like, you're gonna have to build some credibility, and those people are gonna have to tell people and their friends are gonna tell people, and, and so on. And what was cool about speakeasy is that it almost proved that point, it's kind of a microcosm of the industry, in that we just literally kept doing what we were doing, when people weren't coming, we started adding courses and increasing the price. Because from our perspective, we were doing it for fun. And if changing the menu to be more accessible to more people made it less fun for us than it wasn't worth it. So we just kind of doubled down and kept doing what we wanted to do. And people eventually it was almost as you know, it's hard to remember the tipping point, but it was seemingly overnight, that, you know, that I just stopped having to make posts on social media to get tickets. It was, it was, it was like people are now like, if we if people are angry with us, it's because they couldn't get to see, you know, like, they're, they're begging for tickets. And we never changed anything beyond just continuing to try and improve what we what we were already, you know, what we were already doing.

Chris Spear: 23:44

It's really funny how that works. And you know, so much of its psychology, you worked in sales, but that idea as almost like you become more exclusive and more expensive, it becomes more of a thing that people want. Right. And I I think a lot of people especially now, I mean, the economy is turning down a little bit and I see people getting scared, and they're starting to lower their prices on their menus, even though food costs is going up. They're like, well, let's do like a week night three course meal for $75 When I feel like you maybe need to stick to your guns and even double down and just say like no my, my services for more an exclusive high paying clientele. And we're just gonna go deep into that thing. And it's scary if you're not getting customers to kind of do that. But I think that is a real thing that works.

Kyle Shankman: 24:31

Yeah, and I also think that you know, the fastest way to sort of lose you know, any, any sense of, like sustainability in a restaurant is to is to start trying to be relevant to everyone. Because you can't like you can't do that successfully. So it does come down to like kind of doing the math and going, how many seats do we have? How many seats do we need to fill? And you can do the same thing as a private chef. Like how many tickets do I need to sell? How many plates do I need to serve? And work that up against your expenses and go like how many people do I actually need to be relevant to? Like we're we're doing excellent. If we do 314 person, seedings per month, right? And so, from my perspective, I need to be relevant to that many people, which is not a lot. There are easily that many people who have 120 $150 to spend on on dinner. It's

Chris Spear: 25:29

Kevin Kelly's 1000 true fans, do you know that? It's a great essay, he was the editor in chief of Wired, but he wrote this essay years ago, and he redid it recently. But basically saying, like, you don't need millions of followers, you need like 1000 true fans, and he talks about the Grateful Dead. Like he said, stop people on the street, asking what they like the Grateful Dead, probably like 1% will say yes, but like that person goes to like every show and travels around the country, and they spend money on all this stuff. Like you don't need to be everything to everyone. You just need people who really love you and love what you do. And you know, for my business, when I started, I was doing tons of to person dinners for person dinners, this and that. And now I'm just like, it really needs to be like 10 and above and like you now I'm working sometimes one day a week and people are like, wow, like, is that really a business? If you go out and cook one day a week, it's like, Yeah, cuz I'm cooking for like, 16 people I used to sling food for like, I'm doing a two on Tuesday and a five on Thursday. I'm like running myself ragged. It's like, let's just focus on getting one dinner party that's going to pay the bills this week. And then the rest of the week, I'll fill with other stuff.

Kyle Shankman: 26:36

Yeah, a really quick, neat story that relates to that, that I that I always like to tell people is that when we first started, we, we did what a lot of, you know, new restaurants, if you want to call us that, in this instance, do and invited like a bunch of like food bloggers at like, at like costs, because you go look at all their? Which Yeah, look at all the exposure we're gonna get right. And that comes from a place of like, you know, being new and not having the competence to just sort of stand behind what you do, I think, and there were, were 10 people at the table, there were over a million followers between them. And there were local food bloggers, all that we asked us that they made a post about it, everybody did. And we got a grand total of three new subscribers to our, to our website. You know, I chalk it up as a lesson learned, we didn't lose money, if you just look at just like the raw cost of it. So compare that to we have a we have a guest who we would consider our our our biggest regular she, she's been to over 30 of these now, in two and a half years. Her Instagram is private, and she has maybe 60 followers. But she's like, you know, a young single girl in Atlanta with a lot of close friends. We had a night one night where there were 14 people at the table. And I do kind of what I normally do, or there's new people and ask them how they found out about us. And through the conversation, we found out that 10 of the 14 were referred by either her or somebody that she brought in the early days. And it's so it's so telling of like, what it really takes to like, build like a sustainable regular crowd is that it has to not just not be a lot of people, it has to be like the right people, the people that she tells are exactly the types of you know, guests that we're that we're after

Chris Spear: 28:43

100% You know, I, every year on the anniversary of my business, when I launched it, I do a giveaway. And the giveaway is for previous customers. And instead of trying to reach out to these influencers, who's already spent money with me, and I just do a raffle and I give away two to three free dinners and just go cook for those people right and that's the kind of thing you know, that's going to bring more business those people are going to have a great dinner, they're going to post on their private Facebook page, you know, it's lots of couples husbands and wives 40s to 60s year old and they're just gonna post pictures of the dinner and their friends are gonna hire me and that's done way more than you know giving a dinner away to some local influencer though I've done it we've all done it everyone at this point for the most part is has fallen into that trap in some regard.

Kyle Shankman: 29:29

If you look at I tell people who are considering I go look at their Instagram pages and look at the comments on every post. It's just all other food bloggers, like they're all talking to each other. It's just like kind of this echo chamber of, of, you know, pseudo influencers, you know, trying to, you know, get free or calm to meals. So I mean, it's, it's, again, it's good for exposure, if just eyeballs on your page are all that you're after, but I'm kind of I'm after you know revenue,

Chris Spear: 30:01

as we all are, and should be, one of the things you do is I know that you'd like to keep your dinners a secret, but you tell people that they can inquire, I'm interested, what is the percentage of people who reach out and say, I actually kind of want to know what's for dinner?

Kyle Shankman: 30:16

Less than 1%. Really, that's all Yeah, about 10 per tend to depends on. Like, if we're in February, it's almost, it's almost definitely somebody's like Valentine's thing. And a good percentage of them will reach out to ask about, though, even for those say, I, I want to preface this, I don't want to know them in. But I would like wine pairings suggestion, if you have them. So a decent percentage of people reach out asking about like pairings just so they they bring what they feel is the is the right thing. Because we don't want to get back to that sort of like legal gray area, like we don't touch a bottle, we don't pour it, we don't serve it, we don't provide it. But they're able to like, you know, BYOD. And so, you know, we'll get people reach out that way. But we're also very, like accommodating of dietary restrictions. So when people are, are, are making a reservation, they have an opportunity to say like, Hey, I'm gluten free or dairy free or vegetarian, whatever. And we tell them that we will, you know, that will accommodate. So in the early days, we would post the menu. And taking that away from them was a was a was a was a specific choice to try and cultivate the right audience, and the right, the right experience for everybody. Because I do think that part of the experience is the elder conversations and the relationships that are built between these 14 strangers at a table, and there's no guaranteeing that any of them are going to have a ton in common. But if you can guarantee that everybody at the table shares this one really unique personality trait of being willing to, you know, buy tickets to a location without knowing the address or knowing the menu. That's a really specific type of person. They might come from tons of different socio economic, political, ethnic backgrounds, but they all kind of share that. And it when we took away the advertised menu, we started having a much more exciting dinner service, if that makes sense.

Chris Spear: 32:37

Absolutely. Have you heard any stories of people who've become friends after coming to one of your dinners? Yeah.

Kyle Shankman: 32:45

Yeah, it's, it's my favorite part, when I see them, like posting together, like at, like, at a concert on on Instagram, and I'm like, Oh, I know where you guys met? Well, food totally

Chris Spear: 32:54

brings people together. That's why, you know, one of the things I've missed so much, during COVID was specifically not going out to eat in restaurants, but not eating at the bar, and not eating with strangers, you know, like, we went to Zahav. And Philadelphia, I don't know if you knows how, but it's kind of challenging to get into, and I went with a friend. But we were going to get bar seats, you know, and you had to line up outside. So for the hour, before they open, you're talking all these people in line, and then they open the doors and ever just goes and sits at the bar. And you know, I was there with the eight people who I met in line. And we're just we wanted to all try as much as we could. And everyone was just buying something, and then just kind of like passing the plate down the line. And now I'm friends with so many of these people who I met solely because we just sat next to each other at the bar in a restaurant and shared food. So I think that's fantastic. And to be able to bring people around food. Is there anything better as a chef?

Kyle Shankman: 33:49

I don't think there is.

Chris Spear: 33:51

So what inspires you? I mean, you have the luxury of creating kind of whatever you want for food and putting together these five menus, where are you drawing inspiration?

Kyle Shankman: 34:02

In short, the ingredients, it is almost a hindrance to have no limitations on what I can put on the menu, right? Because it's like, I have access to I could do whatever. And then you go like how do I because we change the menu every time. That's self imposed to a degree. But we so we have so many regulars that sort of continue having like that ratio of like 6040 new new guests or regulars, we've got to change the menu every month, right? Because just one seven course menu so I wouldn't want to repeat it. So to sort of give myself some limitations, I look at what is in season. What's local. And I don't really start like finalizing the menu until like a week before. Like I'll have kind of a rough guess at it. But I want to look at what looks best and just sort of play with play with that. What's funny is that my Food style has changed, has changed a lot since we first started this, because it kind of started with what I found fun and exciting six years ago, to what I find fun and more fun and exciting now that I've got, you know, going bald and have a have a bunch of gray hair. I've like matured along the way and started realizing that I get a better response. And I have more fun if I cook the types of things that I'm craving, right, like what is delicious to me, first and foremost. And then we try and make that, you know, make it pretty. But, you know, I fell into a lot of the sort of the pitfalls that a lot of young chefs do in the early days is imagining what I wanted it to look like first, and then trying to figure out how to make that taste good. And that's kind of a fool's errand I think. So. So now we take inspiration from the ingredients, and what it is that I want to eat, what tastes good, to me, what creates nostalgic feelings for me. And then I hope that it connects with as many people at the table as possible.

Chris Spear: 36:10

Now, where are you are now? Is that where you grew up? Like Are these all foods that you associate with your youth and growing up? Are you from the Georgia area,

Kyle Shankman: 36:19

I'm from the Georgia area. My My parents are from California, moved here, very, very young. So I've only known Georgia really. That being said, My parents didn't cook, when I was growing up, like I wasn't around food as a kid. Like they were, you know, they were still our professional physical therapists were running clinics. And we were like latchkey kids, me and my brothers, you know, eaten stuff out of boxes, or cans or jars, or, you know, frozen food and like I got into the industry, because I wanted independence. And I wanted money as a kid. And the first, you know, the industry that will more more likely hire a 15 year old is going to be you know, hospitality in some way, shape, or form. And so I got very comfortable in the industry working as a line cook and as a server and delis, smoothie bars and things like that. And then instantly inadvertently became very comfortable in this world when you know, so it was an easier transition when decided to switch careers and go into food. But that being said, like when I was working in restaurants and things like that, they were all local in Georgia, and I was I was interacting with mostly local ingredients and styles of food. When I was working as a resident chef for that cookware company, we had to like as the resident chef, like I had, I had employees, chef instructors who were specialists, but because the content was all coming to us from corporate, if somebody wasn't available or comfortable with a certain topic, it's on me. And so in the early days, it was a lot of like, fake it till you make it like, you know, Kyle Shankman trying to teach an authentic Korean class. And eventually, I became very sort of passionate about cuisines that I'd never interacted with as a restaurant chef, like Thai and Korean and like authentic Spain, and in Mexico. So that still influences a lot of like the style of my of my cooking, I don't consider myself like a Southern chef, that didn't grow up, like the southern food at the table, so to speak, I'm just passionate about the food coming from nearby, right. And then from like a practical, you know, business owner standpoint, it always cost more to use ingredients that came from far away, right? Like, you had to buy a plane ticket to get to you. So it's going to cost it's going to cost more. Whereas if you're dealing with ingredients that come from your state or a state that touches your state, yeah, there might be some increases when you're when you're dealing with protein you're dealing with, like independent farmers. But I still think that it's a net, it's a net gain when you can when you have that story to tell to your to your guests, and you kind of have money in that in that local economy.

Chris Spear: 39:17

Most definitely, you know, one of my challenges is getting people to take the journey with me. You know, it's, it's very different when you're trying to sell tickets to a dinner as opposed to being a personal chef, and I have clients who specifically reach out you know, I'm going through that, literally this morning, someone sent an email that they're coming to town and they want like a surf and turf dinner and they really want like grilled steak and lobster tail and like, that's just not my jam. It's not my vibe and like, I haven't drafted that email yet how I'm going to kind of say like, Yeah, I hear what you like, but I really don't do that kind of food. Can I send you a menu of what I do and I might have to be comfortable with them saying like, we're gonna go another day. reaction and bok loosing that but for me, you know, making food that I'm excited about is really important. And I know not all personal chefs share that view, some say, you should just you know, it's a business, you need to cook what the customer wants. And that's, you know, I don't want to make anyone eat anything they don't want, but I also want to be fulfilled.

Kyle Shankman: 40:19

Yeah, that's the, that's the balance. Right. And I don't I don't know, I don't know, there's a perfect way to have that conversation with with a customer. But I do think that people respond in this industry to, to confidence, like a competent point of view as to what you do. And you just like, just say, this is what we, this is what we do, take it or leave it, it's a lot harder to have that conversation when you're building the business, right. And you're like, you need, you need revenue.

Chris Spear: 40:51

That's why I advocate for doing it on the side if you can, when you don't need it, you know, I did it for five years while I worked a full time job. So I could build a brand like brand was really important to me. And say like, this is what I do this is for people who like this, where I didn't have to take every gig, if I worked once a month, once every two months, no big deal. I was working 50 hour a week cooking job.

Kyle Shankman: 41:14

When I talk to cooks, or people who reach out and ask about, you know, speakeasy, or having a supper club or even private chef business and how to make that sustainable. I'm always very open about the fact that I didn't I didn't run the supper club for three years at the sub four years of the supper club. I didn't need it. Right, like now I know I do. Because I kind of like I burnt my boat, my shift, like there's no, you know, there's nothing really to fall back on. There's no like nine to five salary job anymore. Is that, you know, so you're doing things on the side, these types of things where you can like, you can set the parameters and say, this is the type of foods that I'm going to do, take it or leave it, and you're doing it for fun. Like, if you're having a great time, your food is inherently better, I think, than if you're cooking, what somebody else wants you to cook. And then from there, you start to find people who then become, you know, future private event customers, what I was going to say is that 100% of my private chef jobs were coming from a separate club, meaning they were people who were either following the Instagram page, or, or actually, like, attended a dinner, or were told about it by somebody who attended a dinner, so they're only reaching out to me because they know the type of food that I do. So I I don't put myself out there in any other way. So I don't get the calls anymore. I did in the early days. I don't get the calls anymore for like fillet lobster tail twice baked potato, chocolate lava cake, you know, but I did. Yeah, I did. And I didn't like doing them. But I could. But I also had to, like, you know, learn some coping mechanisms when I was cooking other people's food for a lot of years to just go, there's something in this menu or this process that that you can take pride in or find joy from, even if that means like adding a surprise course that they weren't expecting. And going like, here's just me, you know, on a plate, hope you like it. So that you can at least take some joy from doing from doing that. Move. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a blast. And it's almost always you have to like, almost forced people to step outside of their comfort zone with certain things. Because all these like, I'll have the conversation about filet all the time, I'll say like, I will beg them to let me lower the price and give them a better cut. Say it will cost you$10 less a person, if you let me, you know if you let me do you know culottes or that? Or? Or flat iron? Right? And they're like, No, I think we'd rather do fillet you know. And so when when I'm presenting private chef, options to people we don't I don't have a menu for people to choose from him for my private chef business. It's all it's all custom no matter what. But I will give them sort of this option of I can do something I'm going to do something custom for you. Either way. You can consult on it if you're concerned or you have somebody at the table because a little bit pickier, but most people just choose to sort of give me their requirements or request and just let me you know, let me kind of take them on a surprise journey and do sort of the chef's you know, secret menu with them. It's what we do at the supper club and, and people are fighting to get seats. And when it's presented that way. You know, probably 70% of the private chef customers now. Say I don't even want to know the menu just surprise us just a heads up, my wife hates capers, you know what I mean? And then we, and then we build something from that. But even the 30% who want to see it, they see that custom menu of meat, basically showing them what I do at the supper club. And most of the time, if they have an issue, it's was like one component of one dish. It's an easy switch, at the very least, like I'm still having a blast doing, you know, a private chef party, which was not the case, in the early days,

Chris Spear: 45:28

I have 100% of my customers wanting to see the menu. I've done zero surprise dinners and the legend. Maybe we'll get there soon. But I am, I am looking at changing some of the business model a little bit, which I'm going to be rolling out I'm not quite doing a rebrand or relaunch. But in the next month or two, yeah, I'm going to be making some of these changes to go more in that direction. What are we not talking about in the food and beverage industry, especially for food entrepreneurs, because this seems cool and sexy and whatever. But for those who are maybe like on the fence ready to do something, what do they need to know that you don't think maybe gets talked about enough

Kyle Shankman: 46:08

that I say this as somebody who, who went to culinary school, that, that I think the traditional route has become sort of phased out and irrelevant. If you want to be successful, I do think that sort of like the gig economy, where you're, you know, either doing either doing pop ups, or, you know, or collaborations or separate clubs, things like that, you tend to learn a lot more a lot faster. And it's practical knowledge than going to culinary school and then working your way up through a kitchen. I think so many cooks. And chefs, executive chefs never fully reached their potential, not just professionally, but even like creatively, because they were just sort of hamstrung by, you know, the systems that they feel are that they feel are in place. So, I don't I don't know. I mean, I think in other markets, people talk about it more like, we are kind of the only ones doing this in like kind of the North metro Atlanta area. But, you know, people who are getting into the industry are so often just, again, going to culinary school, and then going and getting the first job they can, they can find and then of working their way up to kitchen. So I think finding ways to express your creativity without any, any of the limitations of sort of a permanent, for wall brick and mortar space, will teach you a lot more about what your past could and should be in this industry. And there are a lot of other ways beyond working in a restaurant. That I mean, I'll do a commercial for your podcast, please. I love that, that you can find joy in this industry. Like I'm, I'm more financially stable and successful than I than I've ever been. And I work hard, maybe three or four days a week. And, you know, I'm home when I need to be home, I leave for Key West for a week tomorrow. And like I'm not I'm not stressed about it. And that all came from me just sort of disconnecting from from professional kitchens. So I don't know if that I don't know if that answers.

Chris Spear: 48:44

Yeah, don't go to culinary school and, you know, follow your passion, figure it out. You know, there's so many,

Kyle Shankman: 48:52

I think just sort of stopping and rethinking like what like, ignoring the rules, like one of the things that that I that I learned the most from the early days with the supper club, watching Trevor my kid do it is that he was he was breaking every rule because he didn't know the rules existed. And he was, you know, I would say, well, it's not done that way. He felt why. And I say, Gosh, I'm really not sure because that's just kind of the way that I was taught

Chris Spear: 49:21

which is funny because you would hate that if you were in a professional kitchen and tell it like when a younger cuts to you right or whatever.

Kyle Shankman: 49:28

But that's that's that's the toxicity of professional kitchen. It's like we're doing it this way because I said so. And it's so frowned upon to kind of listen to you know, a line cook, show you that there is a faster and more effective way to get from point A to point B on something that you know that you've always prided yourself on, you know taking three days to accomplish.

Chris Spear: 49:53

I can't imagine being at a kitchen these days with line cooks showing their chefs things they saw on tick tock and the conversation that ensues from that

Kyle Shankman: 50:01

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's a hit to the pride if I see something on tick tock and learn something, you know, I'm like, I really shouldn't have learn that from a from a 17 year old just now, but I guess I did.

Chris Spear: 50:13

Kids are great in that respect, you know, I've twins who are 10. And they've actually said, they want to help with my business. And you know, that's great. And I'm looking at, like, what does that look like? Like, at what age can my kids actually go to someone's house and help me serve, you know, like, there's a maturity level, I think my daughter would be okay, my son, not so much. But we've really write that. And, you know, I don't want to force them into any industry or business, but they're verbally expressing interest in helping with the business in some regard. So I don't think we're too far away from that. And I'm going to share the fact that, you know, your 15 year old son started his own separate clubs. So I guess at 10, maybe that's not there'll be 11 the summer, that's not so much of a stretch to get them going.

Kyle Shankman: 50:52

But it's a good thing that they look at your life and want to emulate it. And it's like, in a traditional sense, when people watch their parents be chefs, they go, I would never want to do that. Because I never see him. Like, he's, you know, he, he comes home after I go to bed, and he wakes up after I go to school, you know, like that. This isn't the type of industry unless it's like, you know, a family restaurant where things get, you know, where the kids end up, you know, taking on the family business. And so if you're showing them balance, and joy and flexibility, that I think it's cool that, you know, they see that and want to get into the industry,

Chris Spear: 51:32

the kids brought that to me, you know, I, I haven't worked in restaurants. But I did work in corporate kitchens, and I was working crazy schedules and lots of hours. And I gave up a lot, a lot of time with my wife a lot of time with other family, parents and stuff. And then when I have kids, I just decided like, they're going to come first like family is going to come first. And I'm not going to be you know, 100% married to this job all the time. So when I started my business, it was really important to me to find the balance where we would be able to have family life, I want to know my kids, I want to enjoy time with my wife and finding a business that suited me that in that way was amazing.

Kyle Shankman: 52:09

I think every every chef who's like, you know, who has a family, and kids who's being honest with themselves, they know that they're, they love their families more than they love food or cooking. But going through the traditional route of working in kitchens, takes some sort of level of like cognitive dissonance to like reckon with the fact that it doesn't usually match up. Right? Like, if you love your family and your kids more than food. Why are you there 100 hours a week, and letting it you know, sort of inform how you how you interact with your family and not the other way around. And I hated

Chris Spear: 52:48

that as a boss too. Because when you're a boss who staffing a kitchen, you're the guy who these people are coming in saying, hey, I really need Saturday night off because I have a family birthday and you're like, sorry, you can't have it. It's like, wow, I'm turning into a person. I don't really want to be like, I would want that day off myself. But now I have to be here and be that guy who's telling all these people they need to be more committed to their job than their families. And that just didn't suit me anymore. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. I loved having you today. And I'm so glad that you could come and share your expertise with us. It was my pleasure. And to all of our listeners. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Thanks so much and have a great week. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and Chef database. The community's free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.