Post caption
Running a Restaurant. Episode Six, “Roy Choi” - produced by @goodobject.co
—
Chef Roy is a Softie. Our chat revolved around restaurants, yes, but the true message is for all - rock bottom is a fertile ground for building, staying true to your principles requires consistency and discipline, and the emotional impact we make and the community we build are ultimately what matter most.
It was a true honor and a conversation we will think back on for a long time; Softies is built on the back of @kogibbq ‘s example. And yes hyung… we will get that soft serve machine.
Transcript
You're so sick of hearing from us. So today, Rhonda OG. I'm sorry, Dan. Chef Roy Choi, founder of Kobi Truck, godfather of the entire pop up movement, and our actual hero. And he was gracious enough to visit Softies to drop straight wisdom for an hour. I'm doing what calling Korean Cheonso Tier. Stop making these fucking videos. Why is there not a soft serve machine in here? It's 10 beds and it breaks I don't deal with it. It was the best time. We'll release the entire clip soon, but here's a snippet with Roy. Kogi for you started at what you call rock bottom. Kogi happened when I was out of a job. Yeah. This is the second time that happened to me. Seventeen years later, can you reflect on like the beauty of an oh crap moment being the starting point? That rock bottom is actually the most fertile ground. I had literally about a $100 in my bank account. And then at that moment, POGI happened. But because I had nothing else to rely on, I was fully invested and fully in the moment, and it needed me to be fully in the moment. If I still had one foot out, I don't know if I could good given Kogi my all. Yeah. If any of you are in that position where you lose everything, maybe you open yourself up to understanding that I'm supposed to be in this place. Or maybe because I am in this place, let me open up my other sensors. And if you can do that, you'll see things outside of yourself. Yeah. Kogi was a phenomenon and you said that it's really hard to merit that success because it took away from the purity of the truck. How did you kind of transition from that pop off to Yeah. Making it more stable for you, for your team, but also having a vision? That's a really great question because in this worse, everything is about scale. Everything is about growing and growth. This food business, there's really not much else. No matter how successful you are, you're only gonna be a week away from being bankrupt anyways. What you have to understand is what are you really doing this for? So then it goes down to you have to be in the moment. What is it that you care about? On the outside of that, everyone's saying, oh, Kogi's this phenomenon. You should have a 100 stores. So then, to me, that growth was the second truck. But that was all about better make sure that we don't give up on the things that make people stand in line to begin with. That's ingredients, quality, integrity, employing the right people, and building a culture and sticking by that culture. Not like cutting corners just to grow. Chef Roy Choi, outside of Chef Arthur, what do you want to best remembered as? I think I still got a few more years left in me. Of course. I think if it was to end right now, I just wanna be remembered as someone that I always put on for the city and for the people. Yeah. That always kept my feet on the ground, like we stay in the hood, like 10 toes down. That always looked out for everyone coming up around me. I think the fact that you're here with us today is proof of that. It means the world to us, seriously. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Rank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, y'all.
