The Exchanges

Q Was the payoff good? I mean, I mean, it's, you're getting into a few small local groceries and But a lot of work, you got to make all that tzatziki, and you got to make all that feta, and you got to make all that hummus, and then package it, and was it worthwhile? Was it a good revenue stream?

A It was not a good revenue stream. It was losing money. It was giving us heartache. I remember even the first delivery I took, uh, the grocery store refused it. I delivered it in the backseat of my car, and they said, well, You know, has this been refrigerated? Uh, you know, since you delivered it, I go, no, we pretty much made it through it in my car and brought it over. So I had to throw that all away. Obviously we're making this stuff without preservatives. And as we made it a few days later, these packages were kind of blowing up, uh, because we didn't have any preservatives in it. Uh, so we didn't really understand the business at all, and it really, really struggled.

AI assessment note: “It was not a good revenue stream. It was losing money.”

Q And I have to assume Greek culture was probably pretty sort of central at home. Like, you were probably eating Greek food, bringing Greek food to school for lunch, like, right?

A That is literally all I ate. I mean, I, I was truly amazed, and I am more amazed today because I know how difficult it is to have a family and have work. Then my mom would go to work and still have time to prepare these elaborate, amazing meals, you know, whether it was like a whole leg of lamb or, you Stuffed tomatoes or spanakopita that she would make from scratch. I mean, I tried to make one the other day, and it took me like five hours. I'm like, I don't have time for this, and it was really amazing the experiences that we had around the dinner table, and in my mind, it seems like it was yesterday where I opened my lunch at school, and the smell that came out of the tinfoil container was of spanakopita, which is, you know, spinach and feta cheese sitting in Sitting in my lunchbox for a few hours before I opened it, kind of smelled up the whole cafeteria, and people were like, what is that? What are you eating? And I was always embarrassed to explain what that was, right? I was a young kid, and I was trying to explain what spanakopita was, and it was really, really hard, uh, kind of growing up being so different. Um, now I obviously really appreciate it and love it, and, uh, any chance I get to eat my mom's food is a, is a treat.

AI assessment note: “That is literally all I ate.”

Q So, all right, so you guys were all working, I mean, you and Ike were working at a lot, so, and Dimitri, he was working at another restaurant, I think it was a, an Israeli restaurant, right?

A Yeah, it was called, actually, uh, Tel Aviv Cafe. It was literally right around the corner from, from where we were at, and You know, I remember we would kind of grab coffee and talk about doing our own restaurant one day and talk about doing a real version of a Greek restaurant that really represented what, what Greek cuisine was. And we grew up visiting Greece. We grew up visiting our villages. We grew up really seeing, uh, what Greek food was about, whether it was our, our parents cooking it or those experiences in Greece and in our villages. And You know, Greek cuisine was never technique driven like the French or the Italians or Japanese, right? It was always about the quality of ingredients. So even when my mom cooked here, she didn't need Greek tomatoes or Greek rosemary. She just needed the best version of those from here to make amazing Greek food. So that's really what we wanted to kind of bring here to open a restaurant.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it was called, actually, uh, Tel Aviv Cafe.”

Q What are you doing? Why did I move from Greece for this?

A Yeah, and they, and, And you know, they saw the center and they were like, are you going to even have any business here? Um, yeah, they weren't happy about that, but they did help. Um, Ike's dad, Ike's uncle, my dad, Dimitri's dad, they all really helped us bring it together. But I'm telling you, we built this thing for right around like 10 grand. We, everything was from Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Target. We, we would go into these, to Target or Walmart. We would open up the credit card so we could get that extra 10% discount, you know, when they offer that at the, at the point of sale, and, and we did everything ourselves. It was, it was, there were crazy stories that happened along the way. I mean, we did our own electricity.

AI assessment note: “they saw the center and they were like, are you going to even have any business”

Q And basically taking out some of those things that were not, quote unquote, Mediterranean or Greek?

A Yeah, I mean, that's where we started. You know, we have this document called Concept Essence that talks about our food, our people, our design, our, you know, everything that we do, we, we look through the document. So something like pimento cheese, right? Tasted good, was delicious, but didn't really fit Mediterranean essence, didn't really fit our concept essence, so it was gone. Uh, chicken salad, things like that, right? And what we found out, which is a pretty funny story, on the day that we opened, reopened that restaurant after we had reworked the whole menu, and I was talking to customers, and it was really funny. These Zoe's customers had been coming, a lot of them for just one item. Some people were coming just for like a tub of pimento cheese or a tub of chicken salad, and I had a few customers just go nuts on me, you know, and say, what are you doing here? Nobody asked you to come here. Nobody asked you to change these recipes. Why are you changing the hummus to kava hummus? Why are you changing tzatziki to kava tzatziki? We were obviously doing it because we could run them out of our commissary to make it easier for our team members. So it was really hard to explain, you know, why we were changing these things and what we were doing them for because people just didn't want to hear it. And I think, you know, a lot of this work that we were doing, it was ultimately …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, that's where we started... something like pimento cheese... so it was gone.”

Q Um, I guess you had some money from waiting tables, but I can't imagine you had enough money to open a restaurant. Clearly you all came to this idea of let's start something together, but how did you make that happen?

A So, you know, we, we didn't have any money. You're right about that. We just had the will to, to want to do something different. And I remember, you know, Dimitri got a call from one of his distributors who said there, there's this, uh, Russian bakery going out of business. And this is probably 40, 45 minutes outside of Washington, DC, uh, in Rockville, Maryland. And we went up and we looked at the spot and I mean, this shopping center was just barren. There was no cars in it. Uh, we went into this kind of Russian bakery. It looked like a, um, it looked like a Subway, if I could best describe it, you know, and so we offered to buy the business, and I remember it was, I don't know, I think it was like 10, 15,000 dollars, and the agreement would, would be that we would pay that over time.

AI assessment note: “we offered to buy the business... we would pay that over time.”

Q So you guys are working your day jobs as waiters or night jobs, and then, or maybe in the daytime, you're working on the build-out. How long did it, between the time that you got the lease and In the time that you eventually opened, how long did it take?

A I think it took, I think we were working on it in, in the summer of oh six, uh, and we eventually got to opening day was in November of oh six, a few days before Thanksgiving. Uh, and I remember right around October, we went for final inspection and the fire, the fire inspector came in and he looked at us and he said, He was there to, to test the Ansel system. Ansel system in the restaurant is basically what puts out fires on your grill or fryer if you have one. And he said, where's your grease hood? And we said, what do you mean? It's just a, there's the hood right there. And he said, well, this is a baker's hood. Call me when you have a grease hood. And we went out and we, we got a quote for this and it was going to cost over 20 grand. It was like 23 grand to remove that hood and put a new one in. And I just remember we were sitting in that restaurant It was all built out. The candles were lit. We had the tables. The tables and chairs were all set. I mean, there was, we were just ready to go, and we thought we were done right then and there, because, I don't know, we just didn't know how we were gonna find that money to put that hood in.

AI assessment note: “summer of oh six, uh, and we eventually got to opening day was in November”

Q Wow. I can only imagine how, how just dispiriting that was, because you need that approval to open up. You can't open it up until you get that final inspection. So, what did you do?

A So that was one moment where it felt insurmountable because where was this money going to come from? Our credit was already down the tubes, by the way, because we were not paying those credit cards we maxed out. Uh, so nobody was, was really, uh, going to give us another credit card. And I remember talking to my uncle who had recommended we talk to a banker he knew. And so we met with this banker and he met us. He came into that restaurant and And sat down. By the way, the restaurant at the time had no sign on the outside, so you, it was hard enough for him to find it, let alone our, what our customers were going to experience down the road. So he comes in and he's like, where's your sign? And we start to tell him our story about the money and how we've run out and the hood, but he kind of looks around and he sees the space and he's like, well, how did you get it to this point? And I, you know, I told him the story that I've been telling you about all the work we had done ourselves. And he looked at us and he said, you know what? I believe in you guys. There's something here. I love this story. I love everything you've done in here. I'm going to lend you the money.

AI assessment note: “I remember talking to my uncle who had recommended we talk to a banker”

Q that, that you're more likely to fail than succeed in the first three years. I mean, once you factor in, you know, the cost of labor, the cost of, of rent, the cost of food, There's very little margin left. I mean, it was just the three of you, so you didn't have, presumably you didn't have to pay employees, but were you bringing money in? Were you losing money?

A I think in the restaurant industry, and maybe it's, it's just, I don't know, maybe it's in our blood, but every single day you feel like the restaurant could fail. It's, uh, it's kind of a crazy feeling. Even, even that first day of opening, uh, We had one customer come in. I remember he came in, he sat down. I was the waiter and I, and I went up to him and I said, this is what we're doing here. We're doing this Greek concept, small plate shared. Uh, and he said, well, I want big plates. I want a dinner. I came to have a meal and you know, I try to be as charming as I could. I love talking to people and I love making people happy. And I went into the kitchen and I think it was Ike that pointed out that we had only purchased small plates. So there were not even any big plates in the restaurant.

AI assessment note: “Even, even that first day of opening, uh, We had one customer come in.”