Posted by Steve Cook, Co-founder, CookNSolo Restaurants
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Steve Cook, co-founder of CookNSolo Restaurants, a Philadelphia-based group of food enterprises.
What happens when you stick two guys with a passion for food and restaurants in a room with a laptop? For me and my co-founder, Mike Solomonov, that scenario led to the creation of CookNSolo Restaurants, which has more than 10 restaurants in Philadelphia, from Percy Street Barbeque, inspired by authentic Texas-style barbeque, to Zahav, a high-end Israeli restaurant. People (mostly my wife) often ask how we keep up with the pace of opening and managing so many restaurants. Our answer, and secret sauce, is Google Apps.
Our most popular restaurant is Federal Donuts, a spot dedicated entirely to donuts, fried chicken and coffee. We launched it as a creative side project, but after months of consistently selling out before noon, we realized that fried chicken and uniquely flavored donuts like Salted Tehina, Marshmallow Marshmallow and Chocolate Sea Salt, really hit the spot for Philadelphians. We opened four more locations. As we grew, and as we fried more chicken along the way, we came up with another creative idea: use the 1,000 pounds of chicken bone leftovers we produced each week to make delicious soup, and donate the proceeds to a local non-profit dedicated to helping Philadelphians suffering from hunger, homelessness and poverty.
That’s how Rooster Soup Co. was born — and the idea took shape in a
Google Doc. Mike and I jotted down the concept in a shared document, adding our thoughts and ideas as they came to us, and commenting on one another’s additions as we went. Whether we looked at the doc from our laptops in the same room or pulled it up separately from home, we always knew we were working with the most up-to-date document. As our idea became a more formal proposal, and our proposal needed a timeline, budget and input from our partner, the Broad Street Ministry, we extended the collaboration to six more CookNSolo team members. We added them as editors, so we could all work together in the same document, regardless of where we were and when we could get the work done. That collaboration led us to launch a
Kickstarter campaign to fund the new restaurant, where we’d make and sell the soup, then donate 100% of net profits to the Broad Street Ministry. Our Kickstarter closed in July, and we beat our funding goal of $150,000 to start the nonprofit.
As we continue to grow our business, we need to rely on technology more and more everyday to help us keep up the pace. We use
Google Apps, which is helpful for staying on top of our customer service — not an easy feat when you grow from 2 guys to over 150 employees. For many customers, trying to contact a restaurant can feel like shouting into a black hole, so we pride ourselves by replying quickly by email. With Google Groups, any customer support or reservation inquiries go to a team of people, so if one person is on vacation, another can pick up in their absence and send a response within 24 hours. We’re also dependent on Calendar: we create invitations to track private events at each of our restaurants, inquiries about large catering order and delivery deadlines.
Along the way, Google Apps has been instrumental in helping us manage our business growth, stay creative and stay true to our mission. Who knows what's next for us, but I can guarantee that we’ve helped create our recipe for success with Google Apps.
