Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Chan.
Emily, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My wife and I were both raised in the restaurant industry. My mom and dad both owned restaurants throughout their lives, as did Jen’s parents. When Jen and I met, our passion for cooking and hosting dinner parties to experiment on new dishes to share with friends and family was immediately apparent and something that drew us closer together. We eventually had a son, Mik. That process (of trying to get pregnant) ended up being more difficult than we first imagined and there were a lot of tears and it took a lot of time but eventually, we held our son for the first time at Emory Hospital. I never went back to work at my corporate job for Mellow Mushroom. I was fortunate enough to spend the first year of Mik’s life home with him while Jen stayed on with Ford Fry Restaurant Group as their Beverage Manger.
At home all day with Mik, I began to brainstorm of ways to “own” my passion for cooking and sharing favorite meals with others. I didn’t want to work for another company anymore and I knew I couldn’t stay home forever (for my sanity and financially). I rented a shared commercial space called Prep Atlanta and built a website and had some stickers printed. I maxed out all the credit cards on Red Insulated Bags, Nordic Ice Packs, packaging tape, boxes, and dove into the logistics of shipping and delivering. I created a logo (thank you Fine Arts Degree) and launched in January of 2019 with a single “Supper of the Week” that people could either order a la carte or as a subscription. A month passed and I had a few clients email to say they would order a second supper if I offered it. Jen was traveling all the time with her job and really taking off with it so Mik would go on deliveries with me, which meant I had to get him out of the car seat and walk up the stairs to each house and then strap him back in.
The Shared Prep kitchen was out on 285 and everything had to be packed, unloaded, set up, cooled down, packed back up, and reloaded each and every time; it was absolutely exhausting and the amount of labor that went into making a single supper for 30 people was insane. I was desperate to hire someone but didn’t have any financial ability to do so. Two Suppers each week then turned into three and I hired my first employee in May or June. We started adding Market items like lasagnas and casseroles and then I got introduced to Garnish and Gather and we started offering select items through their website as well. But I missed the hospitality side of it all, the smiles and the rush and the service. The shipping aspect wasn’t taking off the way I wanted; I had pallets of boxes and insulation just lying in storage. I knew I had to pivot, so we started looking for spaces.
The moment I saw the space in Cabbagetown open up, I jumped on it. Jen and I both had watched multiple concepts go in and out of that space and always talked about how perfect it would be for us. Side note about the name because I always get asked why it is called, JenChan’s (people always call me Jen by mistake). I named it after my wife because she is (as cheesy as it sounds) the inspiration behind it all. When we met and started waxing poetic about food and service… well, the rest was easy. Also, EmilyChan’s just doesn’t sound as good. I usually tell people that I named it after my wife just in case it sucks, then I can just blame it on her; that is said with a hard laugh as a joke, of course. Now here we are, less than a year after finally opening our brick and mortar and our dining room is empty due to this pandemic. It is heartbreaking, that is the word that has been on infinite repeat in my head.
Has it been a smooth road?
Definitely not. The original model for the business was based around shipping as well as delivery. I can’t count how many hundreds of hours I spent learning the ins and outs of shipping logistics, on conference calls with UPS trying to figure out the best way to package cold food to stay cold. It turns out that side of the business never took off. We would ship maybe six packages a week, definitely not enough to sustain us. Luckily the local deliveries really took off, but I had made the mistake of investing so much on the shipping side that I was way behind financially. I had made a huge mistake.
Trying to care for a one-year-old while launching a business was also incredibly challenging. Finding family to watch him because Jen was traveling for work all the time was hard but thankfully, we have an amazing network of family and friends who support us. We wouldn’t be where we are without them. We opened in September to good volume but not what I hoped. It was a really hard winter and I spent a lot of time angry and tearful trying to figure out why we weren’t doing the volume we needed to do, to not just make money, but just to stay open long enough to make money. I had been doing this my whole life. My previous job was literally training other restaurants on how to open and manage the minutiae of their business and now mine appeared to be failing before it even got a real chance.
I went a stretch of over 100 days without a day off and I don’t mean “day off” like you are still answering emails. I mean working from 6 or 7 am until 10 or 11 pm at night at the restaurant on the line. We are closed on Mondays but that is actually our busiest day because of the Delivery Supper Club prep. I just lived on the line, an exhausted machine – never saw my family, never slept, never ate, and I was miserable. But then the end of February came around and we started getting really, really busy. So we hired people. We started getting some great reviews. The neighborhood started showing up like never before. March came around and I was smiling every moment (still without a day off but I now had something to show for it). I remember looking at my front of house manager and exclaiming, “We’re not just gonna make it, we’re gonna nail it!!!”
A week later, we closed our doors to the public.
We closed our doors on March 15 a few days before the Mayor closed them for us. Now the obstacle is rising food and material costs; boxes and plastic and take out silverware, gloves for the foh staff and masks and extra labor to sanitize and then sanitize again and again.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the JenChan’s story. Tell us more about the business.
Our little tag line is “Eat Supper Together.” It’s printed on our t-shirts and stamped on our dining room tables. It’s what Jen and I envisioned when brainstorming this idea. Staying at home with Mik meant I would have dinner all ready on the table for Jen when she got home from work, right? Wrong. I was so tired and Mik was a crazy little fat ball of energy and being able to stand in the kitchen, chop up vegetables, and cook dinner while he just patiently watched was a laughable undertaking. We wanted to give families or busy folks a prepared dinner that wasn’t a meal kit (I tried various meal kits and, for me, found that it was still a lot of labor after an exhausting day). We wanted to deliver carefully curated dinner to people’s doors. We knew it had to be something we would feed our son, so it had to be grass-fed beef and pastured pork, local and as organic as possible.
I actually took a trip one weekend when Jen was home to take care of Mik and traveled to a farm near Savannah I had heard about called Hunter Cattle Co. I met the whole family, toured the farm and even learned later that my brother in law handled their farm insurance… small world. I fell in love with the property, their family values, and the way they cared for the land and animals. No, we exclusively use them for our beef and pork.
We also had a dear friend who started dating (now engaged to) someone with Celiac disease. Our dinner parties suddenly became more challenging, but Jen and I realized that we enjoyed the challenge. After hearing about, and seeing for ourselves, the lack of options (especially in Asian food) for people who have Gluten issues and other allergens or restrictions, we decided to incorporate that into our business model. Each supper we offer has a Gluten Free Option. We also offer a Vegan Supper each week and every Supper has a Vegetarian option. Our clients know they can just email us or when they place the order let us know if they have a seafood allergy or a Soy Allergy and we will take it seriously. We want everyone to be able to sit at the table.
We also go out of our way to offer an international variety of dishes. One week we may have Pho, Italian Meatballs with Pomodoro, and Chicken Verde Enchiladas. I tell my kitchen staff that there are no rules; it just has to be yummy. We should be inspired by everything we eat. And when we are inspired, we can’t help but want to share.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I could have given some long and rambling answer just a couple of months ago but these days, I’ve got nothing. I am scared. I am optimistic. I am trying to be as open to positive change as is humanly possible. I just want to be able to make food and share it with people.
Contact Info:
- Address: JenChan’s
186 Carroll Street SE
Atlanta GA, 30312 - Website: https://www.jenchans.com
- Phone: 404 549 9843
- Email: emily@jenchans.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenchansdeliverysupperclub
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenchans
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