Meet Obasi Kitambi of Johnnie and Clyde’s and Say Cheese Sweetcakes & Catering

Today we’d like to introduce you to Obasi Kitambi.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Obasi. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I remember the first time I ever took a job at a fast-food restaurant. It was my Junior year of college and I needed money. I was hired at a Checker’s on campus. When I arrived, I remember being introduced to the manager who issued me a uniform and directed me to the line to learn to cook burgers. This was an extremely cramped kitchen, overstocked with far too much equipment for the small space. Immediately, I knew that this was not the life I wanted for myself. I never wanted to work fast food in the first place because I believed that I was doing well enough on my own hustling haircuts and installing audio systems in students’ vehicles. About 30 minutes in, I hung up my apron, handed the manager my little hat, and walked out of the door never to return.

At the time, being a line cook at a chain fast food restaurant making minimum wage did not sit well in my Spirit. This was not what I wanted and I knew it intimately. But God has a way of aligning humans with His calling on our lives. After years of success and respect in academia, some life experiences forced me to reconsider my career journey. I reached ABD and only needed to complete the dissertation and pay tuition. The dissertation, interestingly enough, became the easy part. Tuition became the struggle.

For nearly a decade, I stumbled through life working to redefine my Self and my career choices. I experimented with everything from construction and multi-level marketing, to security and a half-hearted attempt to own and operate a natural skincare line. Yet, even then, food was an important part of my life.

My mother suffers from chronic pain and other health issues associated with aging. Her doctors had her on ten different medications, some of which made some of the others less effective. She was constantly in the hospital and living in extreme discomfort. Understanding the power of what we put in our bodies, I believed that a dietary shift would help. I researched thoroughly and found The Mediterranean Diet. From what I learned, I created a new dietary lifestyle for my Mother, complete with meals, exercise, and some form of mental stimulation. Mom would lose over 50 pounds and her new doctors immediately took her off of most of the medications that she had been taking daily for years. She had become more active and harder to keep up with. However, working in the food, beverage, and hospitality industry just did not seem like the right fit for me.

Finally, out of complete desperation, I took a job in a small restaurant. I realized that there are three motivating factors that move people: Motivation, Inspiration, or Desperation. This was certainly the latter. The connection was made by a close friend. Older, more mature, and filled with all levels of responsibilities, I went into this experience with an open mind. Besides, I told myself this was more lower-level fine dining than fast food and I hoped this experience would be vastly different from college.

It was different and I learned a ton of information quickly and was offered a management role within the first month. However, instead of management, I opted to be moved to a larger location in the leveled family of restaurants. I worked under a gifted chef who was hard, but fair, who taught me much more than I could have imagined.

In the meantime, I was being hired and trained by a young up and coming celebrity chef who had a thriving catering company. With her, I worked film sets, private homes, and corporate events. I fell in love with the catering part of the food business and started volunteering to help the catering team at the restaurant. She would also hire me for my first official corporate catering contract independent of her company. This contract was with Delta Airlines. She believed in my abilities and knew that I was serious about the work. She supported me. So, I began constructing what would eventually become Say Cheese Sweetcakes & Catering and now, Johnnie & Clyde’s.

By the end of the year, the new restaurant began making shifts in its staff. Even though the executive chef fought for me to stay, I was out. Yet, with the help of a friend who had spoken to a small eatery in EAV on my behalf, I found a new gig. I took that job and all was well in the beginning until the kitchen manager who hired me starting taking shifts from me and forcing those new shifts to conflict with my other work. At this time, I was working construction in the mornings and cooking at the restaurant at night. Unable to fire me, he tried to force me to quit.

The owner realized what was going on, but most importantly, she saw me. She believed that I had so much to offer and that being in that space, under those circumstances, would only serve to stifle both my abilities and creativity. She convinced me to formally quit her company and immediately hired me to cater to a political campaign event hosted for a candidate whom she supported. It was successful and the food was well-received. I was able to take the skills I had learned, along with some of my own, to finally display my gift. She gave me this amazing opportunity and I did not let her, myself, or my family down.

Several months later, my wife and I developed a relationship with a popular local brewery that remains in place today. However, our relationship with this brewery introduced us to couples, corporations, and new clients, including other local breweries, all of whom hired us for private catering events, invited us to exclusive festivals where we were able to secure more clients and contracts and hired us to cater several wedding contracts.

I am following God’s lead on my life. Food was not something that I ran to as a career choice, yet I learned that some of the choices I had made were for all the wrong reasons, even as the knowledge and skillsets acquired will forever be worth the experiences. Now? I have been able to see my past obstacles and life experiences led me to a place of fulfillment and focus in the Food, Beverage, and Hospitality business that I never realized was already a part of me. I look forward to my days and meeting new people. We are a family business so we meet so many other families daily. The conversations and relationships that have been connected, created, and cultivated have been life-changing.

The stage that God placed me on has allowed me to show my gifts in a way that is so fluid and natural to me. My father loved to cook and we always ate at the table together. It was our bond and connection. It was his way of showing me that preparing food and eating was an exercise of love. The discipline and timing in creating a meal for a loved one and eating it together was a physical manifestation of my Father’s love.

It was also the last thing my father did for me when he passed away when I was 13 years old. The next morning after staying the night with close friends, my father called and told me to come home for dinner, our natural order of things. Once I arrived home, however, the meal that he had prepared for us was burning on the stove. He was no longer with me. My father had gone gently to his final resting place, eyes opened, smiling on the front sofa, while the Chicago Bulls played a home playoff game (I actually blamed Michael Jordan, my young mind believing that his exciting level of play proved to be too much for my Father’s heart).

My father was well known as a nurturing man who took the time to embrace both his family and his community. I honor his name – Johnnie – in the naming of my family Food Truck and Catering business and hope to reflect both his character and conscience.

Has it been a smooth road?
Owning, operating, and working your own business definitely comes with many obstacles and challenges. How one meets those challenges is the true test. The restaurant business is fast-paced, ever-evolving, and customer-driven. In the hospitality business, you want to give great service, have incredible food options, encourage guests to try new culinary creations, and open them to a palette higher than their expectations. The truth is that, in the food business, that can be challenging in itself. I don’t want to just sell food. I want my guests to receive world plate creations with African Diasporic influences that leave them with a wonderful memory and unique experience.

Finding out my target audience was key. Understanding my Why and coming up with the complete vision I have for my business and how that can connect to communities is where I begin when making decisions. If you don’t know the guest seated at your table, how will you know how to prepare a meal for them? The challenge of knowing my guest or client builds a fire within me. Are they vegetarian? Where are they from? What is their favorite food? Being a trained historian and researcher, I am filled with excitement in the research and development of my field. Having a background in Academia and being a trained Historian offers me opportunities to utilize those skills that come naturally to me and apply them to the food business. So, many of my challenges have come both from navigating this new professional space that I have fully embraced, as well as moving outside of kitchens and restaurants and executing that same quality of food experiences to my guests in a pop-up restaurant environment. There is a skill set that comes with food preparation, inventory, budgeting, marketing your product, securing commercial kitchens for affordable rates, meeting health codes, and being creative in your marketing strategy that is time-consuming yet time-critical.

I overcame many of the obstacles faced by simply being a sponge to information and a student to the constant study of creative ways to approach the food, beverage, and hospitality business. I enjoy it because I get to create every day. I accept the challenges because I know the answer will take me to the next step of accomplishing my future goals for my business. The present challenge I face is balancing self-care and the long hours of the hospitality business. My hands are unrecognizable, sometimes with bruising and pain from knives and food preparation. My legs, back, and feet ache from standing hours in the same position prepping and then serving food. Now, I am trying to meet that challenge with regular visits to my chiropractor and a workout plan. I had to learn to attack my health and wellness the same way I attack preparing food for my clients with preparedness, focus, love, and discipline.

Finally, the world has entered a new phase with the COVID-19 pandemic, which is forcing nearly all businesses, both large and small, adjusting and pivot to remain relevant. Today our largest challenge is that pivot. Our response is to go mobile and offer more direct, contactless options to our current and future guests. This enables our guests to still enjoy our food creations and continue to support our family business, while enabling us to support our community in return with creative and healthy food options and, eventually, social programs.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We create a healthy “world plate” experience by examining foods along with the African Diaspora on the foundation of a Mediterranean dietary lifestyle. From Caribbean Jerk Chicken to South African Blood Orange Salmon and traditional American menu items, our goal is to provide chef-created food items that honor both the cultural contributions of people of African descent to the world and the history of our families. As a company, I am most proud of the fact that we have been able to introduce large numbers of guests to our unique culinary experience.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
What I like best about Atlanta is the idea that the small business community is extremely helpful, supportive, and willing to share information and resources for the most part. However, similarly, when the opposite is run into, the competitive nature of some can be destructive.

Pricing:

• The Johnnie $12 (Chicken Sausage)
• The Clyde $10 (Chicken Sausage)
• Lakeshore Drive Mahi Fish Sandwich (LSD) $14
• Johnnie Hot Sauce (Carolina Reaper) $10
• Johnnie Mild Sauce $10
• Johnnie Hot Sauce (Ghost Pepper) $10
• Jerk Chicken Burger $15
• Impossible Burger $15

Contact Info:

• Address: MAILING ADDRESS:
  1926 Hosea L Williams DR NE
  UNIT 170292 Atlanta, GA 30317
• Website: www.johnnieandclydes.com
• Phone: 404.707.0980
• Email: johnnieandclydes@gmail.com
• Instagram: @JohnnieandClyde

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