From Corporate Burnout to Kitchen Fun: My Entrepreneurial Journey

Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Jessi Brelsford, Founder & CEO of Taste Buds Kitchen

Jessi Brelsford: So I can’t say I had corporate burnout. I was still pretty young. I’d been doing it for seven years. So it wasn’t as much burnout. It was just like a desire for creativity.

It was a desire to be in control of my own fate and work when I wanted to work and work hard. I’m a hard worker, and I love doing what I do and to figure it out and to not just take the path that everyone else was taking. So I think that was more it for me versus burnout versus, like, I wasn’t as inspired. Right. I wasn’t passionate about it in the way that I am about Taste Buds Kitchen, that I am about building my own business from scratch.

So I think that was really the drive. And I felt like, if not now, when, right. I remember talking to my dad about this and saying, like, hey, you know, I’ve been doing this for a while, and I think I want to do this full time. And him saying, are you sure he came from the background of, you want a good job, you want a steady job? I said, well, yes, I am sure.

Because why not, right? Why not me? Why not now? Let’s to see how this is gonna go. And so I did it and really haven’t looked back.

I’ve loved it. It’s been 17 years since then. I’ve been doing this for 17 years. So my baby can drive. As I say, I actually have three human babies, twin three year olds, a boy and a girl and a six year old.

But Chase bud’s kitchen was my first baby born 17 years old, 17 years ago.

Meg Schmitz: Wow. In your family, you’re talking about how many first cousins? Then up the family tree, were there entrepreneurs who showed you the way? You talk about your dad and my dad is much the same way, very much conservative, and, oh, Maggie, are you sure you should be doing that?

I didn’t really have an entrepreneurial role model until I realized that my mother is very entrepreneurial.

Welcome back to free agent with Meg Schmitz. Your place for inspiring stories of real people who took the leap into business ownership, franchising, and freedom. If you know there’s more to life than a desk job and you’re ready to take control of your Destiny, this is your podcast. After all. Why work for the boss? Be the boss. Now let’s join your host, franchise guru Meg Schmitz, with today’s episode of free Agent.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to, or welcome back to my podcast. It’s called the Free Agent.

This is where the discussion is all about being a free agent, finding a team, finding that camaraderie. But it’s also about taking control over your future. The mission of my show is to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, franchising, and freedom from corporate refugees and executives tired at the desk job to entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey. My podcast is here to aim a spotlight on real people who stepped into the unknown to control over their destiny and became their own boss. I love it when I have people on who, to me, are the epitome of a free agent.

And today my guest is Jessi Brelsford. She is the founder and CEO of Taste Buds Kitchen. What’s so interesting and unusual to me is her background, her education, her training was going in a different direction, and somehow she ended up in a kitchen creating recipes, opportunities, experiences for kids and families. Where does a Wall street gal end up doing this? So, Jessi, welcome to the show.

I can’t wait to hear the whole story.

Jessi: Well, thank you, Meg. It’s great to be here and yeah, happy to be on with you this morning.

Meg: The concept Taste Buds Kitchen has resonated with me and I have presented it to a few candidates who are looking for that family community experience. And so it’s very viable to me in this current world of retail, experiential retail people looking to connect.

Before we get into though Taste Buds Kitchen, tell me about the winding journey that took you from being a, I think you were a division one swimmer, you went to a university of note or a Wall street gal. You’re on a whole different trajectory. So tell the story, please.

Jessi: Yes. So it goes back 43 years. I was born in Maryland, one of 23 first cousins. So I was always the Pied Piper, always around kids, always the babysitter, always the baker making everyone’s birthday cake, always the lifeguard—just always around family. But I loved business. I was the one having the lemonade stand on the corner, taking vegetables from my mom’s garden, going door to door in my community and trying to sell them for a quarter. So I’ve always been a hustler with business and finding a way to make things work.

I did major in economics. I went to Harvard. I did swim Division I. So I absolutely love business. I love numbers. I love putting it all together. I really learned about Wall Street in college. I can’t say I aspired to it, but I loved the finance of it. I got a job right out of school, moved to New York City, and worked on Wall Street. I loved it—it was a great foundation in terms of understanding how the numbers and business work.

But I always had this pull. I always wanted to be my own boss. I didn’t know what it would be. I had all sorts of ideas, and then I kind of stopped thinking and started doing what I loved—baking with kids. I started this as a weekend hobby called Cupcake Kids. At the time I did it about once or twice a month, and people loved it. They were asking me to do their kid’s birthday party or a summer cooking camp. But I had to say no—I was working 60 hours a week.

Eventually, I realized this could be it. This could be the idea I’d been looking for. So in 2008, after a year of doing it part-time, I made the leap and launched Taste Buds Kitchen full-time.

At that point, we pivoted to include not just baking with kids, but cooking with kids and adults. So we now work with everyone ages 2 to 99. We do camps, parties, adult BYOB events, and corporate team-building. It’s not a restaurant—we don’t sell or cater food. You come in and make everything from scratch, from sushi to pasta to cupcakes.

Meg: Yum. I haven’t had breakfast yet today, so that sushi in particular sounds excellent. Were you at that time experiencing any sort of corporate burnout?

Jessi: Yeah, it’s a good question. So I can’t say I had corporate burnout. I was still pretty young. I’d been doing it for seven years. So it wasn’t as much burnout.

It was just like a desire for creativity. It was a desire to be in control of my own fate and work when I wanted to work and work hard. I’m a hard worker, and I love doing what I do and to figure it out and to not just take the path that everyone else was taking. So I think that was more for me versus burnout versus, like, I wasn’t as inspired. Right. I wasn’t passionate about it in the way that I am about Taste Buds Kitchen in the way that I am about building my own business from scratch. So I think that was really the drive. And I felt like, if not now, when, right. I remember talking to my dad about this and saying, like, hey, you know, I’ve been doing this for a while and I think I want to do this full time. And him saying, are you sure?

He came from the background of, you want a good job, you want a steady job? I said, well, yes, I am sure. Because why not, right? Why not me? Why not?

Now, let’s just see how this is going to go. And so I did it and really haven’t looked back. I’ve loved it. It’s been 17 years since then. I’ve been doing this for 17 years.

So my baby can drive. As I say, I actually have three human babies, twin three year olds, a boy and a girl and a six year old. But Taste Buds Kitchen was my first baby, born 17 years old, 17 years ago.

Meg: Wow. In your family, you’re talking about how many first cousins. Then up the family tree, were there entrepreneurs who showed you the way? You talk about your dad? And my dad is much the same way, very much conservative and, oh, Meg, are you sure you should be doing that? I didn’t really have an entrepreneurial role model until I realized that my mother is very entrepreneurial. But that was more a recent revelation.

So for you, in looking at the family dynamic, was there DNA that came naturally to you?

Jessi: Great question. So both my dad and my grandfather, my parents, my grandparents both always owned businesses, but it was usually on top of their full time job. So they would start different things, do different things. So the dinner table Thanksgiving was never remiss of business talk.

How’s this going? What about this? It was always that kind of, you know, work and life mixed together, which I always liked, my mom never did. She’s like, you know, Michael, can we. Can we wait to talk about this later?

But I loved it. So I grew up with that, you know, thinking through the numbers, thinking through how to make things work. But I was the first one to say, hey, you know, I’m going to leave the full time job and do this full time. And it’s been a really exciting journey. But I do remember my grandfather.

He’s 91 years old, still his biggest fan, and he’s one of mine, saying, years in, he goes, I didn’t think it would work. I’m so glad for you. But I didn’t think it would work. So I just pushed ahead and did it. And, yeah, it has and I’m so thankful.

Meg: So much of success is vision and execution. My husband and I work with entrepreneurs all the time. Yeah, they have vision. What about the execution? So as you were peeling away from, you had a great job, you had a great career, people would love to have the role that you had a, the visibility, the prominence, I would say then looking at this now you’ve got, do you have people who surrounded you, who helped you to clearly define your vision and then move into execution?

Jessi: That’s a great question. So I have an amazing team, have built it over time, but it was just, I just did the next right thing. I just kept, I’m an executor, like, I wanted, I’m a doer. I want to do it. I don’t just want to think about it, I want to do it.

Yeah. Started small and I kept taking the next right step. Sometimes you veered off course and then you got back on track. The prototype for Taste Buds Kitchen was designed over lunch with my mom and grandmother. They’d come up to New York City to help me and I literally drew it out on a piece of paper.

I remember sitting there with them and we went to Home Depot and we got the cabinets and my dad came up, my sister came up. She was one of the teachers when we first started for some of our classes. Full family affair, getting involved. I love that. That’s how Taste Buds Kitchen is today.

My kids and I took a class on Monday doing cheesy cake quesadillas, which is a new menu we’re rolling out for kids. So it’s a family business and I’ve loved that from the very beginning to now with my own family. Yeah, now I have more, you know, strategic plans and we’re definitely have grown in that area. But in the beginning, I just knew I wanted to make this happen and I was going to do everything I could to get there. So you had family support.

Meg: Have you, have you developed a posse of advisors? I know you’re with friend Devco now, but before that alignment, as you’re flushing this out and bringing it to fruition, did you have advisors and mentors who had the professional experience to navigate you or are you really bootstrapping this whole thing?

Jessi: That’s a great question. So in the very beginning, I like to learn. I’m like a lifelong learner, right?

I’m always trying to learn. So I would say that my mentors in the beginning were anyone that was doing something I didn’t know how to do. So when I first started this, it wasn’t a franchise for the first five years. I built it from the ground up for a Taste Buds Kitchen. Franchising wasn’t something that I knew a lot about, so I built it as just my business and then later got into franchising when I had had so many people ask, could they open one of these?

So I would say that my mentors in the beginning were just business people in New York City, that I would try to go to anything that I could, whether it was networking events or female led women events, and learn from them in many different ways, which was invaluable. And now that we’ve kind of. Since we’ve been franchising, it’s been ten years, actually. Just signed the 17th franchise agreement this morning, which is very exciting in North Carolina.

Meg: Congratulations.

Jessi: Thank you. Yes. We have brought on a strategic advisor named Guy Falzarano, and he started Lightbridge Academy, which is early childhood center, and had kind of retired from that role, decided he didn’t want to be retired. So we’ve pulled him out of retirement, and he has been helping us over the past year and a half, and he’s been incredible because he’s really helping to scale. We know Taste Buds Kitchen.

I know how to run it, and helping make sure we have the team and the right vendors in place so that we do this responsibly and kind of growing with our team ahead of when we need it on the support side. So he’s been really helpful. And any. Anyone, I mean, franchising, I try to learn from them. Lifelong learner.

Meg: Very robust community of experienced people in franchising. And so one question that is just popping into mine. Well, there’s so many questions. Is your husband involved at all?

Jessi: He is, yes. So my husband, we met once I’d started Taste Buds Kitchen in New York City, and once I decided to franchise, or we decided to franchise, that’s when he left his job.

So he’s an architect at commercial real estate and build out in New York City. So when we decided to franchise again over ten years ago, all of our kitchens currently have a female in the ownership role. They’re not always entirely female owned, but right now, we are 100% female owned. I’m sure that won’t be forever, but a lot of them haven’t been through commercial real estate before, so he’s been the great partner to guide you through site selection. We do have a great national brokerage that we work with.

Guides you through construction, leveling the bids, getting different quotes on the kitchen, making sure, they all look the same, but yet have the uniqueness of the facility and the lease that you signed. So he’s been a great asset in the franchise business, helping with all parts build out to make sure every kitchen looks as great as they do today.

Meg: Let’s take a quick break from the conversation. Are you interested in seeing if franchise ownership is in your future? Get the inside scoop on what it’s like to own a franchise business, warts and all.

Visit Megschmitz.com to schedule your free, informative call. Many people don’t realize that franchise consultants are paid by the franchise companies, so there are no fees, no obligation and no strings attached. Schedule your call today at Megschmitz.com. and now let’s jump back into the conversation.

Meg: One of the tenants of the work that I do with my candidates, and you’ll see this with the gallant and husband and wife that I just referred to. Taste Buds.

Jessi: Yeah, husband and wife. The sweet spot.

Meg: Three things that I tell them, you’re not going to make this decision without your wife, your life and your money being primary considerations. Those are the three, because that’s what my ex husband didn’t pay any attention to when we got into business the first time. It was very cavalier and unilateral decision making.

And so that’s why I say to them, we’re not going anywhere without those three things. If they’re working already, they need to continue to work. So let’s pardon the rhyme, but your wife, your life and your money. So that’s why I was asking about your husband, because this is a big endeavor. It’s obviously a family affair.

Now you’ve got kids. The other question that had popped into mind there a minute ago is, because you’ve been franchising, it sounds like, at a very slow and steady pace. Ten years, 17 franchise owners. That’s a lot of time dedicated to, I assume time dedicated to those individual franchisees and getting them up and operating. Do you see the alignment with Fran Devco now, Franchoice and other consulting groups sending you leads?

What kind of growth are you hoping to accomplish, and what does your infrastructure look like to support a faster pace of growth?

Jessi: Yeah, that’s a great question. So when we first started franchising ten years ago, we decided to grow slow and steady and have people find us. We never advertised. I started with a list of people who had been to our kitchen, loved it in New York City, and, you know, said, hey, can I open one of these?

To which I said, I’m not sure once I figured it out, I reached back out to them. By then, most had moved on with different life choices. And, you know, it was a couple of years later, but that’s how we started. So people would find us online, you know, just SEO Googling who either wanted to own a franchise and they didn’t want to do a restaurant, they didn’t want the hours, the margins, but didn’t want to do a school, right, didn’t want to do early childhood daycare centers. So we were kind of a sweet spot for a lot of different passions that they had or people who wanted to do what we were doing and didn’t want to do it from scratch.

So those were our first franchisees, and we did one to two a year just organically that way that they would come and we would meet with them. They’d come to New York City, we meet them in person, take them around, and I love growing that way. We could test, you know, west coast, south, east, mid Atlantic, but kind of all over the country, larger markets, midterm markets. So really fine tune the model and make sure that it worked in all the different ways that I want it to, because I knew it did in New York City, and I’d grown it there for five, six years before we franchise then we’ve now been doing the franchising for ten years. So just before COVID we felt like we had figured it out to really start scaling.

Right? We had the revenue streams in place. We knew how we were going to train our kitchens. Then Covid happened, so we had to close for a few months, and we kind of took a pause, made sure everyone made it through and, you know, as well as they could, and came out on the other side doing really well. And so about a year and a half ago is when we said, okay, let’s do it again.

Let’s kind of put the vision into place that we had started and had to stop there for a couple of years. So that’s really why we’re growing now. So we first started working with Fran Devco. It hasn’t been quite a year. Just last fall, started getting working with them, and then launched, I know, with you guys in January. So that’s been great. And I feel like we now have the team in place. We’ve hired three people at HQ in the past nine months, and we are growing ahead of that. I want to always be one or two hires ahead of where we need to be for the number of kitchens that we have so we can really support people well and grow, you know, I love hearing everyone’s stories.

All of our franchisees are amazing. Why they’re doing this, what they were looking to escape, you know, whether it was always traveling, never seeing their kids, or always working for someone else and wanting to be in charge of their own destiny, not most of them, not even knowing anything like this existed, right. Wasn’t even on their radar as something to seek out for a lot of them. And the ways that it’s changed their lives, the way that it’s changed our lives and my family’s lives has been really amazing to see.

Meg: I love the concept and I love the two to 99. My dad, by the way, is 92, my mom is 86. And they, at the community where they live, welcome these kinds of educational. They’re coming on site, not going out, but senior tutoring is really what is it sort of is than the younger generations that don’t have, that have parents who don’t cook or really are not looking and weren’t raised that way to spend time in the kitchen, but they want to raise their children with a healthier diet. So to me, this is such a great opportunity again in that experiential retail space. What I’m understanding, because one of the questions that goes through my head is, all right, well, if you’ve got an East coast footprint, you’ve got multiple locations.

They’re New York and surrounding. And what happens when you expand across the country? But it sounds like you’ve got that spider web. Yeah. How many states are you in and how have you supported those new franchisees who are far from the mothership?

Jessi: Yeah, so we are in 13 states. So we are, we have San Francisco, Bay Area. We have one coming in Seattle. We have one coming in Denver, one coming in Atlanta. We’re already down in Florida, just outside of Miami.

We have some in the midwest suburb of Chicago, in Kansas City, and a second in development in Kansas City. We have two outside of Boston, one in state College and New York City. So we were never did the hub and spoke. That’s more traditional in friendship. Yeah.

Of we waited for people to find us, essentially, and then to work with them. Hey, was their market going to be large enough? We want 100,000 people, you know, within a tight community, average household income of 100,000 plus. And then did we, like the operator, did we think they could successfully drive the business forward? And then, like you said, do they have the finances to make it work?

And we always wanted to be a husband wife decision, you know, we have many husband wife owners. Some are a supportive spouse like, you can do this, others, both are actively involved. Both can be great, but that definitely has been a sweet spot for us as we’ve grown.

Meg: Nice. Yeah. So the question of will it work here? Will it work here? You’ve already addressed that. You tested major markets, smaller markets, like you said, the somewhere in between too.

Sounds like you’re.

Jessi: We do. We have a large list of menus to choose from when you’re running your classes. And so we know some are better in the warmer states, some prefer better in the colder states. But there is a lot of consensus, you know, between the most popular menus, whether it’s handmade pasta or tasty tie or for kids, battle cupcake, one of our most popular birthday parties of all time.

So a lot of menus to choose from so that you can kind of have your local flair if you’re more southern, more northern. But a lot of consensus too between really the best sellers for all of our locations.

Meg: And so you’re already reading my mind. I was going to ask you about the variability from one part of the country to another. The tastes profiles are clearly different depending on where you are.

So it sounds like there are a wide variety of programs for franchisees to.

Jessi: Choose, wide variety of menus. And then also it is interesting, you know, some places sushi is like, hey, I’ve never had it before. So if you attend a sushi class, then you’re really going to be just learning the basics. And other places, sushi’s on every corner.

The kids are having sushi from the time they’re three, and then the chef’s going to be able to take it up a notch and really do like the next level, mostly in terms of skills. My goal is when everyone comes home from a class that they’ve learned some tips and tricks that they’ll do again. Will they ever make the exact recipe again? Some do, some don’t. But it’s really just about comfort in the kitchen, having fun in the kitchen, creating positive memories in the kitchen and in the adult space.

It’s BYOB. So we so often have couples or friends, moms night out, adult kids bringing their adult parents, just having a good time, really connecting and doing something that they hadn’t thought of to do before.

Meg: Yeah, I love the diversity of that. Getting back to the nuts and bolts of being an entrepreneur now, stepping into the unknown and coming out the other side was a concept that you’ve proven. You’ve tested it out, you’ve done so much.

Are there particular freedoms that you didn’t enjoy for a while that now you do, that. Your system is older and more mature when you’re the entrepreneur, the visionary, the founder, it’s in your head all the time. Have you been able to peel away? You’ve got kids, you’ve got twins now. So there must be some flexibility and freedom to your schedule that you’ve been able to achieve.

Jessi: Yes, I would say definitely. I mean, I love to work. I enjoy what I do. Like, you know, it’s fun for me. My husband says I think about it too much, but, you know, I wake up thinking about it at the dinner table.

I’m thinking about it, but I do. Like, I can take my kids to school in the morning, right? I can plan my schedule around what’s important to me and I’ll go on their field trips. And, you know, if it’s a long weekend, I can take a Friday off. So I definitely, and I think the same for our franchisees.

It is what you make it, and it is about having that vision for when you want to work, what you want to do, what you want to hire someone to do, and building a great team around you. You all will rise together. So I have a really exceptional team and have to, for how we’ve grown and to put all the supports in place that we have.

Meg: It’s hard when you’re constantly thinking about a business. And I do the same thing this morning, between 2:30 and 4:30, the wheels were in motion.

And so we’ve got the holiday weekend coming up. And I just, I find personally, if I work a bit every day, then I can peel away and I can let my brain settle during the day. But if I try to take time off, like, this is a long weekend, and I don’t see myself peeling away completely for three days unless I’m going to Italy. And I think we’re wired up the same way.

Jessi: Yes. Although it’s amazing now having kids, I am able to turn it off at a different way when it’s time to. Like, I’m very compartmentalized. I love the morning. So similarly, I was up early. I’m currently walk, trying to walk before the kids wake up.

So I walk our neighborhood, do a book on tape, you know, just like have a great start to the day. Back to school starts on Tuesday for us, so everyone’s ready for that. But, yeah, I mean, I work hard. I love what I do. I do try to, you know, if I’m up early on a Saturday morning unexpectedly, I’ll go into the office, you know, head down until we have a home office for 2 hours and I don’t mind doing that.

But then I can also shut the computer and you know, see you on Monday. So I try to be good about that, to be present for family and all the fun things that life has to offer. And then when I’m at work, really focus on work too.

Meg: Curious if franchise ownership might be the next step for you? Or just interested in owning a small business that offers a proven path and support system?

Download Meg’s free ebook that outlines everything you need to know about franchise ownership. There is more to life than your desk job. Visit Megschmitz.com and enter your email to receive your downloadable copy instantly. And now let’s get back to the conversation.

So the next iteration of Taste Buds Kitchen, do you see changing things up at all?

Are you going to continue to expand into your entrepreneur? Do you have other, other concepts that you’re playing around with that you’d like to diversify into?

Jessi: Yeah, good question. So I think right now we’re on like the final push of making everything digital at Taste Buds Kitchen. And that’s been really excited where like our recipes and our menus for our internal franchisees and our crew have been paper, they’re now tabletized and you know, really, really great in terms of us updating and people using them.

So that’s really the big focus that we’re pushing on here. And we’re now studying analytics for menus in a way that we’ve never before. So we’re studying the menus that perform better. We take data driven approach to every. With my background in economics, actually, I have someone on the HQ team whose job is to run reports.

So she’s always running reports and analytics on things to make sure we’re capturing things. So that’s really my focus now, is to make sure TBK is ready for everything digital and that’s what’s going to make us so much more efficient, so much more efficient for our franchisees, not having to print things and shred things and all that kind of stuff. So I would say that’s where my focus is now and then we really want to grow. So I hope to have 75 franchisees in the next three to four years with about 200 locations. So we are trying to really open and, you know, in the next four to five years have them open.

00:26:30
And why I want to do it with 75 franchisees is because we would love people to have little mini Tbk empires, you know, whether they start with one or start with two or three or four. But really own markets and can develop this Tbk empire for themselves in areas where they’re comfortable when they have a community already in place.

Meg: I could see families doing this. Husband and wife with kids. It’s such an easy entree than for kids to step in and learn business via a vehicle.

That’s really very fun. It’s when I first got into business, I had great clips and I would take my son with me. He hated sweeping hair. There was nothing interesting about that. So this is much better for that family legacy, the family dynamic of getting kids involved and really learning about business in a way that’s very fun.

I’m glad that you brought that up, too. About multiple locations are your. It must be your. Your first franchisees are single location franchisees. Are they looking to diversify and I’m sorry, not diversify, but to open additional locations?

Jessi: Yeah. So we currently have two franchisees who have two kitchens. We currently have about four potentially looking to open their second just from within the group that we have now. And of our new guys, they also are interested in expansion.

So, yes, I think it’s definitely once you get in there and you do it, the second one is so much easier. The third one is so much easier. And that’s really when you have an infrastructure and a team and a general manager at each location, and you, as the franchisee can be that regional manager, you could bring in a regional manager. So that’s definitely where you can get scale into place in a really helpful way.

Meg: We don’t talk numbers in the financials, in the podcast, but from the standpoint of a single location, your franchisees who have a single location, are they doing it as a paycheck replacement?

Are they doing it as a secondary stream of income? Doing it for fun? Combination of all three. What would you say? Paycheck replacement?

Jessi: You know, this is. They’ve left their full time jobs. You know, you can do it when you’re in site selection, but they’re all in and how they do this. And with a good team in place, then they can kind of manage how many hours they’re spending on the kitchen, where some franchisees really want to be very involved. They want to be going to the grocery store.

Right. They want to be involved in every team training. They want to have, you know, a really very detailed touch point, which is great. We have others who want to share the ship, and they want to create a great team, and they feel a little more comfortable stepping back. So we’re here for all of them, and they all perform very well.

I think it’s. That’s what’s nice. As a franchisee, you can make this what you want it to be in terms of your involvement and the role that you play in the business, of course. Yeah. So high enough, right.

You’ve got to steer the ship, even if you’re in the ship. But for those who really want that very hands on experience and doing more of the nitty gritty, you can. And for those who don’t, then we can teach you how to build a team around you.

Meg: And that. I get asked this all the time. Well, what about hr? Well, what about training? And what about, do I have to write my own manuals?

Jessi: I said, well, no, this is franchising. I say we do all that for you. Yeah. I say business in a box, it’s never that easy. But yes, we have someone in charge of operations and training. We have a great training program we’ll take you through from the signing of your franchise agreement, through grand opening and beyond. We have monthly newsletters, we have monthly TBK talks. We do a yearly summit just in a month.

All of our owners are flying into Maryland to be together once a year, and we’re rolling out content for the next year. So we have ops manuals. We have, we’re actually currently in production on training videos that would help you train your team. So all these resources are here for you, really. As a franchisee, you’re the community builder, right?

You’re in a good market, you’re the driver. You’re building community for your business. Like you said, your kids can be involved. I’ve have franchisees. We’ve had people that have been on maternity leave, given birth during being a franchisee.

We have people with high schoolers and there in the back doing the dishes. We have grown franchisees with grown children who have a more managerial role in their business. So really with a family, you know, through the life cycles in any way, you are. But I love that part of it. I love that you can kind of mix and have your kids around and show them what it’s like to work hard and get them involved.

Meg: I’m also impressed with the ability to maximize, in a seven day week, maximize the number of classes that are held, say, during the day when kids are in school. Now you’ve got different target audiences who can come in throughout the day. Are your locations open seven days a week? What’s typical for, for a kids are.

Jessi: New kitchens usually will start with five, like a Wednesday to Sunday.

But most right now, all open locations are open seven days a week. So whenever schools out, camps is our big thing. So summer camp and school holiday camp, kids are in the kitchen all day long, all those days, and that’s usually about a third of the days in the year and the other two thirds then we’re having field trips. So school groups come in on school buses. Is the cutest thing ever when 20 kindergarteners march in, or high schoolers.

And then also corporates and adult classes. Companies who don’t want to do the after hours corporate event, but they can do a lunchtime event or peel off a couple hours early and do an early afternoon, and then adult classes as well, like retirement communities or 55 plus communities, getting in during the day and doing things so really like the full gamut. Two to 99 is no joke. We do it all the time. We’ve done 70th birthdays, 30th, 50th, three year old birthdays, so everyone can have fun in the kitchen.

It’s really age neutral, and our kitchen was designed that way so kids see it and they’re just itching, you know, it’s beautiful. Can’t wait to get started. And adults feel like, oh, my gosh, I wish my kitchen were this organized, this clean. So everyone gets excited at Taste Buds Kitchen.

Meg: Excellent. Well, your enthusiasm is contagious. And so that it’s so important for me, as I’m working with my candidates, to know that the concept that they’re going to align with is, number one, going to match their energy and enthusiasm. We’ve got some visionaries, founders, who are just very specific, and then maybe not warm and fuzzy and embracing, and you’re very energetic, and it’s easy to align with you and your passion for this. You’re also, you’ve got the gravitas on the other side, the firm holding in economics. You’re clearly, this is not something that you do for fun.

You figured out how to maximize income potential, and I know that your team will be able to explain that. So for me, in referring my candidates to you, I like to know who is the, the founder and what is their involvement. Sounds like you’re not going anywhere. And that this is your lifetime love, and you’ve been, it’s been part of you before, your husband and your kids. So that’s a great testimony for my candidates, who some of, and you know, you live in the world of finance.

Private equity has been acquiring franchise concepts like crazy over the last pre Covid, really the last seven to ten years. But there’s a big uptick then in PE dollars getting behind there, then the big question for the franchisee is, well, what about me? So now what’s going to happen to me? Nothing’s going to change and then everything changes. So have you been?

Is that anything in your future with Taste Buds Kitchen, where there might be that kind of involvement from a bigger partner, financial partner, where you see your role changing? Are you firmly staying right where you are?

Jessi: Yeah, great question. It’s not on my radar. We’re emailed all the time, but it’s not.

I have more work to do. I know what I want to do and I know how I want to grow this and grow this team. So I’m loving what I’m doing. I’m not going anywhere. This is my baby, my first baby.

Obviously, I love my human babies more, but it’s close on the day. No, I love this. It’s definitely, you know, I’m sure there’ll be an exit at some point, but I’m 43 years old, I’ve got a lot left in me and I’m very excited to grow Taste Buds Kitchen, as much as I can grow it

Meg: Well. I can’t wait to have my candidates go through the process. Your team is as enthusiastic as you are, which always helps as well.

That way, even if they say no, I know that they’re getting fact based. You’ve really got the metrics on this. I love it that you’ve got a person who’s just running reports. It tells me a lot about your brain and then how you’re going to support your franchisees too. This is not just a labor of love and let’s get in there because it’s fun and it’s community and it’s family, but it’s driven by KPI’s that are being monitored all the time.

Jessi: Yes, no, very much profitability. It has to be fun. But if you’re not able to pay the bills and you’re not able to go on vacation and live your life, then it’s not really a job that someone would want to have or investment one would want to make. So that’s what we focus on, really opening in markets that will support it with great strong owners who have the capital to invest. And then we’re going to coach you to success that we’re going to coach you with.

How to fill your kitchen efficiently and what menus do better than others and managing food costs and managing labor costs, reducing turnover, helping to train all that contributes. So I think last year. I know you don’t talk numbers. We have a good item 19 with very clear details. But the average was around 31% for all of our kitchens who were up and running last year.

So that’s a good number.

Meg: That is a good number. And the excitement around, again, the experiential retail. Retail is not dead by far, though. The class that is outperforming is experience.

People want to come in and not be shoved a product, but to be engaged. And so that’s exactly. Yeah, exactly what you’ve done. Well, this has been a great insight for, I’m sure, my audience as well as for me. And I appreciate you taking the time to flesh out all the details of how you got started with this and what it means to you.

Is there anything I did not ask you that you want to make sure is included in the content?

Jessi: Good question. Question I always get asked we didn’t cover is what percentage of your money is made from kids business? What percent from adults? So we’re anywhere from like 50 50 to skewing a little more towards kids than adults.

We usually get that question. I think last year it was 35% adults, 65% kids. But good question. That I usually get asked. No, I would just encourage your listeners to live out their dreams.

Right. If you want to be your own boss and you want to do something, now is the time and you’ve got to be scrappy, and it’s not going to be easy, but it will be fun and it will be rewarding. And I can’t look back, right? 17 years of being my own boss and being in here. It’s definitely, definitely the journey for me, not for everyone.

But we’re here to talk to people through the process. If they do think they’ll be interested and want to do something that’s different that they may not have known existed.

Meg: Well, it’s clearly a labor of love for you and something that is engaging you every day. The fact that you’re not looking to exit. But this brings you my other three words, joy, fun, and yes, every day.

The businesses that my husband and I own. If I can’t find joy, fun and yes, then the answer is no. Right? That’s a good one. Yeah.

Jessi: Our motto is learn, laugh, cook. So I like your three word motto. So learn, laugh, cook. Is tbk, what we’re all about? So I love it.

Meg: Yes. All right. I will learn, laugh and cook. Yeah, learn, laugh, cook. Do you do baking as well?

Jessi: We do. Especially in the kids land. They love to bake, so we’ll do spider donuts or monster cupcakes for Halloween or gingerbread. House decorating is one of our biggest classes of December, not just for kids corporate events. We have people in here battling it out to create the best houses.

Meg: Oh, fun.

Jessi: Yes. Battle cupcake most popular kids party. We do a lot of pizza, but for kids we’re doing whole wheat pizza. So we’re teaching them about whole wheat flour, regular flour.

We use honey, not sugar, to give it that little bit of sweetness and a little bit of chew. So, um, always finding new ways to show new ingredients. But yes, absolutely. Baking and cooking, love it.

Meg: Well, the longer I talk to you, the more I can’t wait to visit one.

So we’ll have to figure out a way to get out to New York and come and visit you. Thank you so much for doing the interview with me today. I love learning about you and your background in Taste Buds Kitchen.

Jessi: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

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