The restaurant industry is one of the hardest to break into anywhere, but it’s even tougher in the oversaturated California landscape. But, Alan Jackson, executive chef and founder of Lemonade, and Sonu Chandi, CEO of Chandi Restaurant Group, are still finding ways to innovate.
I was fortunate to chat with Jackson and Chandi to learn about their beginnings in the restaurant industry, their growth strategies, their motivational techniques and more.
Alan Jackson
Before opening Lemonade, Alan Jackson was a chef for fine restaurants like Jackson’s and The Farm Beverly Hills. He created Lemonade after finding a hole in the Los Angeles market. Now, he serves fresh and nourishing dishes in a sunny, cafeteria-style environment.
How did you first market Lemonade to people who didn’t quite get the cafeteria-style experience?
I created and opened Lemonade in 2008, basically as a response to not being able to find the type of food and dining my wife and I were looking for in our daily life.
Good food should be for everybody! As a chef, when I wasn’t working, I couldn’t find anything, to-go or eat-in, that was flavorful, had variety and was vegetable-focused, affordable and easy. Wanting something different for myself and my family, I knew I needed to create an outpost for people to get the type of food I wanted to have daily.
Cafeteria-style was the only way I could envision a visceral connection between the customer and the type of food we planned to serve. A picture in a magazine inspired me: It was a restaurant in Turkey where a chef was leaning over the counter, steaming pots below him, talking with his guests. It was so inspirational for me. Marketing this concept has been all about the customer experience. In the early days, we spent a lot of time explaining to people how to order and what to order. Over the years, we have been able to perfect and simplify communication with our guests.
Are there any particular marketing strategies you used to help Lemonade expand quickly?
We did our best to be an operations-focused company. We have done no external marketing in the past eight years, other than the usual presence on social media. What we have been hyper-focused on is making sure the consumer perceives the value of our offering and craves our product. We want the in-store experience to match the expectations of our customers. So, all marketing efforts have gone into training team members on hospitality, perfecting recipes and improving atmosphere.
How did you pace Lemonade’s growth in order to take full advantage of its popularity, but not overwhelm yourself or the business?
Growth feels overwhelming, period! But since day one, we’ve been a vertically integrated company. Most companies of our small size don’t start with the manufacturing capabilities that we did. We started by owning and operating a central commissary and manufacturing plant that produces all of our sauces, dressings, marinades, seasonings and long-cooked meats. We utilize a system called “cook chill” that streamlines and improves the process of cooking large quantities of food. By architecting the company in this fashion, we have been able to guarantee recipe adherence and improve…