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She smiles.
“Tell me how Shake Place started,” Whitney invites gently. I take a deep breath.
“Well, I did the fast food thing in high school in my home town. Then, when I came to New York to go to NYU, I got a job at Minestrone Tavern as a line cook. We were putting out forty dollar burgers, if you can believe it. They were delicious but they weren’t better than the burgers my family had back home. So I started thinking that I could do better.”
Whitney laughs.
“I love a good burger, but I’d never pay forty dollars for one.”
I nod.
“There are plenty of New Yorkers who do, but I think good food should be affordable. I was fortunate that my grandfather raised cattle, so I had an excellent source of beef and could get it for a good price. I started with a little food cart and within a month I couldn’t keep up. I literally couldn’t cook burgers fast enough, and needed more grill space,” I tell Whitney. She looks genuinely interested, and my heart warms recounting the story.
“I happened upon a tiny space for rent when I had to take a detour on my way back to campus because the police had my normal route blocked off. It used to be a frozen yogurt place when they were at their peak and you could find fro-yo on every block. It still had a lot of the equipment in it from the frozen yogurt business, and that inspired me to include milkshakes on my menu.”
“So, there was a little bit of luck or fate involved, coming across that shop?” Whitney asks.
“Absolutely! I went and talked to my grandfather about my plan. I told him what I wanted to do: burgers and shakes. He loved the idea, and said it reminded him of old school soda fountains. He gave me a loan to start the business and introduced me to a good friend who had dairy farms. They became my source for the ice cream.”
“If only my grandfather was a wheat farmer!” Whitney laughs.
“Unfortunately, who you know plays a big part in success in the restaurant industry. I never would have been able to do what I did without my supply connections, and I’ll be the first to admit it.”
Whitney nods.
“I saw that in my time working as a pastry chef. My first job was at a country club in New Jersey. The owner had no idea what he was doing but he was a golf buddy of the governor’s. The governor helped him get the right people in there to run the place and frequented it a lot too, which was what made it successful.”
“Where else did you work?” I ask, aware that I don’t really know a lot about her work experience. “I had no idea you started in New Jersey.”
She grins.
“My next job was at a French place in Manhattan called Chez Jacques. Really original name, right?”
“Hey now, I know Shake Place isn’t all that original, but I started out dealing with college students as my main clientele. Their brains were fried from Chemistry, Philosophy, and Art History. I didn’t want to make them think too hard about what they would get at my restaurant,” I tell her, feigning being offended.
“I get it, you needed to be clear to those unsophisticated NYU students,” she laughs, playing along. “But anyways, Jack was the owner of Chez Jacques. I know, funny right? He didn’t have a French name at all, but it was great nonetheless. I baked a lot of bread there and we had traditional French desserts. Every Friday, Jack would let me have creative freedom and do a dessert special for the weekend. When the famous restaurant critic, Leonard Fine, raved about one of my desserts, I got an offer from The Palace Hotel to be an assistant pastry chef in the events department”
“That sounds interesting. I’ve been to functions there.”
“They offered me a salary nearly the same as what I was making at Chez Jacques, so I was on the fence about taking it. But Jack encouraged me to move on. He was honest and said he didn’t foresee being able to increase my salary much. We were busy, but his budget for staffing was maxed out. He wanted me to have the opportunity to grow.”
I nod.
“Jack definitely sounds like a great boss. I’ve had to let some of my best employees go so they could reach their full potential. Was The Palace all you expected it to be?”
Whitney laughs ironically.
“Not at all. I envisioned making fun tarts or mousses for swanky parties, or muffins and danishes for fancy brunches. What I actually did was spend a year making wedding cakes for bridezillas. It was pure hell.”
I grin.
“What, you don’t like making wedding cakes?”
She sighs.
“I like making the occasional wedding cake. But this wasn’t even about the cakes, it was about the brides. They would come in with these ridiculous ideas that they couldn’t get done at a regular bakery because they were either too vague or required feats of engineering. One woman came in with a photo of a cake that was already half cut into and told us she wanted one like it. I could only see about twenty percent of what the finished cake looked like, so you can imagine how difficult that was.”
