Interview with Kathryn Gordon, Co-Founder of Food Startup Help, Educator and Author
Are you an entrepreneur or established business with a product that you want to take to market? You’ll gain hard-earned advice from Kathryn Gordon who helps navigate industry challenges to launch and scale successful food industry startups.
Gordon is the co-founder of Food Startup Help, a consultancy group for food entrepreneurs bringing a product to market or opening a retail location. She draws on her exceptional professional career, as a chef-instructor in the professional Pastry and Baking program at Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), Co-Chair of the Center for Advanced Pastry Studies (CAPS) at ICE, and pre-food industry management consulting experience stirring in her MBA from NYU Stern.
During the COVID-19 quarantine, her group created new tools including an online learning platform and a book, Food Business Idea to Reality: A Food Entrepreneur Guide to Launching a New Product. She shares her insights to help entrepreneurs navigate the uncertain food industry successfully.
Tell us about your background in the industry.
I made a career move almost 30 years ago into the food business. I earned honors certification from L’Academie de Cuisine in Maryland and in my path to pastry chef, I was privileged to train under renowned pastry chef Jacques Torres. I trained at two four-star NYC restaurants—Le Bernardin and Le Cirque. I also refined my culinary skills while working in the three highest-grossing restaurants in the U.S. in the kitchens of The Rainbow Room, Tavern on the Green and Windows on the World, where I was the Pastry Chef of Cellar in The Sky.
I turned to teaching to share those experiences that gave me a broad background. Initially at a few community colleges in NY and NJ, then at ICE. That experience gave me a broad background to teach. I’ve been at the NY campus of ICE now for 18 years. In addition, I was an assistant producer for the Carymax World and National Pastry Championships for 13 years, and have appeared on The Food Network. I am delighted that my interest and passion for my career was recognized in 2017, Chef when I was honored by Dessert Professional as one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America.
While at ICE, I began writing books. My first cookbook Les Petits Macarons has been described by the Wall Street Journal as the “most comprehensive and inspiring book on macarons in any language,” and has been translated into Chinese. That success inspired me to write Les Petits Sweets, a cookbook for Loire Valley Cooking, a program I have run in France for 20 years at Le Moulin Brégeon, and currently I’m looking forward to the release of my latest book on bringing a food product to market, Food Business Idea to Reality, A Food Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching a Product.
What else are you involved with?
I am an active member of Les Dames d’Escoffier New York (LDNY), serving as the Co-Chair for the Scholarship Awards Ceremony and on the Green Tables Committee. The mission of LDNY is to support women in food, fine beverage and hospitality through education, community service, mentoring – and primarily, scholarship. The organization holds events both in-person and virtually, which are also open to non-members to help raise funds for students, this year LDNY awarded scholarships to 16 women pursuing changemaking careers in Food, Wine, and Hospitality and has awarded more than $2 million in scholarships since 1977.
My work on the Green Tables committee aligns with my interests in topics like zero food waste, composting, sustainable agriculture, and wellness and nutrition.
You are the co-founder of Food Startup Help, tell us what the consultancy group does?
About 10 years ago, Chef Jessie Riley realized that my ICE colleague Chef Jeff Yoskowitz and I were constantly helping alumni with their new food business goals and creations. We realized there was really no one out there helping entrepreneurs at these early stages, so we decided to formalize those efforts into an LLC which has since worked on diverse bakery, restaurant, product and educational projects across the U.S. and internationally.
Who is on your team?
The core team are the initial three partners, Jessie Riley, Jeff Yoskowitz and myself. We’ve hired various ICE alumni and others to create a great research team and have brought in ICE colleagues from the business management department and other industry experts on a project-by-project basis.
What are the services you provide? What are the types of businesses you support?
- Assisting entrepreneurs who want to launch a new food product with every step from recipe R&D, food costs and business plans, shelf-life testing and nutritional analysis, to identifying co-packers and guiding the entrepreneur through initial production and bringing the product to market; and
- Working with new business owners opening a wholesale or retail bakery or restaurant on kitchen design, menu development, staffing and training; we also work with existing businesses needing operational improvement assistance such as to monitor or lower food or labor costs.
What are the three core features a startup business needs to know to thrive now and in the post-COVID world?
We’ve seen success in the past year for well-financed businesses that carefully planned their launch. Although to some it feels like a risky time, the unfortunate failure of some businesses has opened both physical and market space for other entrepreneurs. However,
- Supply chains are still challenged, and some costs have increased requiring more careful monitoring and larger (minimum) purchases.
- There are increasing delays in new equipment or parts availability.
- Staffing continues to be a challenge, even with higher starting salaries.
What’s the new model(s) from your perspective?
- Adequate financing is even more important to make it through times of uncertainty and unforeseen delays.
- Kitchen management software evolves every few years and is a solid investment to help with inventory, production planning, accounting integration and staff scheduling.
- Interactive digital customer ordering and payment systems are here to stay since they can lower labor costs.
- Fulfillment centers offering DTC are increasingly replacing traditional distribution to retailers that make product MSRP inhibitive through the role of middlemen.
Tell us about the changes you were able to make to the business models for your clients to survive during COVID-19.
We’ve been helping businesses direct their marketing investment to more specific target audiences where they’re able to grow more of a product following. There is increased demand for sustainable packaging, supporting causes important to the consumer, and “health” oriented products.
Large international B2B companies seemed to take this time to re-direct their businesses into new directions, and tackle technical challenges within their product
offerings.
Smaller companies such as those launching a local brick and mortar business had some options in terms of locations as other businesses closed, and those who held off and are getting ready to open now seem happy about those decisions.
Streamlining production processes has been key to survival in an era of tight margins. We’ve had to work with some business owners to make their production costs more efficient through slight modifications in the product versus original goals.
But for everyone, regardless of size, creativity and flexibility is key in the food industry—plans rarely are executed exactly as planned as unknown factors come into play. These can include positive challenges such as better than expected success with a product launch, and the need to quickly gear up for expanded production.
Visit her website for current resources and to learn more about the consulting services
