Neuman’s Kitchen is one of New York City’s (and Philadelphia’s) renowned catering companies. They’ve been in the business for more than 30 years and have had the same mission since – to delight, inspire and be inspired. Using the freshest, the most beautiful ingredients, and then transforming them into deliciously inspired cuisine is their specialty, allowing companies big and small to make an emotional connection with their guests.
Total Food Service spoke with Paul Neuman, president of Neuman’s Kitchen, to talk about the company, business and more!
Can you just walk us through a quick history of Neuman’s Kitchen? Where did the idea come from and what was your inspiration?
Neuman’s Kitchen started 37 years ago as a retail store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. My ex-wife/partner and I started it in 1981, after we both graduated from art school, and we had food backgrounds. It was like a “Mini Balducci’s” when we opened in 1981 and ran it on Third Avenue until 1996. We were in the retail food business for 15 years. I’m fourth generation of my family in food. My father and grandfather ran a renowned fish market on the Upper East Side called the Rosedale Fish Market. So I grew up working around fish and selling high-end fish to fancy people on the Upper East Side. I went to art school, came back, went to work for my dad and opened our retail store and then decided to focus exclusively on catering.
What was it about catering that attracted you?
The retail environment, even in 1996 was very competitive. We weren’t doing as well as we needed to do to support our business. So we saw potential in launching and growing a catering business. We started from scratch after 15 years of business. We moved to the Lower East Side, found a kitchen that became our home for the next 20 years from ‘96 to 2016. We operated out of a kitchen on Christie Street and grew from $1 million in revenue to $12 million in revenue, over the 20 years.
We built a viable/profitable catering company in Manhattan. The plot then thickened as they say when the building we were occupying got sold to developers. We got a little buyout, and took that money, combined it with money we borrowed from the SBA and personal money, to build an 18,000 square foot commissary in Long Island City. We moved in April 2016 and now employ about 100 full-time people.
Then two years ago, we opened in Philadelphia. So now Neuman’s Kitchen is in New York and Philly. We have four people working in Philly. In New York, we have two types of clients. We have special event clients, and we have daily service clients. In Philly, we’re just a special events company. We’ve grown quite a bit.
You recently announced a rather unique collaboration with Chef Floyd Cardoz.
Through our chef network, we identified an opportunity to enable world-renowned restaurant chefs to participate in catering. We knew that we have a great facility with production capacity and a team of passionate culinary artists. Our goal was to combine that with the talents of some of the great chefs to showcase their unique skills.
So our first partnership point is with Floyd Cardoz. We had heard about Floyd through his incredible reputation not just as a chef, but as a humanitarian and philanthropist. And when we first met him, we fell in love with his warmth and goodness. He truly is a lovely person who is passionate about Indian food.
Together, we think South Asian weddings (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc) are a niche that is ready for a VIP experience. We think that there’s an audience, a very thin slice of the South Asian wedding market, that’s going to grow in value by having Floyd’s food for their wedding. So we’re now reaching out to the South Asian wedding community to identify the right clientele who’s going to value our service and cooking capacity, and his style and flavor profile.
Floyd is a rock star with a world-renowned restaurant in Mumbai. It was rated the best restaurant in India by Conde Nast Traveler just this year. We see it as a great opportunity to extend Floyd’s brand from restaurants to catering.
So is South Asian the new kosher?
Could be! First of all, if you look at India and its food as a culture with an incredibly rich history, it’s diverse and it’s getting worldwide attention. So we are able take a talent like Floyd’s and enable him for the first time to say yes to virtually any special event anywhere. We can also create more particular South Asian cuisines like having it be halal or all vegetarian, as is often the case with these events. We have accomplished this through our affiliation with an organization called LCA, Leading Caterers of America.
We can work and partner with caterers in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta or any other major city in North America as well as for destination weddings in Mexico and the Caribbean. Neuman’s Kitchen has a network of the top caterers in the country. We will be able to design and execute an event with Floyd’s cuisine with the use of these local production and coordination teams.
We’ll be enabling Floyd to not just do this in New York and Philadelphia with our commissaries and our people, but to do weddings wherever we go. Our goal is for him to be the face and the designer of the food. We’ll coordinate with the local caterers. We’ll send our teams out there to train, make sure the ingredients are right, and the recipes are right. Floyd will arrive basically for the wedding to be the face of the event and that makes everybody happy.
How has technology changed in the kitchen? Have there been significant differences in the way product gets created?
It’s such a great question. The answer is we are pretty technically advanced in terms of cooking equipment. So we’ve got all kinds of combi-ovens and the latest and the greatest in heating and thermalizing food.
Let’s face it, in New York we have the challenge of a $15 minimum wage. So finding equipment that can make us efficient is vital. We started by looking at the things that we do a thousand times a day with manual labor. We’re on the cusp as a pretty good size caterer to find manufacturing equipment.
What we are finding is that some of the equipment is scaled for the next level up. So for example, there may be a machine that costs $100K, but you need a production run of 10,000 dumplings to make the run worthwhile. We’re not there yet, but I think that we’re manufacturing where the food industry has to go.
The food service manufacturing industry has got to go towards robotics. The goal is not to cut our labor, it’s to make us more efficient. What will likely happen is that creating beautiful handmade food will be done by humans. The chopping, slicing, dicing, and creating a sushi rice bowl will be done mechanically. Here’s an example: we did a plated dinner for 1,850 people in Philly. We had 16 lines, eight lines per kitchen, two working kitchens, so we could get the service out and done in 16 minutes.
So I envision, and this is really out there, is a conveyor line where the hot plates are dropped on one end. The conveyor pulls the plates forward and there is a depositor at the top of the line to deposit, for instance, the base mashed potato. And I’m imagining a day where, instead of needing 80 chefs on 16 lines to plate out 1850 meals in 18 minutes. We can do a combination of human beings for the high-touch stuff and robots and conveyors for the serve outs. The plate is hotter than it could be because no one has to handle it. It drops on the end of the conveyor at 200 degrees. By the time it hits the end of the conveyor for the final wipe and sauce, it’s at a temperature the waiters can grab it with a napkin. So from our perspective we want to see companies invent machines that facilitate service and speed production, robotically.
What about in terms of food safety, through the years, has that always been a concern of yours, obviously?
We look at food safety as a three-tiered challenge. There’s the environment and the equipment, and then there’s the personnel.
We have a state-of-the-art kitchen, so food safety for us is about surfaces and about light in terms of the environment. The brighter a kitchen is the cleaner it is, the safer it stays.
Then we focus on the process and our people. We know the most beautiful equipment, in the most beautifully designed kitchen can be unsafe if your practices are not really compliant. So I think it’s two fold.
It’s about training and understanding by the people who don’t just make the food, but who handle the food after it comes out of the kitchen and gets delivered to the client. We’ve been lucky over the years and part of it is just diligence and constant focus on safety. But I think it’s really just a matter of having a culture of caring about our customer. For instance, you don’t set foot in our kitchen without a hair net.
Is there a move towards healthier menus?
Yes, but keep in mind that as caterers, Neuman’s Kitchen is designing menus for 100 to 400 plus guests.
So for instance, I went to a restaurant the other night with Floyd and our chef, and we ordered the steak, and it was fantastic. But we’re sitting there saying, “We can’t sell this on a catered event because so many guests now are more health conscious.”
We are finding more requests for vegan, healthier and lighter fare. At the same time, in any given event you’ve got meat and potatoes people. It’s the balancing act to make sure that everyone goes home happy, well fed, and whatever they consider to be healthy, beautiful food.
What about in terms of the other end of the spectrum? Is dessert a thing of the past?
Dessert has evolved into a mini theatrical experience. We want the dessert to almost make you do something that brings it to life. If there’s a chocolate dome, we want you to have to crack the dome with a spoon to reveal what’s below it. It’s an opportunity for us to get our guests engaged. Now having said that, there is an awareness of what’s healthy. We sell donuts, we sell fruit, we sell all kinds of gorgeous desserts for the special events, we try to elevate that desert to that sort of magical, interactive experience because it’s the last thing that the person is going to remember about the event.
What’s the environment like in running and operating a business in New York City today?
I don’t necessarily feel over regulated, but from time to time I scratch my head and go, we really have to do that? I feel like the city’s doing the right things to make it humanistic, a warmer, more pedestrian friendly city. Some of those things are contrary to my interest as a business person. I literally can’t drive down Broadway anymore because it’s too narrow and too slow. So, I think that some of the things that affect us adversely are good for the city and you have to bite the bullet. The $15 dollar an hour minimum wage was just the same kind of thing. I thought, when it came out, $9 to $11, no big deal. I am all for it and clients are aware that we are raising our prices because of it. I think pricing is a challenge for us now because we compete in several markets. Some of them are more price-sensitive than others, and we have to be careful because we’re not the lowest price operator.
What are your goals for building the next generation of the Neuman’s Kitchen team?
We’re very mindful of taking high performers and creating career paths for them within the company. So that someone who starts out as a junior planner can work their way up to a salesperson in three to five years. Some people are happy to stay where they’re at while others are ambitious, and we try to recognize them and grow them.
To learn more about Paul Neuman and Neuman’s Kitchen, visit their website.
