What was your individual career path in terms of education/training, entry-level job, or other significant opportunity?

I stumbled upon a career in food by accident. Growing up in Arlington, Texas, I wanted to work in fashion and earned my degree in Fashion Merchandising at the University of North Texas. I minored in business and had various internships including at Ann Taylor in New York City. After I graduated, I worked in product development for County Seat stores in Dallas for three years—at the time, a competitor to the Gap—then went to graduate school at Clark Atlanta University for an MBA in marketing. I wanted to transition to magazine publishing, but an MBA doesn’t translate well to publishing. I ended up getting on a plane and moving to New York City, where I found an apartment and started looking for work. Six months later, I started as Assistant Manager of Corporate Marketing at Essence Magazine. I moved on to Condé Nast to work at Brides Magazine and focused on digital marketing. At the time, the question was: how do you create websites for magazines and sell advertising to support them? After I had my second child, I freelanced for three or four years at various magazine publishers, then returned to Condé Nast for five years. I was Digital Brand Development Director for W magazine, which was the liaison between editorial and advertising, when I was laid off as often happens in the corporate world.

I’d always wanted to own my own business and at that point I decided I wanted to launch a company doing something that did not feel like work. I enjoyed exercising, particularly lifting weights. So, I pursued a personal training certification with plans to launch a high-end concierge business around helping executives get healthy through fitness and eating nutritious meals. I started working with a chef to create recipes for a meal delivery service and began searching for a commercial kitchen to rent in my area. I was surprised to find that most small food businesses rented church kitchens and restaurants after hours.

Over time, I abandoned my plans to open a personal training and meal delivery business and pivoted to helping aspiring and established food business owners through commercial kitchen and storage space and food business education.

My market research study showed an overwhelming need: there were only six 24-hour commercial kitchens in New Jersey. At first, I was thinking in terms of a small property but after attending conferences and talking to people, a shared kitchen owner from Virginia recommended that I lease a warehouse space. She was right; I rented an empty white box and was able to build it out for my specific business needs.

I spent five years in business development and opened in December 2019. I started with two businesses as clients and have grown to twenty. I sell kitchen memberships. Members sign a short-term contract and can use the facility 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

During the time I was looking for a location, I launched an education program. What started as continuing education at a community college—workshops such as “The First 10 Steps to Starting a Food Business”—turned into a course called the Food Business Bootcamp^®, complete with an 80-page handbook. COVID-19 halted those courses for a year, but I am in the process of re-launching on a virtual platform.

My clients’ businesses are growing. Most are consumer-packed goods that sell direct to consumer through their websites. I also work with meal prep companies and food trucks. Hudson Kitchen also creates the benefit of being part of a community. Members seek each other out for business advice and benefit from cooperative purchasing to secure lower prices for ingredients and packaging.

What are the most important skills and/or qualities for someone in your profession?

You need to be able to step out there and take a risk. I started cold emailing and asking people to teach at my Bootcamp course or sit on a panel for a networking event and they would say, “yes.”

Also, when running a shared space, you encounter people from all walks of life so it’s important to have the ability to deal with different personalities. And, you need the ability to switch tasks quickly—one minute you’re giving a tour to a prospective client or being interviewed on a podcast and the next you are taking out the garbage.

What do you wish you had known going into this profession?

I think the fact that I did not have specific food experience or experience running a kitchen facility has helped me. I was not caught up in how things should be and focused on how I wanted them to be. Even in the financing process, I worked with small nonprofit organizations that read my business plan and made introductions, so I got offers from multiple banks. I didn’t know how many small business resources were available, and there are many—a lot for free or nominal costs.

I also realized along the way that businesses need more than just a place to cook. They need support—coaching, access to tools and resources that aid in business growth and most importantly, a community. That’s why I created a model, so my clients not only have access to a commercial kitchen, they also receive mentorship and training through our Food Business Bootcamp^® course. Also, with the architect plans, city permitting process, and construction build-out, it took longer than I anticipated to get the kitchen open.

Are there many job opportunities in your profession? In what specific areas?

Yes! It takes a lot of manpower to run a commercial kitchen. Specifically, operations, facilities management, and marketing are areas of opportunity.

What do you enjoy most about your job? What do you enjoy least about your job?

My job is so much fun! I enjoy helping people start their own food ventures because their backstories are so interesting. Having a human connection to my clients is very important—their families; what are their goals; do they want to grow into a national business. As my business grows, I plan to delegate more of the day-to-day kitchen management duties to other employees so that I can focus on the thing that I love most, developing educational programming for members and the community at large.

Can you suggest a valuable “try this” for students considering a career in your profession?

In order to understand the ins and outs of running a shared kitchen business, I recommend that students shadow a kitchen manager for a day. Also, it’s important to understand the different types of businesses that work out of a shared kitchen, so consider getting a job on a food truck or working the booth at a farmers’ market.

What was your individual career path in terms of education/training, entry-level job, or other significant opportunity?

My family moved to Auburn, Maine when I was four. I went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, because I am a baseball player, and they really wanted me to play for their baseball team. They gave me my best financial aid package, and I enjoyed the small liberal arts college atmosphere. But going into college, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life—maybe be an educator. I found my way to the philosophy department and realized it was at the root of history and politics. Throwing any desire for financial security to the wind, I became a philosophy major and earned my BA in the subject.

I graduated, traveled, worked in restaurants, and applied for a job at a wholesale seafood company in Portland simply as a means to pay the bills. I scaled and gutted fish in the production room and very much enjoyed the camaraderie in the packing room. I quickly became fascinated with the product, which included seafood from Europe and Japan and, of course, domestic harvests. I left to teach for a year, then hit the Appalachian Trail. When I returned, I applied again at the seafood company, this time for a job in the sales department and stayed for 16 years. I rose through the ranks until I was pretty much running the show, directing production, purchasing, sales, and dealing with top accounts including chefs at white tablecloth restaurants. My last titles were Senior Account Manager and Wholesale Sales Manager.

About the time I returned to the seafood company, my now-wife and I partnered with a friend to buy a 4-unit apartment building in Portland. We lived in one apartment as we renovated, moving from one apartment to the next as work progressed. That was my first taste of entrepreneurship. Through our sweat equity we were able to pay our bills with the rents and provide housing for three other family units. It was a good feeling. It also led us to buy other units over the next 15 years, and now we operate Myers Property Management. It has created a capital stream, something we can fall back on if one of us loses our job. That has been a big part of me being able to dead focus on my entrepreneurial drive.

In the seafood industry, I saw a niche opportunity. I dealt with a lot of caterers who not only needed 500 oysters but by the way, do you sell oyster knives and know anybody who shucks oysters? The idea came to me that I could be that person. I could create a mobile oyster bar and subcontract to caterers, and they could deal with the clients and pay me directly. I could still have my foot in the seafood industry, maybe diversify, and eventually sell the carts as units to other people.

This was a low-cost entry into the market. I had the skill set to do it, and it was a wide-open door for me to walk through. At the same time, my children were little, my wife and I were both working, and we basically had a straight hand-off caring for the kids when I got home at 5 or 6 p.m. This situation was another reason pushing me to get out of a job that was demanding 60 or 70 hours a week and put that time toward something that was my own.

The O’Oyster cart is like a rickshaw. I also designed shucking tables that can get to a place the cart can’t go, like the beach. I got licensed as a caterer and mobile food vendor—the cart goes in back of a trailer, I park anywhere and roll the cart to where it needs to be. The cart looks great. I set up at the ferry and cruise ship terminals or the farmer’s market in Portland. I park it at a rural farm wedding. All the sudden, caterers were calling. People hired me for private parties.

COVID shut down those parties, and we backed off oysters. That gave me time to focus on the next stage of my long-term business goal, which was to start a wholesale seafood company. I could buy oysters direct from the harvester and supply my company, increase margins, and reduce costs. If I were to franchise my carts, I could supply the oysters. A colleague who wanted to sell seafood to restaurants joined forces with me, and we formed SoPo Seafood. We sell in our area, and we’ve also developed an online presence so people from all over the country can purchase from us. I can send oysters with an oyster glove and knife, and people can watch my tutorial on how to shuck an oyster.

We are focused on Maine harvest such as finfish like cod, monk, hake, and haddock. We get scallops through divers and dayboat fishermen. We bring in wild Alaskan sockeye salmon and have a caviar line from domestic farm-raised sturgeon.

Now we are aiming to open a brick-and-mortar retail shop in South Portland this spring. This is located on a critical side of a bridge into Portland that gets clogged with traffic in summer. The retail store will include a restaurant with a raw bar and dishes such as crab salads and lobster rolls that are simply presented so people get the confidence to do something similar at home.

What are the most important skills and/or qualities for someone in your profession?

A sense of calm under pressure, ability to multitask, determination, a commitment to professionalism, “people skills,” and adept mathematics.

What do you wish you had known going into this profession?

I wish I had known a benevolent, wealthy, silent, angel investor.

Right now, I’m self-financed. I’m applying to a bank for a business loan this week and have made a connection to a seafood-focused lender. It’s what I want to be doing but it’s a little nerve-wracking.

Are there many job opportunities in your profession? In what specific areas?

Yes, in sales. People who can sell are the stars of our industry.

How do you see your profession changing in the next 5 years? How will technology impact that change, and what skills will be required?

There’s a constant push in the seafood industry to remove the wholesaler from the supply chain. Technology may finally allow this to happen on a macro scale. Online markets will take the place of the wholesaler allowing harvesters to market themselves and direct-ship to end users. Not on the micro scale though, those who maintain a commitment to professionalism and are skilled learners will be able to flourish in niche boutique markets.

What do you enjoy most about your job? What do you enjoy least about your job?

I enjoy my product most. Oysters are my favorite. Eating an oyster that’s really good is just the most satisfying gastronomical experience I can have.

I do not enjoy when variables outside of my control result in a customer’s dissatisfaction.

Can you suggest a valuable “try this” for students considering a career in your profession?

Start small. My love for oysters resulted in this goal of having an oyster bar and starting with a cart was an entry into the field of oysters that was very feasible for me to do with little risk. Starting small forces you to think creatively.