hello and happy new year
if you’re new — welcome to phuuds 2.0 — a place for my taste buds to wander and stumble upon some fun food ideas, updates on projects new and old, featured photos of frequent collaborators, dumb memes that’ll make you cackle, etc. what more could you want? subscribe to find out (what a cliffhanger!).
also if you want to contact me, email me at lara@🥚.kz.
building the filipino chipotle
one evening in october, my friend ben sent me this text:
after leaving curative, lots of people have asked me what’s next, will i to start my own thing? i’ve said no because 1) i don’t want to do it alone and i don’t have a ready co-founder and 2) i’m not sure i have the experience.
well, this text from ben kind of took care of both hesitations in that i’ve now got a co-founder and i also realized that imposter syndrome is something i’ll always be fighting but not a reason not to do a thing.
who is ben? well, in a sense, he’s family. this is a photo of one of the many incredible family dinners or “fam d’s” in mine and wyatt’s backyard in cambridge circa august 2019. ben is married to karina (to his right in the photo), who is the daughter of my parents’ best friends. when i moved to boston in 2017, they were my home base. as i adjusted somewhat ungracefully to a new climate and city, they not only kept me sane, they formed the most inclusive foundation to seed our little fam d community. they are good people and i miss living near them, so this is a pretty fun way to keep in touch <3
introducing, super galing
our working team name is super galing, which roughly translates to “nice!” or “awesome!” or “hell ya!”
our design challenge: design a covid-first filipino food experience
what does covid-first mean? we are living in a new era of dining where the pandemic has permanently changed the way we eat socially. after a few user interviews, we came up with this little design point-of-view statement to guide us:
let’s also not forget that it’s infrastructurally harder to run a food business that depends on indoor dining or the hosted retail experience. in addition to the worsening supply chain issues affecting businesses around the world, rising inflation and high turnover are costing companies millions of dollars in labor and operations costs.
but this provides a huge opportunity to explore what a food business would look like if we focused less on indoor dining, and more on operations in redefining takeout without sacrificing care and delight. i want to investigate the emotional determinants of dining out motivation and satisfaction. my current hypothesis is that it comes down to feeling “cared for” and “delighted with novelty” or surprise. i want to distill these concepts and separate them from their old formats (i.e. brick and mortar restaurants).
why filipino food? well we love it, and we also think america is ready for it. we’ll keep the menu super simple with two dishes — chicken adobo and oyster mushroom adobo. we already got feedback that msg might be controversial, and i’m both open to alternatives and education.
our initial idea was making a more personable “vending machine” that i called the “kusina portal.” think japanese vending machine or amazon locker but with lots of greenery and wood to make it warmer and less apocalyptic robot restaurant.
and don’t worry, we’ve got 4 master degrees between us and are thinking about how to make this thing economically viable.
ben and i are doing monthly design reviews where we present our latest pitch and musings to a group of trusted friends and family, who are smart, experienced, and most importantly, loving enough to give us harsh feedback (thank you). we presented the content above to them in december and already got some good intel on a direction to abandon (no vending machines). i’m using a handy venture design rubric that i learned during my vc days at matter. here’s how folks evaluated the first design review:
what’s next
báon: a filipino word that translates roughly to “a packed lunch.” it could also be a snack you bring or even allowance money (but for food).
i had this idea shortly after our first design review when it became very clear that vending machine idea did not have legs (at least as it is right now).
as a child of immigrants, i did not grow up bringing the quintessentially american brown paper bag lunch to school. instead, i had a full cooler that would perch atop my roller backpack (to carry all my gel pens) that contained:
a lovingly packed tupperware of rice, stewed meat, vegetables
sliced fruit
a capri sun
gushers, if i was lucky
an ice pack
at the time, my ungrateful ten-year-old self was mortified to be microwaving pungent brown mixtures, envious of my more conformist asian american friends who somehow convinced their parents to pack them pb&js or even better — lunchables.
it wasn’t until college that i heard from a few brown bag people that they secretly coveted immigrant kids’ menudo, adobo, daal, etc.
if our design constraints are to re-envision the takeout experience, then what better way than to leverage childhood nostalgia? it’s the original form factor for this food and it’s basically a happy meal for adults. stay tuned.
shout outs
ben for suggesting and embarking on this wiggly journey of starting a thing with me.
hana for always sharing her thoughts and recommendations on nostalgia — this podcast in particular sets the scene for the next post.
mert for introducing us to your incredible network so early on so we can pick their brains on restaurant industry know how.
scott and keilor for letting us interview you both and turn you into a d. school homework assignment.
design review pals! thank you for your feedback <3
asks
Book 30 min to chat with me about your childhood lunch experience
There’s still time to get in on my first ever nut mix at Nuts.com. The January mix is set to launch soon and it’s got caffeine AND superfoods.
meme time
not an original but a classic