Pushkin. Anthony Strong got his first restaurant job when he was in high school.
It was like day one in a kitchen. Really, I was like, oh, this is my jam right here. And then I proceeded to cut like four of my fingertips off on a box grader that same day.
So his fingertips healed, and he worked his way up in the restaurant industry, moved from his hometown to New York City and then to San Francisco, where in two thousand and eight he got to do what so many chefs dream of doing, and what he himself had been dreaming of doing for decades. He opened his own restaurant. It was called Prairie.
It was eighty seats, We had three different charcoal grills and full bar. It was busy, it was really well received, but.
As a business, as a way to make a living.
Sucked paper thin margins. A high labor business, very high labor business. You're spending a ton of money on very expensive ingredients. It's a very packed, very competitive sector, so it's hard to it's hard to stand out.
It's a classic restaurant story and one that ultimately led Anthony to try something really different. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem. My guest today is Anthony Strong. He's the chef and owner of Pasta Supply Co, a retail store and restaurant in San Francisco. Anthony's problem is this, how can you make a new kind of restaurant, one that serves good fresh food at a reasonable price and actually works as a business. Anthony's quest started during the pandemic.
He closed his restaurant Prairie, and he started trying to figure out how to create something simpler, something made for a moment when people were not gathering indoors. One day, you saw the answer sitting by the curb outside his house.
My neighbor across the street had a vintage VW van and VW camper like an eighty two, and she actually caught me out there with a measuring tape standing outside of her van to see if I could get seventy inches is all you need from back of seat to back of seat to make a comfortable, you know, dining situation. She came out and she's like, excuse me, hey, what are you doing. I'm like, mind if I look in
your van, by the way, are you selling it? She wasn't, but I was able to figure out that I could build a table for four that would be pretty comfortable inside of a similar model, and found one on Craigslist, drove up to Oregon with a friend to get it, and then built the thing out with a pretty like you'd be shocked, very surprisingly comfortable dining room.
And the dining room is a table in the back of a van.
Just to be clear, So the dining room when you know these old vans, they have that sliding door, and the dining room is just inside the sliding door, right in the middle, and the back is where I built the kitchen. I had a charcoal grill that rolled out and a whole kitchen set up, and I did two seatings of four people a night. I think the menu started around somewhere just above one hundred bucks a person and ended up being close to two hundred of person.
Pretty high end, very high end, particularly for the fact that it's in a van down by the very Did it work as a business.
It worked. It worked as a business because because there wasn't any overhead and it was just me and one person helping to clean a van and prep. But the
important thing about it is It got me. It sort of snapped me out of restaurant mind, the sort of like herd mentality of the standard model of restaurant, which is, okay, you need to have eighty seats and a full bar, and a restaurant that has a host and a wine person on the floor and all of these moving parts that it takes to orchestrate, you know, a semi fine dining restaurant. So I sort of realized that maybe there could be an option outside of that.
Anthony wound up opening a new restaurant in San Francisco in March of twenty twenty three. It was called Pasta supply Co, and he was really trying to do something different. To understand how and why this restaurant is different, I asked Anthony to take me through going to eat dinner there and to tell me all the ways Pasta Supply Co is different than the traditional nice restaurant experience.
Will you start by not making your reservation? We don't take reservations. We're walking only cutting out having to pay a reservation platform.
What's it cost to pay a reservation platform? Like you're talking about like open table or rezi right, like these kinds of online platforms where you make a reservation online.
Yep, yep, my old place. We're spending twenty five twenty seven hundred a month. Wow, because you pay a fee and then you also pay per reservation, and if you want more visibility on their platform, you pay an additional marketing package.
So okay, so I don't make a reservation. I walk into your restaurant pasta supply co. Just in terms of what I see when I walk in the door, how is it different than a traditional restaurant.
Yeah, when you walk in the door, it's very clear that you're eating an apasta shop. You see a huge retail display with tons of fresh pasta for sale, like thirty different kinds and twenty ish different sauces to work with and all sorts of fun you know, ingredients for the kitchen.
It's like basically one side of the restaurant is essentially like a deli counter. Right, there's like a glass case and there's pasta in it. It's sort of a hybrid, right, there's like tables and then there's kind of a retail store in the same space. Tell me about the business thinking behind that setup.
The reason for doing that was to have a business that could stand on two legs and be a little bit more durable long term. You know, in a restaurant, you're trying to make all of your money by filling up seats from hopefully the minute that you open until the minute that you close at night. The reality is the middle fills in pretty quickly and everybody's trying to
fill early sittings or late seatings. And you know, with all of the resources that it takes to pull off a restaurant, like, making money that way is tough.
I mean, it is amazing when you think about it. Like you got to pay rent, you know, for being there all the time, which in San Francisco is especially significant, right an expensive place to rent a shop, and for a restaurant, there's like maybe four hours of the day when you're actually making money, right and the rest of the time the space is just sitting there and you're paying for it.
Oh, it's crazy, it's so onch So.
That's like a thesis, right, you have this thesis. Well, maybe if we could be selling fresh pasta all day long, that'll help bring in money at you know, three in the afternoon when we'd be making zero dollars otherwise. Is that working.
It's working really well. Yep, yep, you know, I'm I'm shocked at how well it's working. And in fact, we have people coming in all day long grabbing stuff to work with at home.
So okay, So first thing I see when I go to your restaurant is it's not just a restaurant. It's a store. Good, We've got that. What else when I get to the restaurant? What else is different?
When you get to the restaurant, you're greeted by a host at the door, which is totally normal, right, but that host is standing right at the door usually outside the host asks you for your order, we give you a menu, and we talk to you about food right up front, and we get your whole order right there.
So that's a little more like a what would typically be a fast casual thing. Right. That's a little bit sort of like at a Chipotle or a Sweet Grain or something, Right. I mean, that's the kind of as a diner had that kind of experience.
Why, yeah, kind of. You know, I was really interested in coming up with a model that could be casual but wouldn't make you like get a number on a stick and go bust your own table, right, like I want.
We wanted to give a few more service touch points than than that, And so when you order with our host, you get the kind of the front end of the dining experience out of the way right away, right and then when you sit down at your table, the wine hits the table ten seconds later, your salad and your other appetizer hit a couple minutes after that, and then we land passes on your table within you know, fifteen
minutes or so. It's like it just goes so much, so much more efficiently, And you know, it's not for everybody, by the way, Like we're definitely not the towel over your arm.
I'm an impatient diner myself. I'd way rather walk around the block when my pasta is cooking than sit at a table. But I'm curious, as you say, not everybody like that. It's non traditional for a nicer restaurant, Like why did you make that particular choice.
We chose to do that because it cuts on average twelve to fifteen minutes we found of dead time. I'm off the front end of every seating.
So the dead time is a person just sitting there at the table and nothing's happening.
Just sitting there. In fact, In fact, that's when you start catching up because you're out to eat with your friends, right, and you're sort of looking at the menu and you're sort of talking about how your day went. Then the server checks back in to see if you want stiller sparkling water or you want to start with the beverage, and then you say, hey, just a second, yeah, sure, Yeah. It's like, oh my god, it's excruciating for a restaurant.
You're just sitting there watching the table be dead, and so in a in a restaurant, we're constantly on people to get those orders in as fast as possible.
Right. It's sort of analogous to the to the restaurant being empty most of the day.
Right.
This is now you're at key time, you know, a few hours of the day when you can actually make money. But that table is just sitting there and you're not turning it over.
Right.
You want to maximize the percentage of time when somebody's at a table that they're eating and drinking. You don't want them filling up a table when everybody wants to eat and not having food in front of.
Them, right, right, actual active engaged customer time, Yes, and we're able to price more competitively because of it, which is something that is huge in a city as expensive as San Francisco. You know, a normal fine dining or semi fine dining restaurant, you're seeing pasta prices way up past the mid twenties these days, and you're paying for that debt.
Thirty bucks for a bullet pasta would make me very sad.
Yep, it's it's pretty tough. So our version is cutting off some of the some of the bs off the front of the dinner.
We'll be back in a minute to discuss, among other things, one of the most interesting complicated dynamics in the restaurant business, tipping. Now back to the show. So, so let's talk about the menu. So I before I even walk into the restaurant, I'm looking at the menu. How does your menu look different than a typical restaurant menu.
So our menu is just two or three salads, that's it, five or six pastas, we change them pretty regularly, and no entrees. We're not trying to promise the world to people, you know, we can't. We're not going to roast a chicken.
So what is having a smaller menu do for you?
As a business, So the smaller menu is all about efficiency and doing more with less. You know, our we're a pasta shop. Our entire focus is pasta is using that one product, and we're not getting in a chicken and brining it and having it take up space overnight in the refrigerators so that the skin can dry out a little bit and then roasting that. Like all pastas are literally just like boil, cook them with the sauce for a minute or two and then they get sent
to the table. So we just see a lot more efficiency from like really focusing on specializing on that one really high quality product.
You're basically a pasta factory.
Little pasta factory, and in fact it's everything is right on display there and people love it. You know. I really wanted to bring some wow moments to a retail storefront. And when people walk in and they see the pasta being made right in front of them on these on these machines with conveyor belts, it's like it's so exciting for them, it's so fun. It gets engaged in their food, which actually brings up another point, which is we don't make any pastas by hand. Okay, you know, I in Italy.
You've got like ten grandmas. I've gotten to sit at a lot of tables with you know, half a dozen or so grandmas sitting around a table making tiny little tourdolini with their hands, right. And you know, for us, when we first opened, we were making some you know, very labor intensive, tiny, tiny handmade shapes and you spend like two hours making a dozen or so orders of something, so you sell out immediately. And I really didn't want to be the place that had to charge forty dollars
a pound for some precious boutique product. Right, So we make thirty different shapes using this huge extruder machine, and also another one that makes rolled in filled pastas with all these cool conveyor belts. It goes, it goes really fast.
So what do you charge? What's a bowl of pasta cost at your restaurant?
All of our pastas are I think right now twenty one dollars in lower on the menu.
So just to go back to like the arc of my meal at Pasta Supply Co, I've I haven't made a reservation, I've showed up, I've seen that it's a retail store. I've ordered before I sit down it's a small menu. Once I sit down, is it just like a normal restaurant? What's different? Once I sit down?
Once you sit down, it's basically like a normal restaurant. It was kind of surprising to me how normal it felt just after having people order it the door. It just feels normal. The food hits the table, we bring you, you know, your water and your wine, and you can easily get another glass of wine without getting up and going to a counter or anything weird like, and it's a pretty normal feeling, you know, restaurant. It's It's funny.
A friend of mine was like, hey, like you got to keep your business model to yourself, right, Like that whole order at the door thing, Like that's a that's a gold mine, dude, Like, don't tell anybody about I'm like no, no, fact, Like please, restaurants, please just start doing this. It works so much better. And the more acclimated people get to this type of thing, the better it is for all of us. We kind of need to snap out of it a little bit.
So then my meal is done, I get the check. How does the check look different than a typical restaurant check.
Well, the check looks quite a bit different because it's very much more affordable than you would normally find in a city like San Francisco. And then we also add on a service charge. Ours is pretty modest fifteen percent, and we right now we're still leaving the option to add an optional to add a gratuity.
But the fifteen percent is basically is basically the tip.
It's basically in lieu of tips.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in live tips. So that is a whole thing, right, like tipping is a whole thing. It's a kind of a uniquely American thing, right, you go to restaurants in other countries, it's not customary to tip in the way that it is here. Why did you make that choice?
I made that choice on principle the whole system is messed up because not only does it create a huge wage disparity between a lot of front and back of the house employees in a single restaurant.
So the people getting tipped end up making a lot more than the people working on the line in the kitchen or washing dishes.
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I remember at times when I was a chef of a restaurant working eighty hour weeks, I'd make less than a server who worked for a few shifts on a really busy section. So you know that just that just doesn't work really, And also it creates a creates a vibe I guess you know in the in the in the customer and server relationship that is just generally unhealthy. It leads to things like, yeah, I'm not sure how into tipping out want to get? It's a pretty hot.
It leads to like sexual harassment being normalized, right, I mean, I don't know if that's what you were thinking of. It leads to like power dynamics and gender dynamics in particular between the customers and the servers. That can be really unhealthy.
It's a very unhealthy thing.
Yeah, And so how does the service charge work in terms of employee compensation? Do you just pay the staff a higher wage than you otherwise would or does that how does that work? Yep?
We we pay the staff a higher wage and are able to factor in, you know, things that most normal businesses do when they decide compensation, like tenure and performance.
So, okay, so you have created this restaurant that's different in a lot of ways than a traditional restaurant. Right, there's no reservations, half retail, you order when you get there, it's a smaller menu. The service charge is baked in. How's it working as a business.
It's working very well. Yep. We're paying people well. Our costs are significantly lower. Let me put it this way. I haven't skipped a paycheck since we open.
You personally, because you mean, there's always enough money to make payroll, so you can pay yourself and everybody else.
Yep, yep, And that's rare for a lot of restaurants.
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back to show. Let's finish with a lightning round. Okay, answer questions. Okay, that are kind of fun. What's the hardest thing about cooking for customers out of a van? Yeah?
Uh, being the chef, Saintmelier, and server and the guy who's trying to fight off the seagulls all at the same time.
The seagulls I didn't think of as one of the challenges of selling pasta out of a van down by the bay. Who's your favorite character in the Bear?
Oh? God, favorite character in the Bear would be the Sioux chef, just like young going at it.
Yeah, neurotic, but in the most charming way. It's kind of what I'm going for.
Definitely neurotic. She's like, she's like straight out I know her, you know, I know, like so many of her in our business.
She feels very real, doesn't she feel very real?
She really really is.
Yeah, what's one thing I can do to cook better pasta?
Mmm? So you need to take it out of the water a minute even two minutes ahead of time, and give it enough time to get to know the sauce in the pan, pull it from the water, hold on to some of that cooking water, some of that pasta water. It's like gold. It's got all the starch in it. And you can add small amounts at a time to
the sauce. But like giving those two the sauce in the pasta time to cook together in the pan, will like adhere the sauce to the pasta properly and just make a significantly better product.
I feel compelled to say that my wife already does that, but I do not.
Okay, point to her, Yeah, yeah, point to her.
What's the most underrated pasta shape?
Ooh, dang, that's a good one. Let's see here. It's such a heated topic for me, So honestly, like underrated
pasta shape is rigatoni. It's a hollow, straight tube, but that's like typically ridged on the outside, right, And I feel like rigatoni is something that you know, it's just sort of seen as basic like spaghetti, right, but but it holds the juicy sauce inside so that it just like snap when you snap into the pasta just gushes into your mouth, and that like delicate little ridge on the outside gives a little bit of tongue tickle and
helps it adhere to the sauce. Like it's such a it's such a like common yet just absolutely lovely shape.
Well, I gotta ask, what's the most overrated pasta shape?
Oh? Man, what's the most overrated pasta shape? Oh? Dude, angel hair? What is up with angel hair? Passa? It's so thin? Like, okay, I get thin and delicate right like, But there's so many better thin and delicate pasta shapes that are long and slurpable, that don't just disintegrate and sauce immediately. Angel hair not into it.
Yeah, I feel like there was a weird angel hair bubble in maybe the nineties.
It was very nicety.
You don't know how old you are, but I will have to remember. Yeah, what are you going to go do? Right now?
Right now? I Am going to go downstairs and see if we have enough semolina showing up for the weekend.
It's flower basically, yeah.
North American Organic, Durham.
Someone you don't have flower, your screw.
If we don't have flower, good luck with your business model if you can't make the pasta.
Anthony Strong is the chef and owner of Pasta Supply Code. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo, edited by Karen Schakerji, and engineered by Sarah Breugeer. If you like the show, please tell somebody about it or review it on whatever podcast app you use. If you don't like the show, don't review it, but email us and tell us how we could make it better. You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot Fm. I'm Jacob Goldstein and will be back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem