The Pump New York City
I moved to New York City with no job, rented a sublet for three months. Within days, I got a call from Adam Eskin, a brilliant new CEO of a famed healthy-eating chain The Pump Energy Food. They had a half dozen locations and a strong following with the Fashion and Finance industries — people crazy about what they were eating. At that time, it was all about no calories and no carbs and fat free… and “fake food”. But taking what I learned about food at Chipotle, Adam and I set out to redefine what healthy was to New Yorkers. Out went the imitation food, fat-free and sugar-free and in went Real Food, made from scratch, from whole, unprocessed ingredients. Gone were the frozen turkey burgers loaded with fake ingredients, in went Bison Meatballs. Out went tasteless and bland boiled chicken and spinach, in went shredded 12 Hour Turkey, cooked with steam and marinated in an orange ginger brine.
It was hard. With no budgets, we had to do everything on a shoestring. We had to close down restaurants, remodel them. Piss off customers who didn’t believe us. We started to education people through chalkboards and menus and posters. We had to create a Culture of Food, with a team of untrained but hard working folks, crammed into tight working conditions. Unfortunately, 2009 hit and our major Private Equity investor backed out without notice. Gone was the dream of building 100 restaurants, so I left, knowing that the five store business could not afford my salary and the CEOs.
Adam continued down that path to great success. To shed the burden of reinventing a living concept, he decided to rebrand the restaurant Dig Inn and has gone on to great success, opening over 30 restaurants in NY, Boston, Philly and other cities and attracting huge investments from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group.
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ADVERTISING, BRANDING, CULTURE, DESIGN, GRASSROOTS, MENU DEVELOPMENT
I moved to New York City with no job, rented a sublet for three months. Within days, I got a call from Adam Eskin, a brilliant new CEO of a famed healthy-eating chain The Pump Energy Food. They had a half dozen locations and a strong following with the Fashion and Finance industries — people crazy about what they were eating. At that time, it was all about no calories and no carbs and fat free… and “fake food”. But taking what I learned about food at Chipotle, Adam and I set out to redefine what healthy was to New Yorkers. Out went the imitation food, fat-free and sugar-free and in went Real Food, made from scratch, from whole, unprocessed ingredients. Gone were the frozen turkey burgers loaded with fake ingredients, in went Bison Meatballs. Out went tasteless and bland boiled chicken and spinach, in went shredded 12 Hour Turkey, cooked with steam and marinated in an orange ginger brine.
It was hard. I whole new menu. A whole new design. A whole new operating system. We had to close down restaurants, remodel them. Piss off customers who didn’t believe us. We started to education people through chalkboards and menus and posters. We had to create a Culture of Food, with a team of untrained but hard working folks, crammed into tight working conditions. Unfortunately, 2009 hit and our major Private Equity investor backed out without notice. Gone was the dream of building 100 restaurants, so I left, knowing that the five store business could not afford my salary and the CEOs.
Adam continued down that path to great success. To shed the burden of reinventing a living concept, he decided to rebrand the restaurant Dig Inn and has gone on to great success, opening over 30 restaurants in NY, Boston, Philly and other cities and attracting huge investments from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group.