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The REAL issue with school lunchs

Published on March 1, 2012 in Running A Restaurant. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This week’s local news is rife with lively discussions around Food Trucks and their vicinity to Public and Private schools. The debate centers around a proposed state law that would enforce a 1,500-foot ban of food trucks around schools throughout California.

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener is working hard to oppose the proposed law, arguing that this would effectively wipe out food trucks from the vast majority of SF without solving the root issues related to kids eating habits.

On the other hand, and what I’m super curious about since I have two children in San Francisco public schools, is the rationale behind this proposed law. Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel), who introduced the legislation, believes this works on his goal of reducing childhood obesity and associated health risks AND would also keep food trucks from competing financially with the school districts’ lunch programs.

Parent groups say the plan will just make it easier for kids to snack on unhealthy meals.

The result, in my opinion, is that we tighten the noose even more around small businesses, another knock down against people’s entrepreneurial spirits and greatly reduce the vitality and diversity of food in SF.

This legislation is not in touch with the reality of the situation. For one, most kids (including all elementary school kids) are not even allowed out for lunch. Then the assumptions that all food trucks serve junk food are not based in reality. And how does this legislation deal with the fact that there are already corner stores, fast food restaurants and liquor stores right next to schools with no bans?

On school lunches, wow, that program really really is an absolute farce to be called healthy food. Mr Bill so and so, you have a LONG way to go. Focus on improving school lunch instead of wasting your time on meaningless bans.

I asked my kids to write me a short blog about their experiences with school lunch at their public school. They of course are utterly unaware of all the legislation going on. Check them out.

My 10 year old son’s blog about school lunch

I think that my school really needs to change and improve their school lunch. First of all the lunches are never made at the school. It’s always made by some big company. The school doesn’t even have a kitchen, just a room where they store all the food.

Also the food is very unhealthy. 60% of the time, it’s a lunch heavy on cheese, such as pizza and macaroni and cheese this food called pizza strips. Pizza strips are basically a giant amount of melted cheese and a thin layer of bread wrapping around the cheese. The other 40% of the time it’s meals heavy on carbs and processed meat. Such as hot dogs, burgers and bagel dogs. Bagel dogs are basically bagel bread wrapped around a hot dog.

A lot of the lunch is in bad shape. Like the lunch is always cold. Once my milk came out in chunks. Another time the cheese was so hard, I could take the cheese off.

I think that no-body should eat school lunch. If nobody had school lunch a lot of people would save money. With the three dollars they spend on lunch they could walk across the street and buy a nice roast beef sandwich or a bit of mediterranean food and a drink. My main point is that schools need to improve their lunch.

My 7-year old daughter’s blog about School Lunch

Sometimes I wonder why people get excited for school lunch? I don’t, do you? It’s often unhealthy too. Once my cheese on my pizza wasn’t there and another time it looked really fake. Another time my milk had ice in it. I think they should maybe make the food the night before so it’s more fresh. Or they could make the food more healthier. I like my home lunch better because I know someone actully put an effort into it. When mama gives me money for school lunch I sometimes say ”awww’ and ‘Mamaaa’ and last but not least ‘please don’t make me’. And that’s all I’ve got to say.

The Marina Experiment is Over

Published on February 26, 2011 in Kasa Behind The Scenes, Marina Neighborhood News and Running A Restaurant. 10 Comments
This Sunday, 2/27 at 10pm, we’re closing the doors on our Marina location for good.  It’s been a long time coming after an extremely difficult year in business.  The original Kasa in the Castro was busy right out of the gate and fortunately has remained that way ever since.  Kasa Castro was the first restaurant venture Anamika, Suresh, and I have ever participated in, and honestly we took its success for granted.  We thought: provide delicious and unique food and good service at a reasonable price, and you’ll make a profit.  And amazingly we were right!
Until we weren’t.  At all.  The Marina store proved us wrong and showed us exactly what everybody kept telling us–that the restaurant business is HARD and fraught with risk.  And that we were lucky to have a success under our belt.  Despite making some classic rookie mistakes in the Marina (the space was too big for our concept so never had that “packed” look we wanted, the color pallet was too dark for the space, no TVs despite the Marina’s sport-obsessed residents), we put everything we had into making that store busier and successful.  The food reviews were really solid, repeat business was strong, but attracting enough interest and ultimately enough trial just never happened.  How could two very similar restaurants with identical food yield such different results? Sometimes it felt like the stores were in two different states!
We spent the last year trying to turn things around and finally decided a few months ago to exit the location.  People usually offer their condolences when we tell them we’re closing, but truthfully at this point it’s a great relief.  We learned many lessons from this failure, but thankfully it didn’t bring down our entire business.  Those lessons turned out to be at a great financial cost (my dad would call it tuition), but hopefully we will use our new knowledge wisely as we continue our quest to get more people eating Kasa’s kati rolls and homestyle Indian food.
On a personal note, I will miss our loyal Marina customers.  You all kept praising our food and thanking us for being in the neighborhood.  You made those not-quite-busy-enough, stressful evenings at the restaurant bearable for me.  You know who you are, and I thank you.  Please come visit me in the Castro.
As for the future, we are still planning to roll out a food truck called The Kati Roller sometime before summer.  There will likely be another (much smaller) location in the works toward the end of this year as well.  Although I’m not allowed to spill the beans yet, there is another operator with an exciting concept taking over our space in the Marina in the coming months.
Goodbye, Marina.
Tim

Giving Thanks to Food Runners

Published on November 11, 2010 in Kasa Behind The Scenes and Running A Restaurant. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The holiday season is officially here with the Union Square Christmas tree going up tonight!

With Thanksgiving  around the corner, I wanted to send a huge THANK YOU to Food Runners, a noble and well-run charity organization.

For the last two and a half years, Food Runner volunteers have diligently picked up leftover food from Kasa and distributed it around the city to those less fortunate and facing hard times. Although they are always saying thank you to us, it is in fact us who should constantly thank them.

The first few nights when Kasa was opened, we would throw away leftover food, not knowing what else to do with it. This really made my stomach turn, as I felt I was committing a grave sin, having always been brought up with the ‘Don’t waste food’ edict.

I spent many hours trying to find an organization that would take the food from us and distribute it to the needy. You would think in a city with a huge homeless population like ours, this would be a piece of cake!

But there are legal and political issues that make this extremely difficult. Not to mention that the organization needs to be well run with a network of volunteers to actually collect the food and deliver it around the city.

So again, I am extremely thankful to Food Runners and wanted to share with you all what a wonderful job they do in not letting any of our food go to waste.

Thank You Food Runners!

Kasa’s Love / Hate Relationship with Yelp

Published on July 6, 2010 in Kasa Behind The Scenes and Running A Restaurant. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , .
How do I feel about Yelp?  Hmmm. If I’m really honest, I would say we have an intense love/hate relationship.
Kasa Castro and Kasa Marina are blessed to have excellent Yelp ratings — “people love us on yelp” :) — and many new customers find their way to our doors via Yelp.  For this, I am grateful and LOVE Yelp.
I also LOVE Yelp when we get reviews where people get our concept, appreciate our passion and recognize the food’s authenticity and quality.
And even though one of the hardest things on this planet is to receive negative feedback, we carefully study feedback as it allows us to learn what we are doing well and ways we can improve.  We also get to see how my staff is doing in delighting customers.
For all this, I also LOVE Yelp.
However (and you knew there’d be a however)….there are times when I want to tear my hair out, throw my laptop out the window and scream to no one in particular: “Come and say that to my face!”  Or “Go get a life!”  Or “What in the world are you talking about?” and “Clearly you are a vicious competitor posing as a Yelper!” (Whew, that felt good.)
Those outbursts are aimed at the small minority of Yelpers who have no idea about the topic that they have a strong negative opinion on.
My favourite examples are:
“The naan didn’t taste like naan.”  –> That’s because we don’t serve naan. We serve roti.
“Why are they serving Mexican black beans?”  –> We don’t serve black beans. We serve black lentils (daal).  There are dozens of different types of lentils.
“Why are there white people serving us Indian food?” —> We live in the United States of America!
And my favourite most hated comment: “It’s Americanized Indian food.”  –> It’s homestyle Indian food, different to what people may have tried before.
There isn’t much to do during these moments.  My first reaction is to fume and feel hurt and disappointed that people don’t realize their flippant remarks affect the hard work and love that we put into our business. Eventually I get over it, read the review again to see if there is useful feedback and remember why I love Yelp.
But I do secretly wish that I could concoct my own 1 to 5 star rating of these handful of ignorant yelpers based on the following criterion:
1 – How cute were they?
2 – How funny were they?
3 – How cheap (with their tip)?
4 – How clean (did they buss their table)?
5 – How polite?
But who has time for that? I just get back to trying to delight each and every customer… and the love/hate relationship with Yelp continues…

The Resiliency of an Entrepreneur

Published on May 12, 2010 in Balancing Restaurant Life and Family Life, Existential Ruminations, Kasa Behind The Scenes and Running A Restaurant. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

So Suresh (my wonderful husband, co-owner of Kasa, Google employee) is speaking next week at the San Francisco Small Business Conference about how small businesses can use online tools to manage their business (using Kasa as a case study).  It got me thinking about entrepreneurship and how much resiliency is required to be successful.

When we meet other small business owners, there is a definite and instant camaraderie, an unspoken understanding that we belong to the same club.  No matter our product or service, our shared painful, exhausting, rewarding and sometimes humiliating experiences bond us together (even if we mercilessly compete with each other).

Acquaintances often ask us to share our experience of running a restaurant as they consider embarking on their own dream venture, so this post is for those brave souls.  I will say that Tim, Suresh and I are still seriously in learning mode even after 2 years, but so far this is a collection of what I’ve learned.

If you’re confident about your food and can raise enough money to get started, then you’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg. Thereafter, no matter how much preparation and due diligence you’ve done, chaos will ensue.  This is some of what we have been dealing with:

  • Smelling of Chicken Tikka ALL the time
  • Not seeing your children and family for days at a time (no exaggeration)
  • Being self critical to an extreme and disciplining yourself with an iron fist
  • Scrubbing things clean for hours
  • Lifting stuff so heavy, you permanently have shoulder or wrist aches
  • Controlling your emotions, not showing how upset or angry you are
  • Stopping yourself from stalking and throttling an ignorant yelper (although mostly people LOVE US ON YELP, and we LOVE them…   :)
  • Paying attention to mind numbingly boring details
  • Thinking, eating, sleeping and dreaming your restaurant
  • Listening to everyone on your staff’s issues and dealing with them
  • Going wherever necessary with your menu to shamelessly promote your restaurant
  • Making mistakes and moving on optimistically
  • Learning Spanish at 10pm at night after a long day at work
  • Watching your friends have a social life on the weekends without you since it’s your busiest work time
  • Trusting your instincts and confidently hiring (and firing) people
  • Forgetting about privacy – your phone is on 24/7
  • Having unyielding faith in your food and concept
  • Giving up everything you own to the bank, including your first born child
  • Did I mention…smelling of Chicken Tikka ALL the time!

On the flip side, there is nothing more I would rather be doing with my life as I love Kasa deeply — despite the occasions when I feel I can’t take the stress any more, like the time I checked myself into a hotel for the weekend, told Suresh and Tim I wasn’t coming in and switched my phone off.  I pretended to be a tourist with my English accent, walked the city, met a bunch of friendly Americans who gave me recommendations on where to eat, shopped and went back to Kasa recharged.

Most importantly, prepare to pace yourself and take a vacation before a breakdown.

If you’re still up for plunging ahead despite all this, then you’re as mad as we are and we look forward to bonding with you as a comrade in arms one day.

Anamika