Last year was an interesting one. In early April, I got one of those last minute meeting requests from my boss in London. I figured it was about the project I was working on, most likely some new requirements. Nope, I got laid off on a video call. How very modern. It was the first time in my career as a software engineer that this had happened, which when I look back has been quite fortunate considering the companies that I’ve worked for have all been involved in some form of merger or acquisition. I shouldn’t have been surprised though, since most of my coworkers had been dropping like flies since our company got bought in the summer of ‘23.
So now what? I could’ve just popped my CV over to a recruiter and gone for another full-time job in tech. Or maybe go contracting again. I decided instead to take some time off and think. Do I really want to be stuck behind a computer in an office for the rest of my working life? Maybe 25 years was enough. Luckily the UK has very good redundancy pay laws, so I got enough of a pay out to take 6 months out and peruse the possibilities.
I immediately started thinking about some of the dreams I had as a younger man. I had always been interested in starting my own business, which was why I got an MBA when I lived in New York City 20 years ago. I never got on the management track in tech, but maybe I could use those skills to start something new. But what?
The smart thing to do would be to use my tech skills to get an online or consulting business going. But I really wanted to try something different. I needed to do something creative. I needed to do something in the physical world and get out of the virtual one. I needed a challenge.
So why not try my hand in probably the most difficult industry with the lowest margins? That’s right, food. Everyone’s gotta eat, don’t they? And there probably isn’t too much threat from AI in the near future.
So now the tough decision. What should I sell? I’ve lived in England for 17 years now, and I’ve really noticed how little representation there was of REAL home-cooked American food. Unfortunately, because of corporate fast-food chains, the image of American food in England is mostly burgers, fries, and fried chicken. Not that that can’t be good food, but those chains mostly just load that food up with salt using the cheapest ingredients they can find. It’s not a good representation of how good American food can be.
At its heart American food is fusion food. Different cultures got thrown together and all kinds of new dishes were created. Where did the burger and hotdog come from? German cuisine. Where did fried chicken come from? Scotland (we know how much they love deep frying their food :)). Where did chicken parmesan come from? Italian cuisine. Where did the po’ boy sandwich from New Orleans come from? French and Cajun cuisine.
So, maybe go with what I know. I know southern food and I know the food from the big cities where I used to live: Chicago and New York. And seeing how expensive it is to eat out these days, I wanted to create working class food. And the big sub sandwich is the ultimate working class food in America. Buy one big sandwich for lunch, and it should get you through a hard day’s work.
And thus Nate’s American Deli was born. It being my first foray into food, I wasn’t ready to lay down 50K to get a high street location. I’m using some tricks I learned in previous start-up businesses to scale up organically first. Luckily, I knew the owner of my local, The Roebuck Pub, and he was willing to let me try my little experiment in his kitchen. After a couple of months of serving out of the pub on the weekends, I added delivery using Deliveroo and Just Eat.
I’m now 7 months in, and gradually adding new sandwiches all the time. It’s still just me doing everything, but that’s going to change soon. We’re scaling up to add more sandwiches and hopefully Chicago-style thin crust pizza will be on the menu when we hit our 1 year anniversary.