Caterer turns to retail
Steps from the Scarsdale train station, village-goers ”“ and hungry commuters ”“ can now feast on six-hour, slow-braised BLTs and what one chef considers a Thanksgiving between bread.
Good-Life Gourmet owner and Executive Chef Eric Korn opens two retail extensions of his two-year old catering company on August 16; the Irvington eatery at 108 Main St. will house Korn”™s kitchen. The Scarsdale shop is located at 13 Spencer Place.
Korn does not feel that there is serious culinary competition to hinder growth.
“We”™re applying good cooking that high-end restaurants apply to their dinners and meals and that”™s what we”™re applying to sandwiches,” he said. “That said, speed is important. It”™s lunchtime. But I don”™t see it as an exchange for fast food. It”™s something different.”
Korn did not disclose what he and a partner invested in the business, but he estimated they should see a return on investment “pretty early on.”
About $1 million in revenue during the first year is the target goal.
A lofty ambition includes potential future franchising and the introduction of Good-Life Gourmet sandwich trucks to accommodate the voluminous office population along Interstate-287.
Before the Good-Life Gourmet sandwich shop was born, Korn was busy testing recipes for catering clients.
“I originally took on a kitchen in Mount Kisco and I spent the first year-and-a-half building the catering company there,” said the 27-year-old, Hastings-on-Hudson native. “I was previously selling food to the owner of Michael”™s Gourmet (now the Scarsdale Good-Life Gourmet) and I would buy my cheese from him. As I got to know him, we became friends and he let me know they were struggling and he wanted to leave. In the back of my head, I knew this would be the next step.”
Post-college, Korn took a summer job on Cape Cod and worked in the fast-paced food industry.
After returning home and taking a “real job” working in insurance for his uncle, which he soon realized was not the job for him, he attended The French Culinary Institute.
“I never looked at it as a big challenge,” he said. “The big challenge for me was doing something I didn”™t want to be doing. In culinary school, you”™re in a kitchen, it”™s hot and people are yelling. I liked the intensity and I think you have to love that intensity.”
He loved it so much so that cooking for friends and friends-of-friends back home became a full-time business.
Korn so impressed a catering client that a solidly built relationship resulted in the very seed money he used to begin his first two sandwich shops.
“One of my first customers loaned me money under very favorable terms so I didn”™t have to stress about it,” he said. “He”™s very silent about it. He wants to see it grow and to have fun with it.”