I mean, if you don't mind, and I apologies because I should know more, but how did you guys end up meeting and then end up in Dubai?
Shawn Aoki: We met in a hotel opening Palace in, in Dubai. It was a [00:02:00] massive complex, a couple hotels residents on uh, blue Waters Island. And, uh, Caesar's Palace came over, took a contract, put a flag on a hotel, couple hotels, and um, we did the pre-opening together and it was a beast.
And we opened two hotels and two residents in like four, four and a half months. Yeah. And, uh, it was crazy.
Ryan Harris: I don't even remember those days. It
Josh Sharkey: just,
Ryan Harris: that's
Josh Sharkey: nuts. But you, are you both from the states?
Shawn Aoki: Uh, yeah. Both from the states? Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: South California. I'm from Maryland, but just to like. Wind back for a minute.
How did you end up in Dubai?
Shawn Aoki: Ryan, you've been here the longest, so why don't you,
Ryan Harris: yeah, and I was actually thinking, getting on the call, I'm like, how many years has it been, let me calculate this to make sure that I get it right. So I had an interview, I was working at Atlantis in The Bahamas and I was there for about six years and I got a, got on LinkedIn and found this job in The Bahamas and I was like, it's okay, I'll, I'll go to the Bahama, I'll check it out.
Or sorry, out the Dubai, I'll check it out. 13 years [00:03:00] ago. So came, they flew me over, did an interview that was, uh, for Jamira Group and they have one of these big, uh, infamous, uh, resorts on the beach called Mad Jamara. It's three hotels in one. They've added another since then and they've built two others that almost connect Madina, the Bur Rab, the Seven Star, the seven Star Hotel, and then the Beach Hotel.
So Instinct worked for them for a few years. And then I worked for the Galvin brothers in the UK. They opened up two spots. Uh, they were the youngest two star Michelin brothers. Uh, exported a brand from the UK down to Dubai.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah
about six years ago when kind of it was the boom of bringing in different restaurants from all over.
I stayed with them for about two and a half years to the area that we were at, got redeveloped, and I started doing consulting.
When he went to Caesar's, the exec chef with Humira. [00:04:00] And uh, well we always stay in touch and with Dubai at such a small world in the chef field and everyone knows to everybody. So later on I'm doing consulting. He like, ah, mate, I'm back in town. Uh, I need you to open up the, and help me open up this resort.
You work at the bakery and pastry and we've got this agreed exec zoo. You're gonna love him. He, I brought him from, uh, were you at Fairmont at the time or you were in Abu Dhabi?
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, I was, uh, Fairmont, Fairmont.
Ryan Harris: And, uh, yeah, so kind of that crazy. That's how our, that's crazy. So pro
Josh Sharkey: and Shawn, how did you end up in Dubai?
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, so I was in North Carolina at the time and there was a guy I knew, a good friend of mine that I worked with in San Francisco. Um, and after, I don't know, 2011 or so, we all went our different ways. I ended up on the east coast. He was on news in the Midwest. And one day I woke up and I was looking through, I don't know, Facebook or Instagram, and [00:05:00] he is like, he is posting and he's going to Abu Dhabi.
I was like, wow, man, that's really cool. Where's that? And, and I was like, why are you going there? And he said, I'm going to open up Four Seasons. He said, do you wanna come? And I was like, wow. Okay, let's do it. And two weeks later, no joke, my apartment was empty, my bags were packed, and I. I brought two suitcases over.
I was like, okay, I'll do a two year contract and I'll see how it goes. And now I've been here for eight
Ryan Harris: years, is let alone Josh. This is the thing that we asked everyone after they've been here for a year and a half, two years, they're like, how long you been here? Uh, two years. Oh, you'll be here forever now.
Like there's an itch between 18 a year and 18 months. So if you
Shawn Aoki: bridge the two and a half years, you're done.
Josh Sharkey: I mean, what, like, I, I've never been, uh, I mean we have some businesses there, but you know that, that, uh, from my last business, but I had never actually traveled there. Like what? Just tell me about Dubai.
Like what? As soon as you, it's so, it's so funny when, when you said that, I was like, [00:06:00] you know what? Dubai must be like a sick place to live because 13 years later they're still here. They, they could've, you know, gone another place. But
Shawn Aoki: yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's the, I would say it's, what is it, the New York of the Middle East.
It's, uh, just never stops. And the entity that runs the country and runs the cities are just so progressive. Man, this city impresses you. The country impresses you every day. It's just incredible how fast they move, how smart they put up. Infrastructure and it's just, it's such a clean and safe place to be.
You know, if, if it wasn't really hot in the summer, there would be a whole lot more people that lived here. It's, it's, it's great, man. It's, uh, you have everything. There's a level of convenience that is just kind of unmatched, you know? It's, uh, what do you mean?
Josh Sharkey: Like, just, you mean similar to like New York?
You can kind of go anywhere? Yeah. I
Shawn Aoki: mean, everywhere. I mean. Convenience as far as like, it's, it's a city built for the working class. Like it's, it's people that are here to [00:07:00] hustle, you know, and to build something and to create, you know, so those people, they don't have a lot of leisure time. And so they built this, you know, the idea is to create a 20 minute city, right?
So you can get anywhere in 20 minutes, you know, but we can order whatever you need. So, like me, and I'm sure Ryan, the same, I, I can't remember the last time I went to a grocery store, like groceries come to us. And it's, if you need to rent a car to drive across to Oman, the car comes to you. You know, it's, uh, what do
Josh Sharkey: you mean?
Wait, what do you mean the car comes to you?
Shawn Aoki: Like everything will, everything, all the amenities of day-to-day life will come to you. You know, it's just, that's how it's, that's how it's built. You don't have to go find something, you know? It's such a digital and tech savvy city. Yeah. Yeah. It's just incredible.
I mean, it's, uh. You know, Amazon's a perfect example. I go, I talk to my family back home. They're like, yeah, yeah, I'll order it. And it'll come like three or four days later. It, here it comes in like three hours, you know? Yeah. It's just the, the city moves at such a fast pace, you know, and we have, we [00:08:00] have ingredients from all over the world.
We're center, you know, you three and a half hours from Hong Kong, you are six hours from Europe. Yeah. That's the home. You are two and a half hours from India. Yeah. You are three hours from Africa. Like, we're just in a, just an absolutely incredible hu.
Ryan Harris: That's like if you ever come to Dubai, like you do it as a stopover, go take the family to to Asia or something else, and you come here for a few days.
They even have this kind of, I think three or four days you can come and the taxes are less and you don't get hit with all the air fi airline fees and kind of landing fees and stuff. And there's lots of tourist deals and it's kind of the. The claim to fame of the city and what the hell they wanna bring more people in, especially in the summertime and stuff, but don't come in the summer.
Yeah. I had labor,
Josh Sharkey: I had labor there on my way to Vietnam few years ago, but it was like, you know, a few hours. So I didn't really get to do much. But what, what's the, what's the culinary community like there?
Shawn Aoki: Massive. It's very, I mean, is it,
Josh Sharkey: is it, is it really? Um, [00:09:00] I mean, I, I've been in the bubble of New York most of my life, so it's close knit.
But there's also like these different nodes of communities, you know, of like, there's like the, if you worked for Ballou in that group, everybody knows each other in that group and they go in other places. And then if you worked for, you know, repair, there's a whole group and like, you know, there's like these nodes of, of, of community, but they're, but they're tight knit.
Is it similar in Dubai or is it like, or is it pretty like, uh, you know, segmented.
Shawn Aoki: I would say, you know what it's funny is the city is so big, and I mean, there's gotta be 800 hotels that all have multi outlets. There's probably 13,000 restaurants in the city, but you can almost find probably a one to two person separation.
To be honest, I know somebody that knows Ryan, and Ryan knows somebody that knows you. It's that, it's that, it's that tight knit,
Ryan Harris: it'll do tastings at a, at a client's place and. We'll know the chef that's there and cooking and they'll be like, oh. Or he'll know one of our guys that's cooking there. It, it's super [00:10:00] tight knit, like Sean said.
Shawn Aoki: Super close knit. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: So, I mean, let's look into the business first because I wanna make sure I understand everything that you guys do. And I also would love to learn how that shift was from, you know, being you. You guys come from a lot of hotels from I understand. So being, you know, chefs in hotels to now running a consultancy.
And one kind of being on the other side of the, you know, of the fence in some ways, helping those folks. But what that shift was like. But maybe start with your company. Who do you guys service? I know, I mean, I see all the beautiful food you guys are creating At a high level, what is it that you guys are doing and for who?
Ryan Harris: So we do a wide range and that's kind of the cool thing about our consultancy and that's what actually helped me so much when I brought Sean on board because my background's pastry bakery. I mean, I can do savory. I think fairish free chef, it suits well to do breakfast and that end of the spectrum. And that's what happened.
And to continue our story from after Caesars when, uh, after COVID happened, I got stuck in Japan for [00:11:00] six months. Long story short, got back to Dubai and I'm like, Sean, I'm getting inquiries and I need more savory stuff. I need burger restaurant, I need this, I need that. Like, what do you want? Do you wanna get out?
You wanna get out of the hotel you want to, do you wanna help me? And that's kind of where our kind of, we springboarded to what we're doing now. And that has brought us to seven countries. Wow. Eating, shakes, princesses in Saudi Arabia, uh, and traveling as much as we can around the GCC and then even remote work for recipes in Australia and friends in the us.
And so it's, it's. I think it's a niche and kind of a unique market here for us. We definitely have something different than other consultants in the region where they, we have a suite and savory side.
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Harris: So a, uh, a cafe doesn't have to hire two different people. They don't have to kind of, uh, [00:12:00] spring pick and, and reduce some of their scope on one thing and then expect the chef to pull everything together or even.
So recipes on the internet and they don't work out and they don't get that full thought through of a product.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. I mean, is it, is it, is it mostly menu development or like, what does it look like from, you know, signing contract with another customer to the project's done, like done, done, you know, you, you're no longer servicing them.
Shawn Aoki: No, I mean, we, we prefer to get in on the ground, you know, if we can, if we can build it, then. It's better for, for us, we'll always be in a position to where we have to inherit something along the way. Um, whether it be a kitchen, whether it be a, a team, whether it be a space, you know, we do take that and and roll with it, you know.
But if we can get in and, and build the layout and spec out the brands and really kind of put it, make sure it's fit to purpose is kind of where the creativity starts. And that allows us to have a lot of fun. We get to build it to be [00:13:00] multi, uh, multipurpose. We can run our 20 hour, 24 hour shifts if we need to.
And we just, we, we allow ourselves to give our, give more flexibility to the menu creation, you know, and it's front, you know, from layouts. We get in early, we do the layouts, we do the builds. Uh, we'll spec out all the tabletops, we'll do the many developments. That's a whole creative process in itself.
Mm-hmm. It's like its own separate chapter with, you know, it's us taking on the imagination of the client and kind of bringing that to life. But it's also within reality, within, uh, feasible food cost, within being profitable, making sure the ticket times are, it's not a, uh, you know, it's not a 12 minute build or something.
So there's all those that we have to take into play, and, but it goes, it goes layout, it goes, uh, menu developments. Uh, we go into tastings, we do, uh, physical presentations, we do revisions, we do training on [00:14:00] site, and then we have kind of a, a post program, uh, where we come back. We do QCs, uh mm-hmm. Quality checks.
Spend time with the team. Then we have several clients where we come back every year and we might do biannual upgrades for menu items. It might be two, it might be six. We come back. You have, um, you have your festive stuff. You have, Ramadan is really big here, so there's a couple places we go back to every year and revamp their Ramadan offering and give them something to go to social with, you know, build some business and uh, and have fun with it.
Josh Sharkey: Are you also finding like suppliers and specking equipment and things like that?
Shawn Aoki: Mm-hmm. We do full turnkey supply chain and logistics, uh, in each region
Ryan Harris: as well and each region. Yeah. Not like, uh, it's not like the us There's no Cisco, there's no US foods. There's no more like, so
Josh Sharkey: how do you, how do you do that?
Like how are you, how are you doing this across all of these?
Shawn Aoki: It's a library of contacts, you know, over the last, [00:15:00] you know, four years where you just, you build relationships and. You collect a few here, collect a few there, and then, I mean, it's a, it's, it's trial by fire.
Josh Sharkey: Are you also working with like architects?
Shawn Aoki: Yeah. Kitchen design teams. Yep. Yeah. We work in parallel with them and essentially put an operational mindset to their architectural design.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Yeah. Who, so who are these? I'm just so fascinated, like who that you're, that you're helping. I imagine the hardest thing is that they don't know what they don't know.
So a lot of the things that you have to do, they
Shawn Aoki: dunno what they don't know. We're
Josh Sharkey: gonna use that again. Well, I mean, you know, it's tough right's. You're, you know, it's not just developing a menu. There's a lot that goes on, you know, below the surface of just what kind of vendors are you picking and how many steps is this dish?
And how many stations do you have? And what kind of people are you gonna hire? And all that goes into how you develop this menu. Are the people that you're working with typically, you, you know, let's just say 10 is. I know everything [00:16:00] about the restaurant industry. I know exactly how things get, how, how an opening works, and one is I've never even been to a restaurant before.
What is sort of the, you know, the, the context level of these, of these folks that you're, that you're helping?
Shawn Aoki: We, we would say, we try to narrow our focus on say six and above. Yeah. Six, seven to 10. I mean, we really target f and b agencies. Um, experience entrepreneurs, experience f and b operators. You know, because that takes out, you know, per se, a lot of the handholding, you know, and it keeps mm-hmm.
Because they know that the pace of play needs to, it needs to keep moving, you know, they understand that there's a lot of what you just mentioned about the hiring, the recruiting, the process. I mean, here recruiting, you have to start 90 days in advance, if not a little bit more, you know, you, you're looking at a one in probably 15 ratio of what a successful hire versus interviews could be, you know?
So there's a lot of that. Why is that? So we do. Just because there, because we're in a [00:17:00] heavily saturated labor market, and top tier skill sets are not readily available at all times. You know, there's, there's more, there's more people than there is specific skill sets. There's a lot of general skill sets.
Yeah. Uh,
Shawn Aoki: but labor market is massive. I mean, you can find anybody for anything, you know, but to find someone that's niche that's very specific for that concept or that style of cuisine. And over here, specialists, uh, they're in high demand. You know, if you have someone that's, uh, really good with sushi, someone that's really good with, uh, Peruvian food, someone that's really good with certain cuisine, it's, they come there.
So they come with a price ticket.
Josh Sharkey: I imagine, Ryan, to your point, there's probably a lot of transient uh, workers there
Ryan Harris: as well, right? Yeah. This is what we saw a lot, even when we were still in the hotels here and guys would move to the next hotel for just a little bit more money and a little bit, just not even better conditions, because most of the labor work is six day of the week, and it's just kind of the process of what we get in [00:18:00] and which Sean mentioned each region is a bit different on the price point.
In Oman, we have to pay a bit less and the staffing level normally stays in Oman.
Josh Sharkey: So you have like sort of a, an r and d hub, like where are you working outta for, for all these things?
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, we work out of a development kitchen and it's, uh, it's where all the magic happens as we do all the creatives, uh, behind the scenes.
And that's a kind of a big step. And, and our program is when we go into the development phase, we give ourselves, uh, anywhere between two to four weeks usually to really work through something. I mean by the time the client sees it and tastes it, we've worked through it probably four or five times, uh, through the recipe, through the presentation.
Yeah. And I mean, given, you know, everybody, what's up these days? So it's us cooking, sharing, picture, sharing, development, sharing presentations. You know, do you like the plates? We might have a line of China in, or a line of OS and E that we're messing with it. [00:19:00] You know, where, whether, whether we're pitching it or whether we are, uh, something they want us to use, we're working on that through it so that we, we get to a point to when we do the presentation, it's, uh, there's no big surprises.
It's, yeah, they know what they're walking into. And a lot of it is those precursors, you know, just making sure that we're, we're prepping them along the way.
Josh Sharkey: How do you test, um, when items that have a piece of equipment dead? You don't have, or maybe you, you maybe you, this, you already take care of this.
It's a goods good one. You know, it's a wood burning grow concept.
Shawn Aoki: Make it work.
Ryan Harris: I think it was one of the points that you put down for us, and I talk about how do we divide and conquer, and Sean just had to do this recently. He, if you don't mind me saying, Sean, in the middle of moving house and having a baby, uh, had to fly to Jeda because his expertise was chicken and we had this chicken concept to go in.
The client wanted to. It wasn't any penny, it was another type of fryer. And Sean went there, test the chicken, get the client [00:20:00] happy, bring it off, build it up, and, uh, kind of finalize every, the recipes and the flow through
Josh Sharkey: of the product. Do you, I mean, do you have to, um, just gradually get more modular setup in your sort of r and d hub, so, so you can test, so you can do more, more testing, essentially?
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, and I mean, there's also, there's a, there's a ton of equipment suppliers here as well. Okay. I mean, it, it's a matter of a phone call. Yeah. And call somebody up and say, Hey listen, I need, I need to come by for a couple hours. I need to test something. And usually it's, it's a, it's a quick call. There's a lot of manufacturing here done locally now.
Oh, interesting. So it's, yeah. So it's a matter of calling and saying, Hey, I need, I need this for a couple days. Or it's between somebody we know that has a kitchen, that has that piece of equipment and
Josh Sharkey: Yeah.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah. That's it.
Josh Sharkey: I gotta be honest. It also sounds like a lot of fun.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah. But it's a lot more fun than working in a hotel.
Josh Sharkey: Oh my gosh. Um, tell, well, I mean, tell me about the look, you know, let's not get into the, to the, the [00:21:00] dungeons. Yeah. We must not do that. Maybe we'll get there. But what, like, talk to me about your, your RD process, like from, from ideation through execute. I'm sure it's, it's different for each client, but generally speaking, do you have a framework you use, you know, from the beginning, uh, ideation phase all the way through, you know, delivering the end product to the customer.
Ryan Harris: For us in the way that the clients work. And I think one thing Sean was gonna mention is in how we run the consultancy and what we tell our clients is that we're very chef centric. We don't do all the other nitty gritty stuff. I'm not gonna give you feasibility studies, I'm not gonna do all that.
There's tons of other, uh, consulting companies here that do that and actually hire us to do then the menu development and train the, the team and cook and find the ingredients and do all that. So I think the biggest thing for us is to understand the expectations of the client, what they want, where they're gonna, where they think they're gonna open, what thi what food they think they can put down, the space that they have, uh, how it really kind of levels out in the end.
So we always [00:22:00] do a presentation and a mood board and build it out. We get that back and forth from them, get the few ideas of what they want, and a lot of times. I don't wanna Yeah. Like get into it too much, but they're always like, oh, I want that. It's the same thing that they have and I, you have to make that for me.
And we don't do that. And we'll never even take from the same kind of same thing we've made for one client in the same region and do it again. Always a change. It's, it's a chef thing, right? Yeah. You just, you gotta tweak it up and ingredients are always different and the recipe will never be the same. So we kind of build it out from there.
And, um, like Sean said, we, we, we go through and we cook it two to three times and we taste it and. Now that we've traveled so much to the different regions, we know we're not gonna get good coriander in Oman. We're not gonna get di Oman, we're not gonna get, uh, something in, in, in Riyadh the same that we get here in Dubai.
'cause Uhhuh, even when we talk to clients, they're like, oh, you're in Dubai. You can get everything. And we're like, well, no. We like to make sure that the region or the area that we're focusing on, you're not, you're [00:23:00] gonna get the similar ingredient that we're building the recipes too. This is why, you know, the recipe system is actually the best for us because we can build it out and, and change it and duplicate it, and it makes it the best.
Yeah,
Josh Sharkey: I mean, I imagine, I imagine a lot of times they, they don't fully know what they want. Do you ever have to sort of evoke it out of them? Like what's the feeling you're trying to, because you, you know, most, I, I think a lot of times I remember doing, you know, this for folks back in the day developing menus and they would say, oh, I want, I want it to be like that, like that restaurant.
It never really works because you know, it's fleeting and then, you know, as soon as they need to change or iterate, they don't actually know what they're trying to, you know, tell the customer what story they're trying to tell. Is any part of what you do helping them try to tease out what they actually are trying to, yeah.
What feeling they're trying to evoke from their customers or feeling? Yeah, a hundred
Shawn Aoki: percent. How do you do that? We, we all, we always ask for inspiration in the beginning. I mean, we, [00:24:00] we, we have to get our hands on that kind of internal benchmark of where they're looking at. And it could be a mix of who they think their comp set's gonna be.
It could be Pinterest, it could be Instagram pictures, could be whatever's going viral at the time.
Ryan Harris: I think, like you said, it's like backtracking.
Shawn Aoki: We have to bridge that. And, uh, that's where we have to kind of run away and, and do our part with, with the development and presentation and, and work with ingredients that we know we can get there.
Yeah. Um, and sometimes also the skillset, you know, so it's, uh, it's a tricky one that's,
Ryan Harris: like you said, that's leveling it down. If they see something in the UK and that the ingredients that they're just not gonna be able to get, and you, we kinda have to say, okay, we can make something similar. It's not gonna taste the same that you've traveled and had for.
This is another thing of our clients. They're well traveled. They
Shawn Aoki: very very well traveled.
Ryan Harris: They spend their summers in Europe and in the uk, Spain, us, California, all over. So they come back and they're like, oh, I just had this [00:25:00] and I wanna bring this to my restaurant. And a lot of that, it just doesn't work.
So we can make something similar. We can kind of. Build it out and it's always trying to make something unique for their restaurant.
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Yeah, it's, you know, I, I wanna, I'd love to learn what you. What you've learned about things that don't work. You know, like for some reason fa isn't the same in America as it's in Vietnam. I, I don't know why. Hate the exact same thing. I mean, I don't know exactly what they do, but you know, if you make it exactly the same way as you make it in, in, um, Vietnam and you make it in New York, I don't know why.
It's just not the same. I imagine there's a bunch of this stuff, a bunch of things like that and you know, that you're experiencing 'cause you're so international. Is it the ingredients? Is it just the, like the land, like what, what is it?
Shawn Aoki: Ingredients are a big one because there's, I mean, they've done a, they've done a pretty comparable job at doing a lot of kinda locally produced greenhouse and [00:27:00] kinda hothouse stuff here.
But, uh, a lot of it's imported, you know, so it's, uh, we get this feedback a lot about. The flavor. 'cause a lot of this stuff is just, it's picked premature, you know, and it's shipped in. We get a lot of stuff from Holland. Uh, we get a lot from Africa. There's a lot that comes in from Rocco, Spain. A lot of produce from India.
Uh, a lot from a lot of fruit from Srilanka. So, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's, it's, I mean, the fa in Vietnam is probably grandma's recipe, and it's just been passed down for generations, and you can't, they can't get it wrong. But here, there's, you know, there's a mix. There's a mix of, uh, of different elements.
It's a very international hub, so there is a lot of recreation, if that's kind of what you're getting at as well.
Ryan Harris: Yeah.
Shawn Aoki: There's a heavy influence with certain cultures, you know, like American. General American cuisine outside of say, you know, burgers and, and faux Italian. Like, there's not a lot of that here.
You know, it's, um, but you can,
Josh Sharkey: what do you [00:28:00] mean by general American cuisine?
Shawn Aoki: Like, like, I don't know, like American cuisine. Like here there's like, if you go to, um, like a lot in the hotel industry, you'll find a lot more influence from the uk. From the UK cuisine as well. Like a lot of the brunches, you know, kinda a lot of the all day diners and the three meals and stuff.
Um. But it's, uh, yeah. I mean at the end of the day, it's ingredients, is skillsets, it's everything. I guess.
Ryan Harris: I think restaurants here still go through those phases and the, the fads, like a few years ago was barbecue places and smoked joints and restaurants and yeah, the American ones came into the hotels and stuff, and then it was a bit Vietnamese and Asian.
A huge push for even some franchises to come in and then homegrowns. And then there was another, like actually just as I was getting out of the hotels and why I left hotels is because homegrown concepts were coming up and [00:29:00] the hotels were selling out and renting their rent restaurant spaces to the, is it independence?
And they didn't need exec chefs anymore. They didn't need exec pastry chefs anymore. So it was either. Get out or find something unique
Josh Sharkey: and different to do. Yeah. What's been the biggest mental shift for you guys moving out of running kitchens to now running this consulting business?
Shawn Aoki: If, if you don't hunt, you don't eat in hotel, I mean, in hotels, you, the business comes to steady
Josh Sharkey: salary.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah. But if, yeah, but if you, if you don't go out and get it in, in the consulting field, it doesn't come to you.
Josh Sharkey: How do you, I mean, how do you, how do you find customers?
Shawn Aoki: Uh, it's been, it's been a organic path from building the business, and it's been us working through socials, working through SEO, word of mouth, Instagram, uh, websites, uh, personal connections.
It's, it's really, it's a mix of all of it.
Josh Sharkey: I do both of you handle that?
Shawn Aoki: We do to an [00:30:00] extent. I know Ryan is pretty tech savvy, so he does, uh, have a heavy hand in in some of that, but. It goes in phases, to be honest. Yeah, it goes in phases. There's, there's some periods of time where it'll go heavier, where it'll just, we'll get flooded with Instagram messages.
Okay. Yeah. Maybe we ran an ad or we, we put out a, um, we put out a post and for Rome on and a campaign or whatever, and, and we pick up some traction for that. And then it might be a little shift in some of the keywords, and then more traffic comes through the websites and. I think like you sprinkle in some word to mouth here and there and it's, yeah, it's a little mix of everything.
Ryan Harris: Like Sean was saying when you were asking about the different restaurant levels and what we kind of target now and go to, and it's this progression of change over the last three years where we were taking a lot more of these mom and pops and smaller places and they're cool to have and they're, they're great that, uh, they show up and they've got some money and they just wanna open a cafe and.
Do it, but [00:31:00] we want for the big, we look for the bigger groups and how we can leverage building one concept form and then developing other menus and staying with them more long term. And then that cycle just keeps coming back and repeating.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Who started the, uh, the video production stuff you guys are doing?
I mean, it's, it's really great content you're creating.
Ryan Harris: Thanks. We had a social media company that, uh, uh, was helping us film
Josh Sharkey: and they just, they just came in and film you.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, yeah. Put together a program and, uh, yeah, we just, we would do shoots. It's really great. Massive shoots. And then it would,
Ryan Harris: we need to do a few more.
We're, we're building some more in the background now to release over the next couple. I. Months.
Josh Sharkey: Uh, yeah. It's such a smart way to, to promote, but also, you know, I mean a lot of it's just obviously it's really dope food and I'm sure you can also, like, there's teaching moments there and you know, people see it.
Yeah. Like, oh, I want, want more of that.
Shawn Aoki: Well, what, what we don't remember all the time is what [00:32:00] we think is just normal. Day to day is Yeah. Actually really interesting and, and fun for. A lot of our viewers. Yeah, yeah, I know. You know, it's small. I don't have that anymore. Stuff like how we wrap up herbs or you know, how we, how we ski the sauce or whatever.
I got a wife
Josh Sharkey: and two kids. I think my wife cooks more than I do now, but, oh man. And gross and, uh, yeah, it's, it's. I mean, it's, yeah, I still cook. Not as much, but it's, it is, it is not as interesting, obviously what I'm doing as what, as what you guys are doing. But, um, in terms of like what people get excited about.
So the content, I mean, the content is, is gorgeous and it's just, it does, I mean, I, I know I keep saying this, but it just seems like so much fun. Like, what, what do you, what do you guys do? Like, you know, to keep learning, obviously imagine you're traveling and eating and things like that. Yeah. But, uh, you also have to stay on top of just learning all the time.
And that, it's funny you ask
Ryan Harris: like, and uh, we were just, uh, can't remember the restaurant. I think it was in in Copenhagen. It just popped here on Instagram. And we're always scrolling and looking and seeing, but we diligently make at [00:33:00] least one trip a year to a new country. Some one of us has been, or, or neither of us, uh, been, um, uh, last year we went to, uh, the UK.
This year we went to Singapore ly piggybacked on another trip, and Singapore, Asian Food Street, Hawker stalls and barbecue. The MA's just amazing and it's just seeing the pulse and what's happening. And same in Dubai and trying to visit as many restaurants as possible. We have, uh, monthly comp sets for our team.
They go around to each a different restaurant, they write us a little brief about it. They take pictures and we kind of just discuss it at the end of the month and, okay, where'd you go? What did you like the best about it? Could any of this play a role with any of our new concepts? Could we build something out to develop it for pitch it for a new concept for a client that they, an existing client that we have?
Josh Sharkey: So tell me about your team. I'd love, I'd love to understand like the, the, the construct of, [00:34:00] of, of the team and, and, and how you, you know, and how you build it.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah, I mean, in the consultancy it's a little bit different. You know, we don't have a, a manning of say, 15 people in the kitchen, you know, so it's, we keep a core team of Ryan, myself, uh, some administrative roles and so, and a few chefs.
Then when we take on some of those bigger brands and take on some of the bigger projects, we bring in extra muscle. Yeah. Uh, extra resources. We, we, we call, we call a friend, you know, bring in some of our chefs that are, that are closer around us and, uh, and yeah, kind of beef up the roster.
Ryan Harris: You said if there was a, um, I think use tomorrow we have a, a, a client that we're gonna go to and have a, an Indian menu.
They want us to uplift it and help it and stuff. And in the region that's heavily influenced by Indian food and from the north to the south. Well, we don't do it. We. The, I don't wanna say it's not our core competency, but we've got so many teams and levels that we can bring in and, and help support us and build [00:35:00] it out and, and still involve it in our consultancy and build the other framework along with it.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, I, I, I just, it sounds like so much fun. You get to get into the wind, honest, and then will take you out for a, will take you out, up for a day around. It's just so many excuses to like go and, okay, now I'm gonna have to go learn. Everything about going food, you know, everything about hybrid dive and, and you know, and then you start cooking that and testing that and it's, it just sounds like, you know, just a ton of, a ton of fun.
Yeah. I'm, look, I know it's a lot of hard work too, and, and, you know, getting clients to be happy is, is is not easy. And probably the hardest thing is creating things that are evergreen. That once you hand it off. Yes, it works when you're gone and that's probably the biggest measure of success for you all, is when you can hand something off and then two months later you haven't touched it in the restaurant and it's still delicious and consistent, I would imagine.
Is what are you looking for? If you guys had to like double the size of your business tomorrow, what do you think would be the one thing that you would have to focus on first? Marketing apps, [00:36:00] partnerships, you know. Whatever, I mean, whatever piece of your business. If you had to, if you were gonna double tomorrow, what, what's like, what's the one thing you would have to focus on more?
Shawn Aoki: I mean, in sense of capacity? I mean, it would essentially, to scale it internally would, I mean, you'd have to double the sales and then we'd have to double the output and that would increase. That would be more of us replicating more Ryan's and Sean's, you know, because a lot, a lot of our, a lot of our time is, is, uh, is client facing, you know, so it's, if we're going to say, if we're gonna double our, our bookings for next year, we would, you know, we would essentially just need to increase capacity.
To cents.
Josh Sharkey: It's, I like to ask this question to myself all the time because sometimes the answer is like, well I don't wanna do that. You know what I mean? Um, where it sounds interesting to keep growing and then you're like, wait a second, then I don't get to do this anymore. I have to do that. You know?
'cause every [00:37:00] time you grow, you, you have to add on more. I imagine you guys are doing, you know, a ton of cooking right now, and if you 10 Xed the business, you probably would be doing less of it. Yeah.
Ryan Harris: That would be the biggest thing to give up. Yeah. And that's where our,
Shawn Aoki: that's the hardest thing to give up.
That's
Ryan Harris: the hardest thing to give up, like to still cook and that's what we do. Yeah. And, and like you said about going and checking, going food and diving into it. And we've had some concepts recently where no sugar and using sugar alternatives like alose and other, other things. And I'm, we're diving in and we're making ice cream and gummy candies and really kind of cool and fun stuff, and.
Yeah, working through the entire process. Um, yeah, so while scaling up could focus our time on doing that, we still wanna be client facing and to get somebody that we could send as our surrogate and and replace of us would be difficult to find.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Yeah. It's the one thing that's really interesting [00:38:00] about the, the, the food business, and I'm sure there's other businesses like this, but like as you grow.
You have to give some control, right? Yeah. So show the people that that work for you. You know, it could be more autonomous, things like that. But what's interesting with the food business is it's, it's almost less about giving up control. It's giving up the thing that you love to do that's so fun. And everybody knows, you know, if you wanna cook, you know, don't open a restaurant because you can have a team that cooks for you.
You know, because that's just what happens, right? You have to have your team execute for you. Not that you can't be on the line sometimes, but it's. But it's a very different, and if you wanna open 10 restaurants, then you're certainly not, you know, cooking a lot. I didn't, you could
Ryan Harris: say it's from the Top Boys now, Jose, Daniel Thomas.
I mean, how often are they really cooking now? And, and yeah,
Josh Sharkey: I totally hear you. It's hard to give up control. It's, I think it's, it's harder to, um, give up just the, the reason why we could start in this business, which is just being able to cook. You know,
Shawn Aoki: it's also ensuring, ensuring quality. You know? [00:39:00] Yeah.
It's, uh, ensuring that deliverable is there.
Josh Sharkey: That Yeah, and that's, I mean, I think that's probably part of the, part of the control is, you know, if you do it. And that's, that's the other interesting thing about the food business is it's easier to, I mean, I guess it's, it's with anything really, it is easier to do it yourself because you need less process and you don't have to explain specifically how to caramelize that shallot and what this, you know, gastric is supposed to look like precisely because you just know.
Explaining that to somebody that can do it, you know, without you there is much harder. You know, and that's the, that's, that's the real challenge. And the business, which I'm sure is like the main challenge for you guys is how do you do that so that, uh, someone else understands what's in your, you know, what's in your brain?
Shawn Aoki: A hundred percent.
Josh Sharkey: Do you guys think about that? Uh, um, or talk about that a lot? Like how do you make the recipes that you develop more explicit, more, you know, more foolproof without being overly simplified?
Shawn Aoki: I mean, it's, it's kind of been a lesson learned and kind of a process over the last few years. And [00:40:00] it's, it's the same.
It's adjusting. We adjust our recipes to the country, uh, just because each of the countries in the GCC are a little bit different, we've learned we probably take a little bit more adventure, a little bit more risk when it's a new build. Because we have a bit more reach when it comes to bringing in better talent and someone that has a higher capacity for cooking, for cuisine, for flavors.
And we may tone it back down to two within capacity if it's say, a menu revamp, you know? And we always do a site inspection if we're coming in for, say somebody says, I want 10 new dishes. Or a promotional, you know, a launch for something. We'll always come and see the site, we'll see the equipment, we'll see the team, we'll talk to the chefs.
And from there you just, it's your two chef sense. You know, you kind of see where they're at. You can look at the menu, you can look at the kitchen, and you can, you can make a [00:41:00] pretty good estimate of what everybody's capable of. And that's, and we just take that into consideration. Yeah. But for new builds, I would say, yeah, there's, we can definitely push a little bit harder and take a bit more risk and, and bring a bit more complexity to the dishes and to the recipes.
Ryan Harris: I've never taken a burger bundle and turned it into so many different things from the, to an English muffin to a flatbread to you name it. And it, and it's, yeah. How we can cross utilize as much as possible. Yeah. To get the most yield out of it and, and use, but still make it flavorful. Multipurpose tastes good.
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: And
Ryan Harris: multipurpose.
Josh Sharkey: And it, that's it. People underestimate like the versatility of just one good d like a good pizza dough can actually be a great pita. It can be, yeah. It can be a lot of a lot of things. And if you just, you know, if you learn one, you can do a lot differently each time. Yeah, exactly.
What are you guys like most excited about right now?
Shawn Aoki: Whew. 2025 has been a big year so far. Yeah, it has actually, so [00:42:00] excited in a sense of, in a sense of what
Josh Sharkey: anything your, your, your business personally, things happening in Dubai.
Shawn Aoki: Yeah. You know what? I thi I think the, I think the next probably two to three years are gonna be really, uh, something, it is gonna be kind of a, a, a big checkpoint for the region itself.
Just considering how fast things are moving, uh, there's a ton of opportunity for us. The door, the, the doors are endless as being in consultancy. I mean, the, the f and b industry is growing at like 20% clip, like annually, and there's just no shortage. There is kind of that organic. Kinda 10, 10 open and maybe a few will close, but that's, that's normal kind of anywhere for any of them to go through their teething.
But, uh, it's just, there's, there's so much opportunity for us in the region and especially someone that, a group of consultants that [00:43:00] have our reach and have our expertise. We cover the bakery covered chocolates. We do production, we do catering. We can do your QSRs, we can pull a franchise from anywhere in the world and help the supply chain.
Yeah, bring it here. And, and it's so, it's, there's just such a variety of, the doors are wide open, you know, so it's 2025 has been really, really good to us so far. And just keeping that momentum into the next year and next two years.
Ryan Harris: Yeah. I think, like for me, the, the most exciting is the, the inquiries that we're getting are still really unique and interesting.
Like, like the, the sugar alternative gummy candies, and we got one the other day for, um, there's a big trend for healthier, uh, gut bacteria, building good foods for you. Mm-hmm. Um. Leveraging clean labels as much as possible. No e numbers. So, and it's also challenging the market here, suppliers to bring those products in and more supplier, more [00:44:00] suppliers, bring it in the, the better price points we get.
Better price for the restaurant and better costs and revenue form. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: What you take on monk fruit. Speaking of the sugar, sugar-free stuff.
Shawn Aoki: We've been using monk fruit a lot lately. We've been using monk storage. It's not bad, bad, man. It's, it's definitely like,
Josh Sharkey: you know, when you're having monk fruit, but it's, it's better than studio.
Oof. That's for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Harris: But we taste to the, all I can tell you, uh, Ariel xylitol, monk fruits, alu, uh. What's
Josh Sharkey: the alcohol ones are, are interesting? Most of like the, the, the protein, the protein bars, like they all have that, like, I mean, you can't pronounce 'em, but there's all these alcohol sugars.
Yeah. I mean, are they good for you? Like,
Shawn Aoki: no, no, they're not good for
Ryan Harris: me. Like, you need to say careful for kids. And, uh, I think what of your, your questions was, is are we using AI and. We are because it's the best way to dig through all the information and try to categorize it and label it for us and really kind of understand of even what guidelines are, uh, [00:45:00] acceptable for adults, kids, how much they can have, what's, uh, and then different products have different thresholds.
So it's really interesting. It, it's such it keeps us up at night and
Josh Sharkey: always the wheels spinning is monk fruit, the. Is that the, is that the go-to, is that what you would say? You would, you would pick as the I don't, depends on the application though. You're gonna make me
Ryan Harris: geek out here because Okay. I can, you can't just replace monk fruit for sugar or for alose or even, uh, date sugar or coconut sugar because of the, uh, the dry matter it has.
And if monk fruit is between 200 and 300% stronger and sweeter than sucralose, you need the volume of either all sugar in. Caramels and ice creams and baked products and stuff, so it's not one-to-one. That's why they're using a lot of, i I am gonna butcher the name, ERY Roll plus Monk Fruit or Elements [00:46:00] plus Monk fruit, and, and it's just, uh, either 1% or half a percent of monk fruit that's added to elevate that sweetness level to bring it from 70% to a hundred percent or 110%, depending on how much volume you need.
How does it come? Is it powder, is it like fruit? Yeah, so you can get extract like, uh, uh, liquid extract. You can get powdered, you can get then blended with those other two as well. Uh, one of the projects we're doing today is I'm using a blend of Stevia powder and aose, one of the other products we're using for date sugar, um, because dates are so relevant in the region.
So it's really versatile product of how you can. Use it. And a lot of new suppliers are figuring out different methods to not overprocess it, but get the best of the different, uh, yields. So you get sugar, you get paste, you get clear sugar is a new one that's coming up in the market. I think the end of that month or next [00:47:00] month, a clear date, sugar, it almost looks like glucose.
Oh, day clear day sugar. Yeah. Gotcha. But, uh, you can use it
Josh Sharkey: one to one. I mean, I imagine just sugar, you know, as long as it's not super processed like sugar. Sugar, like coconut, sugar, date, sugar, you know, meaning like, yeah, it's all you know, as good or not good for you as is as much that you use. Like if you, or as much as you, you know, eat if you,
if you have, yeah, they all have the difference.
200 grams
Josh Sharkey: of sugar a day. You know, it's not good for you, but if you have, you know, 10 grams of, whether it's coconut sugar or maple syrup, or, I mean, I don't know, but it seems like, you know, obviously it's all been, man, it does sound like sugar pretty not good for you to have a lot of it, but I know we, we are talking about sugar a lot, but like, I'm, I'm actually kind of, I've been trying to cut back.
I, I'm, I'm a big sweet guy. You know, I, for a long time I would like cut out. I tried to cut out a bunch of sugar and I, and I just too fucking hard. But, um, I dunno. It sounds like you've been doing some research. Are, is there any real difference between like. The health of like maple syrup versus honey versus monk fruit.
So
Ryan Harris: [00:48:00] that's, that's another hard one. I mean, of course cutting sugar, there's massive health benefits to say like sugar is not the best for us while it tastes so good and it's in everything that we like. And it's a lot of things, you just can't put it out one for one. So to say that you would use, uh, like a date, sugar or coconut sugar or ose, and you would reduce the percentage, okay, then the product gets better for you.
'cause you've reduced the amount that you put in. The sweetness might be a little bit less, but, and then if you could offset it with a little bit of monk fruit, um, then you're still getting that same flavor profile. But you've reduced the calories, you've reduced the GI intake, you've reduced the, even the label added sugar because a lot of these new ones, they're not considered sugar.
So then marketing can have fun on everything.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Yeah. Which by the way, again, that's, I think that's what what I was getting at is it's, it's, it's um, you know, whether you blend a banana into a shake like a banana in two dates, or you put a little bit coconut sugar, I don't know if there's any difference.
Like banana's got fucking [00:49:00] sugar in it. So does dates and sugar. That's we
Ryan Harris: fructose. Oh my gosh. That's probably the worst. Oh yeah. Well, fructose is terrible for you.
Josh Sharkey: Oh my God. I, I think they were talking about banning, uh, corn syrup from, from, uh, high fructose corn syrup from, from Coca-Cola. Like they were gonna have to switch to a, to another sugar or something.
You talk about ai, how are, are you guys using AI at all? Uh, for anything? Not even, maybe, maybe not even in cooking, but like in, in any of your daily work.
Shawn Aoki: This morning I was using for Com sets for com checks and like-for-like restaurants and I mean, plugged in, looking for regional, looking for global Com sets.
Um. I use it for a lot for the ratios and pulling massive amounts of data like, uh, Ryan's been doing with the ice cream and the lollipops and everything. And
Josh Sharkey: so it sounds, is, is this mostly just like querying a language model or using other tools or, yeah,
Shawn Aoki: mostly, yeah. Yeah. Querying.
Ryan Harris: We won't lie. We've tried to make it, make recipes, but they don't work.
Shawn Aoki: Never, never really, actually, it never
Ryan Harris: works. And we've, we even had clients say to us, oh no, I can get the [00:50:00] menu from there. And now it's like, is it tried and tested? And AI's made it. It's not, I don't think it's gonna replace us. I really still, no, no, no. Wholeheartedly. Hundred
Shawn Aoki: percent. I
Josh Sharkey: don't think that it will ever replace the creation of recipes.
We're playing around with a lot now, and I'm gonna say playing around, like there's a lot of it in me already, like the, the how you input recipes in like when you import something. There's a lot of AI that we built for that before AI was cool and now we're working on Yeah, exactly. It's just language and stuff.
Yeah. But you know, I'm finding some really interesting applications now, for example, how to make a recipe more clear, right? So one of the things we're doing is we're input, you know, we'll just sort of feed in, okay, here's all the ingredients and here's the instructions I've given. And basically there's a bunch of prompting that we, that we can do to understand, okay, make this recipe, you know, exponentially more explicit, more clear than it is now.
And what it will do, the first, it will ask. Like a hundred questions. And so part of the prompt is you have to sort of dial in. Okay, don't ask me about brand [00:51:00] names to use, things like that. But it's crazy, the the things that we take for granted that we just say, you know, like, eat a pan on medium heat and add the oil, and then the AI will start to ask all these questions.
You're like, oh yeah, I guess that, you know, and you wonder why someone, you know will screw something up, like. That's why there's so many things that we take for granted that we know, that are so difficult to remember, to put down new instruction. That I find is actually where I'm, I'm actually excited about that direction of, um, just tell me everything that I didn't include here to make this thing more explicit.
Some can co attest to that to me,
Ryan Harris: like, I've the worst at, I know I need to do it. So just, I'm not gonna write it in there, but when Sean gr it or one of our team does, they're like, oh, but chef, what do, oh yeah. We gotta make sure that if you do this first and then build that in. And Yeah. And with our recipes, we try not to overcomplicate them.
We've used meat a few times and it's taken it more then put it in and say less can summarize this to the best to get the full [00:52:00] bullet
Josh Sharkey: points out. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot there, but I don't know why I've been asking everybody this. It just came up in a conversation like four shows ago, and so now I'm just queering everybody about, uh, cookbooks.
What's your, what's your top five cookbooks?
Ryan Harris: I just bought the new one from Jose Andreas. What? Crack crack. More eggs. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Break. Cool. Break More eggs. I don't know, I wanna check that one out for me. I'm, I'm excited for the modernist cuisine pastry book. They're, I think they're building out that one.
I bet you are the big one. I've never really went through all the way, but the bread one was awesome. Yeah. I don't know. Try to pick up a new one every now and again. Any go-tos that you always go back to? That's a good question. I'm looking up at them now because they're not this, they're not on this wall.
That's right. I always, I always turn,
Josh Sharkey: I always turn back at my wall. I'm just, uh, yeah, I don't, it's funny. I actually don't, I don't go back to cookbooks very often.
Shawn Aoki: That's the thing. I was like, I was like really trying to think like we don't read. Yeah. Very many cookbooks anymore.
Ryan Harris: I like
Shawn Aoki: to have know back [00:53:00] in the day there was the, uh, it was on food and cooking right?
And like that kinda stuff by Harold and some of the, some of the old stuff out of, uh, you know, the flour water yeast and stuff. But it's, yeah. That's, that's a good, yeah. Nowadays you just pick up your phone and you ine They
Ryan Harris: had some really good books
Josh Sharkey: back. Yeah. But it just. You're right, I usually will do it for, for just sort of inspiration.
Like, what do, what, you know, what's something I wanna, you know, what's something I wanna make? And then I'll like, yeah, like pick up a Lange or something. Yeah. There are, you know, I will say that, I promise it's not a plug, but like for the last four years, every time any, I'm, I'm looking at any cookbook and I like something, I just snap a picture and send it right to me.
So that's just, so I'm just building my, my database of my database of, of, of recipes and I, it's kind of like addicting. I just keep adding them. I do think that cooking by hand for me is one. I, I don't, I don't have to go back to it as much 'cause I can use it in the app 'cause I have all the recipes now.
But like, there's so [00:54:00] many, you know, the charcuterie stuff is, you know, obviously you have to pretty dialed in recipes. That one's, uh, is like one of the, one of the best. Well, I gotta come to Dubai now. I'm gonna have to come visit you guys. You do, you do. I, I mean, I just, Monica work there. You guys are just like the best, the best job.
We don't think you out.
Ryan Harris: This is awesome, man. We'll, we'll, we'll take you to Oman and we'll, we'll show you some of the kitchens and stuff. Yeah,
Josh Sharkey: yeah, yeah. We, I would do, we should totally do that. But it's fi it's great just to finally meet you guys. 'cause you know, I, I always see the names popping up. I see my team working on things, always asking about currency.
Um, so it's great to finally like, uh, you know, put, uh, put, uh, uh, faces to names to be able to chat with you guys.
Ryan Harris: Also coming along, can I ask you face to face?
Josh Sharkey: Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the Song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, fresh daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast.
That's G-E-T-M-double E-Z.com/podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating, don't settle. Make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know.
See you next time.
