#17: The Sweetfin Story: How a USC Student Revolutionized Poke | Seth Cohen, Sweetfin

Daniel Tsentsiper (00:01.241) Seth, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Seth (00:04.108) I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Daniel. Daniel Tsentsiper (00:06.437) It's a pleasure. Growing up in Orange County in Southern California, I could tell you I've seen your guys' name everywhere. I'm very excited to talk to you about, from talking to you earlier, just hearing about the origin story of Sweetfin and also where you guys are taking the brand. think that for my audience, there is a lot there that we can unpack. So I always ask my audience and my guests to first kind of tell us a little about themselves. And then I have tons and tons of questions that I'm very excited to ask you. Without further ado, Seth, tell us why the heck are you selling Poké? How did this start? Seth (00:41.038) That's a great question. I'm still trying to figure that out myself some days. But I grew up in Los Angeles, never left Southern California. I went to school at USC. Just love the kind of healthy, usually sun-filled Southern California lifestyle. And for whatever reason, as a young kid, I was just interested in cooking and interested in food and hospitality. And it was always a passion of mine. was probably one of the only, you know, teenagers watching the Food Network at the time, you know, 20, 20 plus years ago before it was probably socially acceptable to watch the Food Network as a kid. And so I went to, I went to business school at USC for undergrad and, you know, had a lot of passions. And I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do after college. And I had three really distinct passions that were calling to me. One was real estate and real estate finance that I'd grown up in in Los Angeles. Family was in the business and it was just something that I was interested in. I was obviously passionate about food and hospitality and then I loved marketing and branding. And so when I was trying to figure out what my path would be after school or after college, I thought that I wanted to build a brand or I wanted to build something scalable in the food world. At the time, was really the rise of the fast casual movement coming out of the Great Recession. You saw Chipotle taking off in Shake Shack and even Sweet Green. And there was this idea that in a fast casual environment, you could serve a premium product at a reasonable price point and the consumer wanted to pay for that. And there was a big market for it. And so I thought that was a great way to potentially start a concept and to scale a concept because that's what the market wanted both from the financial side, but also the consumer. And so I kind of put pen to paper and thought about a lot of different fast, casual concepts. And what I realized was everyone was kind of doing the same thing. It was either a customizable, you know, pizza concept or salad chain or even sandwiches. And no one had really cracked the nut on figuring out a way to scale. Seth (03:03.846) raw fish and growing up in Southern California, eating sushi was just a part of our diet. it was something that I personally love to eat. I remember when I went to USC, one of the coolest parts about going to school in downtown LA was that we were adjacent to Little Tokyo. And so I would spend a lot of time there and just kind of fell in love with Japanese culture and that type of food. And so I did some research and realized that scaling a sushi concept was challenging and it had its own issues. But I realized that there was this little known dish called poke, which had eaten a few times, you know, visiting Hawaii. And it was interesting because it had the familiar flavors of sushi and components, but you could really customize it and make it your own. And no one had done anything with it in a fast casual sort of environment. So came up with the idea, pitched it. to a partner of mine who went to USC Brett. And we were kind of off to the races. We put together a team, an operator team who ended up being my partner, Alan. And then we brought on an incredible chef named Dakota Weiss who had just finished filming Top Chef. And so that was kind of my first lesson in terms of starting the business was there was a lot I didn't know. And at the time, ignorance was a bliss because if I knew what I... knew then what I know now. I'm not sure I would have started the business. But you know, we were, we were kind of naive and dumb and all the best ways and put a complimentary team around us to get off the ground and, and, know, decided, Hey, let's raise some money, open the first store in Santa Monica. And fortunately that store got, you know, national and global acclaim at the time for being super different and unique. And, and we were off to the races. Daniel Tsentsiper (05:01.532) Absolutely. And I think at that time, okay, it was not, it wasn't what it was today, right? It was you were entering a new market and you had something really special. And so it did that help the fact that you were first to market, let's just say, or one of the first people to market. Did that help you guys stand out in the early days? Seth (05:21.516) Yeah, I mean, I have some funny stories. I'll give you two quick anecdotes. You're right. When we kind of conceptualized Sweet Fin 10 years ago, there was no fast casual poke. The only poke that really exists was in Hawaii. And so we had two jobs in terms of getting the business off the ground. Number one, you have to raise the money. And number two, you have to find a place for your first brick and mortar. So we went to some landlords. Daniel Tsentsiper (05:44.538) your location. Seth (05:49.11) and real estate owners and pitched them this idea and they thought we were absolutely crazy. And I remember one day we found a space in downtown LA and I was so excited. I thought this would be an amazing place to launch this concept. had a really strong density and amazing kind of lunch rush of density of people in downtown LA. And we were about to sign the LOI and I got a call from the broker and the broker said, Hey, I hate to tell you, but the, the landlord decided to go into a different direction. He doesn't understand what you're doing. And he thought a grilled cheese concept would be better used for the space. And I was pissed. And so it ended up working out for the better that we ended up opening in Santa Monica, but yeah, it was, it was really hard and same, same thing when we were raising money from investors. I would say, we're doing this thing called Poke and I'd send the deck and they're like, is this like a tech thing? Is it a Facebook poke? Like literally we don't know like, what is this concept? And so the, and that's the thing I learned about being in the food and beverage industry is that there's no barriers to entry at all. So you have a great product, people are going to copy you. And, know, I was a little bit ahead and thinking that way when we started the concept, because I knew that, Hey, Daniel Tsentsiper (07:07.352) Interesting. Seth (07:08.27) if this category gets big, we're really going to need to differentiate ourselves. so that was the mindset going into it. So every way in which we could differentiate ourselves from, you know, the product quality to the way we were talking about sustainability and acting on it, the brand, the design, the social media, the way we were investing in all of those things, things that we did, and we really took no shortcuts and made sure that we were building a holistic type brand across all touch points. And so when other players came to the space, the market got inundated with these poke concepts. But fortunately, because of the work we did at the beginning, we are always known as the kind of blue ribbon gold standard in the category because we had spent the time to really build a brand in a thoughtful, thoughtful, meaningful way. And so I think that's an important lesson in anything that you do. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:50.753) Just. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:54.688) Right. Seth (08:04.91) You know, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is key and being able to clearly differentiate yourself, it doesn't matter what sort of business that you're in, is really the only way to create kind of pricing power and a differentiating factor amongst the consumer. Daniel Tsentsiper (08:25.238) Yeah. And would you say that you guys are in the category of okay. Would you guys consider yourself a premium product? Do you guys price higher than the competition? Because if I go down Southern California, I'm just in every mile you see a poke shop with all these crazy names and seems like they put very little attention on creating a brand and more about just churning as much product as possible. Do you guys segment yourselves differently as a, you mentioned as a chef driven concept, is there a higher price that you're able to charge for that. Seth (08:57.038) Yeah, I mean, that's what I feel like the definition of a brand is. It's kind of the difference between what you can charge from your competitors because you've created demand. that demand is not necessarily tangible. But we work hard towards it. And so I think our premium sourcing practices Again, we say we're chef driven and we are chef driven. Everything that we say we are, we actually are. we, you know, for the entirety of our concept, even when it didn't necessarily make, you know, economic sense, we've always had a culinary director or head chef on our team as part of the concept. Every quarter we try to work with either an artist or some of the top chefs in the country to bring limited time items to our menu to, again. practice what we preach, work with some of the best culinary minds in the world, and bring unique menu items to our concept. And a lot of people in our category aren't doing that. And that kind of idea of a collaboration is now, I would say commonplace in the fast casual world. But when we started doing this nine or 10 years ago, when we were doing collaborations with two star Michelin chef, Philip Franklin Lee or Richard blaze or Antonio Lafasso and these amazing chefs who are on the Food Network and Top Chef like we hammered home the idea that this is a place that is chef driven and is a place that chefs want to eat at and so that was really the seal of the stamp of approval in terms of Differencing ourselves from a culinary standpoint Daniel Tsentsiper (10:40.173) Yeah. And it's amazing. I'm sure that your, your, experience, Alan's experience, Brett's experience coming from USC, being around, you know, the media capital of the world, the marketing capital of the world. I'm sure that that kind of, reflected in your guys's early ambitions and early marketing. I find that not to be the case for a lot of brands. think a lot of brands first want to come in and, kind of prove out the product and be able to show sales and then. marketing kind of comes as an afterthought. It's something that I talk a lot about on my show is, is when is the right time to invest in some of these, components of your brand that, drive sales. So you guys have done a really, really good job. And tell me when things started to get, when did you start feeling like things were starting to click? Like, when did you guys start expanding? When did you guys start getting a little bit more momentum and what were those? kind of decisions that you had to make at those critical points. Seth (11:41.774) I mean, the truth of the matter is that the hardest part in the early stages was getting the business off the ground was, you know, seeing it is really hard. As I said, ideas are a diamond dozen. It's it's all about executing. It is really hard to take an idea and to convert an idea into a functional business. so getting to that point, it takes a lot of courage. and a lot of hard work and you really have to believe in yourself and the product in order to get to that point. So once we got from that point to opening day, I would say when we opened the first store, it was easy. I mean, that was the fun part. You know, we were in there, we were packed from day one. And one thing we created and it was just Daniel Tsentsiper (12:28.343) Mm-hmm. Seth (12:41.012) my personality and who I am and my partners. And I think this is the most important part of marketing, especially right now, is we created a sense of community within the four walls of our stores. spent a lot of time there. you know, we really treated the business as a hospitality concept, not a, you know, fast, casual restaurant that was serving product as quickly as possible. So bringing in my partner Alan who had some fine dining and some casual fine dining concepts in the past. was an interesting way to think about what we were doing because we still preach this to this day of when we're training our managers and our team members. There are a million places for the consumer to spend money. And so how do you differentiate yourself from a service standard and hospitality standards? And that's something that, you know, from day one, we just preach touching tables, you know, talking to guests, getting to know them on a personal basis, knowing their names, knowing what they like to order. so people, you know, the consumer just wants to be recognized. And so if you can do that and you can make people feel good, you know, that's that's a huge win. The food doesn't even need to be amazing. Like there are a lot of, you know, establishments that people go to the food and product aren't Daniel Tsentsiper (14:03.51) game. Seth (14:08.552) the best, but they're just good enough. And it's a great experience and they're they feel welcomed and they feel wanted. And so that was something that, you know, going back to your question about marketing, when is the right time to invest in marketing? I mean, I think, you know, it's all about, especially now it's about community building. I, know, when we start sweeping, community building was important, but marketing is constantly evolving. So I'll give you an example. When Daniel Tsentsiper (14:09.056) subpar Seth (14:37.994) we started, know, Instagram was really a, it was taking off and again, think 10 years ago, it was, was kind of like a discovery platform. And so if you invested in the platform in terms of creating high quality, high value content, then you would be rewarded for that. So, you know, we had this idea of, let's hire a professional videographer team to come in and really like make our product look sexy. Like, Daniel Tsentsiper (14:49.546) Absolutely. Seth (15:07.47) We're bringing in all this amazing fish and like whole fruits and vegetables and grains and like everything's so colorful. Like let's create these, these videos that showcase the product. Again, 10 years ago, it was like, you it was kind of like food porn. And, and I remember we posted our first video and, um, it got like 120,000 views, um, organically. This is before you could pay to boost content on Instagram. And we were just getting thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of followers. And so now you can't really do that, right? You post a high value video on Instagram, you're like a dime a dozen. And it's saturated, like you've seen it all. Everyone's seen it all. You have to pay to play. But interestingly enough, I was on TikTok this morning and I discovered this guy. Daniel Tsentsiper (15:51.573) It's so saturated. Seth (16:06.958) who is opening a sort of like an air one grab and go competitor in New York City. And he has documented basically almost every day of his journey from day one to now he's about to open. And he has spent $0 on marketing, not $1. And he has created this community around him of people that want to see him succeed because they have gone on the journey with him from opening from, from idea to opening. And so I'll give you an example of one thing he does. So he is the majority of this concept revolves around to go foods that are high end takeout food. so every day he would taste test on TikTok, a new item, like, Hey, this is what my Szechuan beef bowl is going to taste. What it's going to look like. He's trying it. He's giving tasting notes and guess what? People on TikTok would give him feedback. Well, have you ever thought about pickling the onions instead of having red onions that he would respond again, creating community. He spends zero dollars to build all this brand awareness. I know what it is in LA. I'm not even in New York. And now he's going to open this, you know, grocery concept. And I'm sure, you know, so long as he executes, it's going to do well. And so I think, you know, with marketing, you just have to get creative. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:08.66) you Daniel Tsentsiper (17:29.108) Hmm. Seth (17:34.465) You have to be creative, have to be open-minded, you have to understand what people are looking for. And right now, I think people are looking for vulnerability and honesty, rather than very overproduced, non-real content. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:55.605) It's like corporate. It's very much corporate feel. There's a corporate feel to lot of the messaging and a lot of the marketing. It feels very impersonal. And so we've seen brands lead into influencer marketing as a way to extend their brand to the modern consumer. But then it creates a disconnect because you have all these different influencers. They come and go. And you need to find a way to kind of bring it back to what the business is about and who are the people behind the scenes. And this is the reason I started this podcast is because I'm sure you've been on the dock at plenty of times going around talking about your product, but for the person has never tried sweet fin that's in Southern California, seeing you talk so openly and so, you know, so, so plainly about your story, it helps people connect and Seth (18:32.632) Yep. Daniel Tsentsiper (18:52.711) If I was deciding on where I want to eat, I would love to hear more about the story and the vision of the founders as well. And I think that's very important. And that's something I'm trying to push more people to do. Cause I think it's, it's the key to, getting a very loyal fan base behind your brand. Let me ask you in has, have your fans helped you kind of take the direction of Sweetfin along the journey, right? Did they give you any unique insights that Helped you guys maybe refine your menu, try new products. Curious about how you took that feedback and iterated on Seth (19:29.88) Yeah, mean, like, believe it or not, I still, I still respond to customer service emails very often. I just think it's important to know what is going on, you know, in the company and you can't be everywhere at once. so, I mean, we, look at them every literally. Monday through Friday, I get to the office at six 30 in the morning between six 30 and seven o'clock. I'm looking at customer service emails a hundred percent every single day, five days a week. Um, and so listen, everyone has, everyone has an opinion. Um, you can't, you can't, um, you know, mold your business. have to have, uh, you know, you have to listen, we have our core values. have our mission of fueling life through freshness. Um, you gotta stick to your gun sometimes and, and sometimes it would be, uh, be different. Like, like you can't, you can't, you can't like give into, to, what every customer says, but yeah, we definitely listen to them. And, you know, we sometimes we make decisions that are best for the business and, you know, we'll get a couple emails from our customer base that they don't like the decision that we made. you know, every decision we make is, is while it's best for the business, the reason why it's best for the business, because we have a thoughtful reason behind it. And so I think it's important to respond in a thoughtful way. And so I think when people Daniel Tsentsiper (20:31.611) Agreed. Agreed. Seth (20:58.562) you know, complain or have feedback about something and the owner of the business is reaching out, you know, personally and providing their cell phone number. and, know, giving a thoughtful reason it's a, it's very disarming and people just want to be heard. but yeah, of course, like there's many, you know, parts of, feedback that, that we've taken seriously and it's helped us mold our business decisions. Daniel Tsentsiper (21:28.153) Absolutely. You have to be a little bit stubborn and only you know what's best for the business, but still be open to taking feedback and iterating on the product. What's next for you guys? Are you guys opening up new stores? Are you guys franchising? How are you guys planning to grow? Are you trying out new concepts? What's what are you up to these days? Seth (21:44.96) Yeah, we are. Yeah, all the above, all the above. We love our Sweetfin brand. We love the product. We are in a category that is still growing. It's highly fragmented. There's not a winner in the space. There's no Sweetgreen at Poke. There's no Chipotle of the category. But at the same time, we recognize that the consumer and the consumer needs are constantly evolving. And we are ready to evolve with them. And so we're looking at kind of an evolved version of Sweetfin. And what does that look like in something we're working on? I think we stick with our core competency, but in a similar way to Sweetgreen and Cava, the way that they've evolved their menus over the years, that's something that we'll do as well. And we think that we can take that evolved concept and bring it to other parts of the country. you know, we still think there's a huge opportunity in the better for you, fast casual category. that is just, it's not a trend. People want to eat healthier. They want to eat cleaner. you know, we are fortunate that we have a product that is healthy. and it's relatively clean and it's still craveable. And so there's a lot of flavor. and so we think in the, in the. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:01.009) Absolutely. Seth (23:16.07) We sit somewhere in the healthy bull market, in the Asian market, and so our goal is to win that market. Just like Cava has won Mediterranean, Sweetgreen has won Salads, essentially, with some other competitors. We think we can win the healthy Asian bull market, and so that's where we want to take that concept, and we want to take it to different parts of the country. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:38.609) Have you guys tried going to other states or have you guys stayed local to California? Seth (23:43.466) Not yet. We've stayed local. it's, it's, you know, being a small business owner, you take your punches. We've, it's been crazy the last five years, starting with COVID in LA, you have really good momentum and then COVID hits you. And then, you know, people don't really return to office and you have the writer strikes and the actor strikes in Hollywood and then you have fires. And so it's one thing after another. And we're Daniel Tsentsiper (24:09.99) Yeah. Seth (24:11.758) We've done our best to adapt and obviously we're still alive after 10 years, so we're not going anywhere. But it's a tough market. It's hard to run a multi-unit restaurant chain in Southern California. And there are a lot of our contemporaries that unfortunately closing around us. And so we're just very grateful that we have. You know really great team members that work with us. We have amazing group of supporters with our you know what we call our sweet fans or customer base and and we're just looking forward to kind of Getting from where we are now to the more of all version of what sweet thing can be Daniel Tsentsiper (24:54.577) Absolutely. And I do look forward to seeing how you guys evolve. And I very excited to try some of the new items. think the last time I was at Sweet Fin was when I was still living in Irvine, which was a long time ago. So when I'm back, I definitely need to give it a shot. always give me a 50 % off or something. I'll be there. Last question for you. I always ask my guests, who do you look up to in this industry? Who inspires you? Who's someone that Seth (25:10.478) We gotta get you over. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:24.91) You think my audience who, you know, maybe it's you, you, you took some of their inspiration around the way they scale the business or maybe it's your partner, right? Someone that gives you some inspiration around how you see differently. Right. And wondering if there's someone that kind of lights your fire and if you could share with our audience. Seth (25:48.066) I light my own fire. I'm pretty self motivated and competitive to be honest and competitive in a good way with myself. You you just want to constantly be doing more and I think progress equals happiness and it just, makes life more fun and meaningful. But man, that's a good question that I wasn't ready for. I would say probably a gentleman that we met a while ago. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:49.912) Let's go. Good answer. Seth (26:16.718) named David Swinghammer, who's become a good friend of mine. I don't know if you know David, he was a CEO of Shake Shack at one point. And I met him like eight or nine years ago and he was a former CEO of Shake Shack. And now he sits on the board of some amazing hospitality groups like Snooze and what else? Hattie B's exactly, thank you. Daniel Tsentsiper (26:23.024) CEO of Shake Shack. Daniel Tsentsiper (26:40.784) I did these. Seth (26:44.162) and high hospitality out of Austin, Texas. And, you know, I, he's just been really successful in, in working with, you know, multiple concepts. And we did a kind of classroom session with him. ended up investing in Sweetfin and through that we became good friends and he's always been very generous and kind with his time. He's just a very kind person. And, and I think, you know, he really understands hospitality. He understands all the things that really I'm interested in, in terms of real estate. he calls it people, place and product. Those were the three P's that, you know, nine years ago we sat down. He's like, those are the three things you should, and profit, of course, the four P's, the most important for P. And, you know, that's how we think about things. And he's just, Daniel Tsentsiper (27:31.798) And profit, yeah. Yeah, the four piece. Seth (27:40.544) He's just a good human, good person, good leader, continuing to evolve and do exciting projects. But at the same time, just being very down to earth and just a good human. So I appreciate him and he's a good person to look up to. Daniel Tsentsiper (28:05.603) David, you're coming on the show next. He's, he's off. David, David is awesome. Seth, thank you so much for, joining this episode. think that you have, it's almost like a masterclass of, of starting from this vision and then executing really well on the marketing, growing very slow and meticulously, but doing it with a lot of care and listening to your customers and evolving. So I think there's a lot for my audience to, learn from your story. So thank you so much for, sharing with us. Seth (28:08.115) I'll send him a note. Yeah. Seth (28:35.95) My pleasure and thanks for having me. It's good to speak. Daniel Tsentsiper (28:38.777) Take care, bye.