Meet the Owner(s) is a new column on PaigePapers featuring enterprise owners running bakeries, cafes, markets, specialty food shops, and fast casual restaurants in New York City and around the country.  In speaking with enterprise owners, we hope to offer readers unique perspectives on the challenges and triumphs of ownership, as well as valuable insights to apply to their own enterprises.

Recently, we spoke with Alison Cayne, founder of Haven’s Kitchen, a specialty food shop, recreational cooking school and event space in Manhattan.  Located just blocks from the Union Square Greenmarket, Haven’s Kitchen “is dedicated to the preparation and enjoyment of delicious, sustainable, seasonal food.”  TaraPaige Group helped Alison and her team with the opening of Haven’s Kitchen and were thrilled to catch up with her again.

Below is an abbreviated version of TaraPaige Group’s conversation with Alison.

TPG:       How did the idea for Haven’s Kitchen come about? 

AC:             “When I first was out of college I really wanted to open a little sandwich shop, and I always loved making food for people and thought it would be fun to do that as a job.  [T]hen when I went back to school, I started teaching again. I had always given my friends cooking lessons here and there, and as I started learning more about food systems, my cooking classes turned into more of food classes…about sustainability and nutrition.”

TPG:       And then you started looking for a space for the school?

AC:            “I didn’t really at all envision this, I just pictured the kitchen part, and I thought there’d be a little retail…and this place came up and it was way bigger than I [was looking for].”

But after seeing the building, Alison began to envision a ground level café and school, and the event spaces on higher floors. “So the idea for the whole thing as one big business didn’t really happen until the building happened.”

TPG:      What was the most challenging part of starting a new venture? 

AC:            “I had no idea what I was doing…It was also my greatest asset, because someone with more understanding of this business and everything that goes into it probably wouldn’t have taken this on.  And it’s been challenging in that I’m a very trusting person and unfortunately I’ve been challenged with having to face the fact that not everyone deserves that trust…There have been those…typical business challenges, getting this permit or that…certificate, but all of that doesn’t really get to me in a core way, it’s more the interpersonal stuff that has been challenging.”

TPG:      What has been the most exciting part?

AC:            “Honestly, every day is exciting.  That there are people changing the way that they eat and understand sustainable and local, that chefs come to us because they like our coffee and our granola…We work with JustFood [where Alison is on the board], we work with Rural & Migrant Ministry, we work with Edible Schoolyard, we work with FarmAid.  We’re actually doing very cool stuff, and that’s exciting.  [P]eople have responded so well and I’m so honored.”

TPG:       How have things changed now that you’re past your first year?

AC:            “I’m less challenged by the interpersonal stuff now. I think I’ve gotten a little tougher skin, and I think I’ve learned how to not personalize things that are not personal.  But the excitement grows.  It just gets bigger.  It’s still all really exciting.”

TPG:       What about your day-to-day?

AC:            “I taught more at the beginning…And I don’t have the time really to do that [now].  I was behind the counter a lot more at the beginning, too.  I’m still behind the counter, but it’s not probably the most efficient use of my time.  Although I do love our regulars and they all know me.”

“My days change from day to day.  We are still dealing with contractors, we’re still growing our website.  I do the Pinterest. I do the Instagram.  I’m writing for the Huffington Post.  I’m still in school.  I still end up talking to customers because I’m always sitting in the front.  I do the flowers for every private event. Every day is different, which is really fun because it keeps it very exciting.”

TPG:       Sustainability is a core value of your enterprise.  Can you talk a bit about building it into your enterprise?

AC:            “If you’re a values-driven business, you’re going to have questions every day…My primary goal is yes, to keep the lights on, but my very, very close secondary goal is to represent the values that I am espousing.  So every day is a decision, [for example when a private event] really wants to have Coke at their party, but we don’t support Coke, generally, as a business.  And they don’t understand why we would prefer to serve Boylan’s…Everything is a case-by-case, and that’s the good news about being a very small team is you get to make those decisions.  But they’re constant…You constantly have to keep checking yourself against that mission…We keep checking against [a set of questions]–‘are we who we say we are; are we who we want to be; have we lost something because we’re so busy.’”

TPG:       You have 3 revenue streams at Haven’s Kitchen (classes, retail, and events).  How do you manage all three under one roof?

AC:            “It’s been and asset and it’s been a liability… Our ricotta is a perfect example.  We make the ricotta from the unused milk from the coffee [bar], so that’s a really good way…to have the businesses feed off of each other.  We have really good ways of being more sustainable in terms of food waste.”

But she noted it does have some challenges. “The private events right now support the whole building. We would like each business unit to be more self-sustaining.  I thought the school would be more profitable.  As it turns out, right now I think we have about six classes a week.  I thought we’d have three classes a day, six days a week.” Furthermore, Alison noted, “Figuring out what the costs are for retail and the school are actually challenging because so much of it is tied in [to the other revenue streams].”

TPG:      What are some things you wish you had known before starting your enterprise?  Is there anything you would do differently?

AC:            “It would be great to [have known] what COGS [Cost of Goods Sold] are.  I kept looking at sales, and [saying] I don’t get it.  We have such great sales, why are we losing money?  And I didn’t really understand that …[y]ou can have a program where you figure out your margins.  And you should run everything through that program just to know where you are.  It’s the same thing with management.  It’s about if you’re bringing out the best in people that you’re managing… That’s something that I wish I had known earlier on because I think that I was very nice, but I don’t necessarily think that I was as helpful as I could be.  And I thought that I was giving people autonomy, but I probably wasn’t giving people enough leadership.”

TPG:      What’s your favorite product or class that Haven’s Kitchen offers?

AC:            “I really love everything.  I happen to love our granola cookie.  And I love our ricotta.  And I love our pancake mix.  No one would ever say that [our food is] health food, because we use butter.  It’s not a quinoa-chia-date raw bar.  But it does have good quality ingredients; it is made with everything you would want your food to be made with.  It’s just real food and it’s really good.”