DRUMS & CRUMBS

Serving up authentic southern cuisine in the heart of California wine country

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We’ve been quiet the past few weeks, but rest assure we are still plodding forward with gusto. Arthur has been acquainting himself with our new accounting software and making friends in the Bay Area food industry, and Rachel has been working on the logo with our graphic designer (and also studying for the California bar exam next week).

We are thrilled to have our Facebook page up and running, although it will look a little drab until we have all of our fun design stuff figured out. We post little updates here and there on the Facebook page that don’t make there way into this blog, so you should definitely mosey on over there — http://www.facebook.com/drumsandcrumbs — and become a fan!

Have a great weekend!

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Progress Update: Baby Steps

Hello, world!

We’ve been keeping the details of the business (and even this blog) to ourselves the past few months, but we are officially going public on January 31st, which may or may not coincide with Rachel’s 30th birthday.

Up until now, planning has been largely conceptual. We took some broad ideas (what it would be like to run a business together, what kind of business would it be, what kind of food would we serve, what would it look like) and slowly have distilled the vision that is Drums & Crumbs.

In the past month, progress has taken a sharp turn towards the realm of concrete details, and we have found a tax adviser, a bank, and a graphic designer. The state of California is taking its sweet time in processing our paperwork to register as an LLC, but we have checked off some of the other entity-related boxes from our to-do list. We are also well on our way to having company health insurance starting in the second quarter!

In addition, Arthur has been doing market research for the business plan, while Rachel is getting to work with the graphic designer and web developer. We will be sharing updates on both of those projects as we have them.

As always, thank you for joining us. The best is yet to come.

 

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Meet The Co-Founders: Rachel

We’ve already introduced one half of the business, so today we’d like to tell you a little about the other half: Rachel.

Like Arthur, Rachel is a southerner through and through. She was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, lived in Montgomery, Alabama for about 10 years as a kid, studied as an undergrad in Georgia, and went to law school in North Carolina.

Rachel has always had an active creative side, dabbling in drawing, painting, writing, and music ever since she was little. When she entered the somewhat dry world of legal academia, she realized she needed to find a creative outlet to help maintain her sanity. On a whim, she picked cake decorating, making cakes from box mixes and decorating them with colorful frosting designs. She quickly grew tired of the bland box mixes and was soon making cakes and cupcakes from scratch.

While her cake decorations were admittedly solidly mediocre, her baking was not. What started as a hobby grew into an obsession, and she would sometimes bake four kinds of cookies at a time to share with her classmates and regularly delivered pies to friends’ doorsteps. Baking soon spread to cooking, and she developed a special affinity for southern comfort food. This culinary prowess came as a surprise because Rachel hadn’t been exposed to cooking growing up.

Baking and cooking went well with another skill that Rachel had been honing since she was a teenager: hosting. She always loved getting people together, whether it was a back-to-school Hawaiian luau or a Valentine’s Day ladies-only poker tournament. She would distribute homemade paper invitations and prepare a themed menu of snacks and beverages. Favorite events include an Annual Halloween Preview & Arm Wrestling Competition, complete with inscribed trophies, and an annual semi-formal holiday wine and cheese party, which has only grown more elaborate over the years.

By the time she moved to New York City in 2008 to work as a litigation associate at a large law firm, one thing was very clear. Rachel loved food, loved people, and loved when she could put the two together.

Although Rachel was instantly at home living in the big city, working at the law firm wasn’t a perfect fit. She loved the intellectual challenge of the job, but she didn’t like the demanding schedule and the internal politics. She also wanted more room for creative expression.

The thought of quitting a comfortable job in a bad economy caused her some hesitation, but life made the decision for her when she was laid off in 2011 in the fourth round of mass layoffs at her law firm. By this time, her law school fantasy of opening a bakery was reborn, and she took a job at a small but busy bakery in New York’s Upper East Side. Working behind the counter at the bakery confirmed what she always suspected: selling delicious food was inspiring and fulfilling.

Moving to California was an unexpected twist that came after a mother/daughter trip to Napa and Sonoma in 2011. The bright sun and beautiful landscapes (not to mention the amazing wine) was irresistible, and in early 2012 she packed up her life in New York and drove across the country to California to start a business.

While putting plans together for a bakery, she realized how much better the experience would be if she had a business partner to share the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, particularly someone who shared her passion for food and offered a different set of skills. Her conversations with an old friend from New York City, Arthur, about selling fried chicken together started off in jest but quickly turned serious when they realized they shared a vision that is now Drums & Crumbs.

Rachel’s strengths include her legal background, knack for baking, eye for design, affinity for the written word, love of bringing people together, open mind, sweet smile and willingness to take a chance on something she believes in.

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Meet The Co-Founders: Arthur

There are two forces behind Drums & Crumbs. Some say we make an unlikely team due to the differences in our personalities (more on that later), but the common elements of our backgrounds and shared vision for the business have resulted in us being pretty great partners.

Today, we are introducing Arthur.

Arthur is a born and bred southerner hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. An elevated appreciation for food and an entrepreneurial spirit must run in his blood, because his father was a celebrated and acclaimed chef and restauranteur in Memphis. Consequently, Arthur saw the ins and outs of the restaurant business from a young age, busing tables, bar tending, performing various food preparation jobs in the kitchen, and learning to cook.

While in college at the University of Tennessee, he forayed into the world of wine, taking wine education classes and working at a local wine store. Arthur spent a year at law school but discovered the legal life was not his calling and instead managed a wine store and taught classes on wine tasting.

His first “career” began when he moved to Nashville to work in finance, which paved the way to New York City where he worked for a couple of well known financial firms over the next seven years. Even then, food was always on his mind. Arthur took food writing and wine tasting classes and actively explored New York’s inspirational and limitless culinary scene.

By 2012, Arthur knew it was time for something else. He weighed his options inside the world of finance, even studying for and taking the Chartered Financial Analyst exam, but he knew his passion laid elsewhere.

When Arthur encouraged Rachel to take her first non-legal job at a bakery in the city, he had no idea that he was setting his own fate into motion. Rachel moved to California in early 2012, and by June of that same year she had convinced him to take a trip to the west coast to explore the idea of opening a business together. Two months later, Arthur quit his job in finance and took a three-month sabbatical to savor the last of his time in New York and travel to London. In November 2012, he moved to San Francisco to help bring Drums & Crumbs to life.

Arthur’s strengths include his business background, intimate familiarity with the food and beverage industry, determination, self-discipline, gentlemanliness (apparently that is really a word) and lifelong love of food. He’s also somehow held on to his sweet Tennessee accent.

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Why Mobile Food?

We could write a dozen posts on why we think mobile food is so great. Actually, we probably will.

It’s no wonder that food trucks exploded shortly after the economy imploded. Money was tight (and still is) but culinary entrepreneurs still had great ideas to share, and customers still wanted to eat delicious, innovative food.

Mobile food allows both sides to pare down the experience to what they really care about. For us, it is selling food that we love and believe in. For you, its getting a high quality product from a passionate and personal source at an affordable price.

We love all great food experiences, whether it is from a street vendor or a restaurant with a Michelin star. Although the price and the ambiance might vary drastically, the purity of ingredients and attention to detail doesn’t have to thanks to mobile food.

Its hard to separate mobile food from the surge in popularity it has seen in recent years, but we know there a place for it in the wide spectrum of culinary offerings because it allows everyone involved to focus on the one thing that matters most: the food.

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2013: The Year Of Drums & Crumbs!

It’s been an quite a journey so far, but this year things are going to get really exciting.

We’ve been busy getting all of our ducks in a row to launch in the late spring. Right now we are working on all of the boring behind the scenes stuff (will the paperwork ever end??), but soon we will have some fun and exciting developments to share, like a logo and a snazzy new website.

Thanks for coming along with us this far. There is so much more to come!

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Why Food? (Part Two)

We’ve already discussed how food creates memories and shared experiences, which we love.

Today, I want to pay my respect to the delightful tactile nature of food.

We think food can be the purest form of love reduced to physical form. Before I left New York City, I worked at a busy bakery in the Upper East Side. Every day, I had the privilege of selling a product that made people happy. Customers would be so excited to pick up a cookie or cake to give a friend or would share a slice of pie or cheesecake with a companion in the store.

In the south, we take it one step further. As a gesture of love, your dinner host will put together a entire spread of delicious, home-cooked food. We call it southern hospitality.

As our customers, Arthur and I genuinely care about you. We promise to provide to you the best fried chicken and fruit cobbler you’ve ever had, made with ingredients from local sources who share our passion for quality and at a price that won’t hurt your wallet.

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Looking For A Fresh And Fantastic Freelance Graphic Designer!

We need a fresh and fantastic freelance graphic designer to help us design our logo and help us put together our brand image on an independent contractor basis. This may also include helping us design our mobile restaurant! We are hoping to develop an on-going relationship with someone who can help us design web graphics, menus, promotional materials and other swag down the road.

We want to find someone who can demonstrate an ability to create and use retro (think 1950s) graphics and fonts with a clean, modern twist. Prior branding experience is a HUGE plus, but we’re open to new designers as long as you have the skills.

Please send an email to jobs@drumsandcrumbs.com and tell us about your experience and inspiration as a graphic designer. Please include a link to your portfolio, which should include other logos you have designed.

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Why Food? (Part One)

Arthur and I both had very different careers before we started Drums & Crumbs mobile restaurant

There were many things we liked about finance and law — the intellectual challenge, for example — but we both came to the realization that food is our calling.

So what is so great about food?

For me, food — particularly Southern food — represents family gatherings, celebrations and shared experiences. Food brings people together, and sharing thoughtful, perfectly-executed food provides a memorable bond.

We’ve all had meals that stuck with us long after the plates were cleared.

I vividly recall the first time I tried lamb. I was 18 and staying with a family in New Zealand. I was perplexed by the lack of napkins or glasses of water on the table. Within the first few bites of the home-cooked lamb, my teenage taste buds were brought to life.

Not all food memories have to be so specific. I can’t eat a cheese biscuit without thinking of my mom, just like I instantly think of my dad whenever I see shrimp and grits on a menu. Even something as simple as margarine on saltine crackers can transport me back to my grandmother’s lake house with my cousins.

Our hope is that our Drums & Crumbs Southern-style chicken and seasonal fruit cobbler will take you back through your own mental scrapbook of great meals and also create new memories. Whether you are hosting a picnic for twelve or seeking an afternoon snack for two, let us be a part of the experience.

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What’s Happening Here??

Thank you for joining us at the onset of this business adventure! As a (very brief) way of background information, Drums & Crumbs co-founders Arthur Chang and Rachel Hundley are both veterans of the corporate scene in New York City. Arthur worked in the financial sector, and Rachel worked as an litigation attorney.

Both are also born and bred southerners. Arthur grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and Rachel was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina and also spent a decade in Montgomery, Alabama somewhere along the way.

Rachel moved to Santa Cruz, California in February 2012 in search of something new and with the hope of opening a business. Arthur had a similar notion, and will be moving to the west coast in November 2012.

Based on their shared passion for high-quality food, local ingredients and Southern cuisine, Arthur and Rachel have joined forces to bring you authentic Southern comfort food made with a California sensibility and a hint of New York City style.

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