For First-Time Chefs, Pop-Ups Are Often the Path to Restaurant Ownership

When 2024 F&W Best New Chefs Leina Horii and Brian Lea signed the lease on the space that would become Kisser in Nashville, they had a completely different concept in mind. They planned to open a takeout window serving Japanese barbecue and bento boxes. Today, Kisser is a bright daytime café serving home-style Japanese dishes, without any barbecued meat in sight.

Through a series of pop-ups they hosted as they awaited building permits, Lea and Horii found that the public demand for homestyle dishes like udon, onigiri, and inari was much larger than they’d anticipated. Ultimately, they changed their entire menu to accommodate the food they found people were most responding to.

The influence these pop-ups had on Lea and Horii’s final concept of Kisser mirrors the  experiences of many Best New Chefs. Pop-ups are increasingly the path to restaurant ownership for first-time chefs. Their lower overhead allows chefs to try out different styles, according to Karyn Tomlinson, another 2024 F&W Best New Chef and the owner of Myriel in St. Paul.

“It’s a great way to develop a culinary voice in a way that you don't always have the luxury of doing while you're working in somebody else’s restaurant,” Tomlinson said. Before opening Myriel, Tomlinson had been the chef at The Corner Table, which closed in 2019. 

During the short window between its closure and the beginning of COVID lockdowns, Tomlinson did a pop-up at a residency space in St. Paul. She called the concept Ufta, and while it was different from what Myriel became, it was proof to her that people resonated with the more personal, Scandinavian-Minnesotan cooking that would become the backbone of Myriel. 

“People are compelled when they see somebody who really is excited about what they're doing and it tells a cohesive story,” Tomlinson said. “I think [Ufta] was probably the first time that I broke out of the preexisting expectations of a restaurant and did something really all about my story.”

Through their pop-ups, Lea and Horii also found people responding strongly to the food that was more personal to them, especially to Horii.

 “In the back of our minds, the food that we’re doing now was always more what we wanted to be doing,” Lea explains. “We just didn’t think there would be enough demand, that people would be familiar enough with the food.”

 The first time they sold onigiri at a farmers market, Horii had significant doubts.

She said, “I remember asking Brian: ‘Are people just going to be walking by saying, like, what's that weird Asian woman selling?’” They sold out in less than 30 minutes. “People would say, ‘Oh I’ve seen onigiri in manga, and I’ve always wanted to try it, but I’ve never seen it anywhere.’”

To this day she says she’s regularly surprised by how many people have a personal connection to the Japanese dishes they serve.

 “People say, ‘Oh, my neighbor growing up was Japanese, and I grew up eating curry because my best friend was Japanese,’” said Horii. “But they’ve never had it anywhere because no one serves it.” 

Luckily for Lea and Horii, there were significant delays in the build-out process for Kisser. It took almost a year just to get permits approved. In that time, they began to shift their concept. If you know what you’re looking for, Horii says you can still tell in the space today that they made the decision to serve food in person partway through construction.

“We've had people in the industry even comment like, ‘Hey, did you guys intend this to be a takeout window?’” she said. “Because the way that the line is shaped and how the counter is shaped, it looks like an area that you should walk up to and order from.”

Wedchayan “Deau” Arpapornnopparat, another 2024 F&W Best New Chef, never even intended to open a restaurant. He began in 2020 serving juices and drink concentrates out of a tent outside his apartment in Los Angeles. But people wanted food to go with their juices, so a second tent appeared, serving just a couple of dishes. Then smoke from wildfires around LA at the beginning of 2021 forced him inside, and he signed a lease with a developer who had an open space in a food hall, which became the first location of Holy Basil.

“We’ve just followed what we’re curious about,” Arpapornnopparat said. “We opened the Atwater location because we wanted to cook foods that aren’t so good for takeout, so we needed a sit-down space.”

Arpapornnopparat has stuck with mindsight of a pop-up even as he has expanded his business. The creativity and the willingness to change have been a benefit to his business, which has continued to evolve over the years. 

“I think we’ll continue to see pop-ups be a testing ground for new restaurants,” Arpapornnopparat said. 

The ability to slowly start a business, rather than dive in with the high risk and high investment of a restaurant, helps young chefs cut their teeth, according to Tomlinson, who tries to host regular pop-ups at her restaurant.

“The part you don't see as much in a pop-up is sort of the business side of things,” she said. “Not everyone who's talented in kitchens needs to start their own restaurant, but [pop-ups] can be a good way to give someone a taste for that a little bit.”

Myriel’s chef de cuisine, who is Bulgarian, plans to do a pop-up at the restaurant sometime in the next year, which Tomlinson says she encourages. 

“Opening a restaurant is a huge commitment,” she said. “A pop-up can be a great way to test the idea.”