🌱 The Wild Journey of Vegan Food Truck Pioneer Chef Adam Sobel | A Not-So-Ordinary Business Story About a Rebel With A Cause
Ever wonder what it's REALLY like to run a vegan food truck? Buckle up as Adam Sobel, the delightfully eccentric founder of The Cinnamon Snail, shares the hilariously honest truth about his journey from street food rookie to businessman. Between cops forcing his truck to vacate during a lunch rush and creating an intergalactic pop-up experience, Adam proves that success in the food business isn't just about spreadsheets and recipes - it's about embracing the chaos!
What You'll Learn (Besides How Not to Get Sued):
- The unglamorous reality of food truck life (spoiler: it's not just Instagram-worthy moments)
- How Adam turned a mobile kitchen into a multi-faceted vegan juggernaut
- Why sometimes the weirdest marketing strategies actually work
- You’ll sleep better at night doing things legit.
- Real talk about the highs and lows of making money as street food vendor
Behind-the-Scenes Gold:
- True stories from the trenches of a food truck start-up.
- How to stay profitable without losing your soul (or your mind)
- Creating content that makes people want to lick their emails
- Building an online culinary school to support vegan activism through making delicious food
Perfect for: Aspiring food truck warriors, restaurant dreamers, vegan visionaries, and anyone who thinks running a food business might be fun (we'll let you decide after this episode). Warning: Contains stories about a French man who ate an entire airplane - because sometimes success requires thinking outside the box... way outside.
🌟 Learn More About Adam Sobel:
👉 The Cinnamon Snail
👉 Vegan University
👉 Street Vegan Cookbook
👉 Galactic Megastallion
👉 Follow Adam on Instagram: @CinnamonSnail
Follow Savvy Frugal Vegan:
YouTube
Instagram
Facebook
Check out the website for upcoming workshops, events, coaching, and more
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Heather (00:00):
I'm Heather Zeitzwolfe Savvy Frugal Vegan, I'm here to
(00:03):
help chef-preneurs, just likeyou, start, build and maintain a
vegan food business..
If you want to have financialsuccess in the vegan mobile food
industry...
whether it's a cart food truck,or pop up, I'm here to help you
with business hacks, tips,tricks, and the pitfalls to
avoid.
Are you ready to map out yourbusiness journey, then put the
(00:25):
key and the ignition a nd let'sgo for a ride.
I discovered you back in 2017when I bought your book But now
I am in your university whereI'm learning your wonderful
techniques.
And it just makes it a lotbetter to interact with the
person that is coming up withthese recipes.
Totally.
Adam Sobel (00:45):
That's why I launched that whole program
online.
I had taught in culinary schoolsfor years, and those classes
are, prohibitively expensive formost this way, people from all
around the world are involvedIt's much more of a two way
street, I'm always looking tocater to the people in that
program, teach them what they'reexcited about, and give them the
(01:06):
information in a way that isUseful and practical for them.
I just enjoy it so much more.
It's so much more fun and itdoesn't feel like a job to me.
It feels very collaborative.
We're getting at the ultimategoal of trying to move society
closer to nonviolence.
And we're working together inthat.
it really lights me up and Ilove that you're part of it.
(01:27):
Dear Heather.
Heather (01:28):
Thank you.
you said in one of your classes,you're like, I learned so much
from running that food truck.
even though you're not runningit anymore, I would still love
to pick your brain about allthose things you learned.
Adam Sobel (01:39):
while I don't have the Cinnamon Snail food trucks
anymore, what I do have now is amobile food service which is an
experiment in breaking a lot ofthe rules that generally modern
food service businesses operateby.
And it's this trailer thing thatI built during the pandemic
called Galactic Mega Stallion.
(02:01):
I love that name.
it's quite rad.
yeah, so I continue to learn thegame of mobile food service.
I've been in it since About 2010happy to answer any kind of
questions your wild and zanyheart would like to know.
Heather (02:17):
Cinnamon snail, I'm assuming that's a reference to
cinnamon rolls.
Is that correct?
Adam Sobel (02:21):
Yeah, the name came about cause before I had the
truck, I'd been working in veganrestaurants for most of my adult
life.
And really born out of thedesire to get better at cooking
for my wife, who's really cute.
when I met her, she was, theonly vegan person I knew.
And she survived off of frenchfries and canned soup.
Heather (02:39):
The junk food vegan?
Was she one of those?
Adam Sobel (02:41):
Yeah, but vegan food back then in the 90s was, not as
accessible, for sure.
she was just eating reallycrappy food, but I really
appreciated the ethics behindher veganism.
And I was like, man, I reallyliked this girl.
I should learn how to make heryummy food.
So I started working inrestaurants and then working in
restaurants.
I myself, went vegetarian.
(03:01):
And then on the day our daughterwas born I went totally vegan.
Heather (03:05):
did you grow up in a restaurant atmosphere?
Adam Sobel (03:07):
So my mom is a literary agent, mostly for
cookbook authors.
So I did grow up going to allthese cookbook awards with my
mom.
I met Julia Child, I rememberwhen I was little and Yamuna
Davey, who was SrilaPrabhupada's main disciple She
was her agent and she would bookrelease parties at our home in
(03:29):
our backyard and stuff.
that was my introduction, Iguess, to like the culinary
career.
But it really didn't hit until Ihad the personal desire to get
good at cooking because I lovedsomebody.
That's largely propelled me tothis day, I'm still trying to
figure out just how I can makemy kids oatmeal the exact way
they like it.
(03:49):
Back in like, 2008 or so, thisrestaurant I'd been working at
in Jersey changed hands theperson who bought the restaurant
ran it into the ground in notime.
I'd been working there off thebooks for years, which is often
the case in a lot of kitchens.
The week the restaurant closed,abruptly was also the week we
were closing on a house that wewere buying.
(04:12):
And it was like, Oh man, likeI'm going to have to find some
way to make a living ASAP.
So I started doing some privatecheffing.
And then my wife and I did thislittle stand at our local
farmer's market.
Where amongst things we madewere cinnamon rolls also called
cinnamon snails because they gotthat little spirally thing.
I just thought it was like acute name.
(04:32):
That's what we ran with for thebusiness.
after doing that for a couple ofyears, we scraped up.
enough money to buy the mostbeat up piece of crap food truck
on all of Craigslist, which wethen like modified and turned
into something glorious with,help from a few friends of ours.
you got this thing offCraigslist how much did you have
(04:53):
to modify it before you gotstarted?
It's funny.
I didn't have big plans ofmodifying it a whole lot.
But it was in rough shape.
when I took it for a test drive,we drove it around the block and
the entire exhaust system felloff the truck.
it was smoking.
It was in bad shape and it wasalready really cheap.
It was I think 11 grand for thistruck.
(05:14):
the exhaust system fell off andthey were like, we'll take off
another 400 bucks I was like,cool.
Then I was like, Secretlyworking on it in my driveway
for, months, some friends cameover and saw what I was doing
and they were like, Adam, youjust gotta fully rebuild it like
it's gross in here.
was lucky I had a friend who wasa plumber a friend who was an
(05:35):
electrician and a friend of afriend who could do metal work,
by the time.
That truck initially hit theroad, I was probably into it
like, I don't know, twenty fourgrand between wrapping the
outside of it and everything the
Heather (05:49):
outside of your truck, there's a picture Was that the
wrap the one in the book?
Adam Sobel (05:53):
Yeah, so a friend of mine who does graphic design and
I went back and forth on thatfor many drafts.
And then there's a couplepictures of the truck in that
cookbook and I think there's twodifferent trucks photographed in
that book.
they both have slightlydifferent designs, but a similar
style and theme at the time,nobody was doing visually
interesting things with foodtrucks.
(06:14):
I really wanted to do a uniquevibe about it.
And it's interesting'cause likemy new thing has a very
different look.
rather than wrapping the newtrailer I painted it, but then I
had these custom designed lasercut steel panels that I riveted
onto it so you're seeing throughcutouts, the logo and all this
geometric stuff cut into thesteel.
(06:36):
it has a more refined fancierlook, but yeah, both times I
wanted to do something that'slook like what everybody else
was doing,
Heather (06:44):
and when you bought the truck, did you have to buy all
of the different stoves,refrigerators, or did it come
with any of that stuff?
Adam Sobel (06:51):
It came with really crappy stuff, but I was lucky
that I have a very close friendof mine who works in the
restaurant supply world, he wasable to get me most of what I
needed either for free or reallycheap.
I know not everybody else hasthat, and that's one of the
benefits of a truck versus acart, like the trailer thing I
have now, it's super nice, butit's all everything's custom
(07:13):
fabricated in it, with a truckit's a big space, and you could
put in a slightly differentsized fridge, or cut the counter
a little bit and work aroundwith it, it's a very versatile
way for people who are lookingto get into food service to
start with a lower overhead thanbuilding out a whole restaurant.
Heather (07:30):
you make donuts you make sweet, you make savory, and
all of your stuff, looks prettygood.
Pretty labor intensive.
Adam Sobel (07:36):
Yeah, it is.
Heather (07:39):
That's my
Adam Sobel (07:40):
problem.
But on the other hand, that'salso what made the food we
served from the food truckextremely special,
Heather (07:46):
did you have to have a commissary kitchen?
How long did it take you to prepeverything?
did you have different menus allthe time?
Adam Sobel (07:53):
Yes, we definitely had to have a commissary
kitchen.
My food is really laborintensive especially the way I
prep it for a mobile foodservice operation, all these
components that the food is madewith are prepped in advance.
it's really just like finalheating and assembly to make it
really like rapid to serve a lotof people you know all the
(08:14):
different sauces and condimentsand burger patties and whatever
we wouldn't prep Back at ourkitchen certainly the donuts and
stuff like that so that ideallyyou could serve a complex
beautiful dish pretty quickly ifyou have a griddle Yeah, we had
a couple kitchens over thecourse of our food truck years.
We started out with one that wasgreat for our beginning stage.
(08:35):
it had a built in garage.
We could pull the truck in atnight and stock it.
at the very beginning, it was,Like, when I first opened it, I
had one person I hired to be,like, my counterperson, and then
I would be in the back cooking,but it was so dead in the very
beginning for me in the verybeginning for me I had to like,
let that person go, and I wouldget up at two in the morning,
(08:59):
wrap all the doughnuts, drivethe truck, An hour to vend all
day where I'd be like bothhandling the customers and
cooking the food Drive back andclean it myself and do prep work
for the next day I was neversleeping over time I got
significantly busier And startedhiring out pieces of it the
biggest difference was when Icould finally hire overnight
(09:22):
bakers to work with me who, Icould train to make our donuts
and stuff.
And that way I could sleep atnight.
as it evolved and became moreand more popular, we eventually
got to the point where we'dhave, on a busier day, five or
six people on the food truckworking, each on like different
positions, one or two peoplewould be handling customers.
There'd be like an expeditertype person who would
(09:44):
communicate with the line cooks.
call out the finished orders andlike compile them and stuff.
through trial and error, endedup with a lot of systems to keep
it flowing rapidly.
Heather (09:53):
did you know how much to purchase and to prep for?
didn't at
Adam Sobel (09:59):
first.
there was a good amount of foodwaste in the beginning.
unfortunately, this is one ofthe issues with having a very
perishable food product that Iwould caution people against as
much as it's awesome to dodonuts, and at the time, when we
first started the truck, therewere, hardly any vegan donuts on
the East Coast now there's abunch, and it's cool.
But the problem with making themin advance that morning is it's
(10:22):
always going to be a guessinggame about inventory you're
either going to run out of themearly or have some left that go
to waste you've not only wastedthe ingredients, but like you
mentioned, it's pretty laborintensive to prepare these
things and costly.
That was always a flaw, but as Igrew and learned I figured out
(10:42):
ways to make more of the menuoutside of the like, pastry side
of it, I'm never trying to sella day old donut to somebody as
their first experience of veganfood, as I learned, I would make
more of the menu plans to haverecuperable elements if I didn't
sell all the scrambled tofu andseitan on the menu I could reuse
(11:05):
that the next day.
It wasn't being, tapped out in asteam table and getting gross.
we had a flow of it that didn't,open us up to so much Of a waste
risk, that's disadvantages of afood truck in general versus a
regular brick and mortarrestaurant.
there's a lot of unforeseenbullshit that happens with a
(11:25):
food truck much more so thanwith a regular restaurant.
A regular restaurant does notget a flat tire, or the
generator breaks, and then youhave to throw out all of the
food in your fridge, not onlydoes it put you into the shop
for however many days it takesto fix it, but now you have food
that you've prepped that youhave to toss or give away You
(11:46):
have staff that it's very hardto retain because it's less
predictable, their schedulebecause there's so many issues
that come up with food trucks.
in terms of being efficient andprofitable with a food truck, a
lot of that game comes down tobeing really strategic and
planning things so that you'reresilient in the face of, all
(12:07):
the slew of Unforeseeableemergencies
Heather (12:11):
Here in Portland, we have mostly food carts.
we have these pods where they'reparked all the time.
they don't have to worry aboutokay, I got to get a permit over
on this street and know, I mightget a parking ticket or, Maybe
there's a different event therecould be all these unknowns that
can happen and you have to Thinkin advance is this going to be a
high traffic area?
You got to research it.
(12:31):
But these pods, they're meantfor people to congregate in this
one place.
One problem though, we've had inthis town is because they're
parked they get broken into alot.
a huge problem here.
With the truck, would imagine,you can park in a safer space
but again, there's all thoseunknowns as far as getting
permits, you live in like NewJersey.
Did you go to New York,
Adam Sobel (12:50):
when I first started I was looking for a more urban
environment and really trying toget into New York City but they
have a very difficult permittingprocess one of the worst in the
country, the only way to obtainthe necessary permits is through
a black market, similar to howtaxi cab medallions work.
in many ways worse in the earlyeighties when chain, restaurants
(13:13):
started invading New York City.
business improvement districtsand lobbied the city council to
do something about the, hugenumber of Truly at that time,
kind of gross street food thatNew York City had going on.
It was poorly regulated, likepeople making these dirty water
dogs or whatever At that time,the city put caps in place.
(13:35):
There were a little over 3000licensed vendors.
And the city was like, okay, ifyou have one of these permits,
you can keep it and keeprenewing it every two years for
what amounted to be like ahundred dollars a year.
What happened was that createdthis kind of closed system where
you could only get A permitthrough the city if somebody let
(13:56):
theirs expire and the waitinglist became completely full by
the early 90s.
no one would ever let go of 1because they could rent 1.
even if they weren't using itanymore, they could rent theirs
on the black market for ahundred times what they were
paying Wow.
So they'd be stupid to let itexpire.
as time went on and streetvending became trendy again in,
(14:19):
the 2010s the price for rentinga New York city food vending
permit.
Was crazy, I think by the timewe were stopping doing it.
We couldn't even find 1 for 25grand to rent every 2 years.
that being said even with theeconomics of it.
It was very shady, really haveto deal with this mafia type
(14:40):
organization that runs the wholepermit racket in New York City.
So I wasn't able to get one forabout the first year and a half.
So I started operating inHoboken, New Jersey.
just across the water from NewYork City.
every town has differentregulations and rules.
Hoboken had a permit you couldget, but you weren't actually
allowed to use it anywhere.
(15:01):
So there were like, a fewstreets in the entire city the
businesses weren't, threatenedby the food truck being there
and nobody called the police onyou that's where we would go,
but after a couple years of thatfood trucks became very trendy
and it got to the point where wewould drive up early in the
morning And still have to waitfor a parking space to open up
(15:24):
and sometime there were days wewent up there and, we'd get
there at 6am and didn't get aparking space until noon
honestly, the parking situationin Manhattan is not that much
better, nor are the rulesbecause, again, like New York
City, they won't even sell youthe permit.
You have to get it on the blackmarket and then.
in 2011 there was a popular tacotruck in the Upper West Side
(15:47):
that the neighborhood it was inthere were some restaurants that
felt really threatened by it.
they wanted to get rid of thistaco truck.
their business improvementdistrict went to the New York
superior court and found thisold law that was on the book
from like the push cart era ofNew York city, way back in the
day, and they found this lawit's written in this crazy old
(16:09):
English type of.
Language, it's no huckster orhawker or whatever and basically
what it was saying was thatlike, you're not allowed to sell
merchandise from a meteredlocation in the city.
the business improvementdistrict had the Superior Court
update the definition ofmerchandise to include food.
(16:30):
So technically even with thepermits and licenses you needed.
There was nowhere in the city.
Because there's almost nowherein Manhattan that doesn't have a
parking meter So Everywhere youwent, you were constantly at
risk if somebody didn't want youthere, they could just call the
police and have you thrown outafter you spent hours getting
the parking spot there wereplenty of times where in the
(16:52):
middle of a busy lunch rush,police would come and make us
move the truck and, at that timeof day, you'll never get
reparked again in time to keepserving people lunch because,
parking in midtown Manhattan islike a nightmare for a car, let
alone a giant truck.
And it's just a real messyregulatory system for New York.
you never even know what waythey're going to be enforcing
(17:15):
it.
If you get A traffic cop versusa regular cop versus a health
inspector.
they're all going to issue youdifferent kinds of tickets or
give you different kinds ofconsequences it's really
difficult to deal with.
and remain profitable as a foodbusiness when you're dealing
with that whole extra element oftrouble.
(17:35):
It's quite exhausting
Heather (17:36):
that seems like one of the biggest barriers because
it's such an unknown and youhave to file for these permits
ahead of time.
some people will file for apermit for an event, but they do
it too late and then they don'thave the permit and get kicked
out.
yeah, besides all these types ofregulations there's fire codes
and food safety and all of thosetypes of things you have to deal
with as well.
(17:57):
from all these things we'vetalked about, were there other
lessons that you learned orthings that were a complete
surprise that happened to youalong this journey?
Adam Sobel (18:06):
There were a lot of things I learned because aside
from working in other people'srestaurants in a culinary role,
like doing prep line cookingchef stuff and pastry chef stuff
I've never run my own business.
So there were oodles of things Ilearned the hard way about How
to do payroll, why you need tohave everybody on the books and
(18:28):
I'll be honest, I'm stilllearning those kinds of lessons,
about how to, function as abusiness.
So yeah, there were a lot ofthings that evolved in the
beginning once I first startedhiring people to help me It was
all like people I knew, you knowlike people who i'd worked in
other restaurants with or Afriend of a friend or whatever
and i'd pay them cash under thetable and as I grew beyond the
(18:53):
point where I Just had a handfulof friends helping me, it really
grew.
There was a point where we had65 full time employees a
bookkeeper an HR person, and,managers and supervisors at that
point, you definitely need it tobe fully legitimate.
It was definitely an evolutionto get there.
at first the food truck was justcash only.
(19:16):
we had a box of cash that allthe money went into and there
was no real bookkeeping goingon.
but it was cool.
in the sense that it was allfriends working with me, like
people we had over forThanksgiving and I wasn't really
worried about somebody rippingme off, but eventually we were
losing money to like people justgrabbing a hundred dollars out
of the register.
(19:36):
Cause you know, once you're justputting out job listings on
indeed, who knows who you'reending up with.
over time we figured out how todo all the things legit.
it's a headache though.
figuring out workers comp andpayroll having an employee
handbook with all your sexualharassment policies laid out in
it we actually had a reallycrazy story Like a year before
(19:58):
the pandemic.
you were asking about ourcommissary.
we built out a much biggercommissary because we had a few
trucks, a couple of restaurants,a catering division.
we built out this huge, halfmillion dollar build out.
It was rented we didn't own thebuilding but we built out this
big 4, 000 square foot kitchenit was awesome.
such a nice production space tomake a ton of food.
(20:21):
But we had this guy come work inour prep kitchen.
And he really sucked.
He was like an older guy whosupposedly had his own food
business at some point, and hereally wasn't very good.
at the end of his first week, wewere going to just let him go.
Cause it was clear after we likegave him a couple of days to try
out, they just didn't have theskill or the hustle to really
(20:41):
prep things nicely.
but before we had a chance totell him it wasn't working out,
he was nah, I'm not going tostay here.
Bye.
And then a month later.
I got this call from him and hewas like, Oh, there was like a
problem with my pay orsomething.
And I was like, all right, letme know what's up.
We'll fix it right now.
And he was like, no, you'regoing to hear from my lawyer.
So this lawyer guy called me Hadcombed through our employee
(21:04):
handbook and found that likethis clause was missing out of
this one thing and there wasSome form that I had never heard
of in my life that apparentlywas required it's like Basically
an official form in new yorkstate to put in writing the like
agreed upon pay rate or whateverI brought it to my lawyers and
(21:25):
they were like, Oh God, this guyagain, my lawyers who were like
only represented like restaurantand food service clients.
This guy was like suing like 10of their other Clients he would
go from one restaurant toanother, have his lawyer comb
through their onboarding packet,find whatever, things they could
and encourage the restaurant tosettle to make him go away, So
(21:47):
it sucked, and it was expensive,and a bunch of back and forth,
and my lawyer, Time is notcheap.
I forget what they were chargingme at the time.
It was like more than 400 bucksan hour to have them sort this
thing out.
finally we agreed I had to paythis guy.
I forget what it was like.
It was a lot.
I think it was like 11 to makehim just leave us alone.
Heather (22:09):
Did your insurance cover any of that?
Adam Sobel (22:10):
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
No.
we agreed on this money set upthis payment plan for it with
the guy and then a year laterthe pandemic hit and a week
after the lockdown my lawyershit me up and they were like,
Oh, Adam, there's a problem.
Remember that guy?
he's back.
And actually he never cashed anyof the checks or signed the
(22:31):
agreement.
And he wants more money fromyou.
And I was like, yes, now I'mclosing my business and we're
going to be filing bankruptcy.
And instead of 12 grand, he'sgoing to get a hundred bucks or
something.
in the end, I ended up settlingwith him for a thousand dollars
or something instead of twelve.
But what I did too, I was like,oh, if you're gonna be a
(22:54):
scoundrel like that and scam me,I'm definitely going to record
several really weird videos thatI send you with the payment.
I made this really weird videowhere I'm shirtless wearing
these glasses there's overlaysof aquatic birds like swans and
shit and I'm talking all abouthow the money is gonna go to pay
(23:17):
for your aquatic bird therapiesand stuff so at least I got that
out of it.
Cause I think that's reallyimportant.
If people are going to be ascumbag, you got to have the
last laugh and talk about waterfowl with them.
So there's that.
Heather (23:32):
Yeah.
People get into business andthey don't know they're going to
have all these hassles of onebeing like the manager or the
president of the business, andthen everything falls on you.
And.
Compliance is a huge part ofbusiness.
Adam Sobel (23:47):
Oh, yeah.
Heather (23:48):
Back in the 70s, when I was a kid, my dad had a fish
market and restaurant back then,There was no computers and
stuff.
he kept all of his receiptsunder the counter in a box and
he was paying his staff underthe table.
And when this woman that workedfor him for years was going to
retire, she had no socialsecurity because she was paid
(24:08):
under the table.
Adam Sobel (24:09):
this is one of the realizations I had in that
process of Becoming a legitimatebusiness from being this like
little homemade business that Iwas doing with some friends of
mine.
I learned largely the hard way Inever got terribly screwed.
I never had some awful IRS auditwhere, they looked at that I had
all these people working off thebooks at one time.
(24:31):
But.
Eventually, as I becamecompletely legitimate with
stuff, I learned you're notreally saving any money by doing
all these tactics to try toavoid taxes I just didn't know
in the beginning.
And it's a little a leap offaith.
Now you gotta get on a payrollprocessor, you gotta have like
workers compensation insuranceand all these things at first
(24:54):
that just sounds scary.
Like, how am I going to sellenough food to make that work?
But in the end having thingsdone completely above board you
just sleep so much better atnight not having to worry about
that you're going to get caughtfor doing something.
wrong But in the end if you're,for instance, you're paying
everybody under the table andshowing that revenue coming in
(25:19):
somehow, like you're going to bepaying crazy income tax instead
of the payroll tax, right?
Like you're still paying.
But you're, you're not savingyourself anything, but you're
opening yourself up to this hugeliability of what's gonna happen
if you get caught or somethingand in the end, when Things are
totally legitimate.
(25:40):
It becomes so much easier togrow your business and
potentially, if you ever wantedto sell the business, do that,
have people look at your booksand be like there's all this
other money that's not on thebooks, like that's bullshit.
Like nobody serious is going towant to franchise your business
or license your business forSome use, if it's all real crazy
(26:02):
like that,
Heather (26:02):
I want to ask you about, the transition, you're
doing the classes and you havethe best, Social media videos
earlier, you mentioned videosearlier.
how did you get started withdoing these crazy videos?
do you film them yourself?
Do you edit them?
just curious about the process.
I
Adam Sobel (26:20):
do them all myself.
They are very over the top.
They do take a lot of time,which is why I don't do them
very often.
Which is why, my Instagramhasn't grown at all since I
stopped running my food truck.
It's changed so much the waythat social algorithm works, and
really they only reward peoplewho are doing this kind of
(26:40):
clickbaity, like, very genericcontent.
And while I share a lot of nicefood photography and stuff,
those platforms are largelyvideo first now.
And don't really give a lot ofreach to like, the nice food
photography.
Probably once a week or a littleless often than that, I'll put
these real fucked up insanevideos together.
(27:01):
it's a lot of work to do them.
It's really fun and goofy andwhatever.
they're, like every one of those60 second videos is pretty good.
Easily like six hours plus ofwork to do
Heather (27:12):
they look like it.
Are you using your phone orusing different software
packages?
Adam Sobel (27:17):
No.
Yeah, like this so I filmed themon like usually a couple DSLRs
like the same cameras that I'lluse for Both my food photography
and my live streamed cookingclasses and there's just a lot
of editing that goes into them.
Lots of weird effects and lotsof like, finding strange
archival footage to put in thebackground or whatever.
(27:40):
And, before I Was like doingfood service professionally I
used to do like audioengineering to make like really
crazy dance music so a lot oflike Manipulated fucked up
sounding voices and stuff willbe like things I'll bring into a
professional audio editingsoftware and apply all kinds of
effects to and stuff
Heather (28:00):
and do you write it out ahead of time?
Because no, very funny.
They're very funny.
I
Adam Sobel (28:04):
just say like a bunch of weird shit.
And I'm not that clever.
There's not that much rhyme andreason going on here.
It's mostly I just want to havefun and be weird with that stuff
for a little bit.
It's hard to justify other thanthat, I just do it because I
want to do it.
I don't think it really movesthe needle a whole lot with my
(28:24):
business, but some of thosevideos become paid Facebook ads
and I only run those if they're,profitable,
Heather (28:31):
for someone like me that sees that, I'm like, Oh my
God, I got to sign up for thisguy's thing.
Other people might be like, whata weirdo.
But you have in your emailsomething about if you don't
like Puppies and unicorns orsomething like that.
You're not going to like my foodor what is it?
Your tagline thing that you havein there.
Adam Sobel (28:48):
something like that.
It's funny.
I was doing this food hall backin like 2015.
in front of Madison squaregarden and above Penn station.
It was like me and Mario Bataliand Pat LaFreda and like a
couple other like kind ofcelebrity ish chefs and I was
like the weird like street foodguy who like gave it street cred
(29:08):
or something they wanted to putup these little like thing with
a silhouette of the chef andlike some little catchy phrase
next to each kiosk.
And I wrote ten of them for thecompany that was doing, like,
all the design stuff.
And I was like, pick one ofthese ones.
And that's the one they ended uppicking because the other ones
were, like, really freakingweird.
(29:29):
But that one was, normal.
It was like, if you don't likepuppies, unicorns, and rainbows,
you'll hate my food, orsomething to that effect.
Heather (29:37):
funny.
before we wrap up, I want to letpeople know how they can join
your university, your cookie,take some classes and all that.
And then you're doing pop ups inyour intergalactic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it sounds like something that'slike out of Bill and Ted
intergalactic uh, galactic, megastallion.
(29:57):
Okay.
Adam Sobel (29:58):
there's a whole page you can link to in the show
notes about that project.
Cause if your really into mobilefood service stuff it's a very
behind the scenes, article Iwrote about that whole project.
Cause it's like real freakingoutlandish, both the way I
marketed it, the way.
I operate with that.
It's like a kind of fun project.
The other thing is there's tonsof people who just want to learn
(30:20):
vegan cooking who are not readyfor something like Vegan
University.
that's why every week I publishseveral new recipes to my blog
at cinnamonsnail.
com.
there's links there to myclasses and to Vegan University.
Heather (30:34):
you send out emails that seriously you wanna lick
the email?
It looks so delicious.
It's, its amazing the email,
Adam Sobel (30:41):
Heather, nobody's stopping you.
You are allowed to lick theemail if you want.
Heather (30:46):
do you have any closing thoughts
Adam Sobel (30:48):
Yes.
Heather (30:49):
Okay.
Adam Sobel (30:49):
A very, very big piece of advice to you folks So
I do a lot of culinaryconsulting for other people's
food businesses both food trucksand restaurants and food
manufacturers, and very often Irecommend this resource to
clients of mine because it'sespecially for people getting
into food trucks who maybe don'thave a background.
(31:11):
In working in restaurants,there's this book called
restaurant success by thenumbers and It's a short book.
You could definitely read it inthe weekend It's written by I
think he was like a silentpartner who was an accountant he
was a partner in a few differentrestaurants, and it's really
good food for thought forsomebody who's just getting into
(31:32):
food service to like, figure outhow to do it profitably brings
to light a few variables thatlike a lot of people who are
maybe new to food service mightnot.
think about.
That's a great resource.
The other thing that I wouldlike to leave you with because
it's my greatest inspiration inlife and I'd be really remiss if
(31:52):
I didn't share about MichaelLotito.
And he was a French man.
And he ate a whole airplane.
and then they gave him theGuinness World Records like
plaque, and he ate the plaque.
Heather (32:06):
Wow.
People are always asking usvegans, where do you get your
protein?
But I would imagine airplanes.
Where does this guy get hisfiber?
Adam Sobel (32:13):
I didn't read an interview with him and they were
like, Michael Otito, what wasthe hardest part of the airplane
for you to eat?
And he was like.
The seats.
Choking down that foam.
Oh,
Heather (32:25):
Thank you so much, Adam.
I appreciate it.
And you brought the weirdness,which I love.
Adam Sobel (32:30):
hopefully it was very inspiring and helpful.
And if not, then.
You can just reach out toHeather and tell her, Heather,
lawyer up.
We're suing.
That's it.
We've had enough of this podcastgarbage.
I'm Heather Zeitzwolfe Savvy Frugal Vegan, I'm here to
(00:03):
help chef-preneurs, just likeyou, start, build and maintain a
vegan food business..
If you want to have financialsuccess in the vegan mobile food
industry...
whether it's a cart food truck,or pop up, I'm here to help you
with business hacks, tips,tricks, and the pitfalls to
avoid.
Are you ready to map out yourbusiness journey, then put the
(00:25):
key and the ignition a nd let'sgo for a ride.
I discovered you back in 2017when I bought your book But now
I am in your university whereI'm learning your wonderful
techniques.
And it just makes it a lotbetter to interact with the
person that is coming up withthese recipes.
Totally.
Adam Sobel (00:45):
That's why I launched that whole program
online.
I had taught in culinary schoolsfor years, and those classes
are, prohibitively expensive formost this way, people from all
around the world are involvedIt's much more of a two way
street, I'm always looking tocater to the people in that
program, teach them what they'reexcited about, and give them the
(01:06):
information in a way that isUseful and practical for them.
I just enjoy it so much more.
It's so much more fun and itdoesn't feel like a job to me.
It feels very collaborative.
We're getting at the ultimategoal of trying to move society
closer to nonviolence.
And we're working together inthat.
it really lights me up and Ilove that you're part of it.
(01:27):
Dear Heather.
Heather (01:28):
Thank you.
you said in one of your classes,you're like, I learned so much
from running that food truck.
even though you're not runningit anymore, I would still love
to pick your brain about allthose things you learned.
Adam Sobel (01:39):
while I don't have the Cinnamon Snail food trucks
anymore, what I do have now is amobile food service which is an
experiment in breaking a lot ofthe rules that generally modern
food service businesses operateby.
And it's this trailer thing thatI built during the pandemic
called Galactic Mega Stallion.
(02:01):
I love that name.
it's quite rad.
yeah, so I continue to learn thegame of mobile food service.
I've been in it since About 2010happy to answer any kind of
questions your wild and zanyheart would like to know.
Heather (02:17):
Cinnamon snail, I'm assuming that's a reference to
cinnamon rolls.
Is that correct?
Adam Sobel (02:21):
Yeah, the name came about cause before I had the
truck, I'd been working in veganrestaurants for most of my adult
life.
And really born out of thedesire to get better at cooking
for my wife, who's really cute.
when I met her, she was, theonly vegan person I knew.
And she survived off of frenchfries and canned soup.
Heather (02:39):
The junk food vegan?
Was she one of those?
Adam Sobel (02:41):
Yeah, but vegan food back then in the 90s was, not as
accessible, for sure.
she was just eating reallycrappy food, but I really
appreciated the ethics behindher veganism.
And I was like, man, I reallyliked this girl.
I should learn how to make heryummy food.
So I started working inrestaurants and then working in
restaurants.
I myself, went vegetarian.
(03:01):
And then on the day our daughterwas born I went totally vegan.
Heather (03:05):
did you grow up in a restaurant atmosphere?
Adam Sobel (03:07):
So my mom is a literary agent, mostly for
cookbook authors.
So I did grow up going to allthese cookbook awards with my
mom.
I met Julia Child, I rememberwhen I was little and Yamuna
Davey, who was SrilaPrabhupada's main disciple She
was her agent and she would bookrelease parties at our home in
(03:29):
our backyard and stuff.
that was my introduction, Iguess, to like the culinary
career.
But it really didn't hit until Ihad the personal desire to get
good at cooking because I lovedsomebody.
That's largely propelled me tothis day, I'm still trying to
figure out just how I can makemy kids oatmeal the exact way
they like it.
(03:49):
Back in like, 2008 or so, thisrestaurant I'd been working at
in Jersey changed hands theperson who bought the restaurant
ran it into the ground in notime.
I'd been working there off thebooks for years, which is often
the case in a lot of kitchens.
The week the restaurant closed,abruptly was also the week we
were closing on a house that wewere buying.
(04:12):
And it was like, Oh man, likeI'm going to have to find some
way to make a living ASAP.
So I started doing some privatecheffing.
And then my wife and I did thislittle stand at our local
farmer's market.
Where amongst things we madewere cinnamon rolls also called
cinnamon snails because they gotthat little spirally thing.
I just thought it was like acute name.
(04:32):
That's what we ran with for thebusiness.
after doing that for a couple ofyears, we scraped up.
enough money to buy the mostbeat up piece of crap food truck
on all of Craigslist, which wethen like modified and turned
into something glorious with,help from a few friends of ours.
you got this thing offCraigslist how much did you have
(04:53):
to modify it before you gotstarted?
It's funny.
I didn't have big plans ofmodifying it a whole lot.
But it was in rough shape.
when I took it for a test drive,we drove it around the block and
the entire exhaust system felloff the truck.
it was smoking.
It was in bad shape and it wasalready really cheap.
It was I think 11 grand for thistruck.
(05:14):
the exhaust system fell off andthey were like, we'll take off
another 400 bucks I was like,cool.
Then I was like, Secretlyworking on it in my driveway
for, months, some friends cameover and saw what I was doing
and they were like, Adam, youjust gotta fully rebuild it like
it's gross in here.
was lucky I had a friend who wasa plumber a friend who was an
(05:35):
electrician and a friend of afriend who could do metal work,
by the time.
That truck initially hit theroad, I was probably into it
like, I don't know, twenty fourgrand between wrapping the
outside of it and everything the
Heather (05:49):
outside of your truck, there's a picture Was that the
wrap the one in the book?
Adam Sobel (05:53):
Yeah, so a friend of mine who does graphic design and
I went back and forth on thatfor many drafts.
And then there's a couplepictures of the truck in that
cookbook and I think there's twodifferent trucks photographed in
that book.
they both have slightlydifferent designs, but a similar
style and theme at the time,nobody was doing visually
interesting things with foodtrucks.
(06:14):
I really wanted to do a uniquevibe about it.
And it's interesting'cause likemy new thing has a very
different look.
rather than wrapping the newtrailer I painted it, but then I
had these custom designed lasercut steel panels that I riveted
onto it so you're seeing throughcutouts, the logo and all this
geometric stuff cut into thesteel.
(06:36):
it has a more refined fancierlook, but yeah, both times I
wanted to do something that'slook like what everybody else
was doing,
Heather (06:44):
and when you bought the truck, did you have to buy all
of the different stoves,refrigerators, or did it come
with any of that stuff?
Adam Sobel (06:51):
It came with really crappy stuff, but I was lucky
that I have a very close friendof mine who works in the
restaurant supply world, he wasable to get me most of what I
needed either for free or reallycheap.
I know not everybody else hasthat, and that's one of the
benefits of a truck versus acart, like the trailer thing I
have now, it's super nice, butit's all everything's custom
(07:13):
fabricated in it, with a truckit's a big space, and you could
put in a slightly differentsized fridge, or cut the counter
a little bit and work aroundwith it, it's a very versatile
way for people who are lookingto get into food service to
start with a lower overhead thanbuilding out a whole restaurant.
Heather (07:30):
you make donuts you make sweet, you make savory, and
all of your stuff, looks prettygood.
Pretty labor intensive.
Adam Sobel (07:36):
Yeah, it is.
Heather (07:39):
That's my
Adam Sobel (07:40):
problem.
But on the other hand, that'salso what made the food we
served from the food truckextremely special,
Heather (07:46):
did you have to have a commissary kitchen?
How long did it take you to prepeverything?
did you have different menus allthe time?
Adam Sobel (07:53):
Yes, we definitely had to have a commissary
kitchen.
My food is really laborintensive especially the way I
prep it for a mobile foodservice operation, all these
components that the food is madewith are prepped in advance.
it's really just like finalheating and assembly to make it
really like rapid to serve a lotof people you know all the
(08:14):
different sauces and condimentsand burger patties and whatever
we wouldn't prep Back at ourkitchen certainly the donuts and
stuff like that so that ideallyyou could serve a complex
beautiful dish pretty quickly ifyou have a griddle Yeah, we had
a couple kitchens over thecourse of our food truck years.
We started out with one that wasgreat for our beginning stage.
(08:35):
it had a built in garage.
We could pull the truck in atnight and stock it.
at the very beginning, it was,Like, when I first opened it, I
had one person I hired to be,like, my counterperson, and then
I would be in the back cooking,but it was so dead in the very
beginning for me in the verybeginning for me I had to like,
let that person go, and I wouldget up at two in the morning,
(08:59):
wrap all the doughnuts, drivethe truck, An hour to vend all
day where I'd be like bothhandling the customers and
cooking the food Drive back andclean it myself and do prep work
for the next day I was neversleeping over time I got
significantly busier And startedhiring out pieces of it the
biggest difference was when Icould finally hire overnight
(09:22):
bakers to work with me who, Icould train to make our donuts
and stuff.
And that way I could sleep atnight.
as it evolved and became moreand more popular, we eventually
got to the point where we'dhave, on a busier day, five or
six people on the food truckworking, each on like different
positions, one or two peoplewould be handling customers.
There'd be like an expeditertype person who would
(09:44):
communicate with the line cooks.
call out the finished orders andlike compile them and stuff.
through trial and error, endedup with a lot of systems to keep
it flowing rapidly.
Heather (09:53):
did you know how much to purchase and to prep for?
didn't at
Adam Sobel (09:59):
first.
there was a good amount of foodwaste in the beginning.
unfortunately, this is one ofthe issues with having a very
perishable food product that Iwould caution people against as
much as it's awesome to dodonuts, and at the time, when we
first started the truck, therewere, hardly any vegan donuts on
the East Coast now there's abunch, and it's cool.
But the problem with making themin advance that morning is it's
(10:22):
always going to be a guessinggame about inventory you're
either going to run out of themearly or have some left that go
to waste you've not only wastedthe ingredients, but like you
mentioned, it's pretty laborintensive to prepare these
things and costly.
That was always a flaw, but as Igrew and learned I figured out
(10:42):
ways to make more of the menuoutside of the like, pastry side
of it, I'm never trying to sella day old donut to somebody as
their first experience of veganfood, as I learned, I would make
more of the menu plans to haverecuperable elements if I didn't
sell all the scrambled tofu andseitan on the menu I could reuse
(11:05):
that the next day.
It wasn't being, tapped out in asteam table and getting gross.
we had a flow of it that didn't,open us up to so much Of a waste
risk, that's disadvantages of afood truck in general versus a
regular brick and mortarrestaurant.
there's a lot of unforeseenbullshit that happens with a
(11:25):
food truck much more so thanwith a regular restaurant.
A regular restaurant does notget a flat tire, or the
generator breaks, and then youhave to throw out all of the
food in your fridge, not onlydoes it put you into the shop
for however many days it takesto fix it, but now you have food
that you've prepped that youhave to toss or give away You
(11:46):
have staff that it's very hardto retain because it's less
predictable, their schedulebecause there's so many issues
that come up with food trucks.
in terms of being efficient andprofitable with a food truck, a
lot of that game comes down tobeing really strategic and
planning things so that you'reresilient in the face of, all
(12:07):
the slew of Unforeseeableemergencies
Heather (12:11):
Here in Portland, we have mostly food carts.
we have these pods where they'reparked all the time.
they don't have to worry aboutokay, I got to get a permit over
on this street and know, I mightget a parking ticket or, Maybe
there's a different event therecould be all these unknowns that
can happen and you have to Thinkin advance is this going to be a
high traffic area?
You got to research it.
(12:31):
But these pods, they're meantfor people to congregate in this
one place.
One problem though, we've had inthis town is because they're
parked they get broken into alot.
a huge problem here.
With the truck, would imagine,you can park in a safer space
but again, there's all thoseunknowns as far as getting
permits, you live in like NewJersey.
Did you go to New York,
Adam Sobel (12:50):
when I first started I was looking for a more urban
environment and really trying toget into New York City but they
have a very difficult permittingprocess one of the worst in the
country, the only way to obtainthe necessary permits is through
a black market, similar to howtaxi cab medallions work.
in many ways worse in the earlyeighties when chain, restaurants
(13:13):
started invading New York City.
business improvement districtsand lobbied the city council to
do something about the, hugenumber of Truly at that time,
kind of gross street food thatNew York City had going on.
It was poorly regulated, likepeople making these dirty water
dogs or whatever At that time,the city put caps in place.
(13:35):
There were a little over 3000licensed vendors.
And the city was like, okay, ifyou have one of these permits,
you can keep it and keeprenewing it every two years for
what amounted to be like ahundred dollars a year.
What happened was that createdthis kind of closed system where
you could only get A permitthrough the city if somebody let
(13:56):
theirs expire and the waitinglist became completely full by
the early 90s.
no one would ever let go of 1because they could rent 1.
even if they weren't using itanymore, they could rent theirs
on the black market for ahundred times what they were
paying Wow.
So they'd be stupid to let itexpire.
as time went on and streetvending became trendy again in,
(14:19):
the 2010s the price for rentinga New York city food vending
permit.
Was crazy, I think by the timewe were stopping doing it.
We couldn't even find 1 for 25grand to rent every 2 years.
that being said even with theeconomics of it.
It was very shady, really haveto deal with this mafia type
(14:40):
organization that runs the wholepermit racket in New York City.
So I wasn't able to get one forabout the first year and a half.
So I started operating inHoboken, New Jersey.
just across the water from NewYork City.
every town has differentregulations and rules.
Hoboken had a permit you couldget, but you weren't actually
allowed to use it anywhere.
(15:01):
So there were like, a fewstreets in the entire city the
businesses weren't, threatenedby the food truck being there
and nobody called the police onyou that's where we would go,
but after a couple years of thatfood trucks became very trendy
and it got to the point where wewould drive up early in the
morning And still have to waitfor a parking space to open up
(15:24):
and sometime there were days wewent up there and, we'd get
there at 6am and didn't get aparking space until noon
honestly, the parking situationin Manhattan is not that much
better, nor are the rulesbecause, again, like New York
City, they won't even sell youthe permit.
You have to get it on the blackmarket and then.
in 2011 there was a popular tacotruck in the Upper West Side
(15:47):
that the neighborhood it was inthere were some restaurants that
felt really threatened by it.
they wanted to get rid of thistaco truck.
their business improvementdistrict went to the New York
superior court and found thisold law that was on the book
from like the push cart era ofNew York city, way back in the
day, and they found this lawit's written in this crazy old
(16:09):
English type of.
Language, it's no huckster orhawker or whatever and basically
what it was saying was thatlike, you're not allowed to sell
merchandise from a meteredlocation in the city.
the business improvementdistrict had the Superior Court
update the definition ofmerchandise to include food.
(16:30):
So technically even with thepermits and licenses you needed.
There was nowhere in the city.
Because there's almost nowherein Manhattan that doesn't have a
parking meter So Everywhere youwent, you were constantly at
risk if somebody didn't want youthere, they could just call the
police and have you thrown outafter you spent hours getting
the parking spot there wereplenty of times where in the
(16:52):
middle of a busy lunch rush,police would come and make us
move the truck and, at that timeof day, you'll never get
reparked again in time to keepserving people lunch because,
parking in midtown Manhattan islike a nightmare for a car, let
alone a giant truck.
And it's just a real messyregulatory system for New York.
you never even know what waythey're going to be enforcing
(17:15):
it.
If you get A traffic cop versusa regular cop versus a health
inspector.
they're all going to issue youdifferent kinds of tickets or
give you different kinds ofconsequences it's really
difficult to deal with.
and remain profitable as a foodbusiness when you're dealing
with that whole extra element oftrouble.
(17:35):
It's quite exhausting
Heather (17:36):
that seems like one of the biggest barriers because
it's such an unknown and youhave to file for these permits
ahead of time.
some people will file for apermit for an event, but they do
it too late and then they don'thave the permit and get kicked
out.
yeah, besides all these types ofregulations there's fire codes
and food safety and all of thosetypes of things you have to deal
with as well.
(17:57):
from all these things we'vetalked about, were there other
lessons that you learned orthings that were a complete
surprise that happened to youalong this journey?
Adam Sobel (18:06):
There were a lot of things I learned because aside
from working in other people'srestaurants in a culinary role,
like doing prep line cookingchef stuff and pastry chef stuff
I've never run my own business.
So there were oodles of things Ilearned the hard way about How
to do payroll, why you need tohave everybody on the books and
(18:28):
I'll be honest, I'm stilllearning those kinds of lessons,
about how to, function as abusiness.
So yeah, there were a lot ofthings that evolved in the
beginning once I first startedhiring people to help me It was
all like people I knew, you knowlike people who i'd worked in
other restaurants with or Afriend of a friend or whatever
and i'd pay them cash under thetable and as I grew beyond the
(18:53):
point where I Just had a handfulof friends helping me, it really
grew.
There was a point where we had65 full time employees a
bookkeeper an HR person, and,managers and supervisors at that
point, you definitely need it tobe fully legitimate.
It was definitely an evolutionto get there.
at first the food truck was justcash only.
(19:16):
we had a box of cash that allthe money went into and there
was no real bookkeeping goingon.
but it was cool.
in the sense that it was allfriends working with me, like
people we had over forThanksgiving and I wasn't really
worried about somebody rippingme off, but eventually we were
losing money to like people justgrabbing a hundred dollars out
of the register.
(19:36):
Cause you know, once you're justputting out job listings on
indeed, who knows who you'reending up with.
over time we figured out how todo all the things legit.
it's a headache though.
figuring out workers comp andpayroll having an employee
handbook with all your sexualharassment policies laid out in
it we actually had a reallycrazy story Like a year before
(19:58):
the pandemic.
you were asking about ourcommissary.
we built out a much biggercommissary because we had a few
trucks, a couple of restaurants,a catering division.
we built out this huge, halfmillion dollar build out.
It was rented we didn't own thebuilding but we built out this
big 4, 000 square foot kitchenit was awesome.
such a nice production space tomake a ton of food.
(20:21):
But we had this guy come work inour prep kitchen.
And he really sucked.
He was like an older guy whosupposedly had his own food
business at some point, and hereally wasn't very good.
at the end of his first week, wewere going to just let him go.
Cause it was clear after we likegave him a couple of days to try
out, they just didn't have theskill or the hustle to really
(20:41):
prep things nicely.
but before we had a chance totell him it wasn't working out,
he was nah, I'm not going tostay here.
Bye.
And then a month later.
I got this call from him and hewas like, Oh, there was like a
problem with my pay orsomething.
And I was like, all right, letme know what's up.
We'll fix it right now.
And he was like, no, you'regoing to hear from my lawyer.
So this lawyer guy called me Hadcombed through our employee
(21:04):
handbook and found that likethis clause was missing out of
this one thing and there wasSome form that I had never heard
of in my life that apparentlywas required it's like Basically
an official form in new yorkstate to put in writing the like
agreed upon pay rate or whateverI brought it to my lawyers and
(21:25):
they were like, Oh God, this guyagain, my lawyers who were like
only represented like restaurantand food service clients.
This guy was like suing like 10of their other Clients he would
go from one restaurant toanother, have his lawyer comb
through their onboarding packet,find whatever, things they could
and encourage the restaurant tosettle to make him go away, So
(21:47):
it sucked, and it was expensive,and a bunch of back and forth,
and my lawyer, Time is notcheap.
I forget what they were chargingme at the time.
It was like more than 400 bucksan hour to have them sort this
thing out.
finally we agreed I had to paythis guy.
I forget what it was like.
It was a lot.
I think it was like 11 to makehim just leave us alone.
Heather (22:09):
Did your insurance cover any of that?
Adam Sobel (22:10):
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
No.
we agreed on this money set upthis payment plan for it with
the guy and then a year laterthe pandemic hit and a week
after the lockdown my lawyershit me up and they were like,
Oh, Adam, there's a problem.
Remember that guy?
he's back.
And actually he never cashed anyof the checks or signed the
(22:31):
agreement.
And he wants more money fromyou.
And I was like, yes, now I'mclosing my business and we're
going to be filing bankruptcy.
And instead of 12 grand, he'sgoing to get a hundred bucks or
something.
in the end, I ended up settlingwith him for a thousand dollars
or something instead of twelve.
But what I did too, I was like,oh, if you're gonna be a
(22:54):
scoundrel like that and scam me,I'm definitely going to record
several really weird videos thatI send you with the payment.
I made this really weird videowhere I'm shirtless wearing
these glasses there's overlaysof aquatic birds like swans and
shit and I'm talking all abouthow the money is gonna go to pay
(23:17):
for your aquatic bird therapiesand stuff so at least I got that
out of it.
Cause I think that's reallyimportant.
If people are going to be ascumbag, you got to have the
last laugh and talk about waterfowl with them.
So there's that.
Heather (23:32):
Yeah.
People get into business andthey don't know they're going to
have all these hassles of onebeing like the manager or the
president of the business, andthen everything falls on you.
And.
Compliance is a huge part ofbusiness.
Adam Sobel (23:47):
Oh, yeah.
Heather (23:48):
Back in the 70s, when I was a kid, my dad had a fish
market and restaurant back then,There was no computers and
stuff.
he kept all of his receiptsunder the counter in a box and
he was paying his staff underthe table.
And when this woman that workedfor him for years was going to
retire, she had no socialsecurity because she was paid
(24:08):
under the table.
Adam Sobel (24:09):
this is one of the realizations I had in that
process of Becoming a legitimatebusiness from being this like
little homemade business that Iwas doing with some friends of
mine.
I learned largely the hard way Inever got terribly screwed.
I never had some awful IRS auditwhere, they looked at that I had
all these people working off thebooks at one time.
(24:31):
But.
Eventually, as I becamecompletely legitimate with
stuff, I learned you're notreally saving any money by doing
all these tactics to try toavoid taxes I just didn't know
in the beginning.
And it's a little a leap offaith.
Now you gotta get on a payrollprocessor, you gotta have like
workers compensation insuranceand all these things at first
(24:54):
that just sounds scary.
Like, how am I going to sellenough food to make that work?
But in the end having thingsdone completely above board you
just sleep so much better atnight not having to worry about
that you're going to get caughtfor doing something.
wrong But in the end if you're,for instance, you're paying
everybody under the table andshowing that revenue coming in
(25:19):
somehow, like you're going to bepaying crazy income tax instead
of the payroll tax, right?
Like you're still paying.
But you're, you're not savingyourself anything, but you're
opening yourself up to this hugeliability of what's gonna happen
if you get caught or somethingand in the end, when Things are
totally legitimate.
(25:40):
It becomes so much easier togrow your business and
potentially, if you ever wantedto sell the business, do that,
have people look at your booksand be like there's all this
other money that's not on thebooks, like that's bullshit.
Like nobody serious is going towant to franchise your business
or license your business forSome use, if it's all real crazy
(26:02):
like that,
Heather (26:02):
I want to ask you about, the transition, you're
doing the classes and you havethe best, Social media videos
earlier, you mentioned videosearlier.
how did you get started withdoing these crazy videos?
do you film them yourself?
Do you edit them?
just curious about the process.
I
Adam Sobel (26:20):
do them all myself.
They are very over the top.
They do take a lot of time,which is why I don't do them
very often.
Which is why, my Instagramhasn't grown at all since I
stopped running my food truck.
It's changed so much the waythat social algorithm works, and
really they only reward peoplewho are doing this kind of
(26:40):
clickbaity, like, very genericcontent.
And while I share a lot of nicefood photography and stuff,
those platforms are largelyvideo first now.
And don't really give a lot ofreach to like, the nice food
photography.
Probably once a week or a littleless often than that, I'll put
these real fucked up insanevideos together.
(27:01):
it's a lot of work to do them.
It's really fun and goofy andwhatever.
they're, like every one of those60 second videos is pretty good.
Easily like six hours plus ofwork to do
Heather (27:12):
they look like it.
Are you using your phone orusing different software
packages?
Adam Sobel (27:17):
No.
Yeah, like this so I filmed themon like usually a couple DSLRs
like the same cameras that I'lluse for Both my food photography
and my live streamed cookingclasses and there's just a lot
of editing that goes into them.
Lots of weird effects and lotsof like, finding strange
archival footage to put in thebackground or whatever.
(27:40):
And, before I Was like doingfood service professionally I
used to do like audioengineering to make like really
crazy dance music so a lot oflike Manipulated fucked up
sounding voices and stuff willbe like things I'll bring into a
professional audio editingsoftware and apply all kinds of
effects to and stuff
Heather (28:00):
and do you write it out ahead of time?
Because no, very funny.
They're very funny.
I
Adam Sobel (28:04):
just say like a bunch of weird shit.
And I'm not that clever.
There's not that much rhyme andreason going on here.
It's mostly I just want to havefun and be weird with that stuff
for a little bit.
It's hard to justify other thanthat, I just do it because I
want to do it.
I don't think it really movesthe needle a whole lot with my
(28:24):
business, but some of thosevideos become paid Facebook ads
and I only run those if they're,profitable,
Heather (28:31):
for someone like me that sees that, I'm like, Oh my
God, I got to sign up for thisguy's thing.
Other people might be like, whata weirdo.
But you have in your emailsomething about if you don't
like Puppies and unicorns orsomething like that.
You're not going to like my foodor what is it?
Your tagline thing that you havein there.
Adam Sobel (28:48):
something like that.
It's funny.
I was doing this food hall backin like 2015.
in front of Madison squaregarden and above Penn station.
It was like me and Mario Bataliand Pat LaFreda and like a
couple other like kind ofcelebrity ish chefs and I was
like the weird like street foodguy who like gave it street cred
(29:08):
or something they wanted to putup these little like thing with
a silhouette of the chef andlike some little catchy phrase
next to each kiosk.
And I wrote ten of them for thecompany that was doing, like,
all the design stuff.
And I was like, pick one ofthese ones.
And that's the one they ended uppicking because the other ones
were, like, really freakingweird.
(29:29):
But that one was, normal.
It was like, if you don't likepuppies, unicorns, and rainbows,
you'll hate my food, orsomething to that effect.
Heather (29:37):
funny.
before we wrap up, I want to letpeople know how they can join
your university, your cookie,take some classes and all that.
And then you're doing pop ups inyour intergalactic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it sounds like something that'slike out of Bill and Ted
intergalactic uh, galactic, megastallion.
(29:57):
Okay.
Adam Sobel (29:58):
there's a whole page you can link to in the show
notes about that project.
Cause if your really into mobilefood service stuff it's a very
behind the scenes, article Iwrote about that whole project.
Cause it's like real freakingoutlandish, both the way I
marketed it, the way.
I operate with that.
It's like a kind of fun project.
The other thing is there's tonsof people who just want to learn
(30:20):
vegan cooking who are not readyfor something like Vegan
University.
that's why every week I publishseveral new recipes to my blog
at cinnamonsnail.
com.
there's links there to myclasses and to Vegan University.
Heather (30:34):
you send out emails that seriously you wanna lick
the email?
It looks so delicious.
It's, its amazing the email,
Adam Sobel (30:41):
Heather, nobody's stopping you.
You are allowed to lick theemail if you want.
Heather (30:46):
do you have any closing thoughts
Adam Sobel (30:48):
Yes.
Heather (30:49):
Okay.
Adam Sobel (30:49):
A very, very big piece of advice to you folks So
I do a lot of culinaryconsulting for other people's
food businesses both food trucksand restaurants and food
manufacturers, and very often Irecommend this resource to
clients of mine because it'sespecially for people getting
into food trucks who maybe don'thave a background.
(31:11):
In working in restaurants,there's this book called
restaurant success by thenumbers and It's a short book.
You could definitely read it inthe weekend It's written by I
think he was like a silentpartner who was an accountant he
was a partner in a few differentrestaurants, and it's really
good food for thought forsomebody who's just getting into
(31:32):
food service to like, figure outhow to do it profitably brings
to light a few variables thatlike a lot of people who are
maybe new to food service mightnot.
think about.
That's a great resource.
The other thing that I wouldlike to leave you with because
it's my greatest inspiration inlife and I'd be really remiss if
(31:52):
I didn't share about MichaelLotito.
And he was a French man.
And he ate a whole airplane.
and then they gave him theGuinness World Records like
plaque, and he ate the plaque.
Heather (32:06):
Wow.
People are always asking usvegans, where do you get your
protein?
But I would imagine airplanes.
Where does this guy get hisfiber?
Adam Sobel (32:13):
I didn't read an interview with him and they were
like, Michael Otito, what wasthe hardest part of the airplane
for you to eat?
And he was like.
The seats.
Choking down that foam.
Oh,
Heather (32:25):
Thank you so much, Adam.
I appreciate it.
And you brought the weirdness,which I love.
Adam Sobel (32:30):
hopefully it was very inspiring and helpful.
And if not, then.
You can just reach out toHeather and tell her, Heather,
lawyer up.
We're suing.
That's it.
We've had enough of this podcastgarbage.
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