This week, Seattle-based restaurants, Mt. Joy has announced that it will open its second location in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. New location – the first location of Mt. Brick-and-mortar Joy after opening a food truck this fall \u2014 it will be built next door to Seattle’s only Sweetgreen at the corner of 11th and Pine in a brick building that was formerly home to Stout Brewery.<\/p>\n
New restaurant openings don’t usually cross our radar, but what makes this one so exciting is the great vision of its founder, Robbie Cape. Cape, who first made his name at Microsoft and later became the CEO and founder of Health tech startup 98point6, has plans to open a chain of renewable chicken sandwich shops across the country. Although several large restaurants have made small steps to burnish their renewable bonafides (so small that some have called these efforts a new form of greenwashing), Cape has made it clear that his chain – and especially his chicken – will be built entirely on sustainable, highly transparent practices. <\/p>\n
“When I say renewal in all parts of the supply chain and brings joy to all voters, I really mean it,” said Cape when The Spoon sat down with him in September at the opening of his food truck. “And I know it’s smart. And I know we’re not going to get it right every time. But we’re going to try, and we’re going to keep trying to get better.”<\/p>\n
Cape knew when he came up with the idea that creating a chicken sandwich with a focus on innovation would be a daunting task, especially for someone with no previous restaurant experience. Because of this, he began calling on cold-weather restaurants, including popular Seattle chef and restaurateur Ethan Stowell, to pitch the idea. <\/p>\n Above: The chief executive of Mt. Joy Robbie Cape and the Company’s Chief Agricultural Officer, Grant Jones<\/em><\/p>\n “The first lesson I learned when I started getting feedback from people in the restaurant business about this idea I had to create a restaurant that revitalizes is that the food has to be good. Someone told me, ‘You know Robbie, no matter how good the story is, it won’t matter unless the food is the best,'” said Cape. “So that was one of the reasons I tried to meet Ethan Stowell, which wasn’t easy. He’s a celebrity, and I didn’t know I had a connection with him. Turns out I did. But I reached out through the ‘Contact Us’ form on his website.” <\/p>\n As it turns out, Stowell liked the idea and came on board as a cofounder (as would Stowell’s former head pastry chef, Dionne Himmelfarb, who had a hand in designing Mt Joy’s menu). Once Cape had his chefs on board, he began building the entire team, including bringing in a sales person, a farmer with experience in regenerative farming practices, and a technical person. Surprisingly for a tech entrepreneur, it was this last hire – chief technology officer – that Cape Town was skeptical about at first. <\/p>\n “I sat down with Ethan and said, ‘I’m holding off on talking to you about this, but I think we need an expert on the founding team because we want to create a new way of communicating with the restaurant.’ So I started saying, ‘I think we need a tech,’ and Ethan was like, ‘Robbie, sure, we need him. 100%.’\u201d<\/p>\n And this is part of the equation of Mt. Joy – the customer interaction part – where Cape’s technology background (and CTO Justin Kaufman) shines. When I visited the food truck installation of Mt. Joy in the fall, there was a QR code that showed me the way to the app, and when I ordered my chicken sandwich and fries, I got a text to let me know when my food was ready. <\/p>\n That’s all pretty standard stuff today, but Cape sees digital ordering as a way to create new and interesting personalized experiences tailored to preferences and past order history.<\/p>\n “When you come to restaurants, they don’t know who you are,” said Cape. “They don’t know the last thing you ordered. They forget about you, like every time it’s new. If you go to Google, Google knows. If you go to Apple, they know. We need to know.”<\/p>\n While I wasn’t convinced by Cape’s belief that he could differentiate between digital ordering platforms as he was, I thought he and his CTO would develop some interesting ideas. However, I it was<\/em> he was confident in his effort to source all the ingredients through local farmers and food companies, something that was already evident on the menu. All ingredients list the source and distance traveled before being added to the menu. About the only thing that went a hundred miles were spices like paprika that weren’t grown in the Seattle market.<\/p>\n Cape didn’t take offense when I told him that his list of sources for each ingredient was impressive, but replicating it beyond Seattle would require rebuilding the supply chain for each new market.<\/p>\n “It’s true, it’s difficult, it’s a little expensive, but it’s like a game of intelligence,” said Cape. “So you have a team that’s going to have to really think about acquisitions, and we’re going to have to build these local chains. But as it turns out, there are a lot of products. There are a few areas where we might have a few challenges, and our response to that is we’re going to be transparent.” <\/p>\n If you’re in the Seattle market and want to find out what a freshly-raised fried chicken sandwich tastes like, you can visit the new Mt. Joy from December 1st. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week, Seattle-based restaurants, Mt. Joy has announced that it will open its second location in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. New location – the first location of Mt. 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