For 20 years, we've always identified ourselves as fiercely independent, but what exactly does that mean?
The easiest explanation is that we're not, and have never been, beholden to financial partners simply because we've never had any. Back in 2002, when Mitch and Cyn started Hell's Kitchen along with Steve, the amount of money needed to start a restaurant --while certainly daunting-- wasn't anywhere near the amount that would be needed in today's times. The bootstrapping owners were able to pull it off by renovating the interior by themselves and scrounging used kitchen equipment, supplies, furniture, fixtures and other things for pennies on the dollar from resellers. Still, those expenses had to be paid from somewhere, so Mitch and Cyn sold their house and managed to squeak by without having to find investors.
The founders were quick to admit that selling their assets wasn't necessarily the smart thing to do...bringing investors on board would have taken a percentage of their ownership, but also would have saved a ton of financial anxiety. In hindsight, though, the freedom that came without having partners allowed the rogue founders to chart their own territory. As Mitch once said, "We were naive enough --stupid enough if I'm honest-- to want to be the big fish in our tiny pond and make all the decisions for ourselves without worrying about losing someone else's hard-earned money." And if you've followed our precarious journey, you know they lost a boatload of money on so many different occasions that they probably should have lowered their personal risk by bringing on financial partners. But they didn't, and at the end of the day, it turned out to be a blessing.
Being fiercely independent allowed them to take risks in so many ways: Offering up a free wedding when marriage for gay couples finally became legal... defending our servers publicly when a heartless bigot went on a rant... packing up a truckload of cooking gear and heading up to Embarrass to throw a fundraiser... deciding to co-exist peacefully instead of suing Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen even though we've owned the trademark even before he started (wanna see his cheeky anniversary greeting? Click here to watch his 2012 apology)... moving the restaurant lock, stock, and barrel when we still had a lease... turning down a $2 million dollar offer in 2013 for 50% of our company from a well known Twin Cities icon when our gut told us it could tear apart our culture... then spending $109k of our savings on legal and other fees in order to turn the restaurant over to our employees via the ESOP 6 years later... opening Hell's Cafeteria during the pandemic... and even writing these "behind the scenes stories" that make many other restaurant owners cringe. All of these might have raised eyebrows from investors, but by absorbing all of the financial risk, we were able to make on-the-spot decisions, right or wrong.
Would we do it all over again? You betcha. But nowadays, opening a restaurant takes millions, so opening a new downtown restaurant today, sans financial partners, would be out of the question. We feel luck that the only people we now answer to are our Employee Owners and YOU, our valued guests. Both are equally important to us, and once again, we're humbly grateful for the support.
Today marks our 21st Anniversary (!!!), so this is our last "20th Anniversary" story from Hell. But stay tuned...so many of you have written to us, intrigued by our long-winded ramblings, we plan on continuing to share snippets of our journey with you every so often. Thanks for reading; thanks for believing in us.