David Utterback wanted to be a punk rocker, and like many aspiring musicians he started working in restaurants to make money. He was quickly hired at Blue Sushi Sake grill, which was the coolest restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, at the time, because, with a Japanese mother, he looked the part.
But it turns out that he also liked working in restaurants, and was good at it, so he stayed with that company, Flagship Restaurant Group, opening sushi restaurants across the country before he decided to try his own hand at entrepreneurship.
He funded his first restaurant, Yoshitomo, in 2017 with a bunch of credit cards that had promotional 0% interest rates.
He couldn’t afford proper kitchen equipment, like a stove and a range, let alone a hood, so he developed a menu based on what he could do with a toaster oven and a blowtorch.
The gamble paid off, the restaurant was a hit, and he paid off those credit cards.
And now he also operates Koji, a slightly larger and more casual restaurant, also in Omaha, with a dedicated grill program using Japanese binchotan charcoal.
Utterback talks about his operations and hints at more restaurants to come.
Menu Talk is a collaboration between Restaurant Business Senior Menu Editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. You can subscribe to it wherever you listen to podcasts.
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