After departing from Eleven Madison Park, Eric Huang launched a delivery pop-up called Pecking House, combining Nashville hot chicken and Sichuan fried chicken. Within a year, the venture attracted a 10,000-person waitlist. Due to the success of the pop-up amid the pandemic, Huang opened two brick-and-mortar locations in New York City. He credits grassroots funding from friends and family, and highlights the challenges of sustaining a single quick-service restaurant in a high-cost environment like NYC, where operating costs outpaced initial budgets.
I did a very grassroots [campaign] close to home by asking friends and family. They were mostly small contributions, anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000, until we slowly accumulated what we needed to open a restaurant. Of course, we went drastically over budget.
Quick-service restaurants aren't really sustainable at one. With price points and check averages under $20, it simply isn't enough money to cover the operating expenses in New York, so we needed to be more sustainable to a degree.
The delivery pop-up operation was the most profitable version of Pecking House. With COVID-19, people were very generous with how they tipped and how they ordered.
By early 2021, Huang's Pecking House had a waitlist of 10,000 people.
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