Hillary Sterling of Cayenne Nashville Hot Chicken On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand
An Interview With Martita Mestey
There is always an opportunity to learn at every corner, and I enjoy bringing everyone on a journey through education.
As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hillary Sterling.
Born and raised in NYC, Chef Hillary Sterling fell in love with food & hospitality at a young age. She flourished while working with renowned chefs from Bobby Flay, to Joe Bastianich, and Missy Robbins. Currently, Hillary is Executive Chef of restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Ci Siamo, a celebrated Italian-inspired fine dining restaurant in lower Manhattan, and Chef of Cayenne Nashville Hot Chicken, a virtual restaurant brand.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was raised in Brooklyn, NY in the same house my father grew up in. My grandparents, who kept Kosher, lived in the basement. (Though we did not keep Kosher upstairs.)
I didn’t truly understand and develop my relationship with food until later on. When I was eight years old, I remember my aunt snapping off a piece of asparagus for me that she grew in her backyard, and I had no concept of what a fresh, green vegetable was or the flavor profile at all. The next day at school, my teacher asked us if we had eaten anything new over the weekend that we hadn’t tried before — and looking back, it’s shocking to think that I had shared that I had asparagus for the first time.
I grew up in Sheepshead Bay, where food was very old-school. I started cooking in high school and began working in restaurants when I was 14 years old, which is where I began to unravel the concept of what food should be. Later on, I worked at a restaurant in Montauk owned by a husband and wife. It was working there that gave me an understanding of how the culturistic side of restaurants could be.
I then attended college at Indiana University where I studied business, marketing, and sociology. After graduating college, I was working as a logistics broker but still longed to work in restaurants. I then made the decision to learn how to cook professionally so that I could one day have my own restaurant, which has led me to where I am now, 22 years later.
Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?
I love the concept of honoring tradition, particularly regarding food and culture.
The creation of my brand, Cayenne, emerged when I was in Nashville, where I really fell in love with the story and deep flavors of Nashville hot chicken. Within the heat levels, there is so much going on, which led to my obsession and passion to recreate it in my own way.
Honing in on being able to taste all of the different elements and nailing down all of the right spices was a really amazing project.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
While many of my mistakes were not funny at the moment, they served as learning experiences. When working at a restaurant, one of my colleagues was out, and I had to stand in his place, which included making a specific sauce that was made in large batches.
The recipe called for ancho. Not knowing any better, I used ancho powder instead of fresh ancho chilies, which resulted in 24 quarts of a slurry rather than the ancho vinaigrette sauce required for the dish. It was extremely embarrassing at the time, but it gave me a better understanding of how to understand and utilize the right ingredients.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Making things too complicated. You need to gain your customer’s trust, which you can achieve by focusing on perfecting a few signature items, rather than spreading yourself too thin by taking on too much.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Firstly, you should find the demand. You need to be self-aware to understand what a market wants. You also need to focus on making the best product possible, with the best ingredients and the best taste.
Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?
Take a step back and look at your product and business. Remove yourself from the equation.
This is something that Mealco greatly helps with. The platform allows me to take a step back and view my product from an outside perspective. With our southern fried chicken sandwich for example, we designed and tested the product intensely, but I still may not have had the wherewithal to understand where it needed to go from there, and that’s where the team at Mealco was able to help propel this product forward.
As part of Mealco’s exclusive Brand Innovators incubator program, I can better understand the market research to make sure my brand is as successful as possible.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
If you do have the finances to hire a consultant to help require additional knowledge needed to launch, then I would suggest utilizing a partner. However, many people who have new and great ideas do not have the money or access to outside help.
I urge everyone to use their resources — exhaust all avenues and available resources before pouring money into something that is ultimately a risk.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
This depends on the scale of your business. If you go the VC route, you need to have a larger plan and show that there is interest, revenue and long-term business plan.
If you are younger and / or willing to fail and are able to “scrape by” on your own, I also think getting your idea off the ground independently is a great approach.
Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?
Finding great ingredients takes time and effort. Even with partners such as farmers, you need to understand that it is ultimately a business interaction and the exchange needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties.
Don’t be afraid to go down the dark stairwell — you never know what could be on the other side. If you are dedicated to making the best product, you will take any step that is possible to achieve it.
It took years of failure and testing to develop a consistent product and successfully launch Cayenne. Consumers want familiarity, consistency and quality.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?
When I am looking to develop something new, I ask the following, determining questions:
1- Can we execute it?
2- Can we find the products to be consistent?
3- Is it something that is craveable?
4- Is it exciting and new?
5- Is there a story or connection?
Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?
The masses want so much, especially in NYC. For me, I want to find something that I love and that I am excited about. I’ve been asked to do so many fast-casual concepts that I turn down because I am not passionate about it. Having passion behind everything you do is truly the end all and be all.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Our kitchens are very welcoming, nurturing and stimulating. I believe the more people that we can touch that way — by inviting them in and allowing them to be exactly who they are — is very important to me.
There is always an opportunity to learn at every corner, and I enjoy bringing everyone on a journey through education.
Additionally, I’m dedicated to helping our smaller producers and farmers. These people are putting their blood, sweat and tears into their work, and we need to reward them and keep the cycle going.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Getting people more involved with reducing their carbon footprint. We should use what we have nearby. While I do import many things from other countries, I still believe there is an importance on utilizing what we have here, where appropriate.
We also need to educate adults on how to feed their children and focus on the importance of fresh ingredients that are available locally.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Hillary Sterling of Cayenne Nashville Hot Chicken On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.