Meadow Lane's Sammy Nussdorf

Live from WSA, this is expense account. Today's guest is Sammy Newsdorf, the founder and impressario of New York's newest and most controversial gourmet grocer Meadow Lane. I'm sure you guys have all seen the near-time stories, the eater stories, the TikTok videos, all the controversy. And many of you have probably even tried the viral chicken salad, the gluded-free chicken nuggets. But we aren't here to talk to the man himself, Sammy. So we can clear up some of these rumors for us, talk about the future of Meadow Lane, and hear a little bit about him. Today I let Emily Sumber take this steering wheel a little bit, which was fun for me. Sit back, get to be the peanut gallery. This is a fun episode, and I hope you all enjoy it. Cheers! Hi guys, welcome to expense account. Today I guess this Sammy Newsdorf, welcome to the pod. Hi, how are you? Sammy is, which you call yourself the founder, the owner, what do you call yourself? I'm the founder, I'm the owner of the business. The CEO. Yeah. And the business is Meadow Lane. Yes. We're all here with Emily Sumberg again. Again. Ever had big treat, so this is going to be a fun podcast. So Meadow Lane opened How Long ago Now. It's been about four weeks. And how long were you conceptualizing it? Conceptually, I'd say it's around two years. Okay. How old are you? 28. Oh, wow. Baby baller. Well, I look much older. You look great. Whatever's happening, we need notes afterwards. Well, I did just do a fraxel the other day. Where'd you go? Here's a fraxel. Fraxel laser, it's like Dr. Evan Reeder. That's my dermatologist. I love him. He set me up for my wedding in an incredible way. He's great. He's wonderful. Is launch going better, worse, or just as you'd hoped? It's an interesting question, because in terms of its performance on a balance sheet, it is performing better by 10X. It wasn't what I expected it to be in so many different levels, but it's a roller coaster. And they're incredibly high highs and very low lows. And it's been a journey and nothing came to what I was expecting it to be. Do you want to hear about the high highs? First of the low lows. You pick. We'll start with some high highs. High highs, I'd say friends and family, which I wasn't going to do. I did a friends and family day. And my social media, like on Instagram, is private and personal. And it's like a fence, if you will. I say whatever I want. I'm like very open book. And people have been watching me. My friends and my family have been watching me build metal lane for two years. So from the tile to the stone to which location I'm going to use, like they've been watching it unfold before I started broadcasting, building in public on TikTok. And for them to come to an opening that was the culmination. And all these things being put together over 17 months or so was like really surreal. Did you cry? I cried. Yeah, I mean, that's a big for anyone listening, who isn't familiar with metal lane or Sami. Can you explain to us the business that you've built? Yeah, metal lane is a gourmet prepared food market. It's hard to exactly say what it is because there's so many elements to it. But it's such a small space. It's 2300 square feet nestled in Tribeca on Greenwich Street. And there's a floral studio because of my flower background as a florist. There's prepared foods because of my culinary background and not like a chef. But I grew up cooking and I did go to culinary school. There's a lot of local produce, which is important to me because I love gardening and design, which is like I wanted to create this retail experience unlike anywhere else where it was so homey and you felt enveloped and you felt all your senses were heightened. And almost as if you took a Xanax when you walked into the door, it's very soothing. And a community based exercise almost like I wanted it to bring together not only the neighborhood, but people that could meet and chat and ideate. What experience is where you're pulling from that you wanted to rent? Like what's your story? Where'd you come from? And when you turned 26, why'd you say I'm going to open a market? I mean, I'm a born and raised New Yorker and I grew up in chaos. Just because of New York, but also like more personally, I grew up in chaos. And I wanted to create a safe space within a very chaotic city. And that was very important to me. And you know, prior to this, I was working in venture capital. I was investing in startups, a lot of consumer, healthcare, tech, hospitality. And I was always inspired and fascinated by different founders and their entrepreneurialism. And when I was working in VC, we would go and get prepared foods or go, what are we going to get for lunch today? You know, like that's like the talk of the town in the office, right? Like, what are we eating for lunch or dinner? And we would go to Dean Zaluka a lot. And I grew up on Dean and Zaluka. R-I-P. R-I-P. Born out. And when they went out of business in Soho, I saw the signage and I was walking with a coworker and I just passively said, I think it was around six years ago. I'm like, I'm going to open a grocery store one day because I always loved going to the grocery store. It was a fun activity for me. Never thought about it again. Continued working in VC. And I did very well with very little experience. And then the pandemic hit and we were all at home. And I was like, what am I going to do with my time? And like the market is too volatile with investing. VC is like really unpredictable with where that's heading. The portfolio is stable. So I had a lot of free time and I was just cooking and gardening and doing flowers and I started making people arrangements and running to the flower market on 28th street at my car and doing arrangements for these like photo shoots and for these real estate developers to do showrooms and like just doing flowers wherever I could. And then I ended up moving to LA and my friends. I wasn't fulfilled with VC anymore. I was kind of at a standstill. I wasn't trying to invest more. Everything was going well. I could just keep doing the storage of my life or I could do something that I'm passionate about. And I noticed in LA the abundance of produce, the abundance of prepared foods, the culture around cookbook and what were the other stores there that you were going to where you saw the prepared stuff. I loved Jones on third. I loved the lunch options. I just thought they were better lunch options really. I thought New York had better like fine dining dinner restaurants. But lunch in LA was more of a thing. Breakfast burritos, salads, things like that. Air One obviously. Like people got ready to go to a grocery store. I'm like interesting. And Carla Cafe, amazing. The Brownwood Country Mar, like there's so many amazing places you can go and fun activities. And like experiences to be made around food and community. And I started, when I was in LA, I started working as a florist. I called call to celebrity florist, Jeff Latham. And they hired me the next day. And it was a completely different career for me. But my friends were like, listen, if you want to do flowers full time, if you want to pursue that career, you should like get real experience. And I was like, that's valid and fair. So I did it, and I worked there for a little over a year. And I got much better as a floral designer. I got to understand my own style as a florist. And I got to work for some of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood and meet some really cool people and go into some really cool homes and design some really interesting things. And my dream was to create a flower coffee cafe concept. And that was the idea. But when in LA, I realized like there's so much good prepared food. Where is this in New York? We have the Hamptons, like it's round swamp. But in New York City, since Dean and Deluca's departure, I felt there was a big hole in the market or prepared food. So I added that into the business model and decided that medallined it to open in New York City. And then look, look where we are. I mean, your timeline is crazy. I've been trying to do the math of it all in my head. It's like, so you started doing VC, how old? I started VC, you did culinary school VC, floor arrangements in the middle lane. Corneries school, I was a child. I mean, I don't even know how old I was like 15 or something. It was a summer in Tuscany. Oh, wow. And honestly, I didn't learn anything there that I hadn't already been doing myself. Like, I was a self-trained. cook at home. And VC, I started working at my family office when I was an undergrad. So around 19. Oh cool. And that's why I was like, the time went so tight. It's, yeah. I mean, in the summers, mostly, I was obviously a full-time student, but I was trying to understand venture capital and get a footing on, like, would do I want to go into family business? I want to go into that, which this wasn't that. I mean, the family office is like an investment vehicle for families or businesses that are in completely different sectors. And this, initially, the family office was not primarily focused on venture capital, it was focused on other things. But when I got, when I decided to really step in with both feet, I was like, let's do VC. Venture is interesting to me. Like, let's push for more VC. Let's make larger allocations and more of them into these consumer goods, because I think they're going to take off. This episode of Expense Account is brought to you by Silver Oak. Whether you're eating pastrami, carnitas, general-sauce chicken, or a slice of chocolate cake, Silver Oak is the perfect pairing. More than ever, this world of ours is loud and it's full of so much noise. Silver Oak is a firm handshake. It's a planting of the flag. It's quiet and it's effective. It lets everyone know they're about to have a great dinner and a great night. Silver Oak, the official wine of Expense Account. The Expense Account podcast is built in partnership with Substack. I've been spending a lot more time on the Substack app. It's become my favorite escape to scroll productively and it's also where I've built my business. Substack is where I read Lincoln Bio by Rachel Carton to learn what brands are actually doing right on social media, and where writers like Jalille Johnson are reinventing real-time fashion reporting. A few weeks ago, I'm in live with Derek Thompson and it felt like thousands of us were hanging out and talking about the state of parties. Everything for Feed Me lives there too. My daily newsletter, Chats about New York City, live videos with pop stars like Audrey Hobart, and of course, there's always debates in the comments section. In fact, while I'm here reading this ad to all of you, my readers are talking to each other about where guys on Wall Street have been taking their lunch meetings. Go to Substack.com/Emily to get a free month of Feed Me in the Substack app. So you look at Dean and Deluca. What happened with Dean and Deluca? Why did Dean and Deluca close? And how are you making metal in different than what happened with Dean and Deluca? I don't know this specifics as to why it happened. Grocery is a tough business. Gruelling business. The margins are extremely low. The rent is very high, overhead is high. It is a grocery store. The same way that Whole Foods and Trader Joe's is a grocery store, but Dean and Deluca was always more elevated. Metal Lane is not a grocery store. I was going to say that. Do you let everyone call it a grocery store? People can call whatever they want, but people call it a grocery store. Do you think people call it a market? I marketed the business and no one else. I called it Gourmet Grocer, which isn't necessarily grammatically correct, but it's TikTok and it doesn't matter. How else am I going to say Floral Studio, coffee, smoothie, juice bar, matcha bar, pastry? It's more like a restaurant. CPG goods and prepared foods. It's really more like a restaurant. I feel like so many people were so upset because they're like this prohibitively expensive grocery store open that's like for snobs and then you go there and it's actually just a restaurant that's kind of the same price or it's like an expensive neighborhood. It's like costs like $23 for a meal. That's like normal in New York. I don't know. I don't really get what the outrage was after going. I was kind of disappointed honestly. You were disappointed that it wasn't more outrageous. Yeah, or that it was more, I don't know. I was expecting to be like, oh man, here's like like some like the craziest things that one would find an arrow on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that but it was more like a restaurant like it's like a lunch place like a lunch restaurant. Yeah, yeah, it's a paired food market. Yeah. So it's things that you'd want to I just single ship between between two consumers. There's the grab and go consumer who's like the city bank Goldman employee that's coming to get a bowl or a salad for lunch and bring it back to their desk. And then there's the prepared food shopper, which is like a Tribeca mom who's doing a massive hall for their family for like the next three or four days. Yeah. And they have two full baskets of stuff and they're just going to like they don't want to cook. They don't have time. They don't want a grocery shop and they're just going to heat up or eat as it is ready to eat food for them or their families over the course of a couple days. I mean, I've always thought that New York has been missing good prepared food like. And you're up to have Picard, you know, it's like a chain of these they sell really nice quality frozen food. It's like good convenient food that's like you know, good ingredients and like prepared well as like I don't know what's always been missing here. How do you differentiate yourself from like a happier grocery or the what's the other one next to one white street? Brigger Hill. Brigger Hill. How do you do you because do you sort of see you're all kind of catering to a similar customer? I think it is a similar customer. In terms of differentiation, I think from a branding ethos, a menu design and a physical design aesthetically of the space, they're completely different. The consumer might be similar because consumers in New York want easy, ready to eat healthy and vast options of prepared foods. But they're completely different to me. The menus are very distinguishable. And the energy you get when you walk into a medallion versus a happier versus a rigor hill is very different. Like I'm consumers of all three. And I experience something different when I'm in each store. So we can we revisit the low lows? Yeah. What were they? Oh, you don't know. The low lows. Well, we saw some. I mean, you know, it's funny. We, I think the top post now on the Feed Me Instagram account is a video that our friend Paul Needham, who's the CEO of the infatuation, who if you haven't met, you should meet him. He took a video that morning. He's a neighbor to the store and he goes there. But he took a video of the line outside. And it was, I mean, it's funny because like any business owner would be like, this is fantastic. We have a line down the block. And some people in the comments were like, we waited on that line and other people in the comments for like, this is crazy. And then I'm sure on top of it, opening a business today, you don't have control. You like, you can have a perfect marketing plan, but then you can't always determine what other people are going to say about it and it can all just fall apart. We were not anticipating that kind of a line. Really? No. Oh my god. At least I wasn't. Yeah. I thought there'd be a crazy line for two days. And then it would die down. How many days did that line last? Well, kind of there were there were lines for two weeks. People were saying people were skipping work. Yeah. But there's still a lot. There is weekdays are fine, but lunch rush during the weekdays, there's a line. It moves quickly, but there is one and we need someone to control. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a brandy mobile bouncer. There's a greeter. They're a model. I've heard that you have higher models to the bouncer. Opening week, there were models because gay people should be making these types of decisions around here. And they the greeter is really there to not overwhelm the staff. The store is small. If you had a round swap in the Hamptons, there's no greeter, but you go and you start buying food as you are online. Right. You're shopping online. You don't get to go around during the height of summer. Like you start where the line ends, and then you're putting things in your basket. And that's great. I love round swap. I wanted for New York, like less chaos, safe space. That was the idea. So mitigating overwhelm in the store was important to me. So we let in a certain amount of people at a time so that the consumer enjoys their experience so that the staff isn't overwhelmed. And so that we're not violating fire safety code. So it's not an elitist exclusionary thing. No, no. But some people have posed it to me. That's so funny that people think that's what it is. I love that video. And it's just so clear that it's like that you need somebody to moderate the frenzy around people. I mean, like high-end fashion stores and so-ho have security. And that's for a different purpose and function. But when there's like a kid's drop or something like, yes, they still happen. Yeah. Well, that's incredible. I mean, what happens now? Like, do you just think that you're that's the kind of store that you're going to have like a line store? That was not on my vision board. Sometimes things get on that board. Sometimes they go on the board. You know, each week, it's getting to a place where I was more expecting it to be. And it's like right now, the weekdays in the morning are my favorite time. It's so calm. It's so many locals with kids and dogs and it's like super cute and like, there's regulars and we know they're orders and they know how to navigate the store and there's a familiarity to it that's really comforting. And there's the lunch rush, which is fine and it's also nice when it's busy too, but I think eventually it'll level out to a place where like this might be a place where the weekends are always kind of busy and chaotic. Yeah. But during the week, it is for the locals, like, you know, the locals can enjoy, they can go pick up their food and whatnot. Is there a dog that works at the store? There's no dog that works at the door. We have started a medallion dog in ceramic house. Someone was telling me there's a puppy that works there. He should work there. I think you're talking about Chip. Is he like a golden retriever? Chip is a three-month-old golden retriever. So cute. Perfect proportion. Who does Chip belong to? He belongs to a local. Oh my goodness. Oh, so he's just a consumer. He's like a customer. We are in a group chat with Chip's mom and when me and Frances are crashing out, we ask her to bring Chip. Chip time. Yeah. Can we ask you about the low-low? Yes. Can we do another chicken again? We need to know about chicken again. The chicken again. So the low-low is absolutely a day, three of launch. You know, we had to close early because we ran out of food. So we thought we'd do maybe a best, three hundred tickets a day. We were doing a thousand with limited hours. First was to open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. We were open from like 11 to 3. So we sold out quick with a five limit rule on how many prepared food items. These people just wanted to fill a salad wrap. Yeah. So I'm like, as an owner of the business, I'm like, there's people waiting online. It's 30 degrees outside. I need to limit how much they get so that more people can be able to try the food. Yeah. I thought that was smart. And people were naturally upset about that, but we still ran out of food. So then we gave out voucher like tickets like, oh, this will fast pass. Like if you come back tomorrow and we sold out and we closed, you'll get to come back. So people were outraged because they waited like, oh, I would have wanted to see the store, get a coffee like I didn't need the food. I'm like, no, but I wanted you to have the full experience. So there was that day three, we're trying to keep up with demand. A couple people received undercooked chicken nuggets, broke my heart and I understand things happen in FNB hospitality every single day from McDonald's to like the highest Michelin store restaurant, but I did not expect it to happen to me because I'm a perfectionist. And it was devastating and it taught me there are pros to building your business in public and there are cons to it as well. I think about that all the time. And at the time, I was, you know, I handled it as best as I knew how I had never done this before. I saw videos, I wasn't approached first like, hey, this happened. Just wanted to let you know it was on the internet and people were tagging me in it. So I messaged the people, the creators of those videos immediately and I said, I'm so sorry. What can I do? Can't like, please let me refund you. Please let me like, give you a shop on the house and they were very nice. They were very receptive. They're like, everything we had was amazing. We love the store, we love following your journey. Just thought I'd let you know. So I understand you're entitled to do whatever you want to do. You're saying they said, just thought I'd let you know via posting on TikTok to everybody. Like the same people who posted on TikTok were the ones that said, just thought I'd let you know. Yes. And there were people that said, just thought I'd let you know. And I reached out, the outreach was happening to a couple of people and one person even said, I'll take down the video like I just wanted to let you know, great. She came in with her friends. I refunded them, gave them a shop on the house and then she reput up the video. Oh. Did you ever communicate again? No. I'm so sorry. As listen, two things are true at the same time. That's on me. I take responsibility and accountability from a six that are made from my kitchen. At the same time, we live in a culture where people are down to get on the virality train and down to prioritize that over their morals. Because these people at the end of the day were meddling super fans and they still are. But this was a very hot topic and any sort of controversy around this topic was going to go viral. And it did. It's crazy how TikTok has really changed the way that people, you know, give feedback about restaurants. Like, I don't know. Do you remember organic avenue? No. It was a juice, a green juice shot chain in New York City. There was like 10 of them and I worked there in college. And I remember like one of the first, it was one of the first like OG they like had glass bottles before anyone else did of like green juice and orange juice and like beat juice and they were everywhere. And like all the models would come in and all the celebrities would come in, what would happen to that? I mean, a lot of story. But I remember I worked there and all their glasses were bottles and this was in 2012. All their bottles were glass. And it works there in 2012 and like because it was raw juice, like sometimes they would ferment and like break and there was a glass everywhere or like somebody would get a salad and like something was wrong because again, nothing was passed right. So something was wrong. And like today, people would be posting about that 24/7. And I think since then, most places have learned that like raw bottles, unfermented like cold processed juice is just like hard to deal with as a business. But you're building in public, it's hard to separate like accountability from like hype or whatever. It's like all becomes like a mush of everything is like this attention economy like and people are trying to be like, I'm trying to hold you accountable, but they're trying to get their views and their ways to hold people accountable privately that are just as effective as doing it on full blasts on the internet. That is a selfish decision. You can like, there were people also that messaged me privately too, about issues. But I'm bad, I'm sure. You know, like, oh, I didn't like this or I didn't like whatever it is. And I'm like, thank you for letting me know. And thank you for letting me address this in a private chat. Who do you go to to talk about these things? Like, do you have other mentors or friends in the food and beverage space that you can call and be like, this happened? Can you, what, what have you done when this has happened to you? I have other restaurant tours that have been helpful throughout this whole journey from the beginning between like what contractor, how do I know if my contractor is not taking advantage of me? Like, is this winter vestibule, quote, reasonable, like those sorts of people? And when the chicken nugget gate was unfolding and someone published a video of a mouse in my store during its construction phase in July and was whole New York, yeah, but like, there were people targeting this business and me. Well, the thing with the mouse, and by the way, there's probably a mouse in my house. Like, they're, and I'm a very clean person, like, yeah, free or apartment, but it was an old video, right? Yes. Who keeps that? Someone very unwell. Do you know this story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He or she was holding on to that video from July, which I had already seen the video. It was a different video, but multiple people must have taken it the same video. It's just the mouse. It's a mouse and we were a construction site and we were getting ready for our photo shoot. Yeah. New York and the summer. So they sat on the video and they waited for this right moment with chicken nugget gate to be like, oh, not only have they served some raw chicken nuggets, they have a rodent issue. Yeah. And I'm like, the singular mind you very cute and handsome mouse that we saw in July. He works at the store now. He works well. Yeah. He works at Chip. He's right at two. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he's been neutralized. Yeah. He was neutralized six months ago. Right. So like, it was just crazy. Like, and it sets a bad precedent for people building in public. Well, I want to talk to you about that. Like how do you, because you have a lot of friends who are also building in public. You have a lot of friends who are like influencers or creators or founders or whatever. So I'm kind of curious like, do you, I'm assuming with that part of the job, you're able to go to them for advice. But do you think you're going to approach like 2026 differently when it comes to that stuff? Because it's helped you. It's, it's, it's, it's been good and bad. Building in public isn't that positive. I've realized. And I know it's only been four weeks. But I could not have amassed this type of demand and virality and line culture had I not built this business in public and People I mean those those low lows that we would just talked about those made the lines longer. Yeah, I was crashing out I was like, oh my god. I How am I gonna get through this? Like I'd even have a moment to reflect on like what just happened the two years of like Blood sweat and tears that went into this process. I feel like it was straight into damaged control mode And like one day I'll have a moment to like reflect and and like look back on how amazing everything was and it does get me at times But I was crashing out and then I had someone like Bobby Flage Just like stumble into the store and talk to me about these things and give me the best advice ever That's so I was the advice. He's like listen. I've been watching this journey and like I'm super proud of you and You know him know so Bobby Flages came in. No, he's someone from he is like some show with another celebrity chef And and that person was in the store and they wanted to film and do a little interview or something They're like, but Bobby's not gonna make it. Mm-hmm. I was like, okay, do your thing like whatever and then all of a sudden he just comes in I'm like hi Not like I've watched you my whole life on TV so you know, he could see it on my face. I was like not well and He's like, you know this happens all the time and The differences you built this in public and most Founders especially in food and beverage do not no build in public. They're very severed From their business and you're not and you're the face of it and you're the talk of the town so naturally Well, these things are happening at all of our restaurants every single day Yours are going to be under the utmost spotlight and broadcast it for everyone to see And I'm like, okay, but isn't that going to ruin my business? He goes no There's still going to come back and then it was Proof as such because the next day on the next day like lines down the block. Yeah, like oh I'm gonna see for myself if those nuggets are wrong. Do you think that you want to expand? Like are you just tackling this for the meantime like do you think that you want to open more locations? I feel like people would respond really well to a pop-up in the Amptons. Yeah The idea was to expand right now. I'm trying to get the house in order. Yeah Yeah, and even with a 24 operational kitchen between three shifts. We're not producing enough kitchen on prop on premises Kitchens on site. Well, we can't seem to produce enough food and our menu is A third of what it is supposed to be. So there's so many menu items that I tease on TikTok over the last 17 months That are not on the menu right now. Do you think that you're going to eventually move it to a model where you start doing collabs with brands and stuff too? I am very hesitant to Collabbing with brands just because we're so new. Yeah, I want Medellin to become its own tiger before we start Riding off the backs of other tigers. I will do things like a cafe panna collab exclusive flavor only sold at Medellin that they have full Agency over culinary and creative taste of the product little sweet treat love like your own custom bag I picked out each sour candy that goes in the bag like But we're not making anything. We're not R&D anything. Yeah, there's other ones in the pipeline that we're doing that I'm excited about But in terms of collabs that you see around the culture of Los Angeles where it's like let's put a celebrity Indoor smoothie on the menu. That's not my vibe. Yeah, they have the lines and the lines would not be helpful Well, I think it does dilute the brand a bit like even sunlight pretty quickly when they opened your start doing collabs And it was like I like nobody even really got a chance to learn what sunlight was you know It's exciting now that you can that's not really necessarily. Yeah. I mean a lot of companies and brands even Well before we opened we're coming to this table wanting to do a smoothie or a bowl or something And I'm like what is the alignment? Mm-hmm. Like I understand how this benefits your brand. Yeah, but also let us prove our concept first like we're not even real yeah And then when we became real a lot more came out of the woodwork and it would need to make sense Like if Martha Stewart wanted to make a smoothie. Yeah or some sort of harvest bowl hundred percent. Yeah, but these other random brands that have no alignment with our brand. Yeah, it's never gonna happen. Right I feel like you might get a call from a beauty brand one of these days. We have. Yeah Where do you like to eat? Restaurants I hardly get out but I like pasties. I like rafts. I like rebels. I didn't I wasn't able to go to their anniversary dinner because I live and work out of my grocery store twenty percent Where else do I like to our age guest for brunch? Amazing waffles never been have you not been we should go. Yeah Great Chinese chicken salad. Okay, that's important waffles pancakes Chinese chicken salad Where else do I go polo bar? Mm-hmm Uh You've been to polo bar. Yeah Um this polo war. Yeah Servos yeah, is it servo? Yeah. Yeah, I'm using sea food. Love it. Ito I think is the best sushi in the world. Oh, where's that? Try Becca. Okay. Usually go to Omen. Tamarind. Oh, Tamarind is great. Yeah, sleeper. Yeah. I think I'm going tonight. Yeah, that's convenient I guess go outside. Yeah, how would you describe the cuisine of metal in eclectic? I don't think that there's a specific cuisine. I wanted to offer something for everyone While we are seed oil free, even though I'm not sure that matters. I thought my demographic thought that matter. Yeah We do high low. So there are very clean menu items and there are very indulgent menu items There's a lot of gluten free items. There's a lot of nut-free dairy free Items. There's something for everyone. Mm-hmm. So I wanted it to be diverse I didn't want it to be like this new age high protein zero fun Food. Mm-hmm. I wanted a little bit of everything That's kind of how round tom does it too Yeah, it always surprised me when I'm in it. I'm like oh, I can get nachos or I can get like kale salad I love round swarms. Yeah, me too. Like that is my jam. Yeah I'd say it's pretty indulgent Okay, this is scaring me because I feel like sometimes I think it's not But it is in a way they show their calorie count. Oh, they do on the salads I'm not looking You can cut that. I don't think they do Well double check everybody can go through their Instagram feed they I mean Sometimes you just know when you're on the beach and you're eating a salad But when you're having a salad that tastes not like a salad. Yeah, candy salt You have to know that it's like a gazillion calories. Yeah. I mean you saw this pure Vita thing, right? Yeah Yes, how much was the how the wrap was how many calories like I don't know how I'm gonna be like real. I don't know how that's possible Like I think about the size and the density of the like I remember once I was with my friends And somebody we were at somebody's birthday party We rented a house upstate and somebody brought the trader Joe's cookie butter and I was looking at the sugar per tablespoon and I kind of started geeking out and I was like It literally cannot be that much sugar in a tablespoon Like it can't how would you you have to melt it down over and over and concentrate it and they were like your Why are you let us let us like get stoned on a mountain and like eat the cookie butter But that's sort of what the the tuna sandwich. It was a tuna sandwich, right? Yeah, like a tuna wrap. I think I've never been to Peravita. I don't know really know what it's about. It's a tuna sandwich Tuna is like surprisingly Chloric I guess always like Yeah, oil and mayonnaise basically oil and mayonnaise sandwich I don't like tuna It's my one food. I don't like that's surprising all tuna. I like like dance. I like like a tuna burger tuna steak Like a odion tuna burger. Yeah, but I don't really love like I like Sushi. Have you ever gotten like a really crazy blood panel done because I got one done recently and my doctor was like It's it's a little concerning how high the mercury is how much tuna do you eat? I said I probably have a bite and a half of tartar a week because like events Like you go to an event and there's always like tartar and she's like this too much That's you can you can't have a bite in a half a week Well It's concerning. It's a neurotoxin. Yeah Yeah, my blood org you just tells me that I'm an unwell bitch Does that are you like we need to like I've been texting Amanda shantal bacon because they just closed the last moon juice store and have you ever go to moon juice? Is that the same as the CPG brand? Yes, but When you were a little baby or whatever a teenager They had this store. And the store in California was like a marker of culture. Like if you had that tote bag, it was like, "Okay, you're part of this subsect of Venice Beach, Santa Monica culture." And they had like a. They had these crystals and dusts and guanith went and it was this very important part of California culture at the time. And they closed the last store today. And yes, she has the CPG brand. I'm sure that does much better than the store for many reasons Aeroan being one of them. But I was texting her about the craziest messages that she's received in the wake of the store closing and this will go in the newsletter this week. So maybe by the time this podcast comes out, that'll be. - Really? - But she said all these people were texting her about the babies. They conceived after taking the moon juice sex test. - Really? - Which is crazy. Or not crazy. I mean, do your thing. But do you feel called to that corner of wellness at all? Like, or do you not really think about wellness because you keep saying that you are like, your blood is not good and you're spiraling and you're concerned. We need young business owners to stay around. - No, I'm fine. I mean, we are not a wellness brand. - No. - And I think some people have this misunderstanding of like meddling as a status symbol. And it's so far from that. Like gourmet grossers have been around for decades and fine dining has been around forever. So the novelty and like the coverage and the press that this God was like so absurd because none of it's new. - Right, like hearing fake Aeroan must drive you crazy. - Well, yeah, I mean, like we had a press day after friends and family day and they were like, you know, people are gonna call this the Aeroan of New York. And I'm like, well, I thought they did that with happier. I thought like any, it's not like a diss necessarily because when someone, when someone pying years of space, consumers naturally reference that pying. - The thing that they know, yeah. - The thing that they know. - Have you ever been to lifetime in the West Village? I ride really hard for a lifetime. - I don't know if I've been there. - It's a crunchy, crunchy, crunchy, hot food store. - Okay. - Or maybe two crunchies. But bulk, eye to oats, dates, it's good. - Okay, I'll check it out. - Yeah, I think you'd like it. I think it could just be exciting for you to walk there. - Yeah, I mean, anyone that goes to a medallion or a competitor like they know that it's not like a dupe of any sort. There are dupes out there. But none of these aesthetically or from like a menu perspective, like have any similarities. - Well, what's your relationship now to social media? Like, I feel like now that the thing happened and it's open and it's running and the teams in place and the customers love it. Are you like, what's next? Or are you like, let's just keep making this better and better? - I'm still trying to work out kinks and get the house in order. - Yeah. - I want to be able to produce enough food to fulfill the demand that we're experiencing. - Do you do delivery or no? - We're not doing delivery. Our Uber Eats and DoorDash people are reaching out. And I'm like, guys. Just give me a minute, the house. - I will let you know when we're ready. - Yeah. - So we will enable that feature when we're ready. We will enable catering when we're ready. We'll enable private events when we're ready. And then we will start looking at expansion when we're ready. - Cool. - I was gonna ask, how much of this is planned? Like, is this, is it rage baited in a way? I feel like you're so internet savvy. Like, I see your TikToks and feel like, part of this controversy must be your grand plan. I guess you wouldn't say if it was. - It was not my grand plan. I had no intention of like, it has been the craziest three weeks of my life. - Yeah, I can imagine. - It was not intentional. But when I started to see what it was doing for business, what controversy was doing for business, I was like, okay, in no way am I gonna incite this on my own volition. But to some degree, this needs to be studied. - Yeah. - Because every mistake, every controversial thing that you say, whether it is good intent or not, that can be extrapolated and turned upside down into a blender with fecal matter. - It is good for business because it's more engagement. Arc Digest ran Bethany Frankl's house in AD, rage baited. That is strategic behavior. Okay, I don't think they probably had higher viewership in decades. That's a business decision. The New York Times wanting to pose a story with a headline about metal lane. Does New York City need another luxury grocery store? That wasn't a story. If you read it to the bottom, there was no story. There was no linear thought. - There was no valid question, but I can admit, I know the pieces of it. - But no function of necessity. - Yeah, I want in South Slope Brooklyn. - We don't need a lot of things that are in New York. - You don't like it, we don't need anything. You need very few things for survival. - Yeah, we don't need podcasts. - Gourmet Grozer is not one of them, but there's supply and demand for things. So, no, I did not do any of this intentionally. However, I did realize that it's good for business. - Yeah, there's a little lean-in. - Lean-in. - Yeah, it feels like you're leaning in a little bit with lots of references to you being canceled on your TikTok and lots of little signs. We have a sign outside metal lane that says I got canceled at metal lane. - I feel like you have a hold though. Like you have a hold on it. - Yeah. When I see the videos on TikTok, I'm like, he's good. - I mean, people like to come out of the woodwork to complain about anything. And you can either subscribe to victimhood or you can do something productive with your time. Because you're not gonna change the world being a keyboard warrior. You're not. - Everyone hear that? - I would, I'd hope that the answer was opposite. - Like, even when I see like fans trying to fight with the demon trolls and the basement dwellers, I'm like, don't engage. I mean, you could engage. It's gonna help me technically. It's more engagement. I got accused of deleting comments and blocking people. I would never. That's engagement. That's good for the business. That is good for my growth on a platform like TikTok. - Right. - It doesn't matter. The value, the intrinsic value of a comment, whether it's negative or positive, it still is the same value as a positive comment. It's engagement and it's business. - It seems like you have it under control. - I mean, listen, it doesn't get to me at times. Yeah. When they start to say things like, how many times have I openly said it? I've never voted for Trump. Not that it's anyone's business, what I vote for. But the fact that I've said so many times and had to address it so many times that I have never voted for Donald Trump. But people still like to say I did it. - Why do they think that? Just 'cause you're rich, I guess. - Yeah, I mean, it all started. They want something to hate me for. - Yeah. - And it's gonna be mainly nepo-baby allegations. - You can't help that. - You seem fine with it, or fine with it. - Listen, for adults. - For adults, cards, how you play them is up to you. - Yeah. - Like, they're gonna be mad if I'm doing drugs on my couch doing nothing all day. They're gonna be mad if I'm doing something interesting and people are gravitating towards it. - Yeah. - I can't do anything about that. Like, I can't change what family I was born into, you know? - Was it always gonna be meddling? Or was there ever a point when you decided to open a gourmet grocery store where you said, I'm either gonna do this or one of these other three things? Or were you like, I'm gonna get into the food space in New York City? - I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in college. I was studying sociology, economics, finance. - Where'd you go? - NYU. Psych, I loved understanding consumer psychology. - Mm-hmm. - And I think that's what made me good at investing in consumer products. - Yeah. - And, yeah, I mean, I didn't know. I thought I wanted to be a general contractor at one point. I had no idea. And then I just kind of like took one step and did that and then when that felt kind of fatigued, I took another step and I'm scary, but it led me into the next direction, and maybe meddling leads me into the next direction, I don't know. - I think it is. - Maybe I opened like an old school diner. - I would love that. We need more diners, there's a-- - That is what New York needs, though. - Yeah, diners. - New York needs more. - Well, I would have the waiters and waitresses on roller blades, but I'd probably be sued. - Yeah, and like a bunch of puppies working there. - I don't know if that's legal. - Yeah. - Grats on the A, you got an A from the health department, right? - Yeah, you know, even my dad was like. - Pretty cool. - Did you shut down? - It tricked me at first, the video. - Friends of mine were like, I'm so sorry. Like you're gonna get through this. I'm like, wait guys, I'm joking. - Yeah. - We obviously passed. - To be like, you really thought I'd quit after three weeks. - You thought that-- - Put another stream example of building your brand in public, there's people that want to take you out. There's people that have the time on their hands to call the health department and logic complaint and waste taxpayers dollars by sending city employees to your store to expedite a inspection and disrupt our operations because they have to look through everything and they have to like get behind us and it's tight corners down there. Only to get an A, it's like, do you have an idea who these people are, these people with the videos? I have a suspect, that's what we need the black honk for. I have a guy you can talk to, he's really good, he'll hunt them down. He's really good. I have a suspect and I think he's a huge fan actually. That's, the haters are always, oh, and he lives very close by. Oh, this is a little, I, you should talk to my guy after this, I'll connect you. What would you do if you found out? If you found out? If you found out. Who it was? Yeah. Nothing. Van from the store. I don't care. I don't have time. They have time. Yeah. Should we play this game? Yeah. The game was to name the price of different groceries, like standard items. So we'll start with like, we're going to go off like non-organic. What, where are you getting these prices from in your city Whole Foods? Yeah. I feel like that's a good baseline. I didn't want to do Whole Foods, but it just seems like an easy baseline to understand. Do you want to play? Yeah. It's hard, it's hard. You're doing a dozen eggs, size large, not cage-free, none of the, like, just standard eggs at Whole Foods, a dozen eggs today. $11? What? This is the Whole Foods brand. $8.99? $5.99. Oh. They've gone down. I've been buying the one with the, you open it, and it has like the little pamphlet. Like, here's our beautiful green pastures, and these are all the chicks. I mean, that's what we have. Yeah. I'm a sucker every time I-- That's what I like. She went on those blue eggs. Like, this is my favorite. Are people in the middle only in the open thing? They look at all the eggs. Oh, yeah. A blue one, gray one, pink one. Oh, wow. You got the different colors. Yeah. You don't want them. Next is a gallon of milk, non-organic, gallon of milk at Whole Foods, $365 brand. $2.99? $5. $5. $5. $459. Yeah. Banana. One banana or one banana, like a normal segment. $0.70. This is hard. I thought that it was going to be, I was playing with Ryan earlier, and it was hard. I couldn't have guessed this, to be fair. It's around $0.25, I guess. One banana. $0.70. You were telling me it's $0.25? That's what Ryan said. $0.65. $0.25. Oh. I blocked out, sorry. I feel like that's like $7.11 pricing, which is interesting to me. How much are the Lady Gaga Oreos? I don't even know what that is. They don't have that at Whole Foods. I don't have it at Whole Foods. You have to buy it on eBay. When did they come out? They came out earlier this year, I think, or late last year. Oh. I thought her new album did well. No. No one liked it. Got to get that in a visco money. They're $8, but it's $16.00 shipping. That's it. I want you to open a seasonal pop-up in SAG Harbor in one of these closed locations, like in the old Jack's location or something, but I don't know your hood in the Hamptons. Pop-ups are a nightmare, and the Hamptons is a different beast. I know. Being able to sustain yourself in a seasonal environment is very challenging and round swamp has pioneered that. Do you have private label items? Is that the goal? We make items in house that are more shelf-sable like plantain chips and kale chips, granolas, dog treats that we can roll out and mass distribute if we want to when we're ready. That's cool. I mean, that's like the kind of thing that you could expand with. Yeah. I mean, like fresh, direct one was to do a pop-up in their pop-up, or maybe it's their full retail storefront in South Hampton last summer. Where was that? On Main Street. Oh. And they had like a Jack's coffee in it. I don't know if I want to do the Hamptons. It's tough. And like finding labor for a seasonal business like that, round swamp can afford to close half the year. They have a humongous, commissary kitchen on their farm. They are mass producing so much food amongst their like four or so locations. And not many people can do that. You see a lot of people in the Hampton trying to replicate that model and their price point is even higher. What's like your top North Star goal for 2026? What are you like? I really, really, really fucking hope this happens. I don't have a goal. I just want customer experience to be as good as it can be. And there's no metric that's going to make me happy. There's no number. I want to hit. There's no shopper. There's no person who would come in. I would love for Martha Stewart to stop by. She almost did. But we were like, it was pre-opening and it was a mess and like her hair stylist was like, it's too messy. I'm not going to worry her. So it's just, I'm sure she'll come by at some point. Yeah. But we've had a lot of amazing people that have blown me away. Come in. Cool. There's no one in particular I'm like yearning for. It's not about like a goal for me. It's just like, I want things. I want the house to be in order. And I want to have more work life balance. We all do, babe. This house keeps being the house needs to be in order, the house of Medellin. Yeah. I kind of like this. Game of Thrones? Yes. I'm sure you might need to re-wash that today. It's shout out time. Last night it was freezing. It was this snowy Sunday in New York and I went to Raku with my husband. And I never been before because there's always that crazy line outside. And we went at 4 p.m. and we got to sit at that communal table where you kind of face. You're sitting next to strangers and you're facing the person that you're eating with. With the check, I'm noticing that, you know, when you eat at Superiority Burger, they give you that cookie and do you have VIPs? Really? Yeah. Fuck yeah. Sometimes they give you like a little candy, but they gave us two little frozen grapes. So cute. It was like a cute little, it was very, they were delicious. Raku rocks. Shout out Raku and the thoughtful little frozen grapes and the little tiny like quarter-shaped bowl. So my shout out today is, this is funny, like only twice have I run into people in the wild. I mean, friends and stuff always say they like the podcast because they have to. But I ran into like two people I didn't know. And the first was Assam at Roscioli. Her name was Maeve and she said that she was a fan of the podcasts. I was very proud. And then I went to Discovery Wines and another woman said that she liked the pot. And her name was also Maeve. So today I'm going to shout out Maeve's two fans, the only people who listen to this podcast are named. Only Maeve's listen to this pot. I've never done a show. I will shout out Francis who is my absolute rock. And if you do as don't know, Francis was my executive assistant now turned director of operations at Medellin and none of this would have been possible without her and she's really holding it all together and I'm forever grateful for her. Francis! Shut up Francis. Shut up Francis. Shut up Francis. Thanks guys. Thank you. Expense account is the production of Feed Me in partnership with Public Sound and Substack. Our executive producers are Emily Semberg, Jason Gauntlet and Ryan Woodhall. Our associate producer is Camille Fattet. Our audio engineer is Luke Maldolf. Our video editor is Izzy Cross and our graphic designer is Justin Sloan. Expense account is recorded at WSA NYC. For more episodes visit us at feedme.substack.com. See you next week. [Music]