013: It’s been an exhausting week. Everything in life is racing toward the arrival of baby C in June. Every client has been warned of my pending leave over the summer. This has lead to a mad rush of scheduling, hoping to get some extra videos created before then. These are all good things, and it’s just the down side of being self-employed, and a single person business. And I need to pay for all these diapers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the newsletter and what it’s going to become over my paternity leave and after. There is still something I haven’t tried yet here, which was the entire concept when I started. I want this to become two things:

1) A place for unique offerings to redeem at businesses. There isn’t much value here if the businesses aren’t seeing traffic from it. The only ways I’ve been able to track the actual impact from my content, are from messages, or social media posts when people visit the business. Or, after the business owner follows up with me saying “so many people said they learned about my business from the TikTok/Instagram post.” It’s a big ask, but since I don’t charge businesses for these profiles, I think it would be cool if I got an exclusive promo for readers. For example, get $50 off when you spend $100 at today’s Korean BBQ restaurant. I think a decent amount of people would take advantage of that. That would incentivize people to share the newsletter, and possibly lead to a paid membership model to access each month’s discounts.

2) A community hub for people to meet, talk and support businesses in Seattle. This could be a private chat community on an app like Discord, Facebook group, or something new I create specifically for Find Me. Meet ups where you could actually Find Me, and find businesses, or find friends within the community. A few business owners have expressed interest in doing events and meetups at their businesses. Reminds me of my old meetup “Breakfast Club.” Shout out to anyone who went to one of those and is reading this.

If you have any feedback, or interest in these aspects, I’d love to hear it. I could use the encouragement and motivation. I could also use the honest gut punch if it’s actually not what people want.

— Conner Cayson

Chef Heong Soon Park
^{Owner and Chef, MEET Korean BBQ, Bacco Cafe, Chan}

Starting a Restaurant is CRAZY

Starting a restaurant is crazy. There are challenges that are nearly insurmountable. The hours are long, and the profit margins are low. It takes an incredible amount of work to scale to where the business can run without you physically there every day. The business requires in person services and labor. You can’t make money without being open and getting customers in and out of the door. 

I grew up in a family of restaurant people. My parents owned a restaurant, and so did my sister. My first job was a busboy at a local Italian restaurant in my hometown. Two of my siblings also had their first job there. I think I’ve always had an empathy for people brave enough, crazy enough, to start a restaurant. There’s been a single thread that connects all of the restaurant people I’ve interviewed thus far, service. You need a passion for service to succeed, to even stand a chance of survival. Once again, it rings true for today’s Seattleite You Should Know. Meet Chef Heong Soon Park, the owner of Bacco Cafe, Chan, Meet Korean BBQ, and a very soon to be announced new restaurant.

Who is Chef Heong Soon Park?

When Chef Park was getting his MBA at a university in Alaska, he learned that the restaurant business was one of the worst industries to get into. Yet, Chef Park now owns three (soon to be four) restaurants in Seattle. 

He grew up in South Korea. He spent time in Malaysia, Switzerland and then in Alaska. He moved to Seattle in 2007. By 2008, he was involved in his first restaurant, Bacco Cafe. Bacco is a reliable brunch spot located on 1st Ave and Pine Street. In the heart of Downtown Seattle, it attracts many who are visiting Pike Place Market. 

Chef intended to be focused on the business side of the restaurant, but he was spending a lot of time inside running operations. He had one real large weakness, in the kitchen. So he enrolled into culinary school at the now shuddered Arts Institute of Seattle, which was located just up the street on the Seattle Waterfront. 

From Business Person to Chef

He became obsessed with cooking as he dove deeper and deeper into the craft. He was learning new, high end culinary techniques. He wanted to incorporate his new knowledge of French and Italian food into a restaurant. But, as he said “I wanted another restaurant, I wanted to make something Italian, or French, something fancy. But since I don’t have an Italian grandma, why don’t I do something with Korean food where I can combine where I’m from, and what I’ve learned.”

This lead to Chan opening in Pike Place Market in 2014. That restaurant was small with dim lights. The city really loved them. They were quickly recognized for their unique interpretations of Korean food. Chan was on every “Best Korean restaurants in Seattle” lists. A reservation was required to get in. I remember profiling them in 2017 because it forced me to make one big change as a creator. I had a great dinner there, but all of my photos were trash. It was too dark inside the tiny space to get anything that was postable. After that, I got a little light that I would bring with me to restaurants. I still carry the same little light in my backpack.

The pandemic started a transition in the business. Chef Park was offered an opportunity to move into a new, much bigger space, inside the Paramount Hotel, across from the Paramount Theater. 

He now had two successful restaurants, but the third didn’t have the same fate. For a short amount of time, he owned Tray. He described it as a “dim sum style concept” in the Frelard (Between Fremont and Ballard) neighborhood. The business served food on carts that walked around the dining room. That style of restaurant is very challenging. It requires specific precision and preparation. It’s easy to have waste and spoilage from food that wasn’t chosen off the cart.

Meet Korean BBQ

At this point, he has made the transition from business person, to chef. He travels back to Korea often. Firstly, because his children live there, but also to learn and discover more about the quickly changing food scenes. Chef Park was ready for a new challenge. One of his observations was the rise of All You Can Eat (AYCE) Korean BBQ in America. But when he returned to Korea, he saw that it was a dated version of the dining experience. Specialization is now the trend, and he saw these restaurants operating more like Korean Steakhouses, and not the ‘cook it yourself style’ that is widely available here. He set the goal to open his own Korean BBQ, but he would do it his way, the way they eat bbq in his home country.

I’m sitting inside MEET Korean BBQ in Capitol Hill for this interview. Chef Park is at the head of the table, standing above the bbq, diligently cooking the prime American wagyu. I’ve always had a small beef (pun intended) with what I had experienced as Korean BBQ. When I go out to a restaurant, the last thing I want to do is cook it myself. I will inevitably screw it up. Overcooked, undercooked, and I forgot to spread the fat on the grill so now the meat is stuck. Yes, I recognize the benefits too. It’s an experience that you share with others, and a fun one at that. Everyone needs that one friend who takes the lead cooking the meat. At MEET, they take all of that struggle away. You’re going to sit at a beautiful wood table, with a hot grill in the middle. But the staff takes care of the cooking portion of the meal.

I think this is the start of a new found appreciation for Korean BBQ.