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To Ellen Bennett, founder of a kitchenware brand hedley and bennett, Food is a lifelong love. “I’m half-Mexican and half-British, so I grew up with a very unusual combination of eating shepherd’s pie and tea with Mexican foods like tamales and caldo de pollo with my British grandfather.” she speaks. entrepreneur.
But before Bennett launched her apron business, named after her Anglo-Mexican family, she attended culinary school in Mexico City. Tuition was more affordable in Mexico City than in the United States. She took modeling and translation jobs to support herself locally, and then she returned to Los Angeles. , where she grew up and worked at some of the city’s best restaurants.
Image credit: Shayan Asgarnia. Ellen Bennett.
“I’ve always put one foot in front of the other towards what I want to do. Don’t stop or stare too long, because then you’ll be too scared to do it,” Bennett said. say. “So, I always and forever keep myself moving. And I feel like that’s one of the successful traits for me. I don’t analyze, I just analyze.”
In 2012, Bennett, 24, was working a variety of jobs. She worked as a line cook at the two-Michelin-starred Providence and Beco Mercat restaurants, earning $22 an hour between the two jobs. During her mornings, she also worked as the family’s personal chef. “It was 24-hour work,” she recalls, adding that 14-hour days were the norm in the industry.
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“If I could make it, [equivalent] part of a unified dignity [and] roll [that] If I entered this culinary world, I might change the entire industry. ”
Despite his daily “busyness,” Bennett had big ideas. It served as an “interesting link” from her life as a “hardcore chef” to the “other life” she led in Mexico. In the City, she often wore suits at her work events. She also said that as an avid runner who takes on marathon marathons, she knew a thing or two about athletic attire that could withstand the rigors of the sport.
“So I put the two together in my head,” Bennett says. Hey, if I could make it, [equivalent] part of a unified dignity [and] roll [that] Entering this culinary world could change the entire industry. Because we have our asses handed to us. we are working very hard, [and] Everyone looks like shit.”
A few weeks later, a chef at one of the restaurants Bennett worked at gave her the perfect opportunity to start a side business. When he said he was going to order aprons for everyone, Bennett, who had been thinking nonstop about various aspects of chef coats and uniforms, “blurred off, Ellen Bennett style, that he had an apron company. Oops”.
Image credit: Courtesy of Hedley & Bennett.
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Of course, Bennett didn’t have a business at that point, but he was working on an idea. “And working means that was on my mind,” she admits. Still, she managed to persuade the chef to order 40 aprons and “just by sheer force of will and willpower” she “started the whole thing.” Ms. Bennett has appeared anywhere there are chefs who might be interested in her apron, from Her Farmers’ Market to her Eater LA events.
“I walk up to people and say, ‘Hey, I’m a cook in Providence. I work there and I own an apron company. I can show you what I do. ‘What?'” Bennett says. “I mean, it was from a very humble position, but I was also shameless about talking to anyone. And I was also shameless about hiding behind my computer and waiting for people to email me. I didn’t. I was just standing in front of you, and if you had ears, I was going to talk to you.”
“‘Oh my god, Japanese denim? That’s cool. American canvas? Yeah.'”
Although Bennett had no sewing experience, she always loved design, so her process in the early days was “really rough.” She sat down with chefs and listened to their pain points (which she knew well as an industry expert) and discussed the finer details, but important things that are often ignored in the apron game, such as durable fabrics. I dug into the details.
Image credit: Courtesy of Hedley & Bennett.
Bennett quickly gravitated toward “elevating the core ingredients,” the same way a Michelin-starred restaurant elevates its cuisine. “We’re still just selling food, but this is the best fish in the world because we’re sourcing it from the best places. So I applied the same logic,” Bennett said. I will explain. And Bennett’s apron quickly became popular.
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“Chefs were really interested in this dish,” Bennett says. “They’re like, ‘Oh my god, Japanese denim? That’s cool. American canvas? No, yeah.’ And instead of using plastic hardware, they’re like, ‘What if we used brass hardware? ?’” And they would say, “Yes, I love that.” So I basically just cooperated and listened. ”
Today, Hedley & Bennett is an eight-figure brand. If you’ve ever watched a cooking show or a show about cooking, you’ve definitely seen it in action. 70% of his Food Network chefs wear Hedley & Bennett.Apron, and almost all the chefs who appear in best chef and bear According to data provided by the brand, he also wears one. Hedley & Bennett also boasts partnerships with the likes of The Beatles, NASA and Crocs, before branching out into common kitchenware such as knives and potholders.
“Even if you raise $50 million, you still need to build a community to get customers.”
Although Bennett’s apron idea quickly resonated with other chefs and has seen significant growth over the past decade, Hedley & Bennett was not an overnight success, and realistically, She emphasizes that it does not exist.
There was no outside investment in this brand. Instead, she grew Hedley & Bennett the “old-fashioned way,” building “brick by brick,” “street by street,” and “customer by customer,” while reinvesting every penny into the business and building a key brand. Royalty secured. Method. And the people she sold the aprons to in the first place are still her customers today, Bennett says, and “there’s a love you can’t buy from an Instagram ad.”
“Even if you raise $50 million, you still need to build a community to get customers,” Bennett said. “You just happen to have more money in the bank. Are you going to go and talk to people? Listen to them, redirect them, and bring your product to them and to what they actually need.” Are you going to adapt to what you have? Everyone goes through the same struggle: “How many resources can I put into it? I’m much more creative than I would have been if I had all of them.”
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Additionally, Hedley & Bennett’s original business-to-business (B2B) model benefited from a “brutally honest chef” who didn’t mince words when telling Bennett what was and wasn’t happening. It meant a ‘slow and steady’ approach. I’m not working. Feedback has been invaluable, but despite being inundated with requests for additional products, Hedley & Bennett remained “very focused” on launching a fully customizable apron until the pandemic hit. I continued. In fact, we need to create a streamlined menu that codifies how to equip these restaurants to expand.Bennett realized.
So Hedley & Bennett took a direct-to-consumer approach. Within a month, the brand went from shipping everything in-house to using third-party logistics (3PL) to ship everything. “It wasn’t clean or smooth or anything like that,” Bennett said. “It was the right thing to do for business, but people all over the world couldn’t meet in person. So we were like, ‘How can we do it online as quickly as possible?'”
From there, Bennett considered all the feedback he received and considered which products would make sense to work on next. “We were like, ‘Okay, what’s going to grow naturally from the apron? This is a must, because we don’t like prickly things,'” Bennett recalls. “We focus on the longevity and quality of the things we need. Things like lemon squeezers, of course, but you can also squeeze lemons by hand.” That led the brand to knives. .
Image credit: Shelby Moore.
“There’s nothing wrong with taking time to build something great.”
Although Hedley and Bennett’s journey has been long and full of “little peaks and valleys” with an overall upward trend, she is an “action-oriented person” and rarely dwells on what she didn’t do along the way. No, Bennett says.
Still, at first Bennett wishes she had taken a step back to evaluate herself and her contributions like everyone else. “I don’t mean that in an ego-driven way,” she says. “It’s not about thinking you’re the coolest or the best, it’s about simply respecting the work you’ve done and saying, ‘I didn’t just build the table, I built the table for me to sit on. I also made the chairs.’” At the table. I made this. ”
Image credit: Evan Robinson.
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And her best advice for other entrepreneurs looking to take their big ideas from side hustle to multi-million dollar brand?
“I’m a big believer in playing the long game,” she says. “You can start something at home without any money, build a viable and profitable business, and after many years become its majority owner. That’s great. There’s nothing wrong with taking time to build something great.I know all about us.”Life is all about speed and how quickly things grow. [becoming] It’s a unicorn, but you too can be a long-term unicorn. ”