From Wall Street to Cupcakes: How She Built a 40-Location Kitchen Empire

[00:00:00] Jessi Walter Brelsford: I got a job on Wall Street. It was a really great job. But what started to slowly happen is I missed the creativity. I missed being around kids. So I started Tastebuds Kitchen as a hobby. People loved it. It really took about six months before I was like, I could do this. This could be a business. Our mission is Culinary Entertainment. 41 locations across the country. We’re all about making memories. From sushi to pasta to most people’s favorite cupcakes. I’m also excellent at turning it off and on. I have a thought. The door shuts. Have fun with the kids for the whole evening. My four year old, it’s crushing. She comes up to me, she’s like, mommy, look at me. I’m like, you’re right. I’m gonna put my phone over here. You are so much more important than my phone. I’m a ritual lover. Survivor night is big for them. We make popcorn just on the stove. Popcorn. So it’s like this most special thing for them. Covid shut us down. Newborn twins. It was like survival mode. But we got through it. You know, I’m gritty, I’m scrappy. Giving up was never an option. We launched an online cooking club. We were hoping to get one people to join this. We got 25,000 people. Literally broke our website multiple times. Our motto is braille sports, don’t quit. Our core values spell kitchens. The T is for twinkle. I want everyone to just be like, this is fun.

[00:01:16] Kevin Rice: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting wins and fails and everything in between. I’m your host, Kevin Rice. Here’s today’s episode. My guest today turned a Wall street career into a nationwide kitchen movement. After Harvard and a VP stint at Bear Stearns, Jesse Walter Bresford traded spreadsheets for spatulas and founded Taste Buds Kitchen. Now with over 40 locations across the country, what started as a weekend hobby became a franchise built around one simple mission. To create connection and joy through the power of food. From kids camps and birthday parties to date nights and corporate team building events.

[00:01:54] Jessi Walter Brelsford: C.H.

[00:01:54] Kevin Rice: Jesse’S built an experience brand which has been featured on Good morning America, Epicurious, and even partnered with Disney, Pixar, all while keeping heart, family and community at the center. Off the mic. She’s a wife, a mom of three, and often found baking alongside her little sous chefs. In this conversation, we talk about scaling with heart, how the kitchen became her favorite leadership classroom, and the rituals that keep her grounded when life Gets loud. This is a conversation about grit, growth and building something meaningful at work and at home.

Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Jesse Brelsford, the CEO of Taste Buds Kitchen. Jesse, thank you so much for being here today.

[00:02:32] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Kevin, thanks for having me. I’m happy to chat with you. I love the topic, love the name of your podcast.

[00:02:37] Kevin Rice: Thank you so much. I am super interested to hear the origin story. You started your career on Wall Street. So before the aprons and franchises, what was life like on Wall street and what wasn’t fulfilling you in that world and inspired you to start this business?

[00:02:58] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, so step back before Wall Street, I guess. I am from Maryland. I’m one of 23 first cousins. I was always the Pied Piper of the group. So I love kids. I’m the oldest of three in my immediate family. I love business. I was the one to have a lemonade stand. I would steal vegetables from my mom’s garden, go sell them to my neighbor for, you know, a quarter, any money I could make at the time for whatever I was.

[00:03:24] Kevin Rice: My, my oldest has a lemonade stand that he sets up every weekend and it went from a cardboard box to a table and now it is a professional looking lemonade stand that he spent like weekends building and painting.

[00:03:37] Jessi Walter Brelsford: I love that. My 4 year old, I have three kids and my 4 year old is desperate. We live at the end of a country road and I keep being like, bud, there’s no one here to come that is actually on the list for this weekend, which is a funny tie in so fast forward. I, you know, grew up, went to college, I went to Harvard. I majored economics. I love business. I love numbers, I swam. I love competition, love to win any shape that’s currently taking, whether it’s playing my kids in Uno or, you know, delivering results in our business.

And I got a job.

[00:04:06] Kevin Rice: You ever let your kids win? Because I, I have that struggle sometimes.

[00:04:12] Jessi Walter Brelsford: My husband is like, tone it down. I’m very, I like to help them. I’m absolutely helpful. Right. I’ll like if they play the wrong card from a strategy standpoint, I will teach them, but I’m not going to like pretend I didn’t win if I did.

[00:04:26] Kevin Rice: Good, good.

[00:04:26] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I’m friendly about it.

So yes, went to Harvard, majored economics, swam, and then I got a job on Wall Street. I had only been to New York City once before I moved there. You know, it wasn’t like a aspiration of mine. I just really Liked the work. I was hired into fixed income sales and trading. I found it very interesting. I loved what I did.

Moved into credit strategy. I was there for seven years and it was a great job. You know, it was a really great job. I was able to move up. I had great mentors. I liked what I did. But what started to slowly happen is all the rest of my life kind of caught up with me. Like, I missed the creativity, I missed being around kids. At the time that I started this business, I had three great grandparents alive. So I was just missing the whole connective piece. So I started Tastebuds Kitchen as a hobby, never thinking it would be a business. About a year before I left my job and when I started, my colleagues are like, what are you doing? I was like, I don’t. I’m young. I was 26. I didn’t have kids, I didn’t own a home. I lived in New York City. I didn’t have any family in the city. And so I was literally starting it for something fun to do. About once a month I would do a class.

People loved it kind of took off. And it really took about six months before I was like, we could do this. This could be a business, right? I always wanted to be a business owner. My dad had businesses, my grandfather had businesses. It was always part of the dinner table conversation how those businesses were doing. And my mom and my grandmother say, you know, not now, can we talk about this later? So it was always part of my upbringing. But yeah, that’s kind of how I got to Wall street and then why I ultimately left. I got excited to create something for myself and lived in the city for 10 more years after that. And then my husband and myself moved to Maryland ten years ago and we have three kids, seven year old and twin, four and a half year olds, boy and girl. So I’ve got to know an ABC’s title very well.

[00:06:12] Kevin Rice: Absolutely. Yeah, you nailed it. That’s why I love the business idea. Being able to bring connection. And it looks like you do it in a lot of different ways. Families, kids, classrooms, corporate environments. Like, what is the essence of the organization or your company?

And like, what, what values inspired you to create this, this, this brand?

[00:06:36] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I love that. So Taste Buds Kitchen. So what do we do? So we are a 2000 square foot brick and mortar retail facility. You come in and you cook with us. Our mission is culinary entertainment. So we have currently 41 locations across the country.

All the schedule is online. So you can book summer camps for your kids, school break camps. Adults, we do BYOB date night, girls night out, friends night out. Usually beer, bring your own beer or wine. And then on the private side of things, we do kids birthday parties, we do corporate team building events, bachelorette parties, we work with girl scouts, we do field trips for schools where, you know, school bus comes in. So we’re all about making memories, making the kitchen fun, creating something new. We’re always making it from scratch. From sushi to pasta to, to most people’s favorite cupcake.

[00:07:25] Kevin Rice: And when you started the company, you weren’t yet a parent, Right. You had maybe spent a few years building the business.

How did life change as you were growing this company after you became a parent?

[00:07:38] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah. So tastebuds kitchen turned 18 on Monday.

[00:07:42] Kevin Rice: So I say my congratulations.

[00:07:44] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Thank you. My baby is an adult.

I had 11 years in there where I was just grinding it out, pushing, growing this business.

Um, I love doing it. Five years in, I figured out how the business would work, um, how the revenue streams would work. We’d signed a lease in Manhattan, we’re still there today. Um, and then I decided to franchise is the best way to grow the brand. And that’s when we kind of partner with like minded individuals all around the country, which was a really great growth step. I met my husband when TPK was 4, just before we franchised, left his job full time. He’s an architect, he did commercial real estate in New York City. He’s now in charge of all of our locations and helping our franchise owners through site selection, design, construction, getting these beautiful kitchens built around the country. We then moved to Maryland and then we had kids and everything changed in some ways and nothing changed in other ways. Right. I love work, I love what I do. I’m so driven and committed to it. I wanted to try to find a way to, I would say juggle both because you never perfectly balance it. But the biggest thing we did that made the best impact for our family HQ is, you know, was located in New York City. It’s about three hour drive and that became very hard. I was on the subway with a 10 day old baby when my first son was born. Going back and forth to the kitchen and we moved HQ location to Maryland. So we built a second kitchen here. And now it’s 13 minutes from our house. And this is where we run all of our franchise training.

So that’s been really, really helpful. In the balance of juggling it all is having HQ closer to.

[00:09:14] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I mean, congratulations on all the success. So few businesses get to where you’ve been able to take this company, how have you had to evolve as a leader as the company has grown?

[00:09:25] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Great question. I would say I didn’t think about leadership early on that much. I just did what I was good at and tried to grow the team around me. Definitely, as we’ve grown, I’m more intentional about it. Right. What does it mean to be a good leader? How can I get the best for my team, both professionally and personally? Same for our franchise owners. Right. They are partners. So how is this a great choice for them in their life and for them in their business?

So I would say I’ve just been more conscious of a leader and my focus of this year really is how to be the best leader for the organization. I mean, I say this to our franchise owners and it’s definitely the case for me every year. If your business is growing, you are running the biggest business you’ve ever run.

Right. And so that is a challenge and an excitement and something to rise to.

[00:10:10] Kevin Rice: Yeah. And so, like, what are some of the things that you’re doing to focus on growing as a leader? Because I, I resonate with that. When we first started our company, similar early stage roots, my business partner and I started it out of our garage. We had a couple employees. It took a couple years for us to realize, okay, this could actually be a legitimate company that we could scale. And I really didn’t start thinking about leadership because my head was just really down in the weeds growing the company until we maybe had eighty to a hundred employees. That’s when it started clicking of, okay, people are watching me and how I carry myself is going to set the tone. And so it started to become more conscious. I hired a, like, professional development coach who just messed with me every day. But what are some of the things that you are. Because you said you’re. You’re starting to focus on, like, this year’s leadership. Like, what does that look like for you?

[00:11:05] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think two things have really been instrumental. One is we brought on a partner in the franchise business. About two and a half years ago, he had retired. He grew a brand called Lightbridge, which is early childhood education. He had sold it and thought he wanted to retire. He didn’t want to retire, thankfully, came back in to help us grow Taste Buds Kitchen. And he’s been a really great mentor, like a leadership mentor. We’re very similar in how we operate, how we think about the business. And he’s been. I call him my great phone, a friend mentor, just in how to do this successfully for everyone. Right. How to do this with as much balance in place as we can. And then I. I’m in a leadership deep dive session this year. We meet every month, once a day online. People join from all over the country, led by Dave Quick, and he’s been really great for us. We also use culture, and it basically tells you for every individual, your personal traits are formed by the time you’re eight. So who are you? Are you one to drive results? Are you helpful? Are you social? Are you introverted? Right. Do we, like, know a lot about each other and then how I can best hire and coach based on it? The leadership coach has been really great. Just that session, working with other people and individuals. And like you said, it’s a conscious choice. I’m a worker. Right. I want to put my head down and work, but I know to grow this organization, I have to do it. Like you said, people are watching. Right. So I want to do this responsibly. I want to think about how I can be better leader each and every day. And ultimately, you know, the best place to work and best brand for our team members and for our franchise owners.

[00:12:33] Kevin Rice: Yeah. As a CEO, you have hundreds of decisions, constantly pressure coming from a lot of different angles. One of the most difficult things I struggled with was being able to turn it off when I got home and spend time with my kids in a way that’s present when you. When you are building a company at this scale, how have you been able to set boundaries with your personal life and your professional life?

Cause it’s exciting and you want to keep putting energy. But the list of things that you could be doing literally never ends. So at some point you have to decide, what are my boundaries? What am I willing to give to this company? But where does that line get drawn?

So how do you think about boundaries when it comes to growing your career and still being available and present for your family?

[00:13:23] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I probably don’t have as strict boundaries as I should, but I’m also excellent at turning it off and on. So for me, the clock strikes five, my day is done. I leave the office, I shut the door. So my husband and I own this business together.

I’m fine to keep talking about it. I want to talk about it at dinner when we’re making food. Still with the kids, Right. They’re always asking, where’s the next location? So the worlds collide very frequently, but my husband does not want that. Right. He wants to be making dinner together, not talking about the taste buds, kitchen events of the day. So it’s been more for me. I think about balance when I’m not at my desk of like, you know, the kids want to know. My husband does it because he’s done it all day too.

So I think I am balance that pretty well. Like five o’, clock, the door shuts, have fun with the kids for the whole evening. The one thing I’m really conscious of right now I’m working on is my phone. You get a work email and I’m looking at it and my 4 year old, it’s crushing. She comes up to me, she’s like, mommy, look at me. I’m like, you are right. I’m gonna put my phone over here. You are so much more important than my phone. Cause I don’t want them to see that and mimic that. Right. And think that the phone is more important than them. These amazing humans which we brought into this world.

So I’m really right now trying to be conscious about that. Just putting my phone away when I’m with them.

Trying to turn off the thoughts of the day and be the best parent.

[00:14:41] Kevin Rice: I mean that’s so on point. Cuz your phones are literally designed to suck your attention away. Everything about them. Yes, I used to hear that. And I’ve had that experience many times where my kids are like, dad, dad. And I’m like trying to finish something and they’re like, dad, you’re always on your phone. And I’ve had to get to the point where I will literally put my phone up on a shelf when I walk into the room with them.

And that’s sometimes the only way that I can like set it aside and just really be there and present for them.

[00:15:14] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yes, I love that. And sometimes my kids will find it like, mommy, your phone. I’m like, no, no, no, leave it. This is family time and you have fun. And the phone, I think it can connect the world a little too much for my liking. So I do the exact same thing. I put it on a shelf in the kitchen and then I’m just present and able to enjoy the time with it.

[00:15:30] Kevin Rice: Yeah. Do you guys cook together with your kids at home?

[00:15:34] Jessi Walter Brelsford: We cook a ton together. Mostly bake. That’s what my kids are really into. My daughter, specifically, four and a half, she just loves to follow a recipe, loves to measure it all out. The boys love it. They honestly love it most for the tasting. They come over when it’s done and they want the scoop or the spoon. Spoon of whatever we’ve whipped up. But it’s so fun. I mean, that’s really why I started Taste Buds Kitchen. I love families. I love food. I love connection, fun and business. I can do this all together. And some of my best memories were the kitchen. There’s not pressure. It’s just a fun spot to be. To create memories to try something new. We call it reverse peer pressure for the really little kids. Right. If they don’t want to try broccoli or spinach, they see eight other kids trying it and they’re like, you know, I guess I can lick it. And so those moments feel really great, too.

Yeah.

[00:16:20] Kevin Rice: What do you think it is about food that is such a great venue for creating connection between people or families? What is it about the process of making food that is so specifically designed for connection?

[00:16:34] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I love that. It’s a great question. I think everyone has to eat, right? And so you. If you break down all the barriers at our base level, we have to eat multiple times a day, have to drink water multiple times a day. And doing it together, it just feels so vulnerable or regular. Right. All the pretenses are off. You can have a head of a country sitting next to someone who just started and they’re breaking bread together, they’re celebrating, they’re filling their body with good food and connecting in just a really cool way. That’s what’s great about corporate events. We’re saying, bring your team in. This is the best corporate team building. People are going to be laughing, joking, creating things together.

Um, and little kids, too. It’s very approachable and really very fun.

[00:17:17] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I. I will admit I’m probably, like, the least foodie that you will ever meet. I eat the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

It’s not a big area of fulfillment for me. But what is special is where I intentionally create a time to cook with my kids. And so, like, I’ll give you one example is the other day, we planned an evening where we were going to create homemade Aussie bites because my kids love them from Costco.

But I wanted to be able to use some of my own ingredients. I still ate my cottage cheese like I do every single night of the week, but was an activity for us versus, like, a. An evening routine. There was a recipe, and I found this struggle of I just wanted to follow the recipe, but my kids wanted to keep throwing in new ingredients. And it was funny because I found my own tension here of, like, no, we need to follow the recipe. This is how it work. Otherwise, it’s not going to turn out right. And they’re just like throwing in stuff, not measuring it properly. How do you encourage kids to like, follow recipes but also to be creative in these classes?

[00:18:22] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I love that. It’s a great question.

What is important about taste buds, recipes and cooking is we don’t stress, right? Yes, there’s a recipe, but for the most part, too much this, not enough of this. Generally it’s going to work out now. Not if you’re baking a cupcake. That just won’t work. When we’re doing things like baking, we definitely stress the precision of the recipe, but we let them have fun with the shape or, you know, let, let’s say you’re making like a braided bread loaf. How do you want to braid it? Do you want to make it like a knot? Do you want to actually make it long and braided? You know, for pizzas, I would make. Let them make heart pizzas or lightning shaped pizzas. Right. There’s so much creativity. How do you want to put your cheese on? Do you want to grate it? Do you want to cut your slice of cheese into, you know, using little cookie cutters? There’s so much choice and creativity I think you can have even with following the recipe exactly. So next time maybe let them like shape the bites, Right. What shape do they want to make them in? Long and skinny little guys. Lots of ways to have creativity. And that’s a lot of the fun of the kitchen is knowing what you have to measure and stay on point with. But knowing when you can make substitutions and taste along the way, that’s my favorite part with them. Let’s try this ingredient, right? It’s something new. Let’s taste it. Let’s try it.

Spills will happen. That’s why Taste Buds Kitchen is great for parents who are nervous for you. And we’ll set up for you don’t have to worry about that piece, but we do encourage obviously for you to do it at home as well.

[00:19:46] Kevin Rice: Yeah, that sounds great. I wish we had one in my local city. I would send my kids every week.

[00:19:51] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I love it. So what is your breakfast, lunch and dinner, if I’m allowed to ask.

[00:19:55] Kevin Rice: It’s pretty boring. Eggs for breakfast, a protein shake for a snack, yogurt bowl for lunch, and cottage cheese for dinner.

It just kind of came down to I get most of my fulfillment from spending time with my kids, pursuing my passions.

And I know that’s going to make a lot of people cringe. But. But I made the conscious decision I did some blood work and I did a lot of research into nutrition to figure out, like, what would be the ideal diet for me physiologically.

And then I just stuck to it. And I can make breakfast in five minutes and eat it in five minutes. Now my kids, they, they, they think I’m a short order cook. So it’s like one wants pancakes, the other one wants a yogurt bowl. Like, I’m constantly making different foods for them, but I also hope that I’m planting seeds for them.

I certainly don’t necessarily. I’m not trying to encourage them to do the same thing, but I am encouraging them to learn about nutrition. So, like, when they have food on their plate, I talk about, okay, eggs have protein in them, the yolk has healthy fats. Healthy fats are great for brain development at your age. And so we talk about the nutritional value of everything that’s on their plate. So I’m hoping to plant some seeds of being health conscious in.

[00:21:12] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, definitely. That, that works for sure. I know my 7 year old, every time he has milk, he’s like, this is good for my bones, right, Mom? I’m like, yeah, but they like that, right? They’re like, when their brains are developing, they’re soaking up knowledge or the more of that. Sounds like you’re doing all the right things.

[00:21:26] Kevin Rice: Yeah, it sounds like you have a, you know, kind of like family dinner as a routine for you guys. I’m curious because rituals are really important in creating conn connection both in career and family. Are there any other family rituals that you guys have that keep you guys close when work maybe starts to like, tug?

[00:21:45] Jessi Walter Brelsford: I’m a ritual lover.

Currently. It’s Survivor, so the TV show Survivor by foreign.

Love it. We’re watching it tonight, which we’re very excited about.

Bike riding is currently our thing.

[00:22:00] Kevin Rice: Nice.

[00:22:01] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Got a bike for Christmas. My four year olds learned this summer. So the three of them and myself or my husband, we do the whole loop and we do it typically once a day. We’ll find a time if let’s go ride a bike. And you get out there and the kids are like, this is so fun, mom. And it’s just like simple little things like that. I feel like create the memories. We do gingerbread house decorating party every December for all of the cousins and our family. So we have. My kids love to celebrate. I love to celebrate. There’s always a reason inside the kitchen, out of the kitchen. It’s what makes it special.

I’m a believer in quality over quantity. When I’m with them, I want to be with them. I want to be present, I want to be doing things.

Yeah. You know, we live outside making mud soup or whatever the case is.

[00:22:44] Kevin Rice: It’s really the message. Yeah. It’s being intentional, being present. I started to realize that if I wasn’t intentional about my time with my kids, we would end up just kind of going through the motions and we just kind of fall back to default. And it wasn’t as meaningful and it wasn’t building as much connection. I wasn’t helping share values. So I started bringing as much intention to my personal life as I did in my career. Right. If I was going into a meeting, I would never show up without a plan, an agenda, talking points.

So it kind of like I had this light bulb moment of I have to bring as much intention, if not more intention into my personal life than I ever did in my career. So I started planning my weekends, I started planning our evenings. If we had free time, I had some ideas of things that we would do together. I still spend the majority of my time in career, but the time I spend with my kids is, is so much more meaningful now and fulfilling.

[00:23:42] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, I love that. I. I’m a spreadsheeter, so I have one course at work, but I put up on the fridge every Monday morning what our schedule is for the week and I’ll even put Survivor night. Survivor night is big for them. We all get our seats. My four year old hands out the blankets and we have these little movie containers. We make popcorn just on the stove. Popcorn. We don’t even put anything on the popcorn, but they love it. This looks like this most special thing for them. So I agree with that. I think intentionality, focus and little things doesn’t have to be big, but especially done with repetition. It frames them, right. It frames their mind, sense of home, gives them a sense of belonging and importance and they’re worthy of celebration. So so much could be packaged in that. But I think it’s really important to do and I love it. Right. Like, you know, no one wants to work all the time. I love to work. I love what I do. But you get inspiration, you get refreshed, you get recharged. I think I’m definitely a better leader, leader and CEO since having kids because I’m intentional on both sides. I don’t just have 24, seven to work, you know, and days drug into days. And now it’s about like, okay, I’m recharged. I had a great, you know, evening morning with my kids. My kids Leave for school at 7:30. So they’re very early rushed mornings around here. But then I’m able to sit down with that kind of clarity and refocus on the day ahead.

[00:25:02] Kevin Rice: Let’s talk about that. You made the comment that you think you’re a better leader now that you’re a parent. And I’ve heard that from a lot of people, but always in different ways. So I’m curious, what do you think it is that changed in you after becoming a parent that helps you evolve into a, you know, a better leader?

[00:25:21] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think the first is just in my schedule. I had to adapt my schedule. I didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to work, so I had to say, okay, this is work time, this is home time and I’m an optimist. Right. So with the hours I have in the day, I had to be much more strategic with what I was going to spend my time to because I only have so much of it. Right. So that’s really helpful. I think the other thing that definitely has helped is just you see these little humans grow up and they’re so adorable and they’re so full of life and so eager and they just, you know, want so much from you in terms of love and support. And I’ve started to think of my team in that kind of way. Right before kids, we were just all here to get the job done, work hard, go home. And now I think, you know, bring more of the mom feel to my team than perhaps I did before when we were all just, you know, working hard to get it done. And I feel for people in a different way and I try to see through just the work conversation to perhaps what’s going on at home or in life and how this can be a win win for both them and our organization. Right. Or them and me. So I think just seeing people a little more as people has been certainly helpful when you have these amazing kids you’re raising.

[00:26:31] Kevin Rice: Yeah, that’s that empathy has certainly been a common theme that a lot of people found they became more empathetic after they became parents and more maybe just consc of the relationship between them and their. Their team or their employees.

[00:26:47] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, definitely. I love those signs. You see them on social, but it’s like everyone’s going through something you just can’t see.

[00:26:53] Kevin Rice: Yeah.

[00:26:54] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Everyone has things going on. So I think best I can treating team and I see all of our franchise partners this way too. Right. Everyone has, has life to go on and they’ve all chosen to be a part of Taste Bud’s Kitchen. Our strategic focus for this year is to have everyone run profitable, joyful businesses. Businesses that make sense, but businesses that are full of joy. So not just in the kitchen. That’s always been the case. We want our owners to create great culinary events for our guest. But within our interactions, we want to be a place of joy. Life can be short. Right. We want to get the most of it. And really leading with that first has been a helpful, helpful growth step for me, I’d say in the past year or two.

[00:27:32] Kevin Rice: Yeah, a lot of lessons from home translate very well to into being a leader at work. And we talked about rituals. I’m curious, do you have rituals at work kind of the same way you have rituals at home as a way to build connection either with your franchise leaders or your corporate staff?

[00:27:52] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yes. I love them. So one of my favorite things we have is a good news bell. So whenever there’s good news to share, you come ring the good news bell. And I love that we celebrate anything. It can be a new franchise location or you just figured out a technology that was previously giving you trouble. Right. Anything you want to celebrate, we’re here to celebrate.

But I also do follow EOS entrepreneurial Operating system for like how we organize our team. And so that’s really been helpful. We do level 10 meetings and we’re connecting, you know, as department heads, individual check ins as needed to really, I think, be efficient about our meetings, strategic about our meetings. I see that as important and making them as fun as can be. We always try to connect as humans for the first five or so minutes. Yeah. And I mean, taste buds Kitchen as a brand, it’s filled with rituals. There is always a season. It’s summer camp season, so we’re gearing up for that. And then we go into Halloween season and then we go into the holidays, and then we go into Valentine’s Day, and then we go into, you know, spring break, winter break, back into summer. So there’s always a next season on the horizon. So because of that, we’re very ritualistic to say it in that way about what we’re training on, what our goals are, what we’re working towards, and then hopefully stopping to celebrate the successes as they mentioned seasons.

[00:29:06] Kevin Rice: It makes me think of how leaders kind of go through different seasons. I certainly did in my career. And often those different seasons can really test you as a leader and test your identity. Have you had any leadership moments that really stressed you or challenged you to, to grow in the face of adversity or like a season that was maybe particularly difficult.

[00:29:30] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, that’s really great. So my mind goes to Covid and having newborn twins at the same time. So Covid and an experience based business where people come to our kitchens, right, to cook with us. Covid shut us down, right. I remember it happening. And we got on a call with all of our franchise owners that night and said, just going to be a couple weeks, don’t worry, we’ll be back up and running by the time summer hits. You know, little did we know, a year and a half later. But every location, because we’re spread out across the country, every taste buds kitchen was closed for different amounts of times from weeks to months. And then I had twins and then you have newborn twins and you’re navigating life here. We couldn’t have our nanny come. I mean it was like survival mode for a good couple of months here. My in laws are saints. They actually came down from New York and lived with us for I think 12 weeks just to be an extra set of hands. We had a two year old, so we had three kids under two and a business struggling with COVID You know, it was very stressful on all fronts. And then I have these two babies, these most amazing humans, right. We’ve just created so from like Joy. We weren’t sleeping. Business was hard. Our franchise owners were looking for direction. I think that was just like hard. I wouldn’t call it a low because I had the twins and you know, like, there’s so much goodness all around me. I try to be the glasses half full. It was an amazing and hard, just a hard time. But we got through it. You know, I, I’m gritty, I’m scrappy. Giving up was never an option. Was always going to figure this out and just figure it out in the new normal. But I think being a CEO is about pivoting. Being a parent is about pivoting, right? You always have to be looking at, even for your kids, like, what’s the right thing for this month, this week, sometimes this day, and you hope it stays the same. But at any point, like in your business, that can change. There can be a fire. There can be an opportunity, right? It can be led by positive, it can be led by negative. So I’m not afraid of change. I will pivot if needed, both in work and at home. If something’s just not working, let’s just change it up, right? This isn’t working for us today. We don’t need to continue to do the same thing and expect different results.

[00:31:34] Kevin Rice: I think with challenges, it’s absolutely our biggest learning ground in life and career, family, personal.

And you can kind of either choose to go through it or you can grow through it. And when I look at Covid, it was a wild time.

My business was consulting for large restaurant chains.

Every single one of them had to close their doors. I know. And we had no idea of how that would flow through to us. Like, we’re like, we don’t know if we’re going to have a company. At the time, we maybe had a hundred employees or so. And we’re like, I have no idea if we’re going to be around or not.

But that actually probably, if I think about my biggest challenges, was probably we had a one period in 2015. We did our one and only layoff.

And we were much smaller at the time. So a layoff was pretty impactful. Probably 30% of our staff were laid off.

And that led us to completely fundamentally change our business model. We changed the industry we worked in. We invested in ip, we developed new strategic partnerships, new lines of business. Like, we completely changed the business over the course of six months. And that’s what eventually caused us to grow. I’m curious, when you went through Covid, how did that force you to think about adapting or evolving your business and what long term changes came out of it?

[00:32:59] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Great question. So I think we are nimble. Like I said, like I. We always try to pivot. So what happened in Covid? When we first had to close all the kitchens, we launched an online cooking club. So it was free. It was twice a week. We had, I believe, eight franchise owners at the time. So we all rotated and kind of went down the list. We put out a video every Tuesday and Thursday. We tried to use pantry staples. People weren’t going to the stores or if you would, you had like a detox, you know, table where you’d Clorox wipe it. And we were hoping to get a hundred people to join this. We got 25,000 people, literally broke our website multiple, multiple times.

So that was just like a cool way of let’s just do something. We don’t want to sit at home and just twiddle our fingers waiting for guests to come back. We’re going to do this. And it became epic. We partnered with no kid hungry. We were donating a dollar for every child that joined. That felt really good when all the kids who couldn’t get free lunch anymore were home. And so they were doing this big push to get Food available to children. And it gave us purpose, it gave us something to do and people loved it. We had, you know, an online channel you could chat in, questions about the cooking. We had people posting pictures all over social and what’s been so cool, obviously that stopped. We did then launch virtual corporate team building events and we do continue those today in a small degree with teams from all over the world. But I’m, I’m always scrappy. I’m looking for the opportunity. Right. I’m trying to lead the company through whatever is in front of us. However, we can best optimize the current situation. So I would say that I just tried to be resourceful. Continue to try to be resourceful for your business or for your family.

[00:34:38] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I mean those are really important values to carry in your career and I imagine also at home.

How do you try to instill those same kind of values with your kids?

[00:34:49] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Yeah, it’s like my life’s mission.

Our motto is brails first, don’t quit. Because you know kids, they get a setback and they’re like, I can’t do that. Right. Or like this is too hard. And I’m like, no Brailles for so quit. Let’s do this again.

And so like they’re starting to get it. We’ll be doing something. And my 7 year old is like, mom, Braille swords don’t quit. I’m like, that’s right, we don’t. So like teaching that is one of the best things you can teach your kids. I feel like grit, grit is my word. There’s a TED talk on, it’s amazing. But like grit, general, they say is a better predictor of success, happiness in life than education. Intelligence, but just the ability to keep going even if things are hard or difficult for the promise of something better in the future. And I think that’s so important for kids. Whether it’s someone was mean at school or they forgot their lunchbox or like whatever it is that’s coming their way, we can get through this. They’re not winning at Uno. That’s okay too, right? Let’s play another round. Let’s keep going. But that I think is the best gift that hopefully my husband and I can give our kids is that ability to like push through and not to shut down when things get hard and think that they can’t do it.

[00:36:00] Kevin Rice: Yeah. Grit is one of our family values. And I think about it a lot. That and entitlement, that’s the one thing I’m really afraid of, is entitlement. But Grit. Actually, my leadership development coach that I worked with for three or four years actually wrote the book on grit. His name’s Dr. Paul Stoltz, and he literally wrote the book on grit. And yeah, I’ve just had, like, a lot of moments where my kids have wanted to quit something and I had to, like, use something. I’ll give you one example is my son was learning to snowboard, and he was. He was falling hard every two minutes, and he was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to quit. And so we always talk about we can do hard things, right? That’s kind of like our mantra is like, we can do hard things.

And so I was trying to get him to, like, say we could do hard things and he wouldn’t participate. He was just, like, done so over it. And I’ll do something. I did something that I don’t necessarily think, like, parenting experts would say is a good idea. But I gave him permission this one time to use a word that we don’t use in our household. And I said, okay, I want you to say I can do that certain word, hard things. And so he looked at me, kind of grinned and yelled. And it was the one time I let him drop an F bomb. And he yelled it, got up and bomb and made it down the hill. And so it was just trying to, like, figure out a pattern interrupt to get him out of his downward spiral so that he would get back up and try again. And by the end of that trip, he was doing blue runs all the way down the mountain.

But he was. He was ready to quit. So, yeah, teaching grit, I think, is just so important.

[00:37:43] Jessi Walter Brelsford: I love that. I have an example of, for my 7 year old about a year ago, he’s. He’s very into learning. He’s not as into sports or activities. He loves ninja. He loves obstacle courses, pretty much like individual things, but not team. So it came a year ago. And he goes, you know, mom, I’m just not a team player.

Of course my alerts are going off in my brain. I’m like, how am I going to handle this? I’m like, well, Bud, it’s okay if you don’t like sports, but life is a team sport, so we need to learn how to be a team player. And so this has kind of been in my mind, you know, months go on. He doesn’t want to do, you know, the summer sports that’s would be up. So this fall, he was playing football in the yard with his cousins, and he comes in, tears streaming down his face. He’s like, mom, I just don’t know how to play. I don’t feel good about it. I don’t know how to play. And I was like, all right, we can fix this. It’s like, let’s sign up for flag football.

And he’s 50 pounds soaking wet. Tall, tall, very skinny kid. And he’s like, no, no, no, I don’t want to. And I was like, no, let’s do it. So I call. I’ve missed the deadline. Like, great.

So I call back three times. I’m relentless. I don’t take no for an answer. I’m like, please, can you take him? He just needs a positive team sport experience. So they call and they say, yes, we’re going to add a new team. We’ll take him. He doesn’t know anyone. Super nervous going in. My husband and I are like, praying, please let this be just a positive experience for him. It’s five, six and seven year olds, but let him get on a team where, like, they’re good coaches. No one’s really good because he’s really never thrown a ball. But it has turned out, long story short, to be the best experience. He has three. Three coaches who he. Who he just loves. He’s fast, actually. He’s a very fast runner. So if you get him the ball. He scored his first touchdown last weekend. But I think he’s just such a great example, too, at families and at work. But like, that initial, I can’t when I’m not good or I feel uncomfortable finding a way to work through it. And really, my husband and I are beaming. He wanted to get football pajamas last night. Like, I don’t know if ever’s going to be good at football, but he loves it, which is part of it. Right. He’s learning. He can do hard things, he can work as a team. So long story short, I like your motto and I agree with just looking for the opportunity to make changes when you can, in your kid’s life or at work is a lot of what being a leader is about, both at home and workplace.

[00:40:00] Kevin Rice: Great lessons. It actually strikes me as your kitchen is kind of like a classroom.

[00:40:06] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Right.

[00:40:06] Kevin Rice: We’ve talked about kids learning or even in the corporate event environment, like, learning to follow instructions, learning to work together, learning to break the rules and be creative in certain ways.

What do you hope that families and teams actually take away from the experience that you’ve created beyond just learning a recipe?

[00:40:30] Jessi Walter Brelsford: Absolutely. And I always say this. I don’t know if anyone goes home and makes our recipes. Well, I do know people do, but to me it’s really more about memories. Right. They have one of our core values. Our core values spell kitchens. But the T is for twinkle. So we want to create a twinkle in every guest eye because we’ve got people coming who know how to cook, who don’t know how to cook, who actively don’t love cooking, who don’t eat gluten. Right. Whatever it is that you come with, I want everyone to just be like, this was fun. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t think that I would be laughing. I’m laughing. I now know something new. Feel refreshed, feel energized. Yeah. That’s what Taste Buds Kitchen brand is all about. Using the kitchen to create memories, to create fun times. Whether you’re, you know, We’ve had top CEOs in New York City come in as part of multi day events that they’re coming in to do something fun and they all give us great rave reviews of like the best part of our conference was coming here to the two year old, you know, coming in with their parent or grandmother for their very first time in the kitchen and getting so excited to, to get started and just we’re all part of the same kitchen, we’re all cooking in the same place, we’re all trying the same things. Whether you love the results, don’t love the results, get home the recipes, but the fun memories.

[00:41:40] Kevin Rice: Amazing. Jesse, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. You’re such a wonderful human and inspiring leader and I loved hearing, you know some of the stories about your kids and family. So thank you so much for being on the podcast today. If you’re enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We’ve got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow and stay tuned.