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Anna Maria Florio WINs by pivoting during a pandemic

• Ian Richardson • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Welcome to W.I.N. (what's important now?) - the entrepreneurial podcast where we dive into business challenges, achievements, and opportunities!

Join your host, Ian Richardson, from Richardson & Richardson Consulting as he explores what entrepreneurs care about and focus on. This week, Ian hosts Anna Maria Florio, the owner of La Cucina at the Market.

ANNA MARIA FLORIO, the owner of La Cucina at the Market, is a Philadelphia native and the daughter of Italian-born parents from the Campania region of Italy. Her family brought rich traditions of la cucina with them when they emigrated to Philadelphia in the 1960s. Anna grew up speaking Italian in a family where the kitchen was the center of the house. When people came together in their home there was always something cooking. In 2000 she accepted an invitation to join Temple University Center City (“TUCC”) as an Italian language instructor and began to share her Italian heritage with the Philadelphia community. Anna wanted to recreate and share the experience of her own family kitchen directly with her students as teaching tool.

In 2004 Anna approached the Director of the Continuing Education Department at TUCC, about developing a series that combined food and language. TUCC’s first Italian cooking/language class, entitled “Mangiamo in Italiano” was a hit! Several years later with increased interest in all things food, it was the right time for the birth of La Cucina at the Market. Anna approached management at Reading Terminal Market, with the idea of having a space exclusively dedicated to cooking education and culinary demonstration. The enthusiasm was contagious and the process began.

After 7 years at RTM, it seemed like time for a change. Anna found a wonderful new home in Market East. On July 17, 2016, 1206 Arch Street opened its doors to old and new friends and the tradition resumed. Each month brings new and interesting class options and a breadth of opportunities for culinary activities.


Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com
Book time with Carrie here!


Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Ian:

Hello and welcome to Win. I'm your host, Ian Richardson from Richardson and Richardson Consulting, and today I'm joined by Anna Flore. Anna, how are you?

Anna Maria Flori:

I'm doing great. How are you?

Ian:

I'm doing well, I'm doing well. Thanks for taking some time this Friday to, to pop on and, uh, record an episode of Win and share your story with the audience.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Uh, sure. I'm thrilled. Thank.

Ian:

Oh, it's, it's our pleasure. Anna is the owner of Laina at the Market, which is a Philadelphia Italian market and, and cooking operation. She's a Philadelphia native and the daughter of Italian born. From the Campana region of Italy. Her family brought rich traditions of Laina with them when they immigrated to Philadelphia in the sixties. She grew up speaking Italian in a family where the kitchen was the center of a house. Of the house. And, uh, I, I can speak from experience on that. I'm looking forward to diving into, uh, into your childhood a little bit to see if it resonates with, uh, with a friend I grew up with when people came together in their home. Always something cooking. In 2000, she accepted an invitation to join Temple University City Center, T U C C, as an Italian language instructor, and began to share her heritage with the Philly community. Anna wanted to recreate and share the experience of her own family kitchen directly with her students as a teaching tool. In 2004, she approached the director of the continuing education department at Tuck about developing a series that combined food and. Tuck's first Italian cooking language class entitled, oh boy, say It for me. Anna

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

in Italian.

Ian:

Manja and Italiano was a hit several years later with increased interest in all things food. It was the right time, right time for the birth of the market. Anna approached management at Reading Terminal Market with the idea of having a space exclusively dedicated to cooking, education and culinary demonstration. Enthusiastic. The enthusiasm was contagious. And the process of, of,

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

LA.

Ian:

yeah. Laina Steve, you'll have to, uh, cut that little space. The enthusiasm was contagious and the process of Laina at the market began and was born after seven years at rtm. It was time for a change. Anna found a wonderful new home in market. On July 17th, 2016, 1206 Art Street opened its stores to old and new friends, and the tradition resumed every month. Her and her team bring new and interesting class options and a breadth of opportunities for culinary activities. Anna, people wanna know what's for dinner tonight.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Uh, well tonight is, uh, as it would be, we're having the Feast of Seven Fishes,

Ian:

Um,

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

it's a little more complicated than your average Friday night.

Ian:

Yeah, it certainly sounds it. I, uh, I, I'm jealous. I wish I was there to partake. I, uh, I adore seafood and I never get enough of it.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Well, this would be the class for you,

Ian:

Yes, well, I would, uh, I would probably come as someone's plus one well, and let them, uh, let them manage that. All I would manage to do is burn the fish So we always follow, we always follow a, uh, a, a set agenda here on Win Win's, an entrepreneurial podcast. And the food industry, to my understanding, is tougher than most. And really when you get, when you get into food and education and combining these two verticals, it's a whole different kit and Kao. and one of the challenges that we were talking about before the show, everybody knows that staffing's a bear right now. Covid all gave us a, a run for our money and in, in your particular space. It's gotta be tougher than most because not only are you dealing with, hey, we're, we're preparing food and you need kitchen and culinary knowledge. You need to be familiar with the food industry, but you have to have a passion for education. Talk to us about managing that unique challenge set and finding the right people to be on the bus for your team.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Yeah, I mean that is a unique challenge and it has its pros and its cons on the good side is that, you know, our hours are not restaurant hours, so it's not that grueling, you know, 13, 14 hour days. But your point is really, uh, is really hits the target, which is that you have to have a passion. For teaching, at the very least, you have to have a passion for people. And uh, you know, there are a lot of people who are great, well versed in food, great chefs, great cooks, but don't necessarily like to interact with others while they're doing that process of cooking. So that, you know, that could be a tough combination because someone will say, oh, you know, I'm applying for this job. I'm a terrific, you know, Asian cook. And, and then, you know, it doesn't take too long to figure out, well, maybe they have a little bit of a problem letting go of some of the tasks because we're, we're an interactive experience, so we're teaching you, but you're doing the process along with us. You have to let that go. If you're gonna teach someone, you cannot be control. All the direction of, uh, you can control the direction, but you can't control the steps. Um, so it's tough. Uh, you know, there's already a staffing shortage as it is, and now we're looking for kind of a niche, um, in the food world. A lot of people come in and say, well, I've worked in restaurants. Working in a restaurant is slightly different than working, um, at la.

Ian:

Yeah, no, and, and I love that, uh, that give up control conversation. Um, one of the, one of the areas of passion that I have is, is around learning and, and thinking about that, Hey, It's just like watching a kid learning how to tie their shoe, right? At first they have no, what is this wizardry? How did you manage to do this? And then they can kind of start repeating the steps and then they might be able to help and do some of it, and then they could really do it and you could just watch and say, Hey, yeah, you did it well. Or Here's an opportunity for advancement. But I firmly believe if you think about going around that cycle of learning, that fifth step is when you teach someone else, that's when there's a whole different level. of learning that that can, uh, that can occur. Are you, are you and your team finding that, that they gain benefit from passing on those skills once they embrace the, the strategy?

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

A hundred percent. I mean, right away that you see the immediate return is that you see satisfaction that they've accomplished, you know, every class ends in them sitting down and eating whatever, you know, whatever the class topic was. So there's usually multi-course and um, When someone says, wow, this looks beautiful and it tastes great, it still amazes me to this day when we get a lot of brave reviews and they'll say, uh, wonderful experience. Great night. And the food was delicious. Well, that's, that's kind of the goal. I mean, we want you to have fun. We want you to learn, and we want you to learn how to prepare delicious food.

Ian:

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I, uh, I grew up, um, One of my childhood friends was a, was a guy named Josh Holcomb and his mom Tony came over, um, came over and immigrated to the, to the US and I always remember around this time going by their house and she would do holiday holiday dinners where everyone was invited. And she started, she started in the kitchen at 5:00 AM. And dinner was around like seven or eight o'clock. Right. And they had a, they had a table that was as long as this room and every square inch of that table was packed.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Yeah, it sounds pretty familiar.

Ian:

Yeah. It, uh, it, it just was, um, it was really a delightful time. Where did the, where did the passion around? Education stemmed from and in your background.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

I, I mean, I, I literally fell into it. It was just kind of a, I was in between careers and really not, hadn't been pleased with what I was doing, and, um, was just asked to fill in for a professor who was taking a sabbatical. And, um, you know, I, I mean, I've always loved my culture. I love to share my culture. I'd never done it formally, and it was supposed to be a very short, you know, short, I think it was gonna be six weeks and. So I filled in and then I came prepared with my conjugation verb notes and all that, and found that people really wanted to talk a lot about culture. The language was secondary to them wanting to be able to identify with something and then be able to speak to the people that they were gonna encounter. Most of these people were gonna be traveling. So, um, it, it's easy to get passionate about something that's very familiar and that is just part of who you. And that happens to be in Vogue was, was really a plus. People were traveling a lot. The food network was booming. And um, and in that teaching experience at Temple University, I, I realized, wow, I love, I'm a good communicator. People love to listen. They love to learn. As long as you can find a way to really engage them. And I've always been, because it works for me, a big proponent. um, hands on learning and speaking. I, you can't learn a language if you read a book. I mean, you can learn it, but you really will never know how to speak it. And that is what I, you know, took as my biggest return and found that the more that I applied that concept, more you engage people and make it fun. Um, the more they want to participate and learn and the better they'll do.

Ian:

Absolutely. I, uh, I, that, that just resonates home. If, if you can get, if you can trigger that enjoyment right, and, and hit that, uh, Hit those parts of the brain that just kind of say, Hey, like this, this is fun. This is rewarding. And not only does it make someone more engaged, but the retention goes up too.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

100.

Ian:

And so swinging back to that challenge around, hey, staffing and, and overcoming a tough market, there's, there's a pretty big achievement that you and your team were able to pull off. We, here we are. It's 2022. It's December it's holiday season. I won't say that the Covid pandemic is over, but we're on the other side of it. And if we're rewinding back, going into Covid, one of the industries that was massively impacted was the food service industry. People weren't allowed to be open. They got shut down. The business was turned off. And you were telling me before the show that you've, that you and the team. Laina came out stronger than before. Talk us through that. What was what? What happened that helped you guys grow through the pandemic?

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Well, I mean, we were really growing at a pretty good clip in 2019. We'd had our best. Best year, best holiday season, and right into January, you know, full on. And then I think it was March 13th, we had a class, and I think by the end of the class there was an announcement locally made in Philadelphia that, that following Friday there was gonna be shut down, complete shutdown. So, uh, you know, okay, well, you know, I'm still paying people on the staff. We're gonna, we're gonna keep going. We're gonna get out of this in a couple weeks. And then like maybe five weeks later, and we're still, there's just no, there's no opening in sight and things are getting worse. Um, and people are pivoting and I'm thinking, well, how, how can I pivot really? Because we're such a, an in-person experience. So we did, we, we moved into virtual learning experiences. Um, a lot of our clients are corporate clients who do team building, and I think they were also, you know, stuck because they weren't able to. we gave these virtual experiences, we prepared these food boxes, all the ingredients and send them out. Um, much different than what we do and, and really like way different to try to price something like that out when you start and then we're going into shipping and here's. All kinds of backlogs in shipping because people aren't working. Um, we really just a little bit of government help a little bit of, again, of the loyal customers from the back who, um, what we started to see was very unusual. People buying gift certificates. Now, you know, we're in the middle of a shutdown. We don't know when it's gonna end, but people are buying gift certificates and I personally think that that was just their way of showing.

Ian:

Hmm.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

So this went on for about 13 months, where we're closed, we're open, we're closed, we're open. Um, a lot of corporate clients, they had their own in-house restrictions. They could not meet in person. Um, we tried to do a little takeaway food. Again, it's not my, it's not my forte, but we'll do anything to, so I can keep these people on the payroll because this is their job. Luckily, you know, the, the time passes and, you know, we start putting up a couple of classes because we also do public classes. So we have private events, and then we have classes open to the public. We start doing them, we start getting a little reaching, um, reach out about, uh, we wanna bring in a small group, maybe eight people. And, uh, it just, just started to just again, take. And I kept thinking, or really with nothing except a, a, a solid positive attitude. If we can come out on the other side of this, we're gonna be okay If we can just live long enough to get to the other side in terms of, you know, being able to pay our bills and, um, you know, we had good partners. I mean, are the landlord. They were okay. They weren't, you know, super duper. They had bills to pay too, but they did offer forbearance. Those things kind of helped. Kind of chug along until we reopened. And once we've reopened, I mean, it was just full on, like people just couldn't get enough there. Everything was selling out. We were inundated, um, with requests for private events. So, you know, we were, we were in, in a good position at that point. Other than the staffing

Ian:

So almost keeping that, uh, we, we had that good positive, for lack of a better term, like market and brand awareness where demand had been generated and just saying like, Hey, we'll, We'll be here. We'll be here. We'll be here. Appreciate the support. And then the second that people are allowed to consume the supply demand through the roof. I love it. I love that. Just, hey, we're just gonna keep on keeping on. And that's, um, I, I don't know of a better description of entrepreneur than grit. Right. Well, you will not take this from me,

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

I, I did, there were a lot of nights where I would just say to my husband, I'm like, oh my God, I worked so hard for this, and what now? Not what I, I'm not gonna allow this to happen, you know? But of course it's all out of your control. But, um, it worked out.

Ian:

yeah. Being able to, being able to, uh, to pull through. And so I have to imagine that when we're looking at that, you know, when we're looking at the whiteboard and saying, right, what's next? You know, what, what's next for look and the team and what are we gonna do? You've gotta be looking at that solid, loyal base and saying there is a massive opportunity to capture from our repeat business, from our loyal, our loyal customer base, to grow through referrals to other organizations, to other individuals, to to capture new opportunities. Talk to us about what's next, what's on the horizon for you and the team?

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Well, I mean at this point I have a, a great solid team. It's about half of the staff that we had prior, so clearly anything that involves growth is going to involve. Picking up some new people who share our passion. And, um, you, you mentioned the repeat customer. The repeat client there. That's such an important part of us and we try to acknowledge and recognize them in some fashion, whether it's giving, well, I mean, we always give them a little more attention because when you love what you do, it's easy to, to give a little more, um, whether that is in term, uh, in, in a takeaway that we're sending home with. For some of our loyal repeat people this holiday season, they don't know it yet, but they're gonna be receiving a, um, a dinner gift box. Um, so it's one of the dinners that we would've made in one of the classes. We looked up what they had done and um, and we'll put that together and, and get it delivered to them to acknowledge their support through all of. Ultimately our goal is that we're gonna have a, a second location and it's gonna be more in the pop-up fashion. Um, and uh, and I think that that will also provide, um, everyone who follows us and who wants to join us, um, a little, a little more. Opportunity to do that. What, what happens that this is clearly a busy time of year for us, right? October through December, actually October through January we're swamped. The hardest thing for me has been to say, no, I'm sorry, that date is not available. So hoping that going forward we'll be able to have another place that we can offer, um, that we won't have to say no, you know, we can't do.

Ian:

Exactly that, that ability to, to service two demands for the same, uh, for the same area. That's, that's an awesome strategic focus. I love that. Uh, One of the more difficult skill sets and entrepreneurial ability is to say no to the opportunity, right? That hate this money on the table. There's an opportunity to form a relationship, but if it's gonna compromise something else or if there's not the capacity, if, if it can't be serviced to our standards, that ability to say no ends up paying more dividends than if we always said yes.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Well, we'd like to hope that because it's, you know, coming out of, um, tough financial times, you don't wanna say no, but you, you, you know what? You, you hit it on the head again, which is that you don't wanna compromise. The experience, the quality, and I certainly don't wanna burn my staff out because if I lose them

Ian:

Mm-hmm.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

then, then it's all over. I mean, I think I have a lot of, uh, energy, but I, I know my limits and there's only so many things you can do in a day and do them well,

Ian:

Yeah. And otherwise, otherwise, you're, uh, you're, you're just at that risk for, uh, you're at the risk to, to compromise the integrity of

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

That's right.

Ian:

That's, that's where it all lives. Anna, I can't thank you enough for taking some time outta your day to, to come on and share your story. People can, uh, people can find you, find you in Laco, on, on LinkedIn, but call out the other social platforms they can look for.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Uh, surely they can find us on Facebook. We have a really heavy Instagram presence. Um, we are on, uh, YouTube and, uh, we, we will be on TikTok.

Ian:

All right, when we will, we will link out to all of those social profiles as well as the website and, uh, how you can get to, to Anna on the show notes. If you're interested in learning more about Richardson and Richardson, you can find us on the web at r and r Consulting. We're also very, very active on LinkedIn. You can find previous episodes of win webcasts, blogs, white papers. Might even find a carrier pigeon or two out there. So Anna, thank you again for, for coming on and sharing your story.

00;00;01_anna maria flori:

Thank you, Ian. It was a pleasure. And now hopefully we'll get you into Philadelphia and do a little cooking in Laina

Ian:

Oh, that's book it. We're there, Carrie and I there. That's, uh, Steve, this sounds like the, uh, the next offsite location for us, All right, until next time, everyone. This is Ian Richardson from Richardson and Richardson Consulting. Take it easy.

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Carrie Richardson

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Ian Richardson

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