Built a new restaurant in 48 hours | The Flying Toad

The idea

It started with a name, over a drink, at the bar, born out of pure desperation. The restaurant my brother co-owned, Vincent's in Escondido, was fine French dining, and COVID shut the dining room overnight. You can't put a $40 entrée in a to-go box and call it a business. The executive chef was my brother, Chef B to everyone who knows him, and I knew all of his secrets, down to the nickname he'd carried his whole life, "Toad." Before that drink was gone, The Flying Toad had a name. Building for family meant I already knew his food, his story, and the things he would never compromise on, so the brand sounded like him from the very first post.

The odds

We had 48 hours to build a working restaurant out of nothing, on a shoestring, out of a kitchen that had never sent a plate out the door. Fine French food isn't supposed to travel, the rules changed week to week, and none of us had lived through anything like it. It still had to taste like Chef B's cooking and feel French.

The move

Fueled by coffee and a touch of magic, we went all in, and it was a family affair. My 14-year-old son drew the flying toad logo, and the whole team fell in love with it on sight. My husband, Matthew Mellor, built out new technology across the restaurant so the kitchen could run takeout and pivot on a dime. I picked progress over perfection, a web platform with ordering already built in, and in the first 24 hours Chef B and I built a six-item menu, shot it, and put it online. At the same time I built out social, sent the launch email, and pulled in every reporter, influencer, collaborator, and local group I could reach. None of us sent a bill. We all did it pro bono, for my brother and a friend, pulling 14-hour-plus days until it worked.

The result

We busted ass, and it paid off. For months the back alley was our drive-through, and night after night we handed out French food built to survive the ride home. Every day I kept building online and kept pushing the line on what a fine-dining kitchen could send out the door. We asked "can we do this to go?" about everything, and we kept finding a way to say yes. So when the rules finally let us seat people outside, the crowd was already waiting. From the first night of dine-in, we ran at 100% occupancy for both nightly seatings, including the Lily Pad, the back patio we opened for outdoor dining. When we reopened, I ran back of house with zero restaurant experience, learning every station on the fly right next to my brother, and those nights were some of the best of our lives. My other two boys learned to serve on that patio with no work experience either. It took every one of us, and every one of us stepped the hell up. Nobody had to tell me how. I dug in and figured it out, the same way I have every time someone said it couldn't be done. A year later The Flying Toad was still going strong, at $10 to $15 a dish next to Vincent's $36 to $40 entrées. It kept the doors open until the restaurant could go back to its French roots, and it still pops up for special events. By every rule of 2020 this shouldn't have worked, and we killed it.