2020 was a devastating year for the restaurant industry. According to the National Restaurant Association, restaurant and food-service sales were $240 billion below its 2020 pre-pandemic forecasts.
Despite the impact that COVID had on the industry, there were a few who swiftly made changes to their business model and found success, even when the world seemed to be crumbling around us. Chef Derrick Turton (also known as Chef Teach) of World Famous House Of Mac, for example, was one of them. The South Florida restaurant helped to provide food for first responders, offering delivery of mac and cheese beyond the city, to Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Tallahassee.
We could all use a little comfort right now. Luckily for everyone, Chef Derrick Turton is here to deliver literally.
If you ve spent any time in Miami over the last few years you re likely already familiar with Turton s work. He founded the World Famous House of Mac, first as a food truck in 2014, then as a small chain around the city in the years following. But what you may not know is the incredible backstory to how this delicious Miami culinary institution came to be. I had aspirations to be a chef. And then I worked my first job in a restaurant and I kind of hated it, Turton says of his first foray into the food industry at a rather well-known chain that shall remain nameless. However, while working in the restaurant, Turton met Daymond John, the founder of FUBU and shark on
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Philadelphia 76er star Wali Wonder Jones had a big decision to make the day after MLK s assassination.
Speaker in Diversity in Hospitality series tells students to remember the past
March 1, 2021 at 12:00am
It was Nov.4, 1968 the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A thousand miles away, NBA player Wali Wonder Jones, his teammate and NBA legend Wilt Chamberlin, the entire reigning NBA Championship team and the Philadelphia 76ers had a huge decision to make: play the game or sit out in protest. Jones and Chamberlin voted not to play.
2020 was a character-building year filled with a lot of adversity but a lot of diversity. The scariest part of going through a pandemic is the unknown. We cooked for first responders. We started shipping across the country. We ship direct through our website with baking instructions. We now deliver mac and cheese to Brooklyn and Los Angeles and Tallahassee. We never would have thought to do that if not for the pandemic. Sometimes you get into your comfort zone and comfort kills. What I m grateful for is that the community has come out for us, and I haven t fired or laid off one single person.