I’ll be honest: I was terrified on opening day.

There I was, standing in my West Village kitchen with the New York Times filming us, wait times pushing an hour, and absolutely no idea if anyone actually cared that I’d opened a restaurant. For five years, I’d been creating food content online as Salt Hank, but watching someone enjoy your food through a screen is nothing like serving it to them in person.

The path here wasn’t some carefully orchestrated business plan. About eight months ago, two buddies of mine found a lease for a space that had just gone out of business, perfectly built out for a sandwich shop. They called and said, “We could do this right now if we lock this down. Do you want to do it?”

I had 24 hours to decide.

The West Village location was incredible. The catch? The previous business had lasted three weeks. We’d be signing a 15-year lease with a mercy clause at year three. But I felt good about it, and I was ready.

I knew in my gut I had to say yes.

The one-sandwich gamble

We decided to only serve one sandwich. I had no idea if it would work, but I knew I could make this French dip really, really well. So we bet everything on doing that one thing perfectly.

It paid off. On our first day, despite the chaos and the long waits, there was a line down the block.

Luckily, we’ve continued to have a line pretty much every single day.

Building the team

From the beginning, I was focused on getting the best of the best for our menu and for our team.

First, I did a massive bread hunt across the city. When I tried the baguette from Frenchette, the search ended immediately. It was even better than anything I could have imagined.

For the meat, Chef Josh Capon introduced me to Pat LaFrieda, who is basically the godfather of meat in New York. We’re using prime rib that’s genuinely the best you can get in the United States.

When we interviewed Chef Daniel Rubenfeld for the head chef role, we immediately offered him more money and begged him to take it. His resume was stellar, but more than that, he came in with incredible golden retriever energy. He was pumped about combining digital food media with actual physical restaurants, and he understood that we were going to film everything we did.

Fires you don’t expect

At the end of the day, even with a solid product and strong team to steer you in the right direction, opening a restaurant is chaos.

Between staffing and things like renovations hitting your bottom line, there’s always a little fire to put out. You can’t prepare for a delivery truck that doesn’t show. But I think that’s part of what you sign up for.

So technology needs to be easy. With Square, it’s as simple as you make it, you click it, and then you serve it. At the end of the day, every piece of data you need is right there at your fingertips. It’s the one fire we’ve never had to put out.

And all of the nerves, the fires, the chaos is outweighed by the reward of being able to make food for people in person and see them enjoy it. That was really why I did this. Being able to actually make the food and then serve it to the human that’s going to eat it is an incredibly fulfilling feeling.

Expanding outside of New York

We’re having conversations about expansion much earlier than expected. Chef Daniel has mentioned there’s a real possibility of us getting a Michelin Guide listing or possibly a star. Never in a billion years did I think “sandwich shop” and “Michelin star” would be in the same sentence, but we’re caramelizing onions for days and making everything from scratch with the best ingredients. If there was going to be a Michelin sandwich, this would be it.

My advice to anyone considering launching a business like mine? Just do it. I know I’m stealing that a bit, but if you feel it in your gut, if you have that feeling like I did where there’s no hesitation, where you’re thinking “I have to do this” then go for it.

You’ll figure out the rest as you go.