During his teens and 20s, John Kunkel worked in restaurants, learning the ropes of the service industry from the front-of-the-house. He also picked up on myriad intricacies of the business side of running a restaurant. By the time he was 29, Kunkel says he was ready to go out on his own.
“I was beating down every door for traditional financing, and then took out equity on my home, maxed out my credit cards, and was borrowing $500 from everyone who said ‘hello’ to me,” says Kunkel, whose first venture was a bakery on South Beach in Miami.
After a slow start (the bakery, Taste, opened two days after September 11, 2001), the small establishment found successful footing. But barely a year later, Kunkel was ready to move on.