Personal trainer and nutrition expert Josh Broun had a vision for a restaurant focused on providing simple meals with real, wholesome ingredients to ”provide energy to take on the day with purpose and optimism”. In 2015, he teamed up with Frank Toskan, co-founder of MAC Cosmetics to open Impact Kitchen despite neither of them having previous restaurant experience. Since then, Impact Kitchen has grown quickly, opening 4 more locations in Toronto. The future looked bright, but then came the pandemic forcing them to close their doors indefinitely. How did they survive? Listen to find out.
Impact Kitchen
Personal trainer and nutrition expert Josh Broun had a vision for a restaurant focused on providing simple meals with real, wholesome ingredients to ”provide energy to take on the day with purpose and optimism”.
In 2015, he teamed up with Frank Toskan, co-founder of MAC Cosmetics to open Impact Kitchen despite neither of them having previous restaurant experience. Since then, Impact Kitchen has grown quickly, opening 4 more locations in Toronto.
The future looked bright, but then came the pandemic forcing them to close their doors indefinitely. How did they survive? Listen to find out.
You can learn more about Impact Kitchen at impactkitchen.ca.
Al Grego:
Hello, everyone. I'm Al Grego, and this is the Yes, We Are Open! podcast.
Corktown, an older residential neighborhood in downtown Toronto. If you're like me, you might think the name Corktown might have some historical significance to wineries or distilleries, especially since it's only a few blocks north of Toronto's distillery district. But like me, you'd be wrong.
The name Corktown actually originated in the early 19th century, when the area became an enclave of Irish immigrants, primarily from County Cork, Ireland. Most of the early residents did find work at one of the local brickyards or breweries, which probably didn't help the misconception about the name.
Corktown is nestled in the northwest corner of the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. But despite its proximity to these two busy highways, it maintains an intimate neighborhood feel, thanks to the late 19th-century British-style row housing, some of the oldest in the city, lining the narrow side streets and the creative use of outdoor spaces, such as the Underpass Park and Corktown Common.
Once a very blue-collar area, the neighborhood fell on hard times, and many of the buildings were unkept or abandoned. But thanks to some major investment in the area, Corktown has recently become a desirable destination for Toronto professionals and families, drawn to the area's historic charm with excellent shopping, fine restaurants, cafes, art galleries, boutiques, and more.
I just walked through the Underpass Park, located under Eastern Avenue and Adelaide Street East, up St. Lawrence Street to King Street East, where on the southwest corner is a subject of today's story, Impact Kitchen.
Liza Marner:
Hello.
Al Grego:
Yeah. Hi.
Josh Broun:
How's it going?
Al Grego:
Josh?
Josh Broun:
Yeah. Nice to meet you.
Al Grego:
Nice to meet you.
Liza Marner:
Hi, I'm Liza. Nice to meet you.
Al Grego:
Nice to meet you.
Liza Marner:
How are you?
Al Grego:
I'm well.
That's Josh and Liza. They greet me as I walk into the restaurant, a pleasant, large open space. To my left, folks sit at bar-height long tables, sipping their coffee and working on their laptops. To the right is a spacious dine-in area. The whole space is a-buzz with music and activity.
Josh Broun:
I'll give you a little bit of this tour and spiel. This is the original location.
Al Grego:
Okay.
Josh and Liza take me on a tour of the facility, which I thought I'd seen it all, but then they take me in the back.
Oh, wow. This goes on forever.
Josh Broun:
Yeah, well this used to be...
Al Grego:
Through the kitchen to a second prep area that opens up to a large industrial food prep area.
Josh Broun:
You can see now we've really-
Al Grego:
Wow.
Josh Broun:
Had the fortune to expand this space.
Al Grego:
Yeah.
Josh Broun:
We've added in multiple refrigeration units, freezer units.
Al Grego:
So what do you do back here then?
Josh Broun:
This is where we make everything that we ship out to other locations. We make our baked goods, our dressings, our sauces, our soups, bone broths. That's part of our food philosophy is making everything in house. So that's where we create everything. Now they're doing some collagen puddings right there. We've got a butchery program in the back. We really try to control the process. We're obsessed with the quality of the ingredients.
Al Grego:
After the tour of the impressive facility, and after I cursed myself for not eating a bigger breakfast this morning, Josh leads me to a small, quiet office for our interview.
Josh Broun:
Hi. My name's Josh Broun, and I'm the co-founder of Impact Kitchen.
Al Grego:
What year was the Impact Kitchen founded?
Josh Broun:
2015, in October.
I've got two partners, Frank Toskan and Brett Toskan. Frank was the co-founder with me back in 2015.
Al Grego:
What gave you the idea of opening up a restaurant?
Josh Broun:
Prior to Impact, I worked as a personal trainer and nutrition coach. I was incredibly fortunate to have a really inspiring group of clientele. I realized that I was spending 30, 40 hours a week with these amazing people, Frank being the most inspiring person I had almost ever met. He's got an amazing entrepreneur story himself.
Al Grego:
The Frank Josh is referring to is Frank Toskan, co-founder of MAC Cosmetics and one of Josh's personal training clients.
Josh Broun:
We worked together in our training sessions for close to seven, eight years. During those sessions, talked entrepreneurship and our love for coffee, our love for restaurants, our love for health and wellness, and the concept started to grow out of there. He had given me permission to speak to him about any entrepreneur dreams and aspirations I had. Took that as an opportunity to make a formal business plan and present it the right way.
Al Grego:
He is kind of your partner/mentor in all of this.
Josh Broun:
Yeah.
Al Grego:
What background did you have in restaurants?
Josh Broun:
I had zero background in restaurants.
Al Grego:
What made you think you can start a restaurant then?
Josh Broun:
Well, I think it was just about, again, that inspiration I had, of believing that anything's possible, and with hard work you can really create anything. I was super passionate about nutrition. I was eating out a lot, going to a lot of coffee shops, and I thought there was an opportunity to do what I saw out there in a healthier way.
With Impact, the first thing we did was create the food philosophy of the type of food we wanted to serve here and the type of ingredients we wanted to use, without reinventing the wheel of still having coffee, baked goods. We have power bowls with high-quality protein, our soups and stews, bone broths, pressed juices. We have a really robust menu offering.
When I was a personal trainer, I used the philosophy minimally-processed, nutrient-dense real food, and I thought you could apply that to, at the time it was Paleo Vegan were the two main ones. Now we hear popular things like Keto and Whole30 and whatnot. There was a lot of debate between what was the best. So I was like, "Let's just apply that food philosophy to any diet choice." With Impact, we really evolved it and got more granular.
Al Grego:
You're somebody with no background in restaurants, but you want to start a restaurant. What's your first step? How do you start?
Josh Broun:
Yeah, that's a great question.
It was creating that thousand-item list and really that mindset of chipping off one item at a time, reaching out, finding the right mentors and help that did have that restaurant experience. I worked with the lady named Jenny Companion from The Fifteen Group, a restaurant consulting company. Just one step at a time, not letting myself get overwhelmed with the big picture.
Looking back on it now, there is something to say, ignorance is bliss. I didn't know the scale and the scope of what we were trying to do. We did a tour earlier, and I remember another chef I was potentially thinking of working with. Before we had built out the full space, we had the framing up and outlines of what the kitchen was going to look like, and the way I had been explaining to her, she thought it would be a smoothie bar. And then she walked in, and she's like, "Oh my God." She's like, "Josh, I don't think you know what you're getting herself into."
Al Grego:
The scope creep.
Josh Broun:
Yeah, yeah. But even then I had no clue. I didn't know. I was like, "Well, I want to make pressed juices in-house. I want to have a baking department. I want to make bone broths." And I think having a partner like Frank who supported the vision, there was one point where we were talking to other restaurant consultants, and people were telling him and me, "It's a bad idea. You guys are going to, you're going to fail." And him as the investor, he was getting that as well.
I remember him saying to me, he's like, "Josh, we have to stop listening to everybody and just do things our way, because if we fail, and we listen to people, we'll always regret it. And if we fail, and we do it our way, then we'll have to be okay with that." And that was one of those early lessons, where I was like, "Okay, let's cut out the noise. Let's do what we want, and then we have to make it work."
Al Grego:
I see the logo it's a really cool looking logo. It looks like an upside down crown. What's the significance of the logo?
Josh Broun:
That started about this mindset and attitude that Frank and I took on of starting to only focus on what our vision was and not listening to the outside noise. So it was about flipping the crown upside down, going against the grain, being a game changer, not being part of the restaurant establishment, two non-restaurant guys coming in. We weren't trying to disrupt the industry per se, but it was very different. Health and wellness was still on its up-rise in 2015. It was just our way of flipping that crown upside down.
Al Grego:
In the beginning, when you first opened your doors, how was it?
Josh Broun:
Well, it was painful.
I think I'm far enough out of it to think there was never a bad day, now. But I remember at the time being embarrassed when I would have friends or family come, and no one would be in the restaurant. It would be me and my friends and family. That was hard. And then we started to get some people come in. You really get to know them. We had one gentleman who ate here three times a day every day for the first year, and he lost 60 pounds. Every team member we had knew him by name, and he's still my friend to this day. He still comes in all the time. There's actually many of those people who they essentially just made Impact Kitchen their homebase for their nutrition.
Liza Marner:
Hi. My name is Liza, and I oversee marketing and strategic partnerships here at Impact Kitchen.
Al Grego:
When did you start at Impact?
Liza Marner:
I started about two months ago now.
Al Grego:
Oh, so you were fresh.
Liza Marner:
Sure am, yeah.
Al Grego:
Did you know of Impact before?
Liza Marner:
I did, and that's definitely a big reason why I'm here is I've been at Impact since day one and seen the company grow and build a great community. I live just down the street, so this was definitely part of my daily routine, which is great.
Josh Broun:
Well, it started to happen in the second half of the first year. We became a community hub, where I saw a lot of entrepreneur meet-ups. Obviously, the health and wellness crowd started to come in, the professional athlete crowd started to come in. And then that was months 6 through 12 we started to see that, and we started to get a little bit busier. The second year we started to see the King West crowd come over, the Rosedale crowd come down. And then we became a bit of a destination. That's when I knew it, and then Frank gave the go-ahead to start thinking about growing.
Al Grego:
All right. So it's you, Frank, and you mentioned a third partner.
Josh Broun:
Yeah. Frank's nephew Brett Toskan, he joined us right around our opening of our second location at Adelaide and Branch about two years in, another game changer for the business. He brought a lot of skills that I didn't have. He had founded an amazing experiential marketing company and decided to move on.
At this time, Impact, we were about to open our second location. We started to recognize that setting in operational excellence and structure into the company was going to be needed. He stepped right in and had those skill sets and also a passion for hospitality people. He fit right in and changed how we operate here and has set us in the path now to have five and, hopefully, more in the future.
Al Grego:
Did you always think you were going to have more than one of these? Or did that come later?
Josh Broun:
I think even before we opened, I knew that there would be that opportunity, but I knew there was a lot of... I knew we had to figure out how to run a restaurant. So that first year, I probably didn't even think about it, just because I was every day trying to understand how to run a restaurant, which was a learning curve in itself. That second year we started to almost outgrow the space. We were trying to squeeze tables in in the hallway here. We knew we needed to grow, and then it was just a matter of figuring that out. Brett joining us...
One great thing about this journey is you learn your strengths and weaknesses along the way. Going from one to two or two to three, it's a different ballgame in terms of how you run meetings, the operational flow of a day, the back-end, the finance team. And these are things that I needed someone like a Brett to come in and say, "Okay, let's build an HR department. Let's build a finance department. Let's build our Ops team." And now it's-
Al Grego:
An Impact playbook. You need a playbook.
Josh Broun:
Well, it's funny you say that because, and we might get to this later, but that's what we're calling our next phase is we're building that playbook for what we hope is to come in the future.
Al Grego:
Is that when you started thinking about the idea of a central kitchen?
Josh Broun:
Yeah.
Al Grego:
You showed me your commissary kitchen here. Is that when you started thinking, "We need to centralize our prep"?
Josh Broun:
Well, it's a great point. Based off the space, the lease we signed out there, we knew we weren't going to be able to do what we do here. We knew we needed to make our bone broths, our salad dressings, our soup stews, baked goods out of a central kitchen, and we were fortunate to have some extra space here. So that's when that started. That was another new project. Again, no experience, just figure it out as you go. Now you've seen the space. We've quadrupled the space in the back, and now it's a pretty significant operation.
Al Grego:
Up next. Impact Kitchen is firing on all cylinders after a tentative start, now with five locations across the city. But will their inexperience in running a restaurant come back to haunt them when the pandemic hits? Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes, We Are Open! Personal trainer and nutrition coach, Josh Broun, had a big dream to open a restaurant that made minimally-processed, nutrition-dense real food. One of his clients, Frank Toskan, co-found of MAC Cosmetics, became a believer in Josh's dream, and the two of them partnered to open Impact Kitchen, despite neither of them having any experience in the restaurant industry. Can they survive the biggest threat to ever hit the restaurant industry? Let's find out.
What's been your biggest struggle? What's threatened to shut you down?
Josh Broun:
Well, yeah, I think you know where I would go there, with COVID, which actually literally shut us down.
Al Grego:
Sure.
Josh Broun:
If you remember that first wave coming in, it was a lot of uncertainty. We made a decision as a company to close down completely, which was probably in the seven years, the hardest time.
Liza Marner:
It was definitely shocking in many ways, and I come from the professional sports industry, which from our perspective at the time was a bit of the catalyst to everything standing still. So really just stopped in our tracks and shelved a lot of things that we were working on, and life changed completely for everyone in that moment and different people in different ways over time.
Al Grego:
What's your name?
Dan Weale:
My name's Dan.
Al Grego:
Dan, what are you doing today?
Dan Weale:
I am the Culinary Distribution Manager for Impact Kitchen.
Al Grego:
Very good. How long have you been working for Impact?
Dan Weale:
I've been working with Impact Kitchen for about a year now.
Al Grego:
So you started still during the pandemic?
Dan Weale:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Mask policy in full force.
Al Grego:
How was it early on?
Dan Weale:
Well, I think the pandemic was challenging for everyone. My background - I'm a chef - so I've worked in the industry for over 17 years, and COVID did a lot to all of us. When it first hit, I was still chef-ing and yeah, really, really tough. Wipe out the schedule for everyone.
Al Grego:
What are you doing in that time? How are you feeling first of all?
Josh Broun:
Well, you feel terrible for the team members that you do have to let go at the time. But there wasn't much time of thinking about it because we started action items right away, like the dropping food at the teams' doorsteps, all the other products from the app, the website, the grocery program. Those were massive projects that took hundreds of hours to do.
At that time, looking back, there was uncertainty in the air. But for the business, and that's another advantage of having Frank on our team, I didn't feel, and through conversations we had, it wasn't really a conversation that we had to shut the entire company down forever. I'm fortunate and grateful for that, and it's not a loss on me that I'm lucky to have a partner like that. So really, our conversation went to how can we make our business better? How can we get through these lockdowns with the grocery program, with the app, making it easier for people to order ahead of time so when they come in, they don't have to wait in the restaurant long enough, because people weren't comfortable for certain periods of that time. They just wanted to... We even would bring the food outside for them. You do anything you can for your customer.
Looking back on it, the hardest was the waves of emotion. If you remember, we would be allowed to open back up and then kind of get going and then another lockdown, open back up, kind of get going, another lockdown. That was the hardest for sure, because now most people have heard these stories and realize, but just a tremendous amount of work would go into a re-open, and then a tremendous amount of work would go into a lockdown. And I'm sure every business was different. But in the restaurant business, it was just so much with inventory management, the HR paperwork, payroll paperwork, the team members' emotions. When I think back if there was the hardest thing, it would've been the ups and downs of opening and closing.
Al Grego:
Got it. Imagine you had to lay some people off, right?
Josh Broun:
Well, when you would lock down, you would have to lay off a number of people, which was not fun, not fun.
Al Grego:
You got to work, and you took advantage of that time to do what you needed to do, built your app. You said, I think you had mentioned the commissary kitchen was built during the lockdown.
Josh Broun:
We've kind of chunked it along the years, but the largest expansion came towards tail end of COVID.
Al Grego:
At what point during the pandemic, in the last two years, did things start looking up?
Josh Broun:
Well, we were fortunate that even pre-pandemic, our food travels well, and takeout was a part of our business already. Obviously, during the pandemic, the Ubers, the SkipTheDishes, the DoorDashes of the world became more important. We had to have more eyes on that element of our business. Those are great and I love that.
But seeing people dine in the restaurants is the best feeling. I remember at certain points you were allowed 25% capacity, and then even that felt great, just seeing people back in. Then it would go to 50% capacity. That felt great. And then, I think after 50, they opened it up to the entire restaurant. Actually, one thing that I noticed for myself is, because it was so long with seeing an empty restaurant, and I guess in a way, you almost get used to it. When the vibe started to come back up and seeing people eat in, I'd park my car or ride my bike in, and I'd be just giddy to get into the restaurant. I was like, "Okay, I want to see how many people are in today, just how it feels. Okay, now we're back. Now we're coming out of this." But then deep down, praying to God, there wouldn't be another wave or another lockdown.
Al Grego:
Yeah. You guys got a pretty impressive client at some point during the lockdown. You want to talk about that?
Josh Broun:
We were fortunate pre-pandemic to have a lot of professional athletes eating here and a lot of specifically NHL players. Early days, that was super exciting to see, some of the Leafs and other guys coming in. But we knew Toronto was going to have a bubble here. Myself and one of my colleagues, named Alex Casale, who managed a lot of those relationships, we just went on phone call, email mode, of every nutritionist, strength coach, every person we could think of in the NHL to ensure we had a presence in the bubble. And we got somehow connected to NHL head office in New York City, and we did a number of calls with them. They vetted our concept and then made us an official partner for the bubble to be able to bring in food there. So that was huge for us, bringing in... The team's typical quarter is 50 to 60 bowls to do the roster, the coaching staff. That was massive for us. That carried us through for a while.
Al Grego:
I'm sure. That sounds like that would be a pretty big daily order.
Josh Broun:
Yeah, massive.
Al Grego:
Good thing you had that big kitchen in the back.
Josh Broun:
Yeah, we took that over and just were pumping out bowls, and it was exciting. It's fun. We built great relationships in there, and to this day, we do a lot of, especially visiting teams coming in, we're catering most of them, catering the plane rides after the games. In the off season we've made some really special partnerships with Gary Roberts and his team, Adrien and Sylvie. During the lockdowns, we brought them food to go. The last couple summers, we've been up onsite with them at St. Andrew's, Impact team cooking for their team for breakfast, snacks, lunches, and more snacks. It's just a five-star program that they all run up there, and we take that same approach in our restaurants of trying to not leave any stone unturned. So it's been a nice partnership.
Al Grego:
Coming up after the break, we find out what the future holds for Impact Kitchen.
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Al Grego:
Welcome back to Yes, We Are Open? Josh Broun and Frank and Brett Toskan went from having zero restaurant experience to opening five Impact Kitchen locations in Toronto in just seven years. And they did it through a pandemic that shut down many more seasoned, longer-serving restaurants. Their future certainly looks as healthy as one of their meals. How healthy? Let's find out.
How do you feel about the future of Impact Kitchen?
Josh Broun:
I think the future is big for us. I really believe that. We've taken the approach of, you mentioned playbook earlier. From myself to Frank to Brett, there's a passion for operating a business with excellence. We've grown relatively quickly with the five locations over the last seven years. Through that, I've talked about Brett coming in and creating structure in our company and the departments. But we still run the business relatively organically.
You mentioned that word playbook earlier. So this past summer we did a lot of work on what our growth strategy could look like, taking us up to the year 2030. A big part of that was not growing in location-wise for 2023, and slowing down and creating that playbook.
So we've presented to Frank the vision, and he liked it. He approved it, which is our ultimate ambition is to grow the brand into the US market. That's the goal we're shooting for right now. But the immediate is to create that playbook.
We brought on some new team members. We freed up some of our superstars within the company to zone in on this playbook. It's going to be a year's project.
Liza Marner:
That's why I'm here, honestly, is that belief in the future of this business. I'd say people is the reason. Those early-day conversations, even before I made the decision to move over with Josh and the team, is what brought me here. Just a great, really strong vision for the future, ambitions to grow, ambitions to take what we've done in Toronto and see where that can go, bigger picture, broader scope. That really is what it comes down to for me is having a goal, and we're working towards it, and bringing in people to help do that. Feel really fortunate to be one of those people that's been brought on to see where this thing can go from here, which is super exciting.
Dan Weale:
Well, I would like to stay with the company and continue to grow. I think the best thing about Impact right now is we are in a big growth stage, because people think we've got five locations, we're a big company or whatnot. We're still small, and we're still, I think, learning and growing. It's a really personable team here. All the owners and all the managers and the head office team is very responsive to everybody, and everybody works together and especially here in the commissary, which is what I oversee. Everybody comes together and talks about the future. There's lots of opportunities, and I hope to be a part of them.
Josh Broun:
When we're ready to grow, we're going to grow. We want to be able to grow, I wouldn't say, rapidly, but we want to grow aggressively.
Al Grego:
Right. You started off this company with zero experience in running or owning a restaurant, and now you've got five locations in seven years. How do you feel about your accomplishment?
Josh Broun:
Well, it feels great. The first thing that I thought of when you said that, it feels great because it aligns with my core values, it aligns with Frank's values, and it aligns with Brett's values, the three partners here, I can honestly say the values that we've brought to this business, going back to 2015, or even those training sessions to where we want to take it to 2030, they haven't changed. Frank said to me once, "We're going to make it with high-quality ingredients, or we aren't going to make it at all."
That to me was a sign that I'm never going to get pressured to run a business model with a lesser-quality product. Right now, part of this playbook strategy is creating the business model, living up to our food philosophy, living up to the community initiatives we want to do, living up to the partners we want to partner with. And it just feels great. It feels right because I can honestly say to myself, to you, that Impact's only going to get better on the values and the food philosophy, the team-first approach, going into this next phase of growth. It makes me want to come to work every day.
Al Grego:
Last question, guys. Is Impact Kitchen open?
Speaker 4:
Yes, We Are Open!
Al Grego:
All right. Perfect.
That's the story of Impact Kitchen: vision, work ethic, resilience. How about defiance? I think this week the lesson is be defiant. We're taught from a very young age that we should listen to our elders or those with more experience, those who know better, and 95% of the time that is sound advice. But I believe that one thing entrepreneurs excel at over others is knowing when to stop listening, when to be defiant.
A line in today's story sticks in my head, and it happens early on when Frank Toskan gives Josh the following advice. I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of it is, at some point, you have to stop listening to what other people say. If you fail listening to others, you'll always regret it. But if you fail doing things your own way, then you'll have to be okay with that.
Now I'll take that thought one step further and add, if you always listen to what other people say, then you won't be able to innovate because you'll constantly do what has already been done. I dare say that if Josh had continued to listen to the advice of others, he may not have been able to build what he's built. Instead, he was defiant when everyone told him his idea would certainly fail.
Imagine looking at an industry from the outside and saying, "I can do better than that," and then doing it. It looks as if that's exactly what Josh did. He turned that crown upside down, and as a result, the future of Impact Kitchen looks very bright indeed.
Yes, We Are Open! is a Moneris podcast production. I'd like to thank Liza, Dan, and Josh for taking time to share their story. You can learn more about Impact Kitchen at impactkitchen.ca. You can also follow them on LinkedIn, on Facebook. They're @ImpactKitchen.to, and on Instagram and Twitter, they're @ImpactKitchen.
For more information about this podcast, visit our site, YesWeAreOpenpodcast.com. If you'd like to support us, rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcastmoneris.com.
Tune in next week for another story of small business struggle and survival on the Yes, We Are Open! podcast. I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.