ChefDrop founder Adam Teolis on surviving the pandemic, shipping Toronto’s fine dining across the country, and plans for culinary world domination

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This article was published 23/04/2022 (1248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amano, at the newly reopened Union Station, is a curious place to hear Adam Teolis discuss his vision for the future of food. Yet it is here, amid the din of dozens of lunchtime diners, that the Hamilton-based restaurateur explains how he launched ChefDrop, the luxury meal prep kit business that partners with some of Toronto’s most impressive fine dining establishments.

“If someone’s doing pasta, we want to find the very best companies that make pasta,” Teolis says. To be clear, he doesn’t want to replace the restaurant experience beloved by so many, including the customers eating just steps away from Teolis’ table. Instead, he wants to deliver nearly ready-to-eat meals from the best restaurants to wherever their clientele happens to be. Right now, that’s Toronto and the surrounding area — but Teolis wants to go much, much bigger:

March 17, 2020, was the day Ontario shut restaurants down. What was the week that followed like for you?

There was disbelief — I think we were all a little bit naive and thought it would last a couple of weeks. That first week was just taking a step back and assessing and understanding what we needed to do in the immediate term for our restaurant group. How would we need to handle our staff? We were already thinking about how we were going to reopen, right away. We thought it would be a two-week thing, and we’d reopen, and we’d probably need some new safety standards — and we’d just need to understand what they would be.

So we kept everyone employed and we just told everyone to go home, and we’d reassess. After two weeks, when more information became available, it became apparent it was going to have a very long-lasting impact on our industry. We needed to figure out what we were going to do. We couldn’t stay closed, and people needed to eat.

Right out of the gate, a lot of the people who were already in the takeout world were already there. For them, it was very natural. They ramped up very quickly and got very busy. The rest of us were scrambling. At that time, we only had one of our restaurants — or two of them, maybe — online with Uber Eats out of seven in the restaurant group.

Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes were around before COVID-19. Given their prominence during the pandemic, what about your idea for ChefDrop made your investors or backers think it was worthwhile when so many other delivery apps are available?

We saw there were existing apps that would get you a hot and ready meal within a delivery radius of maybe two or three kilometres. What was missing was the ability to go further. How do we get meals from a great restaurant downtown like Carbon Bar or Momofuku all the way to Hamilton, or to Barrie, or even as far as Vancouver or Calgary? There was nothing like that, but the customer inquiries were coming in.

We immediately saw the opportunity there to help restaurants increase their delivery area and provide a new revenue stream. A lot of foods that restaurants do don’t translate well into a takeout format. There’s all this amazing food that’s produced by great restaurants — how does a whole branzino travel in a takeout container? It really doesn’t. That left a huge offering. So we looked at the opportunity and said: what if there was a way where people could get that food, get it anywhere they want, and get those favourites from all those great restaurants? That was kind of the beginning of ChefDrop.

What’s the criteria to get on ChefDrop?

We were really just reaching out to best-in-class restaurants that we knew could execute a certain level of quality and were really passionate. Piano Piano was a great partner right from the beginning. We knew they had great quality food; we knew chef Vic (Victor Barry) is passionate about product.

We knew that because ChefDrop is a new format for restaurants, they would embrace it, and they would make sure they did it at a certain quality level. Carbon Bar was another one we knew — great operators. We knew their product might not travel particularly well as takeout, and we know that people would be seeking out those brands from a bigger radius.

It didn’t make sense to go work with restaurants that might have a footprint across southern Ontario. We sought out brands that people couldn’t access — Pai is another great partner of ours. They do amazing Thai food but only have a couple of locations downtown. People love them. They’re on all the top-10 lists. It was very natural to bring them on board because there was just all of this demand for their product that couldn’t be fulfilled.

Where’s this demand coming from?

It was coming from across southern Ontario. Everyone was so far from their workplaces, and they just couldn’t access the great quality food that was available from the restaurants. We had inquiries come in from all across Canada. While we don’t have standardized shipping right now on the platform, it’s something we’re working towards.

Which restaurants do you want to bring on to ChefDrop that you haven’t yet?

There are so many great restaurants out there for us. We really want to start growing our reach outside of the GTA. We’ll entertain anyone that wants to be on the platform, but it would be great to get some great restaurants from Montreal — we do have a couple of chefs from Montreal, but seeing more would be fantastic. There are some great restaurants from Vancouver and Calgary. There’s great independent restaurants out there that are doing really exceptional food.

We’d love to see more Chinese restaurants on the platform. Right now we do have some Asian offerings, but right now, we are lacking in Chinese restaurants. We’d love to see more French restaurants — there are a couple of French places, but it’s something our customers would like to see more of. We’d love to see more Latin food — Mexican offerings would be great. There’s some really great German food or Eastern European food out there. Really, food from everywhere.

I heard your delivery range is 100 km. But traffic in the GTA is terrible. How do you make that work?

Luckily, we leverage third-party logistics companies that have the infrastructure and the route planning. We really just act as the platform marketplace for best-in-class chefs and restaurants to list their products. We just help them facilitate the delivery. Shipping during the daytime as well, with all that route optimization, really helps make for more efficient travel.

We’re sitting in Union Station, which hasn’t had a lot of traffic for the last two years. How have Amano and Union Chicken fared?

I think we’re just starting to see things bounce back. We’re still exercising a lot of caution when it comes to health and safety. But with sports coming back — for Union Station, that’s great. We get to see a lot of that activity happening around game nights and concerts. We’re not back to where we used to be, but we’re definitely going in the right direction.

Do you ever see yourself opening another brick-and-mortar establishment?

Never say never. But my focus right now is entirely on ChefDrop. That’s where we really see the future of food. I live in Hamilton, so being able to access restaurants from Toronto and other areas is awesome. So I’m really excited about building ChefDrop across Canada and North America, and globally. That’s where all of my focus is right now.

A bit of an elephant in the room, but — we’re in a sixth COVID wave now. We don’t have any restrictions in place. What happens if everything shuts down again?

I think restaurants have their plans in place. I think restaurants know how to pivot. They know how to engage those apps. They know how to fire up their takeout again. Customers also now know how to access those in a different way. They know what options are available to them. I think people now have embraced e-commerce a lot more. That’s not going to go away.

Do you see the possibility of ChefDrop taking away from the atmosphere of a fine dining establishment?

I don’t think ChefDrop will ever replace the restaurant experience. For us, it’s about accessibility. It’s all about a new option for people to enjoy food. We know the number of meals someone eats a week isn’t changing. We’re just giving them a new, great option to experience at home. So, takeout delivery apps — I think we might replace a big chunk of that for some people who are looking for quality.

I don’t think a lot of people will necessarily use ChefDrop seven days a week. But two or three of your meals a week might come from ChefDrop — maybe a really nice Sunday night dinner at home, maybe a Tuesday or a Wednesday night dinner. You’re still going to go out on Friday night.

It really comes down to what you’re looking for in your experience. If you’re looking to dine at home or in a private setting — it’s a very different experience from wanting to be served, from wanting someone to top up the wine, or the music or the energy. I see us just as a new format.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Brennan Doherty is a former staff reporter for Star Calgary and the Star’s 24-hour radio room in Toronto. He is now a freelance contributor.