Taste Of Ethiopia: “It Just Took A Phone Call”

By: Hiwote Berhanu

Taste of Ethiopia founder Hiyaw Gebreyohannes is a successful pioneer in a growing generation of Ethiopian entrepreneurs. I had the pleasure of talking to Gebreyohannes on how he learned to cook, to being on The Simpsons, to getting a deal with the health food chain Whole Foods.  Gebreyohannes’ determination to succeed is clear that with hard work, anything is possible.

Hiwote Berhanu:  You were born in Djibouti and raised in Canada and you were basically raised in the kitchen. Nowadays, being a cook has just become the cool thing or artistic Back then did you find that to be a problem amongst your friends?

Hiyaw Gebreyohannes: No. I don’t even think I knew that this was going to be something I was going to fall into it. I feel like we had a restaurant, we were always there, and then just like normal kids, we’d leave, we’d go to school, we’d have swim classes or karate classes, come back, and be in the kitchen helping out, and then the weekends would be in the kitchen or at the restaurant. Somehow, in some facet, we were there.

I think a lot of my friends thought it was cool to come to the restaurant because there’s a downstairs and they had like a pool hall and so it was like, “Hey, we could hang out here,” but I didn’t really know that it was going to turn out to me doing this is as a profession. I never gave it a thought. It wasn’t whether they thought it was cool or not. There was a time when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen until about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, there was no restaurant, so things changed, so that was like the cool time. If anything, that’s probably where I was like, “Oh, this is kind of girly,” but I wasn’t doing it then, so there was a little hiatus on my part.

HB: Growing up in the kitchen and now being such a successful chef it seems like you were destined for this. Did you do anything to prepare yourself unconsciously?

HG:   Did I do anything? I think, yeah, unconsciously. I remember seeing my parents owning their own business and being their own bosses. I remember telling my mom that I’m going to be my own boss and then I was probably like I was nine or ten years old. I think that always stuck with me just watching them have their own business, have their own schedule, have their own, who they wanted to hire or fire or just the hard work that they put in.

For me, I think that definitely left me with something, thinking that I didn’t want a boss to tell me what to do. I wanted to be my own boss, so that. However that was going to shape out, I just knew that was the path I wanted to take.

HB:  You didn’t like having bosses?

HG:  No. It started from them. They were my boss, right?

I was like, “Nope. I don’t want to … I want to be like you guys. I want to tell people what to do. I don’t want to be told what to do,” and that carried throughout my whole life. From my time in kitchens where I was just like, “I can’t handle this. This is too much.” I’m not cut out for somebody that screams at me and tell me what to do, so I was like, okay, I got to get out of here. How do I do this myself and what can I do to myself?

I had a restaurant in New York and that was four years and it was my own, but it was with a partner. It was just super hard.  Very time-consuming and draining of my energy. Again, I was still really happy that it was something that I could say, it was like a piece of it belongs to me, but then it was like, again, the next journey or the next step on what is that going to look like and then here we are.

HB:  I feel like nowadays being a Habesha in the United States, thinking of how our parents got us here is like some way shaped us into the people that we are, like compassionate people and to grow up not struggle like as they did. How did your parents shape you in that way, like brought you up into a character or a businessman or a human being that you are now?

HG:  I think culture in general shapes you, whether it’s Ethiopian or South American or wherever you’re talking. For me, the biggest thing that shaped me was, again, going back to the restaurant, there were so many … Growing up in Canada also was interesting because the diversity of the amount of people that you see are different, or at least in Toronto, and taking that into our culture. At the restaurant, I had one culture which was all these Ethiopians were there and I was getting to understand it a lot more and like eating with your hands and kissing on the cheek whether it’s a man to a man or a man to a woman and it was all love and there was no other things behind that. As you get older, you understand these things.

I think the biggest thing for me was going back to Ethiopia. It was the first time, I was nineteen and that totally changed my life and my output on and an understanding what my parents were doing by getting what they were trying to do for me and my sister or for the family, and for my brothers, and just understanding what that meant to them, going back and seeing where they come from or where I come from and the struggles and the beauty of it and that being like, “Okay, I get it.”

HB: My sister went back in 2010 and she came back different, like she was never the person that she was before she went.  Talk about how that changes you? The culture shock of going back after for so long.

HG: For me, it was just like I had never been back, like I was born in Djibouti, not even in Ethiopia. I don’t remember anything of it, and then I have all these people who are Ethiopian that are around me all the time, but okay, so I’m still in Canada.

When I do go back, I think it was, first of all, I was very, I was excited, nervous, scared, all in one. The reason why I went back was actually because my mom felt like I was taking a left turn when I should’ve been taking a right and so she was like, “I think you need to go and understand how your cousins and your family lives, you’ll appreciate life a little bit more and you’ll stop getting into trouble and what have you,” and that’s exactly what happened. I went back and I remember kids were smiling all the time and they were so poor and I was like, “How are they happy?” or we’d give them food, our leftover food and they were extremely happy.

I remember this homeless guy, he was like, “Hey, can you buy me?” I was passing a Burger King and in the days, I used to eat Burger King. He’d be like, “Hey, can you give me some money?” I’m like, “Hey, I’ll buy you some food.” He’s like, “Okay.” He comes in the Burger King with me and he’s like, “Let me get a combo 9 and can you add a coffee to it?” I was like, “Whoa! I was going to get you French fries.” He’s like, “What’s French fries going to do?” I’m like, “That’s what I can afford.” It was just so like he put me in the defensive like I was doing something wrong and here I was trying to give him what I could offer.

There, it was like my leftover food and they were happy, so I was just like, “Wow.” The contrast of it was just, like to know and I was never the same after that and I keep going back. I went back, so there’s 2001, 2009, 2010. I went three times.

HG:  2014, I went back three times it’s a place that I now, I look at and I’m like, “Yeah, this is home.”

HB:  I’m the fashion and lifestyle editor for this magazine, so I have to ask you about how does style, fashion, and all that play a role in your life and your business? Do you put it as important as you have to get up in the day and dress up?

HG:  Living in New York, I feel like everybody has their own style to them. I go through different phases of my style where I’ll be rocking all black for six months or I’ll be, I don’t know. I think the biggest thing for me as far as my fashion goes is my socks. I’m always wearing …

HB: Socks?

HG: Yeah.

HB: Wow! I didn’t expect that.

HG: It’s like my thing. I’m always wearing funky … Before they were even fashionable, I’ve been wearing funky socks.

HB: Print socks, really? I had seen some of your Instagram pictures. I’m like, you have good style, and I thought you put that important to you.

HG: Printed, they’re dots or colors or whatever. That’s where I kind of … The rest of it is I’m a pretty simple guy like jeans and t-shirts.

HB: Let’s go back into how you got in connection to Whole Foods and stuff like that. How do you even start connecting with, start doing distribution with Whole Foods. Tell me how Taste of Ethiopia got into mass distribution as far as distributing to Whole Foods?

HG:  I think it was I started with one store and they were like, “Talk to the regional director of that region,” so I did and they were like, “We’ll give you a shot in one store,” and it worked and it did well in the one store that they gave me about three or four more stores after that and then it just took off.

To be honest with you, I picked up the phone and I called. I talked to them, I was like, “Yeah, I have a lot of Ethiopian food. Would you guys be interested in trying it?” They … Because with these buyers, most people are calling them like, “Hey, I have a line of cupcakes,” or “Hey, I have a line of pasta sauce,” or “I have a new salad dressing.” These are all things that are cool, but they’ve been done already and people do them and there’s so much competition.

I think, for them, being like, “Hey, I have a line of Ethiopian food,” it was like, “I’m interested to at least try it,” so to get my foot in the door wasn’t so hard. It was more so just convincing them that people want this and then so it was like a lot of demos and a lot of just getting into people’s mouths which led to the success in one store, which led to bringing into a few more, and then the distribution just started happening after that.

Because Whole Foods is separated by region, but they all have a global buyer and once one region is doing well with something, it’s a lot easier to talk to the second region if you’re like, “Hey, you could talk to Southern California about how everything is going because I’m there,” and you’re talking to Pacific Northwest. They’re going to be like, okay, so they can call Southern California, they’d be like, “Hey, do you have this Ethiopian food? How is it doing for your guys? Duh-duh-duh-duh.” It’s a lot easier that way. You don’t have to really worry so much.

I do think it’s timing, good branding that are the key to making it successful and a good product, obviously.

HB: Are you just saying it’s just a phone call? Like it’s just a phone call. It’s that easy.

HG: There might have been a few other things, but honestly, I get asked this question a lot and that’s the honest truth is I picked up the phone and I spoke to them. The first time, I called the Midwest region because I was out at my mom’s kitchen in Michigan and the buyer was like, “Yeah, I will come,” so he came to the restaurant, he tried the food and he was like, “It’s awesome. You guys are definitely not ready. I was like … He didn’t leave me with much after that, so I had to figure it out on my own as to what he meant by “We’re not ready.”

Taking that into consideration, I was like, “Okay. Let’s start off with some smaller stores. Let’s see what we need to do.” As I did, I just started to understand like, “Ah,” understand what he means when he says, “We’re not ready.” I had a dinky-like label, my phone number on it, and no website, no bar codes, no nutritional facts, so all these things I didn’t know, but he knew obviously. As I started with the smaller stores, which I think my motto has always been to crawl, walk, and then run, so as I started with the smaller stores, I was crawling, making a lot of mistakes, but because they’re mom-and-pop stores, they’re not going to kill me for it.

Get the hang of it, understand more things, study more, do some more market research, build my branding, make it better, then make that second phone call to Whole Foods and it was much better. It was like, “Wow.” Presentation was better, the branding was better, the packaging was better, so then I got my like, “Yeah, we could start you in one store.”

HB: Did you go to college for all this?

HG: I went to school, but I dropped out. I went to culinary school, but that lasted two weeks.

HB: Wow!

HG: Yeah. I told you, I couldn’t handle the teachers, and then I went to a school in Toronto at York and that also didn’t last too long either.

HB: You basically taught yourself about branding and marketing and all that, the business side of it? Most people go to school for it.

HG: Yeah, and learning it on the go and getting good people around me, good advice too. It’s not just me. I get to hear from some good friends who went to … I got good friends that went to business school at Stanford or Wharton, so I get some good insight.

I find them like a lot of them also are great. They have all this great insight, this great knowledge, but they don’t put any of it to use. They’re working for corporate America and part of that is because being an entrepreneur takes a little bit more than just knowing it all in your head, you have to put it to practice.

HB: Speaking of having good people in your life or good business-minded people or good mentors. How is it important to you to have, especially when you’re in this position, so successful, how is it important to have good people that are mentors/good inspirational people in your life?

HG: It’s probably the most important thing. I feel like as the business grows, the decisions get a little bit tougher and so having those people that are either a) already been doing it or b) has sound advice for you is priceless.

If your friends are not growing, then that friendship maybe has come to its end. Everything doesn’t have to have a lifetime. It could be a good year, two years, five. I don’t know. Whatever it is, but appreciate the time that you have and move forward.

I have two close friends and then maybe five other friends that I hang around. We’re always in touch, in contact. I travel a lot now, so I don’t get to see them as often, but when I’m in town or there’s some kind of thing that’s happening, we’ll travel together, like a couple of my friends, we’ve gone to Brazil together for the World Cup, whatever, Thailand, for my friend’s birthday. We’ll get to do those things and then we’re each doing our thing. We’re growing and we’re learning and we’re checking on each other. I think that’s okay. I think it’s healthy.

HB: I heard you were on The Simpsons or Taste of Ethiopia was on The Simpsons. I feel like that was maybe a marking point that turned your business into something higher, greater? I don’t know how you put that, but do you think that was a big transition business-wise?

HG: I think it just really helped my cause of getting Ethiopian food, Habesha food to the American dinner table.

HB: Is that your goal?

HG: Yeah, for sure, and then some. Because I live here, I think that America’s the first point of contact, but there’s a lot more to happen. I think if you’re up still, there’s Saudi and the Middle East, and parts of Africa that I want to start targeting, so all those things to happen soon, I think.

HB:  Lastly, I read in that interview that you did for another online magazine that your motto you live by is to be authentic. How has authenticity play a role in your life or in your business?

HG:  Both in my business and my life, I think, and it’s also my branding is Taste of Ethiopia, then underneath it, it says, “Be authentic.” It’s being authentic who you are, what I think is super important and I learned that throughout my life growing up as a kid, being Habesha, smelling like onions, and going to school, and it’s like the nightmare, and I’m denying who I am because I’m embarrassed about it or Ethiopia was just not cool. It was kids starving and the famine and all that. I wanted to shy away from all that and my parents being immigrants, they also didn’t know how to handle that. For them, they just kind of make it and here I am, with an identity crisis.

I think being authentic stood out once I really understood where I come from and telling that story and being true to that story and not watering it down to help somebody else know, like my name. It’s not a common name and people used to say, “Can you … What? What is it? E-E-HEE-YA-HOO?” I was like, “Oh man. This is so frustrating,” and I just like …

HB: I get you.

HG:  Yeah. When I was younger, I used to do like, “You can just call me Mike.” It was like this name that I just made up because it was so much easier to pronounce. It was common and all these things, and then I was like, “What the hell? It’s my name. If they can’t pronounce it, it’s their problem. Not mine.” I’ll stay there for five minutes until they can pronounce it and if they forget it, it’s okay. Next time they see me, I’ll say it again. Those things have shaped me. They’ve made me who I am and I want to carry that throughout my life. I want to teach that to people, to the future, to my little nephews, cousins, or one day when I have kids, and to whoever else that struggles with that and I think it’s important.

As far as on the business side of it which for me is the food side, sometimes people will be like, “Oh, if you’re cooking for non Habesha, you have to cook this way. If you’re cooking for Habesha, then you cook this way.” I’m like, “Well, I think I just want to cook one way, whether they’re Habesha or not.” If it’s a little too spicy for them, they’re going to just have to deal with it. It’s the authentic way to me of how I learned how to do it, so it’s too bad and their staff’s adapt to it. I think we try to, in our lives, help people out a lot by cutting corners for them as opposed to giving them the honest and authentic way of doing something, so yeah.

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