A Small Business Venture Booms with Plenty of Mac and Cheese to Spare

By Alana Voldman and Laura Wilson

Chicago just got cheesier- with gourmet mac and cheese, prepared fresh daily from scratch. The Southern Mac and Cheese food truck opened up a store front at 60 E. Lake Street in the Loop in early September- a small business venture dream come true.

“I think once we realized we had an ample amount of business, we figured hey, why not, let’s give this a shot,” said Jason Draves, manager of the Southern Mac and Cheese Store.

The business started out as the popular Southern Mac and Cheese Truck, which debuted at the Willis Tower and sold out within 30 minutes on its first day. Wicker Park based bar The Southern (1840 W North Ave.), which is affiliated with The Southern Mac, does not offer a weekday lunch menu but Chef Cary Taylor wanted to offer a daytime lunch alternative to patrons. Thus, the food truck was born.

Draves and Chef Taylor manage the store and collaborate on how to make the food that the restaurant serves. Taylor plans and prepares each week’s menu that will appear in the food truck and as well as specials in the store.

The Southern Mac and Cheese Truck started in February this year, as a way to give customers more options for lunch. Now with the store location, the Southern Mac business has a reliable and consistent supply of mac. Located at the intersection of State and Lake, the foot traffic is ideal and keeps people coming in. With the up-coming holidays, Taylor is confident that the business will bring in even more people.

“We bring the truck to the Loop a lot,” Taylor said, “We knew that we were going to be a lunchtime business, and there’s obviously no better place for lunchtime foot traffic.”

The store has brought in a variety of lunch-goers, all of whom have one thing in common – mac and cheese.

“We get a mixed, diverse crowd,” Draves said. “Anywhere from college kids, young, old- business has been great. We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback, a lot of foot traffic.”

The Southern Mac’s location near the intersection of State and Lake in the Theater District caters to shoppers off of Michigan Ave. and is close to several Chicago college campuses such as DePaul University, Columbia College, and Roosevelt. The food truck also ventures to areas with a lot of foot traffic.

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Draves says that the food for the truck was initially prepared at The Southern, since current mobile food laws prohibit vendors from cooking food on-site. The kitchen was small, though, and the crew needed more space to work since they was getting more catering orders.

“The food truck was growing so much, and we absolutely needed to branch off on our own,” Taylor said.

Taylor’s food suppliers come from all over the map. With a lot of the Southern Mac’s food coming from organic farms in the Midwest, including the Green City Market — something that Taylor says makes him proud. The quality and sustainability of the food is evident in the final prouct.

Social media has also played an important role in advertising for the store and the truck. It’s free, and all of the Southern divisions utilize it accordingly.

The Southern operates its Facebook and Twitter with the help of a social media coordinator “to get the word out to the people, so that they come,” Taylor explained.

The Southern Mac and Cheese store is not the only business in Chicago using social media to its advantage. Businesses such as The Vault, who operates its doughnut shop in the near North Side, keep their customers up to date by using Twitter. just as the Southern Mac and Cheese truck does when they want to tell people about their current location.

According to Chef Taylor, the difference is consistency. “We update our sites several times throughout the day,” he added. “We get back to people on their feedback. We’re actually holding a contest right now where a customer gets to decide what special we will be having. It will be named after them, and people will vote. We’re trying to be interactive with Chicago.”

The Southern Mac will also be bringing in guest chefs in the future, including Graham Elliot, who will be creating his own version of mac and cheese for the restaurant.

Draves says that his favorite part about working at the store is Chicago’s “environment and the atmosphere…it’s what gets customers coming back, too.”

Despite the stressful parts of running a restaurant, Draves and Taylor say that the best parts of their jobs are the interactions with different people every day.

“We’re warm and inviting,” Draves explains. “And we’ve got some great employees.” The kitchen employees also confess that they enjoy working at the store under the direction of Chef Cary. “Having a fun environment makes the day go by fast,” says Jay Lovell, Chef Cary’s right-hand man.

In addition to their new store, the restaurant has introduced a new bike delivery service on November first, which can deliver within a one-mile radius of the store.

“The idea of the store is for people who are not able to get to the truck,” Draves said. “So many people wanted to have our mac and cheese for lunch, but they missed the truck, or it wasn’t in the neighborhood.”

The Southern Mac is an idea that plays off of Taylor’s roots. Growing up in Georgia and attending college in Texas, Chef Taylor had first hand exposure to Southern recipes, including the staple macaroni and cheese. Taylor thought that this simple comfort meal would be the perfect idea for a food truck.

“We have a variety of mac and cheese dishes, and I’ve tried to play off of different spices and styles that I’ve picked up throughout the years,” Taylor said.

You can follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

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Andrew Huff of Gapers Block Talks Hacking and Ad Revenue

Andrew Hoff speaks to a DePaul journalism class on Sept. 12 (Photo by Mike Reilley)

Andrew Huff spoke to DePaul University students on September 12 about his growing website, Gapers Block, a Chicago-centric web publication that is both looking to expand and fend off hackers at the same time.

Huff spent the majority of time breaking down the ins and outs of the website, explaing the need for a business section, and fending off hackers.

Serving as editor-in-chief and founder of Gapers Block, Huff started the blog in 2003 as a way to  provide news, reviews, events, and other happenings around Chicago.  The website grew steadily and now reaches more than 500,000 page views a month.

Gapers Block, however, has been hacked twice this month, and Huff is doing everything in his power to stop the intruders.

“We’ve changed every single password we can think of,” Huff told the class. “I just don’t know how they’re getting into the site.  I really cannot wait to get out of here so I can fix this,”

Graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in Journalism, Huff went into public relations shortly after college, working primarily with clients in the healthcare and bio-tech industries.  He began blogging when he found the job market to be no-so-inviting.

“The job market was rough,” Huff recalled, “so I went into PR. But I was looking for a more creative outlet.”

Huff began blogging in 2001 with Me3dia, a personal blog.  As he began freelance writing on the website, Huff also worked for several years as a professional blogger for American Express and Kenneth Cole, among others.

American Express and Kenneth Cole were not particularly what Huff had in mind, though.  He described the Kenneth Cole Awareness line as somewhat of a disaster.

In 2003, Huff and friend Naz Hamid founded Gapers Block while sitting in a coffee shop.  They had the basic format of the site figured out in an hour.  Their idea was to have very few sentences and lots of links, and the website still boasts a similar design to the original format.

Huff’s intention was to cover stories around Chicago that were not making it into mainstream news-stories that could be read on a coffee shop bulletin board.  Features of the site included a new photo every day, event calendars, and highlights of events around the city.  These features  morphed into their own section of the site, though Huff has noted that he would like to add a business section in the future.

Huff eventually parted ways with Hamid, but still remains friendly.  He said a challenge to Gapers Block is accruing ad revenue.  He explained that most of the ads are locally-based, which maintains Gapers Block, but does not generate a large source of income.  Hackers rerouting ads on Gapers Block creates a challenge for Huff.

Other Chicago-based websites, such as the Chicagoist, have more ads and generate much more income.

Managing a staff of about 300 volunteer writers and 100 contributing writers, Huff, who is also a professor at Loyola University and Columbia College, explained the importance of having these writers on board during a “souring economy”.

“[Gapers Block] is valuable to writers because they know they can rely on us not only to take their content, but also to enable them to find ways to keep surviving,” Huff said.

He said that his favorite parts of Gapers Block are the music and food sections, two of his passions, and two things  for which Chicago is especially known.

“Gapers Block is not a tool for tourism,” He said. “…and the site is not blind to the city’s faults, and I like that a lot.”