Camilla Opperman on Revolutionizing Shared Kitchens with Nimbus

#47. We are thrilled to introduce our guest for today, Camilla Opperman Morse, the Founder and CEO of Nimbus. Based in the hub of New York City, Nimbus offers a fresh take on the traditional ghost kitchen model, providing a collaborative cooking infrastructure that fosters creativity and community.

In our conversation, Camilla shares insights into the unique concept behind Nimbus, which goes beyond mere kitchen spaces to encompass a vibrant experience and an inviting event space for brands to connect with their audience. With a diverse clientele ranging from CPG brands, to meal prep businesses, to established favorites like Ivan Ramen, Nimbus is at the forefront of culinary innovation.

Camilla's transformative journey, from her athletic upbringing to her immersion in finance and analytics, culminating in the founding of Nimbus, is truly awe-inspiring. We explore her strategic approach to growth, her dedication to operational excellence, and her insights on navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.

Join us as we sit down with Camilla in the heart of downtown Brooklyn, where she shares her story and her vision for the future of Nimbus.

Where to find Camilla Opperman Morse: 

• Personal Instagram
• Nimbus Instagram
• LinkedIn

Where to find host Josh Sharkey:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Twitter

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

• High Output Management by Andy Grove
• Measure What Matters by John Doerr

In this episode, we cover:

(04:47) The New Haven Pizza Debate
(07:09) Camilla's background as a gymnast and its similarities with entrepreneurship
(12:32) Camilla's career background before Nimbus
(17:41) Overview of Nimbus
(23:09) Things Camilla has deployed that have helped operators be more efficient
(30:54 The specificities of operations within Nimbus
(36:34) How Camilla is different as a leader from when she started
(41:46) What makes Camilla really really angry
(54:43) The benefits of scaling down

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh Sharkey: 

You're listening to season two of The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level.

[00:00:23]

Day after day. And I would really love it if you could drop us a 5 star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky, anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show.

[00:00:43] 

My guest on today's show is Camilla Opperman Morse. Camilla is the co-founder and CEO of Nimbus. It's a new approach to the Ghost Kitchen, really more of a shared kitchen space. I think they call it a co cooking infrastructure. It's a really incredible concept. They have four locations. They're based out of New York City and we actually went on site to their spot in downtown Brooklyn and man I was blown away.

[00:01:08] 

They service all types of food businesses. They also have this front of house where in addition to sort of the virtual kind of ghost kitchen spaces where you can do production and obviously delivery, customers can come and order at a counter and there's, you know, Concepts like Ivan Ramen and Domo Sushi and Cheesecake Factory, they partnered with DoorDash as well.

[00:01:27] 

So a lot of cool concepts that are producing out of her spaces. And there's this really beautiful event space where each brand can also tell their story to the community, which I think is such an important part about building, uh, you know, a virtual brand. But what I loved most is, one, she is super detailed, so this operation is really tight.

[00:01:47] 

And not only is there kitchen space for these brands to do delivery and pick up, but there's also a bunch of space for CPG brands, for restaurants to do R&D. The Noma Kitchen came to her space I think last year and are coming back again. And generally speaking, you know, it's clearly like a space that's built for all types of culinary execution.

[00:02:10] 

And Camilla's background is really interesting. She came from more of the sort of finance, uh, analytics background. She was a Yale graduate, was actually the captain of the gymnastics team at Yale, worked in some retail and operations, and then eventually sort of moved right into starting her own food business, Nimbus.

[00:02:28] 

And it's been, I think, five years and they've grown incredibly well. She'd been really mindful about growing slowly and being strategic, but we had a really awesome conversation. We were sitting in the event kitchen and just talked a lot about, you know, how she built the company and some struggles along the way that she deals with stress and her approach to what she calls operational scalability, which I really loved. Anyways, I had an amazing time chatting with her We had met a couple times via phone and zoom, but this is our first time meeting in person So as always I hope that you enjoy the conversation as much as I do.

[00:03:11] Josh Sharkey: 

Welcome to the darn show. 

[00:03:12] Camilla Opperman: 

Thank you for having me super excited to be talking with you. 

[00:03:16] Josh Sharkey: 

We're in Nimbus kitchen Here in Brooklyn. There's how many of them? 

[00:03:20] Camilla Opperman: 

We have four locations around New York. 

[00:03:22] Josh Sharkey: 

Okay. I Was totally surprised with what this is and there's a million more questions. I have now than when I had planned coming here, so I'm excited But anyways nice to see you in person.

[00:03:33] Camilla Opperman: 

I know we met right when I was starting out and I don't think we've actually met in person yet So it's good to see your face.

[00:03:40] Josh Sharkey: 

We haven't met in person and I do want to give a shout out though because I believe we met through a mutual friend Alex Beltrani.

[00:03:47] 

The best. He is. Shout out to Tattle. If you don't know Alex Beltrani and Tattle, first of all Tattle's awesome. You know, it's a customer insight product. But Alex is just incredible. I met him when I was, when I still owned restaurants and I bought his product mostly just because of him.

[00:04:01] Camilla Opperman: 

His energy, sorry to interrupt, is unparalleled. I met him for the first time and was just blown away with how kind and giving he was with his time. 

[00:04:12] Josh Sharkey: 

He is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And just an incredible entrepreneur as well. He's coming on the show. So let's talk about you. I want to talk about your background and we're going to get into that, but we're going to start with New Haven because you went to Yale.

[00:04:27] 

Yale is a college, a university that some people go to. It's pretty easy to get into. You can kind of like just, I think if you get like a 2.0 in high school, you can get in. But anyways, it's a college in New Haven. I'm kidding. I love New Haven. I actually spent a lot of time there when I was starting a restaurant called Bark, and we were researching mostly actually hot dogs because there's a place called Frank's there.

[00:04:47] 

But let's talk pizza for a minute. We got Sally's, we have Pepe's, we have BAR, Modern. What's your pick? 

[00:04:53] Camilla Opperman: 

I'm so glad you mentioned BAR, because that is absolutely my favorite. Oh my god, it's so good. It's so good. Most people automatically default to Sally's or Pepe's, which is fine. I think they're great pizza.

[00:05:06] 

Honestly, I think I like Bar the most because of its proximity to campus. It's like a two minute walk from where I lived, versus Sally's, Pepe's, and Modern are all like 15, 20 minutes away, which when you're in college, that feels like a world away. But the BAR crust, that thin crust, their toppings are unparalleled.

[00:05:24] 

I don't know, most people, oh my gosh, it's incredible. And most people default to the mashed potato pizza, which is good, but the eggplant parm is out of this world. And weirdly, their salad is really good. I don't like salad. Yeah, I'm not like a big salad gal, but. For whatever reason, they're caramelized nuts and the pears and the blue cheese.

[00:05:42] 

It's, it is such an incredible experience. I'm actually going there this weekend. 

[00:05:46] Josh Sharkey: 

So how much are those pizza joints a part of the culture when you go to Yale? Or is it, is it sort of, you know, some people do, some people don't? 

[00:05:54] Camilla Opperman: 

I think it's one of those things for move in, when your parents are there, you go, you do the pizza tour. At graduation, you go, you do the pizza tour again. And then most people, maybe one or two times throughout their time, you know, their four years there, will go to one or all of those pizza places. I would say BAR is the most integral to campus culture, just again, because of that proximity and also because it's a physical bar where you can go and drink.

[00:06:17] 

Yeah. But it's not, you know, the end all be all of food in New Haven. Honestly, campus dining was incredible. Really? They ate in the dining halls all four years, three meals a day. It was incredible. So I think a lot of people default to that because it's so good. 

[00:06:31] Josh Sharkey:

Wow. All right. That's cool. But between Sally's and Pepe's, did you have a 

[00:06:37] Camilla Opperman: 

Oh my gosh.I don't know if I can pick.

[00:06:38] Josh Sharkey: 

So I love the clam pie. And also, there's like, there's a place that, actually it's closed now, it's called Franny's, it was in Brooklyn. I think they kind of recreated what was the, the clam pie from Sally's, but that for me is like the best pie. You know, bacon, clams, cream, I don't even know, I don't think there's any cheese on there.

[00:06:55] Camilla Opperman: 

Have you had the clam from BAR? No, you need to move. I have, yes. One compares it. 'cause that one's really good too.

[00:07:00] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. It's just, I, I don't even really compare BAR and Sally 'cause they're so different. It's a different pizza. 

[00:07:05] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, exactly. These are the hard, hidden questions though. I'm really glad we opened with this one.

[00:07:09] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Well, the other thing I didn't know about you was that you were a pretty incredible gymnast, uh, and that is sort of what brought you to Yale. Is that correct?

[00:07:16] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, so I grew up doing gymnastics. I did it from the time I was three by the time I was. Seven was training 20, 25 hours a week and then did it all four years in college.

[00:07:27] 

So ended up being the captain of the team, still really involved with the organization. It was an incredible part of my experience there. The girls I competed with were amazing. I loved the coaches and then the sport itself is just so wonderful. So you know, gymnastics was not the reason I went to Yale. I was fine going to college without gymnastics, but it was definitely the cherry on top of my experience there.

[00:07:49] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Well, I mean, what does it take to be a great gymnast? I don't know anything about the sport. 

[00:07:54] Camilla Opperman: 

Grit, a little bit of an insanity, uh, as well. Honestly, I think there are a lot of parallels between being a competitive gymnast and being an entrepreneur. Yeah. You're falling on your face 10, 20 times a day.

[00:08:06] 

You have to get up with a smile on your face and go again. And I think that is, you know, candidly, when we're hiring, why I screen for athletes, I actually have a gymnast that I used to work with or compete with on the Nimbus team now, because I know that she has that grit and the determination that's going to get her standing up again and persevering in the face of adversity.

[00:08:26] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And it's also, it seems ultra competitive and it's funny. I totally agree. And another sort of industry is ballet. Dancers, especially in New York, it is the most intense, competitive, like You know, gritty. 

[00:08:44] Camilla Opperman: 

But they make it look effortless. Oh my god. And that's the whole thing. You have to look like you're having the time of your life and it's so easy and you're floating in ballet across the floor and gymnastics across the beam when really it's such a mentally taxing and physically taxing sport.

[00:08:58] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And it's one of those, it's not zero sum, but there's, you know, there's only so many folks in Alvin Ailey. There's only so many folks that get to like, you know, Broadway. Yeah. And this is independent of gymnastics. When I would find a dancer who was really like, clearly was like, you know, incredible and like hired, you know, because the amount of effort, you know, that goes into that. It sounds like it's very similar to being super 

[00:09:20] Camilla Opperman: 

similar. And I also think if you're able to keep up the level of athletics, you know, you're training four or five hours a day while also maintaining an academic record that can get you into a place like Yale or any of the great schools that are out there, you're going to know how to work hard.

[00:09:36] 

And you're going to know how to succeed. So you're automatically going to be a good employee, so I could not agree more on that strategy. 

[00:09:41] Josh Sharkey: 

And I have to imagine, I don't know anything about Ivy League schools. We were just talking before this how I went to, you know, I've, my degree is in culinary arts. That's about it. What's the biggest takeaway from a school like Yale? Because I imagine socially, sort of the, the things that you learn about people and the networks that you develop is. Just as much as the information that you're ingesting. 

[00:10:02] Camilla Opperman: 

I think that's exactly the learning that I took away. Of course, the information is important, but fostering relationships and who you know and how you're able to show up every day when you meet people is just as important, if not more.

[00:10:14] 

And I think that's really translated into the working world. You know, going back to Alex, for example, I met him when I was just starting out. It was pre pandemic. I had an idea and a deck. Somehow got introduced to him. And he made so many connections for me just because we had a really great interpersonal interaction.

[00:10:32] 

And that really opened a lot of doors for me. And so I think the EQ piece of things and being a nice person and being willing to and open to those kinds of relationships is so important when building a business and just in life in general. So yeah, he'll definitely taught me that.

[00:10:46] Josh Sharkey:

 Are you still in contact with a lot of the folks that you hung out with that, you know?

[00:10:50] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, I lived with the same girls all four years in college, after college as well. I'm married now, so I'm unfortunately no longer living with them, but they were. Is that important? I know I've, I've moved on, but you know, they were bridesmaids in my wedding. We're still best friends. I'm still very involved in the gymnastics team. I'm going back this weekend for an alumni meet. Um, so the relationships I forged there were really incredible.

[00:11:15] 

And the people I met really. You know, there were athletes, there were non athletes, there were people who are up on Science Hill, there were economists, there were lawyers, it was a really diverse group of people and, you know, we still text every day and we're still, we're still best friends.

[00:11:28] Josh Sharkey: 

How do you keep up with, like, gymnastics? Is there like a, you know, obviously, like, you can go play basketball or you can go, you know, running, but what's like the, like, is there just like, like a place where you'd go and just Do gymnastics. That sounds terrible 

[00:11:43] Camilla Opperman: 

After graduation? Oh my gosh. There's no way. Yeah. My body cannot handle that. I did go at Chelsea Piers. They have an open gym. And when I was dating my now husband, he was just my boyfriend of like two months. We did an open gym class together. I couldn't walk the next day. It had only been a couple of years since I graduated, but it's not really a sport you can keep up. You can't like do pickup gymnastics the way you do a pickup game of basketball, which, you know, I think.

[00:12:08] 

left a big void. It had been so much of my identity from the time I was three until I graduated at 21, 22. And so I think, candidly, founding Nimbus kind of filled that void. I needed something to spend all of my time and mental energy on because I was so used to having this all consuming task that, you know, once I graduated, I had so much time, I had nothing to do, I didn't know who I was. And so founding Nimbus kind of filled that void, which was great. 

[00:12:32] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, I have a million questions about Nimbus, but before I get there, you were at Credit Suisse for a while, I think as an analyst, and, and then Away, the luggage company, what was the path to those things? And then how did you end up, you know, diverging and opening Nimbus?

[00:12:48] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, it's been a very circuitous route. So In college, I ran our late night snack shack, which was effectively making grilled cheeses for drunk college students. It was not a super professional experience, but I set the menu, I shopped for the ingredients, I cooked on the line, loved that, did that for three years, ended up not going into hospitality.

[00:13:07] Camilla Opperman: 

I ended out Away doing supply chain operations, was opening warehouses around the country, in Asia, in Europe. It was a great experience. It was very fun working at a high growth startup. I love operations. I love process. If you can't tell, I'm pretty type A, but I knew I wanted to get back to food. So I decided I was going to start my own food business. I was living in New York in lower Manhattan. 

[00:13:28] Josh Sharkey: 

Was there an impetus for that? Was something that happened? 

[00:13:31] Camilla Opperman: 

I'd always been, I mean, I hate when people are like, I'm a foodie, but I had always loved food and I thought based on my experience in college, which was so much fun, effectively running my own mini food business within the kind of.

[00:13:44] 

Walls of the university. I thought I could get back to that and wanted to start a healthy macro driven catering company geared towards athletes. It was something I would have really liked in college, you know, eating to fuel your performance, not just to, you know, subsist. But the issue was I couldn't find a kitchen to operate out of.

[00:14:03] 

In New York City, as you know, real estate's incredibly expensive. I was looking into signing a restaurant lease. You have to, you know, give your firstborn child, sign a 10 year lease. The rents were astronomically expensive and it was just not feasible. Then I toured a bunch of shared commercial kitchen spaces.

[00:14:20] 

And Hannah, Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen. Yeah, there were a lot of them. And, you know, I ended up doing research and there were over 50 in the New York City area. I know a lot of them are like in church basements or my buddy down the street who's renting his restaurant overnight or what have you. They were typically in pretty remote locations.

[00:14:39] 

Very mom and pop operations, a lot of them didn't have heating or AC, which for me coming out of this like cushy university kitchen, which had all the bells and whistles I was not prepared for. Yeah. And. They were operationally very inefficient. People signed up for their kitchen slots by signing up on a whiteboard.

[00:14:56] 

It's like, this is crazy. This is an industry that's stuck in the 80s. And I recognize that there was this white space where, you know, on one end there were really nice kitchens available, but they were very expensive. And on the other, there were affordable and flexible kitchens, but. Uh, they weren't really what I was looking for in terms of a working environment.

[00:15:13] 

So pivoted away from starting a food business, decided to found Nimbus. I was 25. Wow. Candidly, I had no idea what I was doing. Definitely an outsider. But, you know, it's five years later now. Yeah. We have four locations in New York and we're just getting started. 

[00:15:28] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Well, I mean, we're gonna, obviously we're about to talk about Nimbus, but like walking the halls here, it's very clear that things are so tight and clean and organized.

[00:15:36] 

I remember when I was, you know, when I had restaurants and we would do, you know, bulk production of our relishes, let's say, or something like we had, there was a, there's a place in Long Island City called Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen. I think it's called that. And then another one called Hannah and. It's so different when I see this, I, what I had pictured versus what this is, it's just there, it's so clear that you're thinking about every discrete operator and how to make sure that you can maximize the amount of people that can work at the same time and how to share like, you know, communal space.

[00:16:04] 

So I want to talk about like the, some of the biggest differences between Nimbus and those kitchens, but maybe just to start like, I'm thinking of the cloud when I think of this name, but like, where did the name come from? And then what, you know, and now I know why you started, but maybe just like for the, for the audience, just like, what is Nimbus?

[00:16:19] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, it's exactly that, cloud. Um, when I was starting out, there was obviously this whole world of these shared kitchens that you toured and you were just talking about. At the same time in 2019, 2020, there was a lot of money and capital or capital and attention going towards what people hear of are kind of referred to as cloud kitchens or ghost kitchens.

[00:16:40] Camilla Opperman: 

Um, Travis Kalanick from the, from Uber had started a shared kitchen company. He named it CloudKitchens. It kind of became synonymous with the industry itself. So I wanted to evoke that kind of CloudKitchen terminology, but also make sure to maintain that that sense of flexibility, because at the end of the day, and we can definitely get into the nuances of our business, people can come to Nimbus and cook in our space for a few hours, they can cook for a few years and everything in between.

[00:17:08] 

Nimbus sounds nimble, Nimbus is a kind of cloud, and then the added benefit is I was a big Harry Potter fan growing up, so people are always asking me about that as well. 

[00:17:18] Josh Sharkey: 

Emily behind us, by the way, is, uh, is hooting. Fist bumping. Well, I think the nuance is actually what's important here, because, yeah, if you think of a shared kitchen or a ghost kitchen, you know, it's not abstract, you understand what it is.

[00:17:29] 

There's a lot of nuance to what you're doing here, so maybe just talk a little bit more about the details of like, you know, why this, how you're improving upon the shared kitchen model, and then some of the ways in which you've gone about creating this operation.

[00:17:41] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, I can, I can start by giving you like the 30 seconds of what Nimbus is and then talk about how we're different.

[00:17:47] 

High level, we're a co cooking infrastructure business. So we're operating commercial kitchens and event spaces that we rent to food businesses hourly, monthly, and annually to run their production and promote their products. We're intentionally very flexible here. As I said, people can come for short or long periods of time.

[00:18:05] 

And because of that, we're able to work with food businesses across the industry from you know, the nascent entrepreneur selling jams at the local farmers market to the school lunch caterer who is making their meals in the mornings and then distributing them to schools around the city to very large operators like DoorDash or QSRs like Jersey Mike's that are in our space full time running their deliveries out of this space and everything in between.

[00:18:31]  

I think one of the differences that really sets us apart and that's been core to our identity is our focus on community. The space that we're sitting in here is our show kitchen. In all of our locations, we have event spaces and show kitchens for our operators to, you know, not only produce their food in the back of house, but actually promote their products to the people who are ultimately eating their food, whether that's through content production or through in person experiences like cooking classes, dinner parties, tastings.

[00:18:58] 

That was something really important to us to help increase transparency. between the consumer and the operator and kind of maintain some semblance of the hospitality you'd get in a brick and mortar restaurant. I think the nuances between what we've done. You know, ghost kitchens have gotten a lot of flack recently.

[00:19:16] 

People don't like the term, people don't like the industry. And I think rightfully so, in a lot of ways. Ghost kitchens in their quote unquote traditional sense, they've kind of been around since, call it 2018, 2019. Typically only service delivery only businesses, they're typically only rented out on longer term contracts, so annual or multi year contracts, and so they're only servicing a very small sliver of the hospitality industry.

[00:19:39] 

They're also typically in semi industrial areas, or in basement spaces, they're not visible to customers. And so there's kind of this lack of consumer trust because food coming out of those spaces is kind of scary if you don't know where your food is coming from, or you've never seen the brick and mortar storefront.

[00:19:56] 

And so a big part of what we've done at Nimbus is increase that transparency, increase the flexibility so we're able to work with more businesses, and then professionalize this kind of shared kitchen industry that you had experience with and layer on operational efficiency to make it a very premium, flexible, but then also affordable product.

[00:20:15] 

So we're kind of taking the best of all of these different portions of the industry and rolling it into one and then layering on the community focus. 

[00:20:22] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I, and I totally agree. I think one of the biggest missteps in this, just in my, in my opinion, with these, with ghost kitchens, virtual brands is that I think everybody underestimated brand equity.

[00:20:34] 

You know, that like, you can't just have, you know, this black box of a brand that serves pizza. Even if the pizza is delicious. Now, if the pizza is really delicious, that helps a ton, right? And if you can do that consistently, then sure, that, that might actually work. But over time, people want a connection, you know, and I love that you sort of like created this, this medium where you can not only service your brand and service the customers, but you have this space where they can like build that connection because I don't think it works without both of them.

[00:21:01] 

At least not. I agree. Not perpetually, you know, it might work in the short term, but it 

[00:21:04] Camilla Opperman: 

It might work if you have a splashy celebrity that, you know, is tacked onto your brand, that's not going to drive repeat purchase. Yeah.

[00:21:12] Josh Sharkey: 

There’s a half life to that, right? At some point that celebrity will do something else or whatever the thing is.

[00:21:17] 

And, you know, if you're relying on that, there's, you know, it's not an evergreen solution and over time or, you know, Mr. Beast and, you know, things happen and you have to create that connection with customers. I love that you've like, that you saw that and created this because independent of it, I don't think it works.

[00:21:34] Camilla Opperman: 

Could not agree more. I mean, part of why we layered this on is I was thinking about when I was looking to start my own food business, how do I get customers? How do I actually get in front of them? It's impossible to stand out in such a saturated ecosystem, particularly in a place like New York City, where there are thousands of operators.

[00:21:50] 

And it's that in person experience or the brand recognition of walking by and saying, Oh, I actually see their brand on the window. And so that's really why we intentionally from the beginning and this has been part of our identity since we started in 2019 was to have that in person interaction. You know, we hosted 260 events here in our space last year.

[00:22:10] 

That's a lot of in person interactions, but I think that also speaks to the demand from the brands and the operators that are using our space to get in front of of the people who are actually consuming their food.

[00:22:20] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a no brainer. Like, if you talk to somebody about what you're doing and they understand why and they see your face, they're gonna, they're gonna be far more likely to buy what you have.

[00:22:30] 

I want to talk about the actual, like, the operators, but before we get into that, you clearly I'm making some assumptions, but just based on what I know of you and looking at your operation, you understand operations pretty well. I don't know if you've ever read High Output Management by Andy Grove.

[00:22:43] Camilla Opperman: 

Haven't read that, but I'll, I'll take it down after this. 

[00:22:45] Josh Sharkey: 

There's a notion of the black box and, you know, there's the interworking of a business and actually he references a, a restaurant and how, you know, understanding how each piece of the, of the puzzle really works. And you have to open the black box and see anyways, it seems like you've really opened the black box and looked at how, how each piece of this needs to work and removed all of the like painful parts of, of the operation just to let the, these operators cook.

[00:23:09] 

But can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you've deployed that have really helped operators be more efficient? And or things that you've noticed from really good operators, because there's some really great operators here, sort of common threads that you've seen that make them really efficient because you obviously have to be of small space, right?

[00:23:29] 

You can put a lot of volume. Um, so operational efficiency is really, really key here. 

[00:23:33] Camilla Opperman: 

It's a very good question and operations is very much in my, my background and has been core to the business since day one. I think something that's interesting is I've done every job at Nimbus myself, mopping the floors, shoveling the sidewalks, doing the marketing, you know, running our social media until like three months ago, I was doing that, which was

[00:23:54] 

very painful for me. And so I think I come to building the space and making it really efficient in a very empathetic way because I've interacted with our members so much by physically being on the ground here and understanding what their unique pain points are. Running a business is, and particularly a food business, is very, very difficult.

[00:24:13] 

There are a lot of little nuances that people don't understand from the outside, from figuring out how to file your taxes to making sure you have the right permit to having the correct infrastructure and making sure that that's maintained. So at Nimbus, we make sure that that infrastructure piece is taken care of.

[00:24:31] 

So we've built out the spaces, their turnkey, an operator can waltz in and start cooking in a few days. If they're doing R&D, there's a waiting period if they want to sell to customers legally with Department of Health, but you know, in as little as a few weeks, if they're, if they're actually selling to customers, we do.

[00:24:48] Josh Sharkey: 

Do you have like a Schedule C for them to be able to do? 

[00:24:50] Camilla Opperman: 

Oh, I could talk to you about permits all day. So Nimbus has its own permit with the Department of Health. And then each of the operators that works with us also has their own permit. Oh, okay, gotcha. We do also service some Article C Department of Agriculture businesses as well.

[00:25:04] 

That was a whole journey figuring out the nuances of the different permits. We're kind of operating in this gray area where we're an event space, we're a cafe, we're a shared kitchen, we're a standalone restaurant in some respects and so we've spent probably a thousand hours working with the DOH and DOA to make sure.

[00:25:21] 

Are you regulated by both? Yes. We're regulated by both and we have inspectors on site every day. That's rough. So yeah, that's, that's one of the things that we help our operators do is figure out what permit they should even have. And then in terms of space maintenance, we do the pest control and the grease trap cleaning and the trash removal and all the HVAC maintenance, like all the shit, excuse my language, that food businesses don't want to deal with.

[00:25:46] 

And so they can just, by nature of operating out of Nimbus, be significantly more efficient because their time isn't being stretched, just making sure that the infrastructure runs well. To answer the second part of your question in terms of, you know, to your point, we do have some really amazing food businesses operating, you know, shout out to the Noma team.

[00:26:04] 

They came out here. They were the first people to operate out of our space. They flew 12 of their chefs from Copenhagen. They cooked here for a pop up. We work with DoorDash is one of our biggest customers. We have Jersey Mike's in the space, some local heroes here in New York, like. Kings Co and DOMODOMO, some really amazing businesses operating out of our space.

[00:26:23] 

I know this sounds basic, but having SOPs or standard operating procedures in place, but then constantly iterating on them has been a really, I think, you know, you'd be shocked the number of businesses who come to Nimbus. They have passion, they love the food, they're so excited, but they don't have processes.

[00:26:40] 

They haven't thought through, you know, what could happen, what could go wrong and how am I going to react to that until those things are actually happening and. They're, they're not able to scale because of that. Yeah. 

[00:26:50] Josh Sharkey: 

Also, you make such a great point that I think so many times that the mistake is not, I think a lot of people actually write really good SOPs, but they have to be dynamic, right?

[00:27:02] 

You have to be able to, you know, have a sort of this Kaizen approach to constantly iterating because things are always changing. And if you write this static document that lives forever and doesn't change. Then, eventually, you're just going to start finding all these flaws, and You're going to become obsolete.

[00:27:18] 

Yeah. Have you seen any examples where you've seen things, something change because of, you know, the space or, or, or the unit economics or something where you saw an operator change something that really stuck out? 

[00:27:29] Camilla Opperman: 

I mean, I think it's interesting seeing, and this is more marketing focused, but I think there are obviously SOPs related to marketing.

[00:27:36] 

As consumer preferences shift, even with the seasonality, in a place like New York City, you know, everyone flees in the summer. Delivery kind of goes down. The businesses who had been thriving in delivery in Jan, Feb, March, maybe they're a pizza concept. People love pizza at the beginning of the year, maybe not so much when it's, you know, bikini season in the summer.

[00:27:56] 

So they see this huge drop off in demand and they're, they're looking at us like, hey, why, why has my demand gone down? Well, you have to iterate, like, let's think of other ways to get in front of the end consumer, whether that's a different mode of distribution, maybe we should lean into catering, or maybe we can jar your, your sauce and go the CPG route, like being able to iterate there, I think, has kept the strong operators within our space, but Uh, you know, has ultimately been the downfall from, for other operators if they're, they're not able to think on their feet there.

[00:28:28] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. It's funny. I remember having this conversation last season with a really great operator and leader named Dan Simon. He has this restaurant group called Founding Farmers. And we were talking about, you know, in restaurants, there's this issue where if you have really great people like a great CDC or a great, you know, GM.

[00:28:46] 

Oftentimes we find like the only way to have upward mobility is to open another restaurant because it's the only way for them to be able to, you know, get promoted. And what's cool about restaurants and things like Nimbus is that you don't have to. expand to new locations of a restaurant just because you need to, you know, create more opportunity for your, for your staff.

[00:29:06] 

You can horizontally expand, you could create a catering business, you create a CPG business, you could create another like delivery business. And it's such a cool opportunity that restaurants have to maximize the amount of top line they can do out of, you know, whatever space they have. And this is just a great way to like, you know, add onto that.

[00:29:22] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah. And I, you know, most of the businesses that operate out of Nimbus have existing brick and mortar spaces and they're using Nimbus to supplement their operation to your point, whether that's launching a CPG brand or, you know, moving their catering off prem. And, and so I think that's exactly right.

[00:29:39] 

It's a really creative way for them to grow without. Yeah. Signing a 10 year lease and putting a million dollars into a kitchen build. 

[00:29:46] Josh Sharkey: 

This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, meez. meez helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully.

[00:29:57] 

If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out a consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then meez is just for you. And you can transform all those old Google Docs and Word Docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic, actionable recipes in meez in lightning speed.

[00:30:16] 

Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, because meez will digitize all your purchases. Automatically. And there's a built in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions for every ingredient, which means you're going to get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time.

[00:30:31] 

Visit www.getmeez.com. That's G E T M E E Z. com to learn more. And check out the show notes moving forward because We're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant meez podcast listeners get a sweet deal on meez.

[00:30:54] Josh Sharkey: 

I love seeing that there was Cheesecake Factory, Ivan Ramen, and then clearly somebody doing R&D on the other side of the, of the building that was like, very meticulous about some, you know, cookie or tweel that they were, I don't know what it was, but it was very clearly like, you know, it's a really tight R&D that you have sort of all of these different diversities of operations.

[00:31:13] 

But the thing that I was thinking when you were taking us through the, to the, to the kitchens, like the first thing that came to my mind is I've seen all the, all the, um, you know, the cages where everybody's dry goods and things are. And, you know, a lot of operations are really particular about the ingredients they want.

[00:31:27] 

Like, I want this very specific vinegar or soy sauce or this dried, you know, dried shiitake. How do you manage all the disparate products that everybody wants to get in? Because I imagine there must be some broad liners, you know, operation coming in here, but then there's got to be like independent, smaller, you know, vendors as well. Like, how does that work? 

[00:31:45] Camilla Opperman: 

This is a great example of iterating on, on an SOP. When we started, and we still do this, we. Automatically, and from the beginning, accepted ingredients for the members that come into our space. And it used to be kind of a free for all. It was very difficult to track whose ingredients went with which business.

[00:32:04] 

Oh my god, yeah. How do you do that? How do you do that, exactly? And, and, you know, we didn't really have a good process around sorting those ingredients. What do we do if something comes in and it's not food safe? Do we reject it? Do we let the members deal with it once they come on site? So we've spent the last three years of operation really streamlining that process.

[00:32:22] 

We accept ingredients for our members. We put them into a kind of neutral holding cage. We notify them. Everything's labeled very clearly. This is for XYZ business. This is for ABC business. And then once they come on site, they then transfer it into their own cages themselves. Of course, some of the operators are very particular.

[00:32:41] 

They want to make sure that their strawberries are a specific level of ripeness or whatever. Then they can come on site and do the ingredient receiving themselves. But it's a huge value add for the businesses coming into our space that they don't have to be here at 6 a.m. when Baldor rolls around, Nimbus can take care of it for them.

[00:32:57] 

And then when they come in at 10 a.m. or the next day at 6 a.m., they know that their ingredients are on site and fresh. But it took a very long time for us to really streamline that process. 

[00:33:07] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, I'm also trying to wrap my head around. I mean, I have to assume there's like this like economy of scale of you're able to, you know, buy things in bulk and two different operators both want La Baleine sea salt or something.

[00:33:19]  

And then you have to split up a case, right? Like, how does that work? 

[00:33:22] Camilla Opperman: 

That's the dream for Nimbus. to be that intermediary. And, you know, whether it's through a communal pantry or figuring out a way for us to buy in bulk for the members and pass on that preferential pricing to them. Uh, I think that's something that we've always talked about doing.

[00:33:38] 

We don't currently do it. Each member is responsible for ordering their ingredients themselves. Baldor might come and do a one drop for five different members, but it's very clear who, what belongs to who. In the dream scenario, we would have a full ingredient procurement arm where we can save our members a lot of money by that kind of bulk purchasing power, but we're not quite there yet. We're still focused on the infrastructure itself. 

[00:34:02] Josh Sharkey: 

That's cool. Yeah, I'm picturing like this Amazon Go style warehouse where you just walk in, it knows who you are, and you grab your salt and your sugar. And anyway, so this long, what, five years ago? Is that right? 

[00:34:12] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, so I. left my job at Away in 2019, summer of 2019.

[00:34:17] Josh Sharkey: 

Did you get a bunch of Away things, by the way? 

[00:34:19] Camilla Opperman: 

Oh my gosh, we got a free suitcase every quarter. Oh my gosh. They're incredible. I, I mean obviously I'm biased, I worked there, but the product is superb. 

[00:34:29] Josh Sharkey: 

Right, you can put like, like, you plug in your phone and stuff? 

[00:34:32] Camilla Opperman: 

There was, there was some, no, this is a great aside, I have a lot to say there, there was a little bit of drama with TSA and the battery, the battery pack, so they no longer offer the battery packs.

[00:34:41] 

That's right, they make you take the they make you take them out, they don't even sell them anymore. That was one of the problems that, that on the operations team, we, we dealt with when I was there, but it's a great product. I highly recommend it's, I've had my suitcase for, seven years now and it's still, still fantastic.

[00:34:59] Josh Sharkey: 

Anyway. All right, we digress. 

[00:35:00] Camilla Opperman: 

We digress. Five years. Five, yeah, so left, left that job in summer of 2019, signed the lease for our first space in January of 2020. We were supposed to start construction March of 2020. Horrible timing. COVID hit. We hadn't started construction. We didn't have our permits yet.

[00:35:17]

And so we spent the better part of the summer figuring out how to get the permit so we could actually start construction on the space. The Lower East Side, right? The Lower East Side location. And it was a gray shell. Well, we thought it was a kind of salvageable restaurant setup. We ended up having to pull everything out, which was unfortunate, but a great learning.

[00:35:33] 

And we ultimately were able to open our doors in January of 2021. So I've been working on it for almost five years. We've been operational for three. We opened this space here in downtown Brooklyn in May of 2022. And then in September of 23, we inherited two sites from an operator that was leaving the market.

[00:35:53] 

And so doubled our footprint overnight. And now we have four locations, 40 rentable kitchen spaces, four event space, event spaces across that portfolio.

[00:36:01] Josh Sharkey: 

That's amazing. Well, we, we have like. Such a similar trajectory. I launched meez or start, tried to launch meez in March of 2020. So bleak. And, uh, decided to do like a, a way for chefs to sell their recipes for the first six months instead.

[00:36:14] 

And we didn't actually launch until 20, January, 2021. So we have like the exact same. We've been in the trenches at the same time. Now we can follow along for the next, you know, 10 years of this. Well, anyways, I have this picture in my. In my office with this sort of, this question for myself, they're kind of all over them, which is a little bit weird, but I always wanna be embarrassed with what I did five years ago.

[00:36:34] 

And if I'm not embarrassed, then I haven't like moved along far enough. Right. And I'm curious, it's been five years, like how do you feel like you're different as a leader, as an operator, as a person than you were when you started this whole ordeal? 

[00:36:46] Camilla Opperman: 

I love that mentality. That's great. And it's a really great question.

I mean, I was 25 when I started this. I hardly knew who I was as a person. So there's been a lot of personal growth. First and foremost, I made so many mistakes. I mean, I think every entrepreneur makes mistakes. I completely underestimated how long it would take to build out a kitchen space. I completely underestimated how expensive it would be to build out a kitchen space.

[00:37:11] 

I completely underestimated what it would be like to you. navigate the regulatory environment. I honestly think I was a little cocky coming into it because here I was, I'd run a late night snack shack at school thinking I knew everything about restaurants or I knew something about restaurants. And then I came in and was like, Oh my gosh, the journey of a CPG brand versus a meal prep company versus a delivery concept versus a catering business.

[00:37:39] 

Vastly different. And then you can get even more granular and say, okay, this kind of cuisine versus this other kind of cuisine makes it even more different. And where they are in that life cycle makes the unique needs of those businesses very different. And so I think kind of embarrassed to say that I thought we could be this one size fits all solution for all of those different kinds of concepts.

[00:38:02] 

And only after you know, physically being open, talking with our customers as much as we have, being in the trenches, so to speak, like physically at those locations. Did I realize that the nuances between those kinds of, you know, food business or F&B concepts are great and cannot be underestimated. So that, that was, it was certainly humbling.

[00:38:25] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, it's funny because I actually wanted to ask you that because you've, you know, you didn't come from the restaurant world per se, although you had some experience obviously, but is there something that sticks out as like, there was something that you really thought you understood well, and that now five years later after doing this, you still You're like, wow, I still don't actually understand this. Now that I've been doing this for a long time. 

[00:38:49] Camilla Opperman: 

It's such a good question. I think a lot about what makes a member successful within our spaces. And I think we talked about operational efficiency. We talked about marketing. Those are both really important. But sometimes there's just like this secret sauce that makes somebody successful, whether they're a Nimbus or not, that I still haven't quite cracked.

[00:39:07] 

And so I think that's, that's been really interesting. I do think coming from Outside of the industry has been a really great asset, largely because a lot of people underestimated us and me in specific. I was 25. I'm from outside the industry. I had no idea what I was doing. And that certainly fueled the fire.

[00:39:27] 

I also think it gave it. I think when you've been entrenched in an industry for a really long time, you kind of accept the status quo as fact. And you say, okay, this has been done for the last five decades, it must be a great strategy. And I think coming from outside of the industry allowed me to come in with a fresh perspective.

[00:39:45] 

And, you know, when we were launching just as like a little story, we were launching the Lower East Side Space. The kitchen was fully built. Equipment was in place. Everything was gleaming. We were good to go and we didn't have gas yet. And the last thing to get gas was to get the fire department in to inspect our fire suppression system.

[00:40:04] 

Everyone told me that was in the industry. It takes 12 to 16 weeks. That's how it's always been. COVID's made it worse. You just have to sit back and wait. And I was like, this is crazy. There's no way I'm going to sit for another three or four months to open this space that I've already waited way too long for because of COVID.

[00:40:22] 

And so I marched to Metro Tech where the fire department sits. I somehow conned my way into the inspector floor, like past the security guard, forced the inspector. to sign off on our plans and lo and behold, we opened a week later. Oh my gosh, it's crazy. 

[00:40:37] Camilla Opperman: 

But I think that like scrappy mentality and like not taking no for an answer, that wouldn't have been the case had I come from inside the industry, because I would have just accepted how things were.

[00:40:47] 

So I think it has been a benefit in a lot of ways. 

[00:40:50] Josh Sharkey: 

A hundred percent, you know, obviously there's a lot of benefits to domain experience. It helps you move faster and, you know, with, with a lot of things, but yeah, there's so much of starting any business where if you have a new perspective and you don't have all these cognitive biases, recency bias, whatever, you know, any of those things that impact your ability to have an idea that's contrarian and right, you know, it's just very difficult if you don't have an outside perspective.

[00:41:15] 

So it really is. First of all, yeah. It's very difficult. I mean, the fact that you're able to build this not having experience with kitchen operations is pretty amazing, but it's, and just impressive, but it's also, you know, when it does work, it works really well, I think clearly, you know, which is what we're seeing here, but I love that.

[00:41:33] 

And I think this is like contrarian and right, right? This is not the way that we would think of, you know, doing things. So, I've been asking this question lately, because I give the background too often, so watch another episode of the podcast, you'll know why I ask this all the time, but I'm just gonna ask you.

[00:41:46] 

What makes you angry? Like, really angry? Like, blood boiling angry? Just, what, something that you can think of that is like, when it happens, you just get so fucking mad. 

[00:41:57] Camilla Opperman: 

It's such a good question. We actually ask it in our interview processes. 'cause I think it Oh really? Yeah. It's, it's, I think it really gives you insight into how people think you can see Yeah.

[00:42:05] 

And their values. Their values, yes. The EQ piece of how they're actually, you know, talking about it. So it's a very good question and, and I'm glad you asked it. I think kind of going back to, to people telling, you know, it drives me nuts when people categorically say no. And they don't try to get creative around how to make something work.

[00:42:23] 

Me too. There is always a way. It might be roundabout. It might be kind of janky. It might be a band aid solution. But we can figure out a way. And when people just say no, not possible and throw up their hands, that drives me absolutely up the wall. So being close minded. Yeah, being close minded. Exactly. And, and not.

[00:42:43] 

Not being scrappy, not thinking creatively about how to solve problems. And that's exactly why we ask it in the interview process because we are such a lean and scrappy team and we make shit happen when everyone else tells us it's not possible. And so yeah, it really grinds my gears. It's so good. I'm glad you asked it.

[00:43:02] Josh Sharkey: 

I'm reminding myself now to put that into our interview process. Such a good question. And it tells, it's actually very telling. And I think now thinking back at our conversation so far, it makes so much sense because so much of what you do is like, no, no, this is, this still can't work.

[00:43:17] 

How do we think, how do we make this happen in one week, not 16? So I love that. I want to go back for a second though because you know you were talking about you know the mistakes you made early on because we all make so many of them in any business that you start you know people usually see like. This cool thing and they don't realize that it's basically like 90 percent fuck ups.

[00:43:36] 

And I'm curious, like if you have any, any methods or things that you do or therapy to separate the mistakes that you make and the. the tribulations of your business from who you are as a person. 

[00:43:51] Camilla Opperman: 

Oh,that's a work in progress. We're not quite there yet. I do think the benefit of time, you know, I've been now working on this for almost five years.

[00:44:01] 

I've made mistakes every single day. And I used to get so freaked out when I would make a mistake. I would reflect on it. I wouldn't sleep. It would feel like the end of the world. But I'm I ended up pushing through and persevering and continuing on and we're still standing here. So looking back, I say, okay, well, that thing that happened a year ago that I thought was the end of the world, I overcame.

[00:44:23] 

I can overcome anything. And so I think there's been like, this is a little depressing, but a little bit of desensitization where I'm like, well, it is what it is. There's nothing really I can do about this. I think having the amazing support network that I do in, in my husband, my friends, the team.

[00:44:39] 

now has been really helpful as well because we can kind of commiserate with one another and we say, okay, well, we made it past this crazy thing that happened previously. We can continue doing that, but it's obviously a work in progress. Like I would be lying if I said I'm above it all and feeling peachy keen all day, every day.

[00:44:56] Josh Sharkey: 

It's such a necessary skill that is always a work in progress as an entrepreneur because yeah, we're constantly making these mistakes and it's hard to not, and this is our business. So when something goes wrong, it, we feel like it's, it's us. You take it so personally. Yeah, like, oh, I'm, I'm wrong, you know?

[00:45:12] 

And so my wife bought me this, uh, well, it's a picture of a quote. I have a lot of quotes around my house. It's from this stoic philosopher named Seneca and I love it. And it's actually, we have two of them now, one in my room and one downstairs. It just says, we suffer far more in imagination than in reality.

[00:45:26] 

And love that. Yeah. It was because so often we're like down and we're upset and it's like, wait a second, hold on. What's actually, what's actually wrong right now? You know, I made a mistake. Now let's, now let's move on. 

[00:45:39] Camilla Opperman: 

I also think people care about you a lot less than you think they do. Yes. Yes. It was like a little bit of like a narcissism check.

[00:45:47] 

Yeah. Oh, nobody's actually talking about me. Yeah. Or nobody thinks I'm that crazy. I'm just like in my head about it. And being able to kind of move beyond that, uh, has been a process.

[00:45:56] Josh Sharkey: 

I know. By the way, that always, I mean, I don't know about you. I'm always like having to check myself. Like, hey man, Totally.

[00:46:06] 

I'm not that special. Yeah, well, you know. Well, I'm going to sort of shift a little bit, because we already talked about managing mental health. We can talk about that more if you want. I find that like, especially now with kids, I have to be maniacal about how I manage my time. And I have all of these, all of these sort of tools and systems and my assistant, everybody just trying to help me make sure that like, I fit, you know, 150 hours of work in, in 50 or 60. Do you have any like tools or processes that you use for  time management?

[00:46:33] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think actually my, my life doing gymnastics and being so stretched for time growing up, when I graduated, I had so much more time. Um, so that, that experience and, and effectively growing up with no time at all was very helpful.

[00:46:47] 

It sounds pretty antiquated, but I use the notes app on my phone. A lot of people laugh. I've tried monday. com. I've tried Asana. I've tried all of these fancy, you know, Trello task management tools. None of them have worked. The notes app is spectacular. So I have a running list and it's in three buckets.

[00:47:07] 

The first is things I need to accomplish today. That's the urgent stuff. The meetings that I know I've committed to, there's stuff that needs to get done tomorrow, and then there's longer term stuff. I find if. I try to plan out, like, I'm going to accomplish this in two weeks on a Tuesday. It's very hard to stick to those timelines.

[00:47:25] 

And so I have those three buckets that are much more immediate. So today, tomorrow, and then longer term. And every morning I look at that list. I reorder and reprioritize what I'm meant to do. And then I post it on Slack for my whole team to see. And actually the whole team does this now. Where I say, this is all I'm going to accomplish today.

[00:47:44] 

This is what I said I was going to accomplish yesterday. And by the way, I had to shift this one thing because of whatever. And it just increases that transparency. And also, because I do it first thing, it really keeps me on track. I know, okay, I have these 10 things I must do or these two things I must do.

[00:47:59] 

Everything else can be shifted if I need. And I'm going to tell the world, the entire team, what I'm doing. Yeah. So it's almost embarrassing if you don't get those tasks done. And I don't log off until those tasks are complete, obviously, if they're urgent.

[00:48:11] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of putting the, you know, putting it out there and then you create that pressure.

[00:48:19] 

I think I've been doing that since the minute I left my, my home and just started in professional. I remember when I was like, just got to New York and I was cooking and I would told everybody. I'm flying to Mexico. I started telling all my friends, I'm flying to Mexico, I'm gonna go spend a bunch of time in Oaxaca.

[00:48:34] 

I don't have any money to do this or anything, but I just told everybody. And finally, like, everyone was asking, When are you going to Mexico? I bought a ticket and went to Mexico. Same thing with like, you know, so many things. If you create that social pressure, it's such a great way to, you know, to force yourself into those things.

[00:48:49] Camilla Opperman: 

It's also a really great way to clear blockers. So part of what I do is say, Hey, I have this hold up because I need something from X, Y, Z person, or I'm really struggling with this. And I post it and then the team can react and clear those blockers at the beginning of my day. And it just keeps everyone in sync.

[00:49:04] 

And yeah, it creates the, creates the social pressure to, to get. 

[00:49:08] Josh Sharkey: 

Do you schedule time for strategy? I'm just thinking. 

[00:49:11] Camilla Opperman: 

Calendar blocking is also a big tool for me. Yeah. I block. I live and breathe by my calendar. Yeah, same. So I say, okay, I'm transiting now, I'm walking my dog now, you know, I'm doing my deep work from two to four, nobody bother me, don't schedule a meeting during this time.

[00:49:26] 

I find it very hard and that's part of what I do in the morning when I put my task list out there. I then actually schedule the time to. do those specific tasks. I find when you're constantly context switching, or if you have a hundred items that you need to complete in a given week or a given day, it's very difficult and overwhelming.

[00:49:45] 

So time blocking, it gives me this sense of control to be able to accomplish what I've set out to do.

[00:49:50] Josh Sharkey: 

I totally agree. It was so eye opening. I use this app now called Reclaim that I have. to stop talking about unless they start paying me because I talk about it all the time. I'm like

[00:49:57] Camilla Opperman: 

This is your, this is your sign reclaim.

[00:50:01] Josh Sharkey: 

I was looking for something like this for a long time because I'm the same thing. Like if it's on my calendar, it's not happening. And I don't know if anybody right now that has a to do list, if you look at your to do list and the amount of time it takes to do each of those things isn't the amount of time that you have in your calendar. It's not happening. 

[00:50:17] Camilla Opperman: 

No. And it's very stressful and you feel bad about yourself. Totally. 

[00:50:20] Josh Sharkey: 

So it has to be in the calendar. I love Reclaim because it actually, it uses AI to shift my calendar. So I have blocks for strategy, blocks for partnership outreach, blocks for just mindfulness, five minutes to think, blocks for content.

[00:50:34] 

And it used to be that I would put that in my calendar at, you know, noon on a Thursday or something. And that's when this happens. And it was me first and then my assistant. If you're driving both of us nuts, like, like, Each time it'd be like, Oh yeah, well, this is really important. So we're going to have to, and sometimes it was like, I actually needed that slot for an investor or a customer that like, that's the only time that they could talk.

[00:50:55] 

And I want to make sure I, so now it just moves everything around and still make sure I keep the block, but it will move it up or back or to a different time. So I always make sure that I have, you know, two, two hour blocks a week of strategy and two, two hour blocks a week of content and whatever else. And, and I don't have to worry about it. I'm like, I know that no matter what, it's, 

[00:51:12] Camilla Opperman: 

That's amazing. I mean, it's like going back to the SOPs, but being flexible on those SOPs and constantly iterating, like have the process, have the parameters in place, but allow there to be iteration within a week. I need to check out this product.

[00:51:24] Josh Sharkey: 

Oh, you should check it out. Each of them, you create these habits and you've just sold another customer. Have you, you can create priority levels. So like one will. If something has priority over another, it will sort of shift it and I'm not going to talk about this app anymore because they need to start paying me.

[00:51:37] 

I literally posted about it on LinkedIn. I've talked about it twice now on the show, so I'm done. 

[00:51:42] Camilla Opperman: 

Make a calendar block to reach out to them to get this paid sponsorship. Yeah, I think that's important. 

[00:51:47] Josh Sharkey: 

Okay, so we talked about five years ago. I don't know if you do sort of future thinking or like the 11 star experience type thing or, but have you thought about what is, what this business is in five years?

[00:51:59] Camilla Opperman: 

I have quite a lot. It's funny if I look back at my 2019 self, I said I'd have a hundred of these kitchens by now. Oh yeah. We have four. So really hit the mark there. But you know, in all seriousness, I do think we, We'll have a presence in every major metro eventually. I want to be really measured about that growth.

[00:52:19] 

I think a lot of people who raised a lot of money expanded way too quickly and ended up spreading themselves too thin and opened a bunch of sites around the country and then couldn't manage them effectively. So we're going to grow as quickly as we can while still maintaining the quality of our on the ground operations and the quality of the member experience.

[00:52:38] 

We're expanding to a new market. Soon, in Q2, announcement coming soon, which is very exciting. It'll be our first facility outside of New York City. Exciting. Yeah, we're very excited about that. And I do see the opportunity to have these in every major city around the U.S. and have between three and ten, depending on the market size.

[00:52:58] 

So continuing to grow our physical footprint, and then I also think continuing to deepen the member experience and make it better for our customers. So once they come into the Nimbus facilities, what are the services we can provide to keep the customers within our four walls and make them successful? I love that.

[00:53:17] 

Yeah. So there's a, there's a lot of that we can do there. We're still kind of in the, you know, we built out our 2024 plan, but we did it for six months because we're moving so quickly and so much changes. You know, I have my H1 plan. Yeah. Yeah. And then in a few months I'll do H2 because we're kind of in that hyper growth phase where things change so quickly.

[00:53:36] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. We do that. We do the same thing. Do you leverage the OKR process or, or a different way of setting? 

[00:53:42] Camilla Opperman: 

This is embarrassing, but no, we've tried. 

[00:53:45] Josh Sharkey: 

And I've done it now at three companies. Yep. And Every single time failed. I think I'm actually working on writing a, uh, an article about it works now for us, but it is 

[00:53:56] Camilla Opperman: Give me your tips. It’s so hard.

[00:53:57] Josh Sharkey: 

It's a, I mean, it's a, it's a long conversation, but, um, it takes a lot of work and you also have to be the right time to do it because if you're. Company is shifting a lot. It actually sometimes doesn't make sense. 

[00:54:08] Camilla Opperman: 

No, it doesn't. I mean, we were on my honeymoon this past summer and I found out that these two facilities were coming up for grabs.

[00:54:15] 

We negotiated that deal, moved and moved into the spaces in six weeks. You can't plan for that. You can't reflect that in OKRs and then obviously the entire company strategy shifted. Same with our expansion to this new market. It's been a very quick process. And I think we're just. Moving at a speed right now where it doesn't necessarily make sense.

[00:54:33] Josh Sharkey: 

It might not make sense. Have you, have you read Measure What Matters? Yes. Okay. So at least you've done that. You've done that work. so.

[00:54:37] Camilla Opperman: 

I think it's important eventually, but right now we've, we've tried and it's just never worked. It's good to know when it's just not the right time. 

[00:54:43] Josh Sharkey: 

You know, one thing that you said that I really loved, and I don't remember where you, it was an article, some interview, and I think it was recently, you were talking about operational scalability and I'm, I'm like, I've realized recently that like, Creating scale is sort of my mission in life.

[00:54:59] 

Like, I love to help people scale their vision. And it's why I do so many things. Scale their recipes, scale their business, you know, those things. I'm kind of obsessed with it. And you said something that like really was so poignant and I had never thought about before, as it relates to growing a business and scaling a business.

[00:55:15] 

Because you said part of operational scalability is also the ability to scale back, to dial back. And I love that. How do you think about that as you're like growing this business? 

[00:55:25] Camilla Opperman: 

I think being able to admit when you've made a mistake or you've gone in the wrong direction is just as important as forging ahead and, and, you know, trying new things.

[00:55:34] 

An example, we got a lot of pressure in the early days and particularly when we were trying to raise money from potential investors saying that we need to, to, to build a tech product to help us scale. So we built out a booking and billing app, cost a lot of money, took a lot of time. We're not a tech company.

[00:55:52] 

We're an infrastructure business. We did not have the resources to do that effectively, and our members hated the product. We rolled it out, and a year later, we scrapped it. You know, and everyone was saying, this is exactly what you need to scale. Well, turns out there's a great off the shelf product, The Food Corridor.

[00:56:08] 

that we can use. We used them when we launched. It was perfectly wonderful then. We moved over to the app. Everyone hated it. We scrapped it. Now we're back on the food corridor and we're sticking with them. So I think the ability to, you know, recognize those mistakes and scale back some of those bets is really important.

[00:56:24] 

And particularly before you pay a lot of money to do that. I think also just in terms of operational scalability, understanding that just because something works in one market, like here in New York City, we have our operation down pat. That doesn't mean that's going to work in L.A. or Chicago or Denver or wherever you're going to go next.

[00:56:42] 

And understanding the nuances of individual markets is very important. Especially, I mean, even just thinking about the Department of Health, it's the Wild West in some of these other markets. It's completely different. What they look for is very different than what they look for here in New York. And being able to take the foundation of what you've built in, in market one, take like 80 percent of that and then iterate on that 20 percent is also really important.

[00:57:05] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And it's so funny. We opened, um, a spot in Chicago and with a concept that worked, but it was just crushing it in New York. Identical concept, Chicago completely failed. Transplanted it over there, and yeah, people are different, 

[00:57:21] Camilla Opperman: 

Customers are different, like so much, everything. 

[00:57:24] Josh Sharkey: 

Okay, so, in thinking about like five years from now, maybe if you had like unlimited resources and time. Somehow you broke the laws of physics and what could happen in 10 years could happen in a year. What would you do with this business? 

[00:57:40] Camilla Opperman: 

I love this question. It's so much fun. This also I think should be an interview question. You've got my wheels turning there. I think that's a good kind of exercise in people's creativity.

[00:57:50] 

If we had unlimited resources, I would very much focus them on building out the member experience. So going back to those unique Who's the member? So the customers that cook in our spaces, we call them members, we like to be community oriented. You know, if you look at our, our member base right now, it's about 20 percent delivery concepts, 20 percent catering, 20 percent CPG, 20 percent bakers, and then the rest is this mixed bag of R&D and meal prep and chefs doing pop up and, you know, there are a lot of different concepts there.

[00:58:17] 

I would love to have one person staffed on the team, focused on each of those customer cohorts. What can we do at Nimbus to make the delivery businesses successful? What can we do to make the CPG brand successful, the catering concepts successful, and have the resources in house to improve their experience?

[00:58:36] 

You know, I think we figured out the infrastructure side, but like, what are the services we can layer on top of that to make coming to Nimbus something that's not just a, you know, stop gap while they're building out their own brick and mortar? But something that's, you know, a solution for them long term.

[00:58:51] 

So we'd love to build out our member experience team. We have somebody who's overseeing that right now. He's wonderful. There's just too much work for one person. So I would have a whole army of people focused on that. And then I would have more kitchens. I think part of why we've grown quote unquote more slowly

[00:59:08] 

is because we are a super lean team. There are seven of us overseeing these four locations. We just haven't had the head count to move as quickly as, as demand would point to, you know, we sold out of our spaces, our long term kitchens pretty quickly at the first two locations, which is why we felt great about taking on facilities three and four.

[00:59:28] 

So, You know, if we had unlimited resources, I would just have a bunch of these, but I'd have enough people in place to make sure that we could maintain that operational product and, and the operational efficiency that we have. 

[00:59:39] Josh Sharkey: 

I'm going to push you a little bit more. Unlimited. Go ahead. Unlimited. So like the most magical experience for one of these folks, they come in and, you know, they see the space they want and tomorrow it's.

[00:59:52] 

It just suddenly exists for them, completely, you know, specked out with their equipment, and the shelves are, you know, like, are there things that, like, if you think about, maybe not even realistic, but maybe they could become realistic, are there things that you, like, wish could just happen?

[01:00:10] Camilla Opperman: 

I mean, yes, I have so many things I wish could happen. Give me a couple. Okay. I look at our sales process right now. When our long term businesses come in and want to run space for a year, two years, we'll customize the kitchens for them. There's definitely a way to make that process more efficient where we can really easily visualize what the kitchens are going to look like, very clearly tell them how long it's going to take to turn the kitchen.

[01:00:33] 

Right now it's kind of finger in the air and we're like mocking things up on Canva ourselves. It's very janky. Yeah. Yeah. Would love to professionalize that experience. Would love to streamline the customer, the member experience, as I said. Would love to actually have services beyond, you know, once you're at Nimbus, like a Nimbus Downtown Brooklyn or a Nimbus Lower East Side, maybe there's a suburban model where these members want to expand outside of these hyper dense locations.

[01:01:00] Josh Sharkey: 

By the way, please bring this to the Northern Westchester. Desperately need. Desperately need. 

[01:01:03] Camilla Opperman: 

Yes. You know, there are shared kitchens up there. No, I mean this. Bring this. This specific model. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think there's so many ways we can go.

[01:01:12] Josh Sharkey: 

You talked about the warehouse, right? 

[01:01:14] Camilla Opperman: 

Totally. We could really double down and have Nimbuses specifically for CPG operators.

[01:01:20] 

We could have Nimbuses specifically for delivery only businesses. We could have turnkey event products where we say, Hey, you're a catering business. You do tastings. We'll put that on for you so you don't have to worry about that on top of not worrying about the infrastructure. I think there are so many directions we can go.

[01:01:37] 

I definitely suffer from shiny object syndrome where I have an idea and I'm like, great, let's do it. I get super excited. So part of, you know, this journey is making sure we stay focused and solve problems that our members actually have. Yeah. Like, we've had ideas and our members are like, we don't need that.

[01:01:55] 

Don't go down that route. Yeah. So I like, I like the pie in the sky thinking, but also want to make sure that it's, 

[01:02:01] Josh Sharkey: 

I find it's, uh, I'm the same way, by the way. I try to really push those things down. But every once in a while, I find it's really helpful to, I talked about this, I think, the last couple of weeks as well.

[01:02:11] 

Like, I love the Airbnb 11 star experience. You know, they're playing out what it would, what would this magical experience be like? And usually what ends up happening is you think about like the crazy thing that it just seems impossible. But then you find some little nugget of like, Oh, actually, you know what?

[01:02:25] 

We could probably do something, you know, small that that could accomplish a piece of that. Like after I got done with the with this tour and we sat down, the first thing I thought was, I wonder if you could. 

[01:02:37] Camilla Opperman: 

Oh, that is a great idea. The incubation piece and whether you take equity or, you know, whatever that might be, I think that's a really great idea and definitely something we'd be interested in.

[01:02:48]

The reason we haven't gone down that route just yet is we're typically operating a little bit further downstream where the members are already established and don't necessarily need that funding. Absolutely. If we could build out real incubation services where we can say, Hey, you're starting your hummus company.

[01:03:07] 

You've never worked in food before. Let us walk you through the process of how to incorporate your business, how to file your taxes, what a PNL even is. And by the way, we're going to take a piece of the pie and help you be successful. That would be great. It's just, I think very operationally intensive.

[01:03:23] 

But if I had unlimited resources, it would be fantastic.

[01:03:25] Josh Sharkey: 

There you go. And I mean, I even think about there are restaurants that, you know, that crush it, right? And maybe they have a couple products like, you know, PJ Calapa's like Bomba, you know, his little like antipasto thing. You could just go to a restaurant and say, Hey, you know what?

[01:03:40] 

We can package that for you. You don't do anything. We'll take care of the of the production and the distribution and. All the rest, and you know, I feel like that's a huge opportunity too, where if you start creating more of these, I'm sorry, I'm just kind of like this. 

[01:03:52] Camilla Opperman: 

No,I love, I love the idea. And I think, you know, ultimately, we will move to a place where we vertically integrate like that.

[01:03:59] 

I think part of the downfall of a lot of the players is they did that prematurely. 

[01:04:03] Josh Sharkey: 

Yes, yeah, I love that you're taking it slow. 

[01:04:04] Camilla Opperman: 

Yeah, it's, you know, running a commercial kitchen is very operationally intensive. It takes a lot of time and energy and resources. And the competitors of ours that went out and then they said, Hey, we're actually going to start virtual brands as well.

[01:04:17] 

And we're going to build out tech, you know, commercial real estate or commercial kitchens, tech and running a restaurant. Very, very different businesses with very different skill sets. And I think a lot of the people in the space who tried to do that too soon. Yeah. And so we've been very methodical about and measured about that growth, but that's not to say that there isn't room for that in the future.

[01:04:39] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Well, it's clear. And let's bring it back to reality now. Back to Earth. To close things up. Is there anything else that you think I haven't asked you that would be interesting to discuss or that we didn't talk about about Nimbus or anything you just want to share? 

[01:04:53] Camilla Opperman: 

Well, it's interesting because most of the conversations I've had in the last couple of months are about the death of ghost kitchens.

[01:04:59] 

There has been a lot of negative press around this ghost kitchen industry, and a lot of the conversations I have are around like, Hey, this model does work if executed correctly. And you know, here's how we're different. And so I think that's something I would want to impart on your audience is, you know, Commercial kitchens and, and shared commercial kitchens have been around for decades.

[01:05:21] 

It was just a very, very fragmented and mom and pop industry until recently when ghost kitchens came onto the stage. Ghost kitchens are only focused on delivery. They're kind of ignoring all these other ways or modes of distribution for food. But when executed correctly, that kind of combo between the old school shared commissaries and the newer school ghost kitchens, the model really does work.

[01:05:42] 

They can make money for the operator like Nimbus, we're profitable. They can make money for the businesses that are operating within the four walls. We've had members within our space for literally three years since we launched, and it's a really viable way to scale a business, particularly when you have this community facing aspect, and you can get in front of those end consumers.

[01:06:02] 

So I would like to formally say that, sure, ghost kitchens are dead, but co Nimbus has taken is alive and kicking and just continuing to grow.

[01:06:12] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, being here today, I can, I can attest to that. This was awesome. This was so much fun. Yeah. Thank you.

[01:06:21] 

Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z dot com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show. I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros, and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[01:06:45] 

Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.