“My followers were from all over the country, so I was not able to capitalize on those numbers in our location in Brooklyn,” she explains. Thanks to her fame plus good public relations and social media management, Hall had 150,000 Facebook followers by the time her restaurant opened - but that didn’t translate into diners flocking to the restaurant. But not so much in the middle of winter when that wind is whipping off the water.” “We were like, ‘Oh my god this is going to be amazing! We're going to make all kinds of money!’ But it was by the water and a 15 minute walk from the subway, which was maybe fine on a really nice day. “Our rent was less than $3,000,” she says. Location, location, location: After experiencing major sticker shock in Manhattan, Hall and her team were lured to Brooklyn by cheaper rent. They don't know how much things cost.” Then there was also the issue of fulfilling all the Kickstarter rewards: People who donated as little as $10 were promised a boatload of swag, from cookie mix to free meals once the restaurant opened.Ģ. The people don't know that it takes time. She also acknowledges that they launched the fundraising campaign much too early - nearly two years before the restaurant actually opened - which left backers wondering what was being done with their money: “So, we had all these people basically asking us, ‘What's up? Are you stealing our money?’. “It's an understatement to tell you that I got beat up by the social media community for using Kickstarter,” Hall said. Hall’s fame also meant the restaurant was able to raise more than $250,000 from fans via Kickstarter, but she later came to regret taking the crowdfunding route, saying, “How we funded the restaurant is really what ultimately led to our downfall.” Some fans were outraged by the idea of a celebrity soliciting donations from fans to open a restaurant. As she explains, “There are limitations to being on The Chew in self-promoting.” Hall couldn’t plug her restaurant every time she was on TV, nor could she constantly promote it on social media under the terms of her ABC contract. Though she’s a daytime TV host who’s broadcast into millions of homes across the country five days a week on The Chew, that didn’t translate into free publicity for Carla’s Southern Kitchen. Fame doesn’t guarantee success: “In fact, my previous success made it harder in some cases,” Hall told the audience at MUFSO. She also promised that she’ll be back with another restaurant concept before long.ġ. Despite her fame and fortune, despite the 20,000 cookbooks she’s sold, despite the 12 million people that watch The Chew each week, Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen was a failure.ĭuring her keynote address at MUFSO, Hall gave a post-mortem on her restaurant, examining the reasons why it shuttered - and the lessons she’s learned along the way. “It took us two and a half years until we opened our doors, and then we were only open for a year,” she said with a tinge of sadness in her voice. “Everyone assumed that my first restaurant's success was a foregone conclusion,” Hall said recently on stage at Nation’s Restaurant’s News MUFSO conference.īut that wasn’t the case: In May 2016, she opened the fast-casual Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen in Brooklyn to great fanfare - and the restaurant closed for good last August. Runway model-turned-caterer-turned-TV star Carla Hall has become a household name, thanks to a stint on season five of Top Chef and her work on The Chew, the Emmy Award-winning culinary variety show on ABC she hosts alongside Mario Batali, Michael Symon, and Clinton Kelly.īut as Hall found out the hard way, fame doesn’t necessarily lead to success in the restaurant business.
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