Ann Arbor, MI | Korean Restaurant | Monthly Supper Club Subscription

‍

Key Results

‍

• A working test kitchen for holiday menus, plus Chef Ji Hye's forthcoming cookbook
• Deepened regular relationships, with personal touches that educate and inspire guest loyalty
• A “personal assistant” for the club - Table22 handles reminders, customer questions, and logistics

‍

What her grandmother would buy

‍

Chef Ji Hye Kim didn't set out to run a restaurant. She grew up in Seoul, studied political science and economics at the University of Michigan, and spent years in hospital accounting before she walked away from it. She trained across Zingerman's Community of Businesses and at the Rome Sustainable Food Project, then ran an Asian street food cart for four years to test the concept before committing to a storefront. Miss Kim opened in 2016, and has since brought her four James Beard Award semifinalist nods and a place on Food & Wine's 2021 Best New Chefs list.

‍

Now she’s proud to say Miss Kim runs on a triple bottom line: good food, good service, good finance. But the food part comes down to one image she carries with her. "I just imagine, what if my grandmother was cooking here," she says. "What if she went to the farmers market? She's not going to try to import expensive vegetables from Korea. She's going to try to haggle the farmers for the best prices in season." 

‍

Ji Hye channels that instinct (without the haggling, she clarifies), building a menu rooted in Korean tradition and dictated by whatever Michigan farmers are pulling out of the ground that week: root vegetables and brassicas through the long cold season, then a rush of ramps, nettles, asparagus, corn, and heirloom tomatoes once spring finally breaks.

‍

‍

A different setting to share the food

‍

Miss Kim's Table22 club started the way a lot of good ideas from 2020 did: out of necessity. "During the height of the pandemic, we were looking for ways to share our food in different ways," Ji Hye says. Table22 gave the restaurant a new channel for revenue and, just as important to her, a way to keep her cooks working safely when dining rooms across the state were closed. “I always remember that that was hugely helpful,” she says.

‍

What kept it running long after indoor dining returned was something more structural. A restaurant menu has to be consistent, which leaves little room for one-off, feast-style specials or the kind of quick holiday celebration a home cook can throw together on a whim. The subscription became the outlet for exactly that. 

‍

Some months it's a big occasion like the Harvest Moon Festival. Other months it's something smaller and stranger to an American audience, like Black Day, the Korean holiday where singles mark April 14th by eating black bean noodles. Miss Kim built a menu around jjajangmyeon and sweet and sour chicken for it. "It's not a special that we're going to put on here because we're rooted in tradition and all," Ji Hye says, "but it's a way to have a little fun and share our Korean culture."

‍

The unofficial test kitchen

‍

With a subscription, the food doesn't get eaten right away like it does in the restaurant. Ji Hye has to plan for a meal that might not be enjoyed for even a couple of days. "You sort of have to be a little bit of a cultural ambassador and a little bit like a cooking teacher," she says. Every month's menu is chosen for how well it holds and reheats days later, then written up with instructions simple enough to recreate at home on a stovetop, in an oven, or in an air fryer, since not every subscriber's kitchen looks the same.

‍

That discipline has turned into an unplanned benefit: a running rehearsal for the cookbook she's been working on. "It's a good practice for my future cookbook," she says with a laugh. Every time she gets positive subscriber feedback, she knows one more recipe already works.

‍

“There's a lot of room for customization. You just need to think outside the box and figure out what works for your team and the menu. It doesn't have to look like anybody else's, or even mine.”

— Ji Hye Kim, Chef/Owner, Miss Kim

‍

Table22 carries the parts of the operation that would otherwise fall entirely on Ji Hye. "Technically I could run this club on my own, but I'm a small business owner. I have to do every little thing myself," she says. Table22 keeps her organized, reminds her when menus need to go out, and fields customer questions before routing them back to her. "It's been like having my own personal assistant." 

‍

‍

Stories the members love

‍

When asked about rewarding member feedback, Ji Hye brings up a subscriber who's been with the club for over a year. He was on his fourteenth meal when he emailed the Miss Kim team unprompted to say how much he'd been enjoying the stories behind each dish, the food itself, and having enough left over for a second meal.

‍

She’s seen overall that guests respond most to the storytelling that comes with each box. When one month's menu featured bibimbap, Ji Hye sent members a map of Korea which depicted its regional variations, from a crispy potato-and-rice version out of the mountains to a stone bowl version built for cast iron at home. It was “really well received,” and a fun way to educate and deepen the meaning behind her food.

‍

Building forward

‍

Her advice to another operator considering a club is simple. "It may take a little bit to get used to, because you do have to make room for it. It's not in your usual day-to-day schedule," she says. "But once you set up the system and really utilize the help from the Table22 team, it's like clockwork. And it provides an extra engagement with your regulars that is different than just coming to the dining room."

‍

That's exactly the bet Ji Hye is making again with her second restaurant. She's preparing to bring the model to Little Kim, her all-vegetarian concept right next door to Miss Kim, with its own Table22 club in the works. And somewhere in between menus, she's still chipping away at that cookbook, with a test kitchen that's already been quietly building the recipes for it, one holiday at a time.

‍

Our platform, your stories. Welcome to the Club.

‍