How Aspiring Meals Distributors Land a Life-Altering Spot at Smorgasburg LA

On a sunny weekday morning in early November, Smorgasburg common supervisor Zach Brooks arrives at Shlap Muan, a restaurant tucked away in a quiet strip mall in Lengthy Seaside. He’s there to satisfy the house owners, Hawk and Sophia Tea, and discuss concerning the family-run restaurant, which focuses on Cambodian-style rooster wings, but in addition boasts Khmer Chinese language dishes like pork broth noodles and shrimp fried rice. The informal, counter-service restaurant, which opened in 2020, occupies a tiny area with only a handful of tables.

Hawk Tea brings out a sampler of his crispy wings, some dusted in dried lemongrass and pepper, and others slathered in a spicy peanut sauce. Brooks, sporting a 5 o’clock shadow, baseball cap, and hoodie, is informal about the entire expertise. When Hawk asks him what he thinks of the wings, Brooks says, “It’s clearly scrumptious. You realize it’s scrumptious. You don’t must ask and you realize.” He assures Hawk he isn’t there to scrutinize his meals and says he is aware of Shlap Muan already has one thing distinctive to supply.

Only a week prior, Brooks had posted on Instagram that Smorgasburg was in search of new distributors for 2023. The Teas have been one in every of 100 candidates. Whereas Smorgasburg accepts new distributors all 12 months lengthy, the months of January and July are particularly busy as a result of these are the occasions when older distributors sometimes filter out and contemporary ones are available in. Throughout these months, Brooks will meet with wherever from one to 5 potential distributors per day, operating the gamut from dwelling cooks to skilled sous cooks. Not like Shlap Muan, a lot of the candidates don’t have already got an current restaurant, so Brooks will meet for interviews and tastings at their properties, at Smorgasburg, and even on the road, in the event that they’re merchandising.

Getting the possibility to promote meals at Smorgasburg generally is a life-changing expertise. A mean of 8,000 to 12,000 visitors stroll by means of the gates each Sunday on the Alameda Produce Market, and numerous distributors have used their stints at Smorgasburg LA as a stepping stone to everlasting places. Over the previous couple of months, Brooks pored over purposes. On January 8, he welcomed practically a dozen contemporary ones, together with Champignon Eats, Shlap Muan, and Quarantine Pizza.

Brooks says these conferences aren’t what folks suppose they’re. “Above all, we actually delight ourselves on being an incubator for brand new companies,” he says. “We would like all of our distributors to achieve success, so we undergo this complete course of not as a result of we need to move judgment on anyone. It’s much less about, can we love this vendor or not? It’s really extra about ensuring that earlier than we add someone to the market, they perceive what they’re stepping into.”

Earlier than the conferences, Brooks says he and his workforce vet potential distributors by asking about dishes and reviewing meals images, social media presences, and backstories. One of many issues they’re most conscientious about just isn’t bringing in one thing that someone else is already promoting. “The toughest half [about choosing] is we don’t wish to have an excessive amount of overlap within the distributors, as a result of we would like all people to do properly and we would like all people to generate profits,” he says. “We don’t need to create a dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest state of affairs.”

When Brooks lived in New York Metropolis within the late aughts, he ran a preferred meals weblog referred to as Midtown Lunch, the place he ultimately related with the house owners of the unique Smorgasburg, Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby. After Brooks moved to LA in 2010, Butler and Demby would come go to and he’d take them on meals crawls all through the town. After they bought the chance to open an LA market in 2015, they requested Brooks to assist curate the meals lineup. Ultimately, they requested Brooks to handle the complete market.

When Smorgasburg LA opened in June 2016, it began with a mixture of 100 meals and procuring distributors, with that first Sunday bringing in 10,000 folks. “We bought a ton of press, however six months in, identical to any new meals enterprise, we have been struggling and never getting that quantity of individuals each single week,” he says. The variety of distributors shrunk and grew over the subsequent few years, however has stabilized over time to a manageable variety of about 60 meals distributors per week.

Brooks, who works full-time with Smorgasburg LA, is a part of a small workforce working with him in operations, advertising, social media, and partnerships. Whereas he’s the one one that drives round scouting the brand new distributors, he leans on his workforce to assist resolve who makes the ultimate lower.

At Shlap Muan, as Brooks eats the rooster wings, he chats with the Teas concerning the logistics of taking part in a market like Smorgasburg, discussing the whole lot from the occasion’s prohibition on mills to the lease for every 10-by-20-foot meals area ($300 per week). Whereas distributors aren’t locked into long-term leases, Brooks stresses that if somebody does signal on, they need to decide to exhibiting up each Sunday, rain or shine. (Typically that comes at a price, as Eater LA reported in September.)

There’s an plain Instagrammable facet to most of the distributors’ dishes on the market. “Each one that involves Smorgasburg is coming for one thing they noticed on Instagram and so they need that,” says Brooks. “Whether or not it’s Lobsterdamus or Shrimp Daddy or whoever, they need that one factor, after which they could see different issues and take a look at them.”

Shrimp Daddy (which dropped out of the market final 12 months to give attention to its first everlasting location) had halved pineapple shells full of saucy garlic shrimp, and scoops of macaroni salad and white rice. Broad Road Oyster Co.’s lobster rolls are topped with dollops of caviar, and Evil Cooks has a vertical spit layered with charred octopus tentacles.

“Not all of the meals needs to be Instagrammable,” Brooks says, “however it’s good to make the very best model of one thing.”

Distributors which have discovered success at Smorgasburg, like Tacos 1986, Wanderlust Creamery, and Broad Road Oyster Co., have discovered totally different causes to remain at the marketplace for so lengthy. When Victor Delgado and Jorge “Pleasure” Alvarez-Tostado of Tacos 1986 first launched their Tijuana-style tacos to Brooks, it was only a seed of an thought. Since merchandising on the market commonly since 2019, enterprise has skyrocketed to the purpose the place Tacos 1986 has six places from Westwood to Pasadena, with two extra on the way in which within the subsequent few months. It continues to promote at Smorgasburg.

“There’s no strategy to measure how Smorgasburg grew our enterprise, but it surely’s astronomical,” says Delgado. “The issues that occurred solely occurred as a result of we have been at Smorgasburg each Sunday.” He provides that the model will get publicity to meals writers, cooks, and celebrities, who make their strategy to the market on weekends, and that’s helped his enterprise immensely.

When June Quan, one of many co-owners of Shrimp Daddy, utilized for Smorgasburg six years in the past, she remembers how nervous she and her companions have been to have Brooks on their house rooftop sampling their meals. “We have been prepping endlessly the weeks main as much as [the tasting] simply ensuring that the whole lot was excellent,” says Quan. “We have been actually excited to have him strive it, and he sat down and ended up consuming the entire thing.”

Smorgasburg was the primary place Shrimp Daddy bought meals to the general public. Quan credit Brooks for encouraging her workforce to check out different ideas, like their Junbi matcha drinks. That enterprise has since been franchised, and there are a number of places round america, together with in Hawaii, New Jersey, and Texas.

Adrienne Borlongan, co-owner of Wanderlust Creamery, already had an ice cream store in Tarzana in 2015 previous to beginning at Smorgasburg. She says Smorgasburg put her model on the map and she or he now has a complete of six places round LA, together with her first Orange County outpost slated to open in March 2023.

“On prime of that, now we have an occasions and catering aspect that was born out of Smorgasburg,” says Borlongan. “We’re principally booked each Friday and Saturday on the calendar with weddings and personal occasions, and it’s as a result of they discovered us at Smorgasburg.”

Again at Shlap Muan, Brooks finally ends up his assembly with the Teas. He reiterates that he loves what they do and says he’s going to go away it of their court docket to contact him in the event that they’re nonetheless occupied with merchandising at Smorgasburg. As Brooks steps out into the strip mall car parking zone, he contemplates his subsequent meals journey and heads off to Gusto Bread in Lengthy Seaside.

Smorgasburg takes place on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 777 Alameda Road, Downtown LA.