Today we’d like to introduce you to Cristiano Azevedo.
Cristiano, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
What Soup Miami started in January 2020 between myself and Luisa Lopez, my girlfriend and partner, from the kitchen of our Midtown apartment where we start to make a couple soups for neighbors. I’ve always had soup in my life, either from my humble roots in mom’s cooking where soup would always be present like any other Portuguese family or in my personal cookings once I moved on my own. Started hospitality when I was 15, my career had me move for management and consulting of fine dining restaurants in cities like Porto, New York, London, and now Miami (since 2018), and in cities as busy as these, the soup was an always a good way of eating/cooking quick and also staying healthy. Upon moving in with Luisa, she started taking soups for her offices (she’s a Dental Hygienist), which became very popular, and so did amongst our neighbors. A little push from Luisa and that was how the company started.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has been a happy road, not always smooth, but certainly with a lot of lessons. There is not enough experience that prepares you to run your own business, and in retrospect, I think we took all the right steps. We gave a lot of soup away, to everybody, as we were confident that if people tried them, they would love them, which they did! We started with a couple different soups and quickly understood that selling soups was not enough, so we worked a lot of hours in selling an experience too; that’s why so much work on our choice of flavors, timings, products, etc.
On a logistical perspective, it was very difficult for a couple that had recently moved together to also work side by side and inside the house. Luisa had no background in hospitality and I didn’t have experience in managing a relationship so it was two months of a lot of learnings for both of us. In many interviews, I laugh and say that has definitely been a love story. While these months passed, we quickly jumped from making 20 soups to 200, which boosted the morale and prompted us to delegate and work better every day.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the What Soup Miami story. Tell us more about the business.
What Soup Miami specializes in homemade soups with the freshest ingredients available. We take a common and humble dish to a whole other level by cooking soups that are subtle yet creative with a focus in worldwide gastronomy as we a cook a soup from a different country every week. As of now, we’re solely focused on making great soups, although we’ve been discussing complementing the product (with either savory or sweet). Most of what it makes us unique is the proximity to the consumer and the variety of soups we make (3-5 each week, we’ve done over 40 recipes).
One of the things that make us proud is our social mission, either through food donations to charitable companies (or the homeless community, which we don’t post about it), and also being a company with almost 0 waste. The type of scheduling/operation we have (mostly all paper supplies) makes it for a company that has little to no waste, which is a problem that I’ve seen across properties worldwide.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Over the next 5-10, most likely, we will see a change in consumer behavior, which is already happened, mostly because of Covid. Most consumers are gearing towards a more fast-casual experience if not pick-up all together as they don’t want to spend hours in a restaurant or closed space. There’s an increase in the vegan diet, and you see more allergies as the time goes by so I think two things will happen 1) consumers will tend to go back to relationship restaurants as they used to in the past; in other words, you repeat the restaurant you love more often. 2) As information is more accessible, people are moving to a more healthy diet and to a more social buying as time goes by. They want to know what they’re eating and who has been producing it. Lastly, I see a big shift in location, A lot of companies are realizing they can remain working remotely so areas that used to be giant restaurant bubbles to cater to local offices are now empty and it seems the offices are not filling up.
Pricing:
- $6 per soup (minimum 3 soups for delivery) $2.75 delivery fee (waived if 5 or more are ordered)
Contact Info:
- Website: whatsoupmiami.wixsite.com/whatsoupmiami/
- Phone: 732-618-8223
- Email: whatsoupmiami@gmail.com
- Instagram: @whatsoupmiami
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatsoupmiami/?epa=SEARCH_BOX
Suggest a story: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
