Today we’d like to introduce you to David Foulquier.
Hi David, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Hi my name is david foulquier I’m from New York City born and raised moved to Miami for college. I went to The U , and then hospitality school at FIU and ended up opening my first restaurant a couple years after that. I went to Cooking school in Japan and Barcelona, refined my skills and then brought them back to Miami. I open Fooqs about 10 years ago to great success. It became one Miami’s best restaurants for the locals by the locals. We focused on serving globally inspired Mediterranean Middle Eastern cuisine using mostly local ingredients as much as possible given the agricultural Restrictions in Miami. During Covid, I had to rethink the concept and turned fooqs into eleventh st pizza. We tried multiple different pop-ups before landing on the pizza. I had been always expecting better pizza in Miami coming from New York. I saw an opening jumped on. It taught myself how to make pizza and now I believe we make the best pizza in town. 10 years later, Fooqs is going to come back in a new location in Little River in a big 15,000 square-foot space with 200+ seats, a lounge bar big outdoor terrace. We are also opening a new restaurant in New York. Any day now called Chez fifi an honor of my late mom On the upper side right next to where she grew up where my other Michelin star sushi restaurants are Sushi Noz Noz market and noz 17. Sushi noz has been a huge success earning two Michelin stars and catapulting us into another stratosphere of the restaurant business. We continue to strive and hopefully will achieve three Michelin stars there.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think the biggest challenges that we’ve faced have been rapid inflation, increasing labor cost, and food cost, and just all the remnants of Covid. We made the best of it as I always do and what could’ve been a disastrous event turned into a prosperous one. The restaurant Business has become more difficult and more testing labor just keep rising and consumer prices cannot keep up. I think figuring out food prices and labor shortages are going to be the key to a flourishing restaurant industry for the next few years. Let’s hope this year brings some newfound investor confidence and consumer confidence so that people feel comfortable going to the restaurant again and spending money and enjoying themselves in our establishments without feeling gouged.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I am the owner, founder and operator of we all gotta eat. Along with my brother Joshua, who joined me after I open my first restaurant we have since created a little empire that we intend on continuing to grow. We are a family operation, With most of the people on our team being there since day one. The corporate team has about eight people at the office in New York and the rest of the restaurants have about a total of 80 employees. This number is steadily growing as we are about to open Fooq’s and chez fifi which will probably add 100-125 new employees into the group. These 2 restaurants will bring our total to 7 operating restaurants between NYC/Miami.
What matters most to you?
Like I said, we’re a family operation so what really matters is creating a safe, comfortable, inspiring, and delicious workplace Where our team can thrive and excel channeling their skill sets towards our greater mission statement, which has always been to be the best in class. That literally translates to doing everything we can in whatever vertical to try to be the best at what we do. This translates to working with the best designers to sourcing the best quality ingredients to creating the best concepts that we could imagine that have been inspired from some of the best and our favorite restaurants in the world. Overall building this team, and this family and seeing happy faces on our customers is really what matters. There’s nothing more rewarding than hearing random people tell you how much they love your restaurant without you, even knowing that they’ve been or without even knowing that you own it. I’m gonna continue to try my best to the best that I have to give
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.weallgottaeat.group
- Instagram: @davidfooqs
