How the founder of generation Z prepared dinner in business solitude

Tyler Tep, 26, could be responsible for your next dinner.

TEP is the founder of The Dinner Table, a new social catering community that serves municipal meals for customers who want food and socialization. TEP jumps on an increasing trend, because social meals and dinners are more robust demand. Americans want to see other people, and they want to eat – dinners offer a chance for both.

Of course, any new business brings its challenges. For dinner entrepreneurs means to design and execute something new in a notoriously difficult catering industry.

During two conversations, TEP spoke with Business Insider of his journey – and challenges – creating the dinner table.

The following has been modified for duration and clarity.

What is your first memory of a dinner?

When we started, the intention has never been that the dinner table becomes a social restoration community that is across the United States. At the start, it was just for me and my roommates to make friends. So my first dinner was our attempt to meet new people in New York; We organized a dinner with a private chef who came to our apartment and prepared a meal for around 20 of our common friends and friends. It was a great gathering.

What happened then that you were, we must continue to do this?

We organized the first dinner for our friends, and they really loved it, and they talked to their friends – so it was simply built on itself. Their friends wanted to come to the next and they asked us when we host again. We organized a second dinner a few weeks later when we were able to meet more people. After the first we hosted, we thought, why will we not open it to the public and will we not open it to different places in New York? It is really in about four to eight weeks that we decided, Wow, we actually have something here.

It was very resounding that there was an appetite and a request. This is how we made snowball in the model we have now.

Was there any unexpected challenges when planning these types of events?

If you speak to an event coordinator or a company based on events, the nature of the events is very unpredictable. Then when you throw the component of working in a restaurant, it has always been unpredictable as well.

To mitigate this, we build a network of restaurant partners who are between 12 and 15 restaurants on each of the markets in which we operate. These are restoration partners with whom we have worked in the past. They know our events, they know us, and also with them.

Sometimes we can see the breakdown of the participants biaring more towards women – and in some cases, very dramatically towards women. So, sometimes, we hear: “I hope there are more men present” or “I hope there are a more diverse fan of men who even came from the distribution of the sexes during the event.” I think it’s a bit that we hear a little, and I think it’s quite consistent in the event sector – to get men out.

One way to mitigate is that we create gender tickets – men and women tickets – for the sole purpose of ensuring that we will have a reference number of men present. But it is certainly a logistical challenge, that we are inclusive for all the participants and all the guests of our community, but also ensuring an optimal culinary experience and an experience of mixing for our guests.

Have you ever had a time when you are just, oh my God, is it too much happening?

Always. By taking a step back, I have never seen the dinner table be what it is today, and I am extremely proud of what it has become. Now what I see is the potential of what it can be and the interest that there is. But I also recognize that what I have already built with the dinner table is already really cool and incredible.

I have an immense appreciation to be able to do something like that. It is a privilege to have this opportunity. Few people have the opportunity to do things like that with the dinner table.

When I think of the way I manage and balance my days, it recently came from a place of appreciation for work and for my post.

It really helps me to cross the difficult days and make me spend the busy days that the alternative is not to make the dinner table – and it is much less interesting, much less creative and much less fun, frankly.