Recipe for success: From founding chef to franchisee
DENVER – From crafting and preparing the original recipes that made Toast Cafe a brunch staple in downtown Davidson to playing a pivotal role in franchising the chain now known as Famous Toastery, Julio Heras helped lay the foundation for the success of the local restaurant venture.
Heras, an experienced chef who earned his stripes running kitchens at upscale New York City eateries, was called upon by close friend and Famous Toastery co-founder Brian Burchill nearly two decades ago. With an offer in-hand to be the executive chef at Toast Cafe, Heras packed up his life and headed south to the land of biscuits and gravy.
“I was an executive chef in New York so I already had experience writing menus and setting prices, and the idea was that Brian would run the front of the house and I’d run the back,” Heras said of those early days at Toast Cafe. “We clicked and worked well together as a team, and within six months of opening we had lines out the door and press coming in trying to get the story on these two Yankees who just came down from New York.”
From the outset, Heras and Burchill committed to cooking with fresh ingredients in the mold of their fine-dining background, a decision that helped foster their early success.
“Our customers saw that everything we were using was fresh and they loved it,” Heras said. “The customers were like our family at Toast Cafe. They’d come talk to me while I’m cooking and even make their own cups of coffee. It was great. Good food and good customer service, if you have those things you can be successful.”
The different cuisine took some adjusting to, but for a skilled chef like Heras, it was only a matter of time before he had mastered the staples of a southern breakfast.
“I had never cooked grits,” he said with a laugh. “It was fine, but it just took some time to fine-tune those recipes. I got them fine-tuned the right way, with the right amount of butter and the right this and that, and they became not just grits but good grits. It’s not instant grits, we use stone-ground grits that we cook for about an hour-and-a-half and people love that stuff.”
While the menu has expanded significantly over the years, many of the initial items created by Heras at the outset remain customer favorites. Those offerings that have stood the test of time include the strawberry cream cheese french toast, California benedict and the left coast B.L.T.
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