Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Banayan, Ryan Elyahouzadeh, Omeed Minoofar
Ethan Banayan, Ryan Elyahouzadeh, Omeed Minoofar, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Sobuneh started about a year ago in the Summer of 2023. It all started with a shower thought that we made a reality. I’ll never forget the moment Sobuneh was born, I was taking a shower at Equinox Santa Monica, a month after leaving my prior job, where I thought to myself now is the time to try everything I’ve ever wanted to do with my life.
However, the origin of our breakfast burritos goes way back before 2023. Rewind to 2020 when my cousin Matthew and I would play basketball then come to my house and make breakfast burritos as a post-game meal. Every week the burrito would get better and better, and we began posting them on Instagram, to where we’d receive rave reviews and people begging to try one.
Now back to the shower thought. I thought to myself why not make my burritos for everyone to try? I knew I couldn’t do it myself, so I thought who I could do this with? I knew instantly who I’d ask. Ryan and Omeed. The three of us have a long food and cooking history together. Every month we go to Korean BBQ together, we host an annual Super Bowl party where we create an insane feast, and two nights prior we’d had a steak night at my house. Every time we’re cooking or sharing our love for food together, I’d have an amazing time. I knew it would be a perfect fit.
On my drive home I called them, and I simply said, “Do you guys want to make breakfast burritos and sell them out of a house?” To which Ryan replied, “F**k it, why not?”
In that moment Sobuneh was born.
We got to work immediately. Thinking of what to name our new pop-up. We had names such as The Morning After BB, Hangover Hero, The Morning Recap Club, Rise n Shine, and Last Nights Wrap up, but none of those names stuck with us. However, it was a simple word that stuck with us. Sobuneh, a word meaning breakfast in Farsi, it meant more than just breakfast burritos. It was the word we’d heard our Iranian parents say to us for years. It was perfect.
We made a simple logo and an Instagram. Posted a picture of a burrito with the words “Coming Soon”, and off we went. The post started going viral. Nobody knew what it was, but everyone was curious.
On the back end we got to recipe development. We took the burrito I’d been making for years, and Ryan and Omeeds cooking experience took it to the next level. To provide some background, Ryan had just graduated culinary school a few months prior and was working as Chef at Farmshop in Brentwood and Omeed is a top-level home cook. It took weeks of R&D and a lot of burritos, but in 2 short weeks we created an incredible burrito.
We planned our first pop-up and invited 60 of our closest family and friends. Everyone pre-ordered their burritos and showed up and LOVED it. It was an enormous success. Social media also noticed it, with people on Instagram now begging for it to become available to everyone.
We moved the pop-up from my house to Ryan’s newly renovated guest house that his parents were so gracious to let us use. That guest house became the home of Sobuneh for the next 4 months. It also became a second home for us for the next few months, as we’d spend more time there than in our own homes.
We continued to grind, week in and week out doing our weekly Sunday pop-ups. We’d accept orders on Tuesday for pick-ups on Sundays. Every week we’d take feedback from our customers and slowly adjusting our recipes to make our food better every week.
We would do about 60 total burritos each weekend. A couple of months later, we got an opportunity to do a pop-up at the grand opening party of Collective Health, a med spa in West Hollywood. We did almost 200 burritos that day and had over an hour long wait. Momentum was building. The next week, we did a pop up at the one-year anniversary party of Rise-Up Pilates in Encino. We also had @yoeats23, our first every food Instagrammer make and post a video of us. Again, we made nearly 200 burritos that weekend. The week after, @forkingaround.tv came by and made a video about us. This one went viral. The social media wave continued, and we began to outgrow the number of burritos we could make in Ryan’s guest house.
We began to think of potential places we could move to. We asked a few bars and clubs if we could rent out their kitchen during the mornings when they were closed and received nothing but no’s or we’ll think about it. We then reached out to a cloud kitchen we often visited ourselves, Colony Cooks in West LA. The owners of Colony, Nick and Dima, graciously called and invited us over to check the place out. In return we invited them over to our next pop-up to try our food. They came by and loved it. They have been two of our biggest supporters and gave us the opportunity to open at Colony on a pop-up basis, and we’ll be forever grateful for their support and generosity.
Within a month we opened at Colony on Sundays only. A month later, we opened twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays. Demand continued to grow. We opened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Demand grew even more, and we opened Wednesday-Sunday. Now, we are finally open 7 days a week.
That is how we got to where we are today, and we’re far from satisfied. We’re not just a café we truly are a taste of home from the ingredients we use to the way we treat you when you walk in through our doors. We’ll never give up the essence of people hanging out and spending time with us eating burritos in Ryan’s guest house.
-Ethan Banayan
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Simply said, there has been nothing smooth about our journey and one thing I’ve learned about the restaurant industry is that it never will be smooth.
Working with your close friends may seem like an absolute dream and it is, but it also has its challenges, especially when the 3 of us are very passionate about what we do. We often would get into disagreements about recipes, plans, or how we want to conduct business. But what makes us so special is that we always find a way through it. With every disagreement our bond grows stronger, we’ve learned to speak openly with one another, and we never take anything too personally.
Time. Even when we operated one day a week, it took nearly 3 days of prep to get ready for one day of burritos. We’d have to take time away from our other jobs and obligations to begin preparations on Thursday, where we’d go shop for ingredients and begin making food for the weekend. On Saturday’s we’d spend most of the day bottling sauce containers, cracking eggs, and setting up Ryans house for the pop-up. Then we’d wake up bright and early at 6:00am on Sunday to begin getting ready for the day ahead and even though we’d close at 2pm, we’d be at Ryan’s house cleaning until 6 or 7pm. All of that to wake up the next morning to resume our weekday jobs. We’d exhaust ourselves, all because we had a dream and wanted to continue doing what we truly love.
We used to have weekends where we’d barely have any orders. We came face to face with doubt. Where if you succumb to it, it could be a death sentence for any business. Luckily, every time doubt seemed to creep in, we’d punch it in the face and tell it to get lost. We have Omeed to thank for this. Every time any of us have a sense of doubt, Omeed always encourages us and gets us on our feet, he is the single best person at putting things into perspective.
Another struggle was staffing. For the longest time we couldn’t afford to hire anyone, but our friends and family stepped in to the rescue. They stepped in and helped wherever we needed them, whether it was helping customers, cooking eggs, or even wrapping burritos. Our friends and family were our life savers, Simon, Rachel, Leah, Talia, Ben, Neku, Rachel, Dorian, Shayan, and Ariella we couldn’t be more grateful for you guys and how much you’ve helped.
Lastly, we accidentally opened a restaurant with 0 experience running a restaurant, which came with endless challenges, however we learned, and we continue to learn how to better manage and operate Sobuneh. In the early days, Ryan helped set his house up like a real restaurant kitchen and always took on the leadership role in the kitchen and until this very day he leads the kitchen, and he always will. He helped set us up for success by taking his real industry experience, and what he’d learned from culinary school to make sure our operation would be as efficient as possible.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Sobuneh is a café that currently operates out of Colony, a cloud kitchen in WestLA. We focus on making the best breakfast burritos in LA using only clean ingredients you’d find inside your own home. Our eggs are some of the best you can buy, locally sourced pasture-raised Organic eggs form Chino Valley Ranchers. We truly take the time to source best in-class ingredients. If you ever come in our kitchen, you’ll quickly realize that every ingredient is likely in your home pantry.
Sobuneh, meaning breakfast in Farsi, stands for more than just breakfast. It’s the love of being surrounded by friends and family within the warm walls of our homes. Everything we do from using the best, cleanest, and healthiest ingredients to making you feel at home every time you step through our door embodies Sobuneh. Sobuneh is not just a cafe, it’s a taste of home.”
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
We don’t believe in luck. Luck is winning the lottery and Sobuneh has not been winning the lottery winning to say the least. We believe in manufactured luck. Where your hard work, and continuous hustling helps create your own luck.
We’re all 25 or 26 years old. We’ve given up going out on Saturday nights so we can be up the next morning at 6:30 am to make breakfast burritos and Sobuneh. It takes a toll on you, but we’ve made these sacrifices to grow Sobuneh because it matters to use. We’ve work long exhausting days, and still do just because it’s what we must do.
We put a lot of work into constantly improving our burritos. We often make smalls tweaks from week to week. We’re an open book and are always open to feedback and constructive criticism to make our food better. In the end, our food speaks for itself.
I can only think of two true instances of luck. The first instance is the new people that have come into our lives because of Sobuneh. We have so many people walk through our doors because of our burritos and have become genuine friends. The second instance is how lucky we’ve been to have the full support of our friends and family. We are so lucky to have the people we do around us, without them we’d be nothing and we’ll forever be eternally grateful.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sobuneh.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobunehLA
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sobuneh-los-angeles-3
