00:04
Sebastian Perez
I chose "Still life, Lucca. 1993" by Wolfgang Tillmans.

00:09
Sebastian Perez
I see at the top, turquoise from the pool, the cracked stone, and what looks like freshly harvested eggplants and tomatoes fresh off the vine.

00:21
Sebastian Perez
I have Spanish roots and a lot of my youth was spent in Spain and Italy. I immediately thought back to summers, walking along the cliffs down in southern Spain where we'd go as children, plucking fresh produce off the trees and you're by the pool, you're on the beach.

00:40
Sebastian Perez
I remember Italy up in the mountains along the Amalfi Coast and up by Cinque Terre where we'd have all this fresh produce, sitting down by the small beaches with the small boats in the water.

00:52
Sebastian Perez
This image, it gave this sense of calm and serenity that brought me back to my youth spending time in Southern Europe.

01:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Sebastian Perez, a Danish restaurant owner. Welcome, Sebastian.

01:28
Sebastian Perez
Thanks for having me.

01:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We are very happy to have you. Where are you at the moment? Please describe your location so the listener can get an idea of where you are when they hear your voice.

01:40
Sebastian Perez
I am currently sitting at my dining table in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, New York. My Golden Retriever is right under my legs, and it's a beautiful sunny day here in New York today.

01:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh, I love golden retrievers.

01:55
Sebastian Perez
Same.

01:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sebastian, let's start out by getting your name and identity straight. Your surname is Perez, which sounds Spanish in my ears. How do you identify yourself?

02:07
Sebastian Perez
I identify as Danish, but my whole life has been outside of Denmark, at least since I was six. And I come from a mixed background. I have Brazilian on my mother's side, and you were correct, Spanish on my father's side. Hence Perez, not the most Danish name.

02:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, it's not. It sounds a bit more exotic for us Danes. How do you think that this background has influenced you? How was your upbringing in terms of the culture mix that you have?

02:39
Sebastian Perez
Growing up in Denmark when I was younger and then going to especially Southern Europe a lot in my youth, living in Switzerland, followed by Australia, now New York, I've always been surrounded by a lot of different cultures, which is really what makes me who I am too, in the sense of I'm Danish, Brazilian, Spanish.

02:59
Sebastian Perez
And so I think from an early age, even going to school in Switzerland at an international school, I've been exposed to so much difference, which I value so much. And I think it's really shaped who I am at this point now.

03:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did your parents do since they moved to Switzerland? I don't know if they were the ones who brought you to Australia, but I assume they were the ones who brought you to Switzerland.

03:27
Sebastian Perez
My dad worked for Bodom, the makers of the famous French press, among other things. So that's what took us from basically Denmark, when we left, through Switzerland, Australia, and to New York. So I was young, I didn't have much say, I just followed along, but I'm grateful I did because it was awesome experiences all the way along.

03:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you mentioned that you left Denmark when you were six, so maybe you don't remember, but where did you grow up in Copenhagen? How would you describe your childhood there before you left?

04:00
Sebastian Perez
I was born in Gentofte, and then we lived in Rungsted for the first six years of my life, and I have amazing memories of playing in the yard on the swing. We had, I remember, a black currant bush in the backyard. We would make hyldeblomst, which is the elderflower syrup.

04:22
Sebastian Perez
My grandma and my cousins, they lived close by in Holte and Hørsholm, and so it was maybe about 30 minutes north of the city center of Copenhagen that I spent a lot of my youth, biking down the street, it was amazing. And I remember fondly some of these memories for sure.

04:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
As mentioned, you own a restaurant. What did you dream of becoming back then? Did you envision yourself as a restaurateur already when you were making hyldeblomst?

04:52
Sebastian Perez
It depends on who you ask. Whenever I speak to my grandma now, she says I fulfilled my dream of becoming a restaurant owner. If you ask myself, I remember in kindergarten my dream was to be a bus driver, which I have not fulfilled. But for sure, since my childhood, food has been a big, big factor in my life. My granddad, he referred to me as his sauce king, 'cause I would be sitting on the counter helping mix the sauces.

05:21
Sebastian Perez
And being in supermarkets, it's one of my favorite things, even as a kid. Just running up and down the aisles, looking at all the different products. And to this day, it's still one of my favorite things. Whenever we travel, one of the first shops I'd like to go into is always a supermarket, just to see the different products and the produce and things that we don't have where we currently are.

05:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you think appealed to you about being a bus driver? Was it the adventure? Was it traveling with people? What was it?

05:51
Sebastian Perez
I think just machinery in general. I love driving. I love planes. As a kid, I had probably hundreds of small cars I would build little cities with. And I loved excavators, construction, all these things. I think a combination of those things. And then I remember sometimes in kindergarten we'd align the chairs as if it were a bus, so in a long two rows. And I'd sit at the front with my imaginary steering wheel.

06:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How did you end up in New York? How did you decide to study at Baruch College? I believe you studied international marketing.

06:32
Sebastian Perez
So we came to New York, once again, because of Bodom. My dad would oversee, I believe it was North America and South America, for Bodom. I came over when I was 13, so, came into middle school. I went to high school. College is a big part of American culture and typically, up until that point you've lived at home. And this is that big moment where you can go out and live on your own and be free from your parents.

07:01
Sebastian Perez
In my world, it was a little bit different because I had already experienced so much newness in my life and I had to make new friends three times over, build new connections so many times. That led me to wanting to stay in New York City and really just feel more at home. We had been here already at that point for maybe six years, but I wanted to just explore the city more.

07:30
Sebastian Perez
The idea of having someone pay $250,000 for my education seemed wrong. Baruch is a part of the City of New York college system, so it's a lot cheaper to go there. And it's a great school, and I wanted to do business. And I figured this was a great way for me to obviously not spend an extravagant amount of money on school and still stay in New York and pursue something that I really wanted to pursue.

08:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was your first home in New York? Where did you settle and how did you experience the city to begin with when you first arrived as a 13 year old, very young?

08:11
Sebastian Perez
As a 13-year-old, coming to New York City was very cold. It was in December, it was even colder by that we lost our luggage and I was wearing shorts. We were coming from an Australian summer and I didn't think, let me wear pants.

08:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And your parents didn't tell you?

08:29
Sebastian Perez
No. They were like, you do whatever you want. And so the first few days were spent in the apartment in Tribeca / Soho right on Broadway, an awesome loft apartment that was super cool where we were for about a couple months. But the first few days were spent inside because it was very cold.

08:49
Sebastian Perez
There was a Starbucks next door, we got breakfast from Starbucks, very American, for the first few days, and then we finally got our luggage. And then we started exploring Soho and downtown Manhattan. We eventually moved to Battery Park where we actually lived in the same building that we went to school.

09:09
Sebastian Perez
And then we were in a couple of different apartments in Tribeca. One thing that my family liked, I think collectively, was moving. We all really enjoyed it and especially coming to New York City, it was a great way to see different areas downtown, so that was super fun.

09:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Tribeca and Soho are very artistic parts of New York, right?

09:30
Sebastian Perez
Very.

09:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's jump a little in time. In 2019, you opened Smør in the East Village with Sebastian Bangsgaard, and the two of you opened another Smør in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. The two of you met at The Copenhagen in Tribeca. What made you click so much that you wanted to create a business and be creative together?

09:53
Sebastian Perez
We met at The Copenhagen back in 2015, which was a great restaurant. We did meet towards the end of it. At that time, it was probably at its lowest point. We had a different approach to how we would have done Scandinavian food, particularly Danish food. And so we would sit in our lunch breaks, after work, sometimes before work, and we would daydream about what we could do together.

10:19
Sebastian Perez
And it was anything from a smørrebrød food truck, 'cause food trucks were big back then, to maybe a small cafe. But one thing we knew, for sure, was we wanted to provide Danish food, Scandinavian food, in more of an approachable and street forward way, and not so much a white tablecloth, fine dining way, which you typically associate, I think, these days with Scandinavian food.

10:48
Sebastian Perez
So, from sitting there in 2015, we fast forward to 2018. We started a catering company, this was right after I'd finished school. I didn't really wanna go sit in an office all day, and Seb had some free time as well. So we started catering out of my parents' kitchen in Fort Greene, at this point, in Brooklyn.

11:13
Sebastian Perez
We basically did that through 2018. Not particularly busy, but we were able to get some good clients. And towards the end we started looking for a space, we put an offer in on a space in the East Village, and we were approved.

11:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it about the two of you that clicked? What made you say, ah, Sebastian is the one that I want to do business with?

11:39
Sebastian Perez
We were actually chatting about this yesterday. And I made a joke: as soon as I saw him, I knew he was the one.

11:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's funny.

11:48
Sebastian Perez
We just clicked. We only really worked for three months together and then we didn't see each other — maybe once a year — until we actually decided let's do the catering thing. It was just one of those moments where we had met each other for the first time. He's obviously new to New York, we had a great connection, and we were super aligned on what we wanted initially.

12:12
Sebastian Perez
And we still are. It was just this alignment of let's do Scandinavian food a little differently. Let's do it in a fun way, in a cheaper way, not for us, but for the customer, right? So you can scale it out to different people that maybe don't have $300 to sit down and have a fine dining experience.

12:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Unfortunately, The Copenhagen closed down. But what did you learn from working there, about what to do, about what not to do?

12:41
Sebastian Perez
We learned that money is fragile and we learned the idea of bootstrapping. I think that's something that stuck with us.

12:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did you say? Boot —

12:55
Sebastian Perez
Bootstrapping.

12:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay, I don't know what that means.

12:58
Sebastian Perez
That means, basically, you gotta struggle, you gotta just figure it out. So bootstrapping is a term we are familiar with because we've done that since we opened Smør. We've learned the most, obviously, since we opened Smør, what it is we wanna do, figure out who our clientele is. But things like culinary techniques, we learned there. We learned certain values and maybe how not to run a business.

13:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what were those things?

13:28
Sebastian Perez
I think it really comes down to money. I think a lot of money was put into this restaurant and it didn't maybe live up to that buildout cost in the long run. And so we really wanted to figure out how can we create something that's not cheap to build, but inexpensive comparatively to an industry standard. And that maybe is smaller.

13:55
Sebastian Perez
It was a very large space — large kitchen, large restaurant, dining room. New York City, you pay a lot for square footage and the larger it is, the more expensive it'll be. In that sense, we thought, how can we create something that's smaller but still gives off a very familial feel and homey energy. And so I think all these things combined, allowed us to think in this way, that then allowed us with the first Smør to really input these things that we had learned.

14:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are nothing like the famous restaurant Noma, but did the interest for Noma rub off on you? Did you gain a bit from their success in Copenhagen, Denmark when you opened your place in New York?

14:43
Sebastian Perez
For sure. We are proudly the most opposite thing to Noma in the sense of what we are doing. But I'm inspired by Noma, inspired by everything they've done. They've really, when you open anything in food that's Scandinavian, I think if it wasn't for Noma, you could argue that maybe we wouldn't even be here now, in the sense of what they've done collectively for the whole food scene coming out of Copenhagen.

15:08
Sebastian Perez
In the beginning, because we had no money when we opened the doors, I think we had $1,000 in the bank account —

15:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh wow.

15:19
Sebastian Perez
And we didn't open 'cause we were ready, we opened 'cause we had to open. It was a very tough year. But I do feel Noma helped us, at least in our journey since then. It's allowed people to put their eyes on the culinary food space, and I think even in terms of tourism and stuff and people's love for Denmark and familiarity with it being such a small country. A lot of that can honestly be attributed to Noma and the whole food scene in Copenhagen.

15:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Talk about how it all began with the two of you Sebastians from the conception of the idea to when you were starting to make phone calls about your smørrebrød to potential clients? How did you decide what to offer and how to offer it? How did you decide on the concept as a whole?

16:07
Sebastian Perez
So we started January of 2018. I had just graduated. I called up Seb, and I said, do you wanna start catering? And he actually, at this time, had a job already. So he said, let me think about it, I'll get back to you. And this, I promise, happened. He calls me later in the day, he had a meeting with his restaurant owners where he was a manager, and they had decided to shut down the restaurant in two weeks.

16:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The same day?

16:35
Sebastian Perez
Same day, literally, same day.

16:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's fate.

16:39
Sebastian Perez
It's fate, and it sounds made up, but I promise it happened. Basically, we had no option, this is what we're gonna do now. And so we worked out of my parents' kitchen, and we did the LLC, all the fun business founding stuff that we had never tried before.

16:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And LLC, you have to explain that to the listeners who are from Denmark, what that is.

17:02
Sebastian Perez
An LLC is a company type. It's called a limited liability company as opposed to a corporation. And typically, it's better for smaller businesses. And so that's what we decided on. And we figured out our name. Back then it was called Two Bones Catering. My nickname was Seabones, and because there were two of us, we called it Two Bones. and then we started compiling lists of Danish companies in New York City. We did a lot of cold calling, a lot of emailing, probably very annoying —

17:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I was about to say, it's hard to make cold calls.

17:38
Sebastian Perez
It's hard, and it's not something I enjoyed doing, but we were able to find a couple of routine clients that gave us a confidence boost. Our smørrebrød, we offered the classics. We decided let's go full Danish with the smoked salmon, the chicken salad, fiskefilet, all those things. We were by no means busy, maybe on a month where we had two or three, four, that was a great month.

18:09
Sebastian Perez
We made absolutely no money. Whenever we'd make money, we'd spend it on the next one. And so I think that year we obviously had jobs on the side because it would by no means sustain our lives. But we were able to build loyalty with customers and we were able to build, like I said, confidence in ourselves to say, you know what? Let's try this. Let's take the risk. Let's actually build a business out of it.

18:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So how did that bootstrapping concept work practically? What did you do practically?

18:40
Sebastian Perez
The bootstrapping really started when we got that first lease and we were able to secure $40,000 from Seb's uncle in a loan that had to be paid back.

18:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Nice uncle.

18:55
Sebastian Perez
Very nice. Grateful to Christian to this day.

18:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What's his name?

18:58
Sebastian Perez
Christian Bangsgaard. We love him because if not for him, we would not be here right now. In New York City, we were able to get a good rent, but you have to pay a deposit. We decided to get a lawyer because it's the first time we were doing it. And so we were essentially left with just a little more than $20,000 to build out this dream restaurant of ours, which was where bootstrapping comes into play.

19:26
Sebastian Perez
We had to learn how to sand floors, how to build benches, how to build counters. We had to utilize all our family contacts and friend contacts to help us build this thing out. And we did it. But like I said, we did so with no money in the bank and had to open. It took us about two and a half months to get it done, to open, and then we decided we have to open this weekend because we need money, we were on the brink of being broke.

20:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Just on a side note, I know a Christian Bangsgaard from Odense. I don't know if that's him.

20:07
Sebastian Perez
He is the one.

20:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are kidding me. That is funny.

20:11
Sebastian Perez
I mean I know he's from Odense.

20:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I went to high school with a Christian Bangsgaard. It could very well be.

20:16
Sebastian Perez
I think it is.

20:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
If he's from Odense. He was a nice guy, so it's very likely.

20:21
Sebastian Perez
That's very funny.

20:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's very funny. So, after six months, how did you feel? Were you still struggling? I assume you spent all your time working in the restaurant. People might think it's romantic and you see in movies how people open a little candy store or something and it's super romantic, but it's not really like that. It's hard and long hours, right?

20:43
Sebastian Perez
It was very difficult. Because we didn't have any money, we couldn't really hire anyone. So the only day we had helpers was on the weekend, which was our busier days. We were closed Monday, so we could have a day off, but I'd say 70% of those Mondays, in the first six months, we were still working. So it was seven days a week, probably 80 to 100 hours.

21:10
Sebastian Perez
We were doing all the prep, all the dishes, cooking everything, serving everything. And then we had some help on the weekends to help out with that. So the first six months were very tough and compounded by all those factors, we did not make a lot of money as a business because it wasn't busy.

21:31
Sebastian Perez
If we did $500 on days, that was a good day. On the weekends, if we did $1,000, $1,500, that was a great day. So the first six months were tough and of course, like anything, you wake up some mornings, and you question, can you do this? Is it gonna work? Do I have the mental fortitude to really push here? But I think all along we always really believed in what we were capable of.

22:01
Sebastian Perez
And looking back, even at the food we did in the beginning, we can raise question marks with ourselves. Why did we think that was gonna sell? Or why did we serve that? And I think the beauty of business, especially in a restaurant, but really anything, when you're in charge, you have to wear all the hats.

22:21
Sebastian Perez
The amount of knowledge you gain and the amount of learning you do on a daily basis, you can look at all the bad things that happened the first six months. But we can also look at all the good. We met so many people from the neighborhood, we were able to provide something that you couldn't really find in the city to people. Five people who were craving curried herring, we were able to make those five people happy by selling them curried herring.

22:45
Sebastian Perez
While we are not maybe appealing to many, we are appealing to some. And putting a smile on people's faces and being that person that hands you a coffee on a daily basis on your way to work and just building a connection that way and being a sponge in terms of you're learning so much constantly from people from a business standpoint.

23:07
Sebastian Perez
I think, yes, the first six months were tough, but I think it was an important first six months for us because it really built this foundation within us that pushed us forward and wanted us to explore this idea further instead of just saying, you know what? We can't do this anymore.

23:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There's this TV show called Cheers, where the tagline is "where everybody knows your name." Is your place that kind of place, where people are familiar with each other, everybody knows each other's names, and you say hi to the customers and know who they are?

23:38
Sebastian Perez
Absolutely, especially in the beginning when it was just me and Seb and it was me in the front, Seb in the kitchen. And we were busy in the sense that we were building community. So we had a lot of regular clients. Our problem was we had no money for marketing. So no one really knew that we existed.

23:56
Sebastian Perez
We did see someone three times a week over the course of a month. Maybe they came in ten times. You build community with them, they pass it on. So it was a slow build. But I think absolutely in the beginning, me and Seb slowly got known as the two Sebs that ran Smør. And it was funny, sometimes people, they didn't know we owned it, so they're like, wow, you guys are here every day, I hope your boss is paying you well.

24:25
Sebastian Perez
And we'd just go along with it too, 'cause it was funny. But no, definitely I think it really was, and to this point, the community aspect of it is so big, and that's something we really want to just continue building upon as we open more.

24:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We've talked about your menu a little bit. We've talked about smørrebrød, which is open sandwiches in English. So now you know what smørrebrød is, if you don't. And we've talked about fiskefilet, which is a kind of fish fillet, or how would you say, fried fish?

24:56
Sebastian Perez
Yeah, fried fish.

24:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, fried fish. And then you have Danish hot dogs, which Danes would recognize from pølsevogne on the streets in Denmark. But what is the menu otherwise? What can you expect from your restaurant and how do you decide what to serve? Do you change the menu or is it the kind of place where you get the same so that you know what you can get when you enter your place?

25:19
Sebastian Perez
It's a mix of both. We have our core items. The restaurant's all day. We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So we have our eggs during the day. The smørrebrød, like you mentioned, we have a couple sandwiches, some bowls and plates, and at night we have maybe a couple more uniquely Danish items.

25:38
Sebastian Perez
We have a stjerneskud, which is basically a piece of rye bread with a piece of fried fish, some remoulade, and prawns. And with some of these things, we have Swedish meatballs, which is one of our best sellers —

25:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A Swedish dish?

25:58
Sebastian Perez
A Swedish dish —

25:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Hmmm —

26:00
Sebastian Perez
— which we eat in Denmark sometimes too.

26:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes!

26:03
Sebastian Perez
And I think one of my favorite things on the menu is our pancakes, which is based on a Rasmus Klump pandekager recipe from when I was a kid.

26:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a cartoon figure, right?

26:14
Sebastian Perez
Yeah. And I actually made these pancakes all my life and I was like, these have to be on the menu. And I think they're one of our best-selling items collectively across the board.

26:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I assume you have homesick Scandinavians coming to your restaurants. But how did the New Yorkers, the very mixed population of this big city, react to the Danish food you were serving?

26:39
Sebastian Perez
There's obviously more New Yorkers or non-Scandinavians that come in just 'cause they outnumber the Scandinavian population. When Scandinavians come in, it's pure euphoria and happiness — oh my God, I can get smørrebrød, I can get a shrimp on toast. I can get elderflower soda.

27:01
Sebastian Perez
I think the Americans, there's more similarities than I think we assume at initial glance. And the reason for that, there's a large Jewish population in New York that have grown up eating pickled herring and smoked salmon. It was not super difficult to convert New Yorkers to love rye bread, they just have to try it for the first time.

27:27
Sebastian Perez
That's been one of the big revelations that people really like rye bread and it is a little easier to get it now over here than it has been in the past. But yeah, rye bread was one of the top things that people came back for.

27:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The Germans love it too. Talking about homesickness, do you gravitate towards the Danish community in New York?

27:50
Sebastian Perez
Yes I do. I'm a part of a Danish soccer team. It's called Team Denmark.

27:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Fantastic.

27:57
Sebastian Perez
And very connected, especially through my parents, in the Danish community here. You have the Sømandskirken, which does the yearly Christmas market and we also do now a yearly soccer tournament. And I think growing up with my parents who are very social and know a lot of the Danish community in New York, you're brought up into that. And then through owning a Danish restaurant, you're very much catapulted into that industry as well.

28:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you miss about Denmark? And do you think you'll ever miss it so much that you will return?

28:35
Sebastian Perez
I miss the candy, the hot dogs, and I really just miss the Danish summers. I think me and my wife, we talk about maybe one day when we have kids, maybe we move back to Denmark. But then I'm reminded of the long Danish winters and I think that's one of the big things maybe holding me back.

29:01
Sebastian Perez
I don't know if I could do that, the rain and dark and gray for seven months. But I must say, I think my memories of Denmark are only fond. Just the whole way of living there and the cycling culture and Copenhagen as a whole is something I really, whenever we go back, I just have the best time ever. It is hard moving anywhere from a place when you've lived in New York, because I really do think you have everything here.

29:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You've created a little Scandinavian oasis in your restaurants. How significant is the environment, the interior of your restaurants to you?

29:43
Sebastian Perez
Me and Seb, we've designed all the interiors ourselves, because we wanted it to feel sort of an almost extension of a Danish home or a living room or a dining room. Danish design is such a big part of Danish culture. It's common now, there's a lot more focus on it, obviously on a global standpoint, but a lot of these designer lamps and chairs, those are common fixtures in many Danish households.

30:10
Sebastian Perez
And so we really wanted to create spaces that felt bright, minimal in their design elements, touching on some light wood specifically, that's something we focused on, but just really creating a space that cultivates a sense of hygge, but also still being comfortable and bright and airy at the same time.

30:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
As a Dane who comes to New York, what do you see as the challenges of having a restaurant in the city and how have you survived for so many years? What is the trick?

30:48
Sebastian Perez
I mean, New York City is probably one of the hardest places to do what we've done. There's so much red tape, it's expensive. There's so much competition. Basically any factor that could work against opening a restaurant is fully alive in New York City. But I think what we've done, and back to this idea of bootstrapping, is we've built something from no money. So this has been purely organic growth.

31:21
Sebastian Perez
And with having no money as opposed to a lot of money, when you open a business, I do think you make much better decisions, because you make survival decisions, not luxury decisions. So a lot of the decisions that we've made in growing this company were based on: if we do that, we won't survive, but if we do this, we will survive. And so a key element of us has been low rent.

31:49
Sebastian Perez
We seek out, even if it's not the most desirable location, we seek out spaces that have considerably lower rents compared to other spaces around.

31:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what is low rent in your mind?

32:01
Sebastian Perez
For example, in our case, we pay $4,000-something for a space that's maybe, I'd say, a third or a fourth of the size of a corner space that's on the market for $30,000. When you do the math, it adds up. And so from the get-go, we decided let's create something that has lean, fixed overhead costs.

32:31
Sebastian Perez
This will allow us to sell products cheaper than our competition. It will allow us to pay our staff better than competition. And it'll allow us room for creativity and fun as well. And so through all those factors going into lowering that overhead, we have been able to really build on all those initial ideas. And that's, I think, honestly, a key attribute to why we've been able to survive and thrive for so long.

33:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are still working with Sebastian. How did your jobs and responsibilities change throughout the years?

33:11
Sebastian Perez
From the get-go, I was always more front of house, business side where he was more back of house, product side. While of course we work so closely together, there's so much overlap, but I think we've done a good job of keeping those roles the same. They've obviously just expanded exponentially in terms of our responsibilities and to-do lists and all these things.

33:36
Sebastian Perez
He brings a lot of things to the table that I don't bring, and vice versa. And so we have a great working dynamic together because we see different things that maybe the other one doesn't see. And I think our responsibilities and our oversight, it's very complementary to each other. Aside from the load and the responsibility list, we've actually done a great job of keeping those roles more or less the same since the beginning.

33:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We've been talking about the challenges and how hard it was, but let's also talk about the fact that you're doing well. Talk about expanding from being two people who agree with each other and like each other and are aligned, to having employees. And how many do you have and how do you deal with that? Because you are also managers who care for people.

34:25
Sebastian Perez
I think one of our biggest elements and something we put very much emphasis on is workplace culture. From the get-go from when it was just me and Seb, to Ethan, Daiji, Harris, some of our first employees that were friends before employees, to now having almost 70 full-time and part-time people across the locations, there's so much growth. These are 70 individual minds that have different needs, wants, desires, that you have to make sure you can attend to in the correct way.

35:03
Sebastian Perez
From the get-go, we wanted to create a place that's fun to work, serious but fun. And we want people to feel comfortable in this workplace and enjoy the job. I think one of the key things we decided on early was that if you enjoy where you work and also who you work for, everything is gonna flow through that. Your service, everything.

35:28
Sebastian Perez
And so, if we can create a place where people enjoy coming to work and they like it and they have fun — but of course, as anything, there's always gonna be rules. I think that was a key element to us building this company. It's very much, of course you can attribute it to me and Seb, but I think it's just as important to thank and attribute it to the whole team that's been able to carry their weight and bring this vision of ours to life.

35:55
Sebastian Perez
And I think of course those founding principles can come back to me and Seb, but I really do think each person brings their own individuality to the workplace, and I think all those combined is really what's created Smør and is what Smør is today.

36:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I think I can pinpoint a few things, but do you think there's anything particularly Danish that you have brought along business-wise, ethical principles or certain ways that you do business?

36:29
Sebastian Perez
I think just having a heart-first attitude and just being a good person — you would be amazed by the stories you read and everything you see online of how horrible certain workplaces can be. And I think there's something I always say, it's so easy to be nice. It's so easy to smile. So if we can just start with this and then move forward from there, that's obviously the key.

36:55
Sebastian Perez
But I think just having a hygge element, this togetherness of, guys, we're on the same team here, we are working towards the same mission, whether you're the dishwasher, whether you're in the front, if you're working the kitchen line, and even extending that out to our purveyors and people we buy produce from, the mailman.

37:11
Sebastian Perez
Building this element and captivating this idea of hygge and community, I think, is something that we've really been able to do very efficiently. And I think that's, in my mind, very Danish, this togetherness as a whole unit as opposed to just individual people coming in and caring about their own and then going home and moving on.

37:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Are you planning to have more Smør in New York in other places?

37:38
Sebastian Perez
We have in the East Village a Smør and also Smør Bakery. We have Clinton Hill and another small bakery in Williamsburg, our main baking hub.

37:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Williamsburg is not cheap as far as I know.

37:53
Sebastian Perez
It's not.

37:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a hip area of New York.

37:56
Sebastian Perez
It's definitely hip, it's a little bit further east. It provides us with a massive space where we can really do a lot of fun and scale and bring better products and focus on the bigger things. And taking the baking out of the East Village where we have about 300 square feet, maybe smaller, of baking space where bakers are on top of each other. This is a much needed change.

38:26
Sebastian Perez
It's our biggest location to date. It's also our most expensive, but we were still able to negotiate a good lease for ourselves and feel happy with our decision. I think ultimately, if we signed the lease, that means that we've done all we can do to be within these guidelines we've set ourselves.

38:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question to you. How do you see your future career? What would you still like to achieve in a dream scenario? Where will you be 20 years from now?

38:57
Sebastian Perez
From a business perspective, I'd like to grow this and really see how far we can take Smør in a sustainable community-driven way, not necessarily a very corporate approach. On the side, I think opening a bar would be not so much business-driven, more hobby-driven. Me and my friends have been chatting about opening a bar for years now, so it could be fun to finally do it.

39:22
Sebastian Perez
And beyond the work environment, I just really want to travel and see more of the world and really just go out and explore.

39:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
All right. Good luck with that. And Sebastian, thank you so much for being with us on Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being a part of this.

39:39
Sebastian Perez
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

39:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Sebastian Perez chose Wolfgang Tillmans's Still life, Lucca, 1993 from 1996 from the collection of the National Gallery of Art.