MEET THE CITY’S DELIVERY-ONLY CHICKEN OPERATION.
Joe Hargrave, owner of Tacolicious, has been talking for years about starting a takeout roast-chicken restaurant called MF Chicken (“I can say that it’s nothing profane, which made my mom feel better,” Hargrave texted). But the plans never materialized until May, when he installed a rotisserie oven in the North Beach branch of his five-restaurant chain and launched MF Chicken as a delivery-only restaurant, making deliveries through Caviar.
Its short menu centers around an organically raised chicken, brined before being thickly coated in spices and spit-roasted. The chicken ($17 for a half-bird, $32 for a full bird, plus tax and delivery fees) comes with a full complement of sides, salsas and tortillas. Several members of The Chronicle food section have already ordered it, pronouncing the chicken delicious.
Two months into the restaurant’s run, The Chronicle asked Hargrave about MF Chicken and the future of the deliveryonly restaurant. (Answers edited for brevity.) Q: How did the original idea come about? A: It was 100 percent to serve myself. I am in my mid-40s. I have kids. My wife and I both work full time. I want to feed a family without breaking the bank, and I want to have satiation and nourishment but also be healthy. I think chicken does that. Q: What did it take to set up the business? A: I financed a $45,000 rotisserie, and then I did some electrical and plumbing work requiring some permits. Honestly, it cost me almost nothing. Q: When you were developing the master recipe for the chicken, what kind of considerations did you make for delivery? A: I first started by researching countertop rotisseries and ordered a Ronco. It was $138 on Amazon. Every person you know should get one. It is amazing. And so I got that first, and started making birds on my kitchen counter.
Sara (Deseran, Joe’s wife and Tacolicious’ director of marketing) and (fellow staffers) Ron and Corey then started messing with different packaging. We would make different birds, but I’d tell them, don’t eat it now. Just take it home and put it in the fridge and see how it tastes the next day.
I gave Rowena, our culinary operations person, the recipe and the Ronco, and she figured out how to calibrate the (commercial rotisserie) for a 2½pound bird. We sat at the Valencia location while she was at North Beach, and every hour she would send an Uber over with two roast chickens. She had a piece of butcher paper on the wall charting cooking temps and time. We did blind tastings and sent info back. Finally we got it. Q: With delivery cannibalizing sit-down restaurants’ business, why create your own brand instead of adding a chicken to the Tacolicious menu? A: I think the business is greatly changing. You see it with Media Noche, Barzotto and Souvla — counter-service concepts where a huge chunk of business is take-out. They do them because you can operate with very little labor. It’s fascinating to watch. I feel like if restaurants like me don’t modify now, we’re going to be gone. Q: How is business going? A: Unless I’m riding Caviar to promote me, we’re not doing that many orders. If I had a brick-and-mortar, that wouldn’t be the case. It’s funny, but I still think the brick-andmortar is the attraction and then delivery takes off. You’re looking for recognition of (the brand behind) what you’re eating. I would be curious what would happen if I put that chicken on Tacolicious’s delivery menu. I don’t want to do that because I’m branding it, but I bet I would sell three times as much.
(Author note: At the same time, Hargrave later said that customers are already coming in to Tacolicious restaurants looking to order the chicken, and he hopes to eventually open a standalone MF Chicken location, with an eye to expanding.) Q: What would it take to make delivery-only work? A: To open a delivery-only restaurant in San Francisco would seem impossible — just the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), the permitting, constructing a bare-bones kitchen, it’s still a quarter-million dollars. I don’t see how that would be feasible. It also seems like a totally one-dimensional business, which is the opposite from what you do as a restaurant. You need to have as many platforms as you can.