Erin Wade is a successful chef, author, and restaurateur. However, before all this, Erin was a high-paid lawyer in San Francisco. What is the difference between the two jobs? Happiness and love. In a recent article in Fortune Magazine, Erin Wade explained how she left her respectable job and started her own business in the food industry. Talking about her previous job as a lawyer, Erin shared, “I looked important at cocktail parties, looked very respectable in a suit every day, and got to represent some of the biggest companies in America. The problem was that I was unhappy.”
In the Fortune Magazine article adapted from her book ‘The Mac and Cheese Millionaire: Building a Better Business by Thinking Outside the Box,’ Erin shared that she wanted to love what it is at work. “I’ve heard people talk about being excited to get up in the morning to go to work and thinking they’re crazy—maybe I wasn’t that kind of person. I wanted to love who I was in the world and How he spent his days there. I wanted people around me to feel the same.”
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He found his love and calling in mac and cheese. He shared, “I hope that the longing I felt for something more meaningful can be found in making delicious food and sharing it with people.” Erin opened the macaroni and cheese restaurant Homeroom in 2011.
Erin is now the world’s leading expert on macaroni and cheese. He shared, “I have personally cooked over 10,000 mac and cheese recipes. I’ve grated over a metric ton of cheese, boiled thousands of pounds of pasta and mixed so much cream sauce that my wrists Got hurt.”
Homeroom’s mac and cheese is so popular that it has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on the Cooking Channel, and its financial performance puts it in the top 1% of restaurants nationwide.
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Erin shared, “When I first prepared my homeroom business plan, I estimated my take home pay would be $40,000. I was stunned when in our first year I made as much as a corporate attorney. Earned more than he earned.” After running Homeroom for a decade, Erin sold the restaurant to a larger, venture-backed restaurant company in 2020. She’s now a mac-and-cheese millionaire.
Erin started the restaurant out of her love of food, especially mac and cheese, and the joy of feeding people. After all, she enjoyed running a business and learned how to run a profitable company that was also a happy workplace for all employees.