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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
Josh Kim never planned to open a restaurant.<\/p>\n
Softies Burger<\/a> started as what Josh Kim later described as a joke. A side project. A way to make a little extra cash for what his business partner Sam Hong described as \u201cdiaper money.\u201d<\/p>\n The two met while working in restaurant tech. Kim was at OpenTable, Hong had spent years opening coffee shops before moving into tech. Both loved hospitality, but both had chosen the safer path of steady salaries. Softies was supposed to be a low-risk outlet. A pop-up outside coffee shops and breweries around Orange County, California. Nothing serious.<\/p>\n \u201cWe dropped a few thousand dollars on a credit card to buy a couple of griddles,\u201d Kim said. \u201cIt was always supposed to be a very low-risk, low-reward pop-up for friends and family.\u201d<\/p>\n Their expectations were modest. For the first event, they planned to serve about 50 burgers \u2014 maybe a hundred if things went well. Thirty minutes before service, they noticed something strange: A line was forming.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw a queue of like twenty or thirty people, none of whom we knew,\u201d Kim said. \u201cWe thought they were at the wrong event.\u201d<\/p>\n And they were not. That first pop-up sold 300 burgers in three hours. The night was chaotic. Two guys cooking together for the first time, suddenly buried under tickets.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m crying and I don\u2019t even know why,\u201d Kim said. \u201cI\u2019m like, this was so hard.\u201d Instead of rushing into a restaurant, they slowed down. One pop-up every few weeks. Just enough to test whether the first night had been a fluke.<\/p>\n The crowds kept showing up. The joke kept growing. Soon Softies landed at Smorgasburg,<\/a> Los Angeles\u2019 massive outdoor food market, popping up every Sunday.<\/p>\n For Kim, the decision to go all in carried extra weight. The safer path had always been corporate life. But Softies kept pulling him back into the hospitality world he had tried to leave behind.<\/p>\n Eventually, the side project stopped feeling like a side project. \u201cI would tell my younger self not to even consider drawing up a plan B,\u201d Kim said. \u201cFollow plan A, even if it looks really daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n What happened next was not just a restaurant opening. It became a story told in real time.<\/p>\n Before Softies Burger<\/a> opened its doors at USC Village, Kim and his team decided they would document the process publicly. Not the polished version most brands share, but the messy reality of opening a restaurant.<\/p>\n The result was a vertical video series on Instagram that followed every step. This included lease negotiations, construction delays, stressful moments and the everyday exhaustion of being an entrepreneur. All this to say, Kim did not want another feed full of burger photos.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one cares about our burgers,\u201d Kim said. \u201cBut people care when a story reminds them of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n The episodes showed the moments that most operators hide \u2014 long nights, stress, doubt. The emotional weight of building a restaurant from scratch. At one point, Kim openly discussed the mental toll of restaurant ownership and the reality that success on the outside often comes with sacrifice behind the scenes. That honesty resonated with people online.<\/p>\n Operators from around the country began following the journey. Entrepreneurs saw pieces of their own struggles in the videos. What started as documentation slowly turned into something bigger: a brand built around transparency. That visibility also brought unexpected moments.<\/p>\n One of them came when chef Roy Choi<\/a>, a pioneer of the Los Angeles food scene, joined Kim on the show. For Kim, the moment felt surreal.<\/p>\n \u201cRoy Choi is a hero to us,\u201d Kim said. \u201cThe fact that he would come on and share his story meant everything.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time the conversation wrapped up, it was clear the pop-up experiment had grown into something much bigger. What started as a weekend hustle had become a full restaurant, a recognizable brand and a vehicle for the kind of storytelling most founders never get around to.<\/p>\n Today Softies Burger is projected to generate nearly $2 million in its first year. But Kim is careful not to frame growth in traditional restaurant terms. He says adding more locations is not the goal. Instead, it\u2019s about keeping building honestly, sharing the process and showing what entrepreneurship actually looks like.<\/p>\n For Kim, that means continuing to build in public. Because the real story is still being written.<\/p>\n Restaurant Influencers<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is brought to you by Toast, the powerful restaurant point-of-sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience.<\/p>\n Toast \u2014 Powering Successful Restaurants. Learn more about\u00a0Toast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Josh Kim never planned to open a restaurant.<\/p>\nBuilding in public<\/h2>\n
About\u00a0Restaurant Influencers<\/em><\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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