Photo courtesy of the Breakfast Club
Creped Crusaders
For those who don’t want to bring home the bacon themselves, the Breakfast Club’s delivery service may be a viable option.
The Upper Arlington delivery service offers a plethora of gourmet menu items, including cherrywood smoked bacon, all made to be delivered fresh to guests in the Tri-Village area.
Nikki Stoughton, Breakfast Club president and founder, says she dreamed up the concept of breakfast delivery in March 2014. She saw a need for the service after helping her brother move out of his house. Upon realizing they could not leave their moved items to go pick anything up without risking cold food upon their return, she entertained the possibility of a hot breakfast delivery business.
“Why doesn’t anyone serve (and deliver) hot food for breakfast?” she had asked her father.
“That was the initial spark,” Stoughton says.
Stoughton and Executive Chef Josh Truex launched the company in April. They chose to name the business “The Breakfast Club” in part to commemorate the iconic John Hughes movie as well as allude to plans to offer a monthly breakfast delivery service.
“(The name) really has nothing to do necessarily with the movie, but it does have to do with the name recognition,” Stoughton says. “My generation grew up with The Breakfast Club. It helps keep the awareness once they hear the name.”
For his part, Truex says he recognized how novel the idea was and wanted to get involved.
“I thought it was a very innovative idea,” Truex says. “It’s hard to find a good take-out breakfast because it’s always cold or, at the very least, warm and soggy by the time you get it home.”
Chef Josh Truex
Truex tried to spend as much time as possible perfecting each of his dishes.
“I really don’t have a favorite; I enjoy making them all,” he says. “I’ve always believed that as a chef, you should never have a favorite dish because it means you’ll spend more time on your favorite dish to make it more perfect than all the other.”
Truex has high hopes for the Breakfast Club’s future and believes it will continue to grow.
“I see it taking off,” he says. “There’s nothing else like it that I know of. We have already talked about our future, and it looks very bright.”
Customers can order online upwards of two days in advance to ensure there are the necessary ingredients and time slots to ensure a fast and successful delivery. Stoughton can deliver to as many as 15 people per day but hopes to expand that number with more employees and breakfast delivery trucks.
“I have a set limit of deliveries that I can do in an hour,” Stoughton says. “It’s going to be really fluid the first six months to a year.”
The Breakfast Club uses space at the Commissary, a professional kitchen rented to different bakers and pastry makers as well as other small businesses, to create the dishes. These dishes include both the sweet and the savory. One of the most popular dishes is the French toast, which can be either stuffed with bananas and toffee and topped with salted caramel sauce or stuffed with sweetened goat cheese and drizzled with truffle honey.
“We have doughnut muffins that are our signature bread, and we provide that with every meal and you always get a side,” Stoughton says. “We make fresh, in-house chicken sausage and fresh, in-house chorizo sausage, so the quality you’re going to get from us is really high.”
The minimum order is four breakfasts ($70) along with a flat fee of $10 for delivery. Stoughton believes that $15 breakfast plus $10 delivery is competitive compared to a typical brunch cost and wait time.
Stoughton makes it a point to send out surveys to all her customers to make sure she’s meeting expectations.
“We’re always looking to be the best and be better than we were before,” she says.
In addition to expanding the number of employees and vans and delivery range, Stoughton plans to utilize seasonal menus. The next menu change will probably occur this fall. Additionally, the company’s changing chef du jour option allows Truex to dream up something new each week.
The overall goal is to prepare and deliver everything to the best of their ability. Stoughton has high aspirations for the Breakfast Club and anticipates success with a redefined idea of breakfast.
“I have to change the way people think about breakfast,” she says. “Once it happens, I truly believe great things are going to happen to this club.”
Elizabeth Tzagournis is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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