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Menu Talk with Pat and Bret

Menu Talk with Pat and Bret is a collaboration between Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.

Voodoo Doughnut CEO Chris Schultz shares how the concept has adjusted during the pandemic

Long lines gave way to social distancing and online ordering as the home of the Bacon Maple Bar changed with the times

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 6, 2021

 

Chris Schultz has been the CEO of Voodoo Doughnut since 2018 after a career that started when his father gave him the “gift” for his 16th birthday of a job washing dishes at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Schultz resented that, but it did launch him into a career that he’s been in ever since. It has included 13 years at what was then a young coffeehouse chain called Starbucks, followed by nine years at the Seattle-based fast-casual chain MOD Pizza.

When it was time to make a career move, Schultz reflected on when he has had the most fun in his career, and he realized that it was when he was at small, spunky chains that he was eager to help expand.

Now he’s doing that in Portland, Ore., at Voodoo Doughnut, which has a cult following in its hometown in particular, but its fan base is growing as the concept expands to Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and beyond.

In many ways, Schultz and team were caught particularly flat-footed during the pandemic. Although doughnuts were a favorite treat for Americans during lockdown, Voodoo Doughnut was an in-person experiential concept known for its long in-person lines. It didn’t have online ordering or third-party-delivery capabilities that were a crucial part of the success of the best-performing restaurants.

But Schultz and his team acted quickly to alleviate that, while also doing their best to enjoy the process.

"We don't take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “Heck we make doughnuts for a living."

Schultz recently discussed his career path before taking the helm at Voodoo Doughnut, how the brand has adjusted to the changing times, and his plans for the future.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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