Steve Cook and Michael Solomonov, partners in the ever-expanding
Federal Donuts empire, are looking to transform all that leftover chicken into soup, and that soup into meals for the hungry. They have turned to
Kickstarter to fund Rooster Soup Co., an innovative new restaurant venture.
According to a
story in the Philadelphia City Paper, when the pair opened their first chicken-and-donuts spot in Pennsport (they are also partners in the upscale Israeli eatery
Zahav and
Percy Street Barbecue), they were frying 15 chickens per day. Now they're going through up to 1,500 across five locations, including one at Citizens Bank Park.
That leaves them with a lot of Amish-raised, Indiana-bred, free-range, antibiotic-free chicken backs and necks -- the perfect thing to make soup.
Now they have teamed up with pastor Bill Golderer of
Broad Street Ministries to kill two birds with one stone, if you will. The plan is to open a Center City restaurant serving chicken soup made using the stock from those leftover parts. The innovative part is the business model: Rooster Soup Co. will be a nonprofit restaurant with the proceeds benefiting Broad Street Ministries' hospitality services.
Click here to check out their Kickstarter campaign; they've already raised over $114,000 as of this writing.
In other news, Federal Donuts is currently
scouting locations in Washington, D.C.
Writer: Lee Stabert