I sat down with Ethan Banayan, one of the three founders behind Santa Monica's hit breakfast burrito spots, Sobuneh. We're at their home location of Colony Cooks, outside at high top. It's a beautiful, bright sunny day in Southern California.
You mentioned that Sobuneh began as a bit of a shower thought turned reality. Can you walk me through the moment the idea was born and what inspired three friends to team up in 2023 to create the best breakfast burrito?
We'll actually take it way back to 2020. That's when everyone was hanging out and trying everything they wanted to do on the side—you were so bored, you just started doing stuff. I played basketball with my cousin, and afterward we'd go back to my house because we couldn't get our favorite breakfast burrito. So we just started making our own. Week by week, it evolved.
I graduated college mid-2020 and started a job in commercial real estate. We'd make burritos every couple months. Fast forward to March 2023. I'm thinking about taking the next step in my career. I was debating going to another firm, but my parents said, "Listen, if you've ever wanted to start anything in your life, you're young. We're going to help you."
The night before the shower thought, we had a steak night with someone who's now one of our suppliers, Premier Meats. We bought four to five different cuts of Japanese Wagyu and had an incredible night cooking—Wagyu fried rice, spicy miso eggplant, steaks, everything.
Next day I'm at the gym, in the shower, and I'm thinking: Everyone always asks for those burritos I make on Instagram. What if we made them and sold them? They look so damn good. The original pictures look similar to what we have now—very photogenic.
So I leave the gym and call Ryan and Omeed. Ryan had just graduated culinary school and was working at a farm shop in Brentwood. Omeed was one of my best friends—we used to cook all the time. The three of us go to Korean barbecue once a month, all you can eat. Still do it every single month.
I say, "Do you guys want to start making breakfast burritos in our backyard?" They're like, "Yeah, we'll do it. It's a Sunday. It's not that hard." It was really hard. But we set a date, tested for a month, and finally did our first pop-up. We each invited 15 to 20 friends or family.
So you quit your career in commercial real estate to pursue making burritos full time. What was going through your mind as you made that transition?
Well, I'd already decided to leave. I'd put my notice in. I was starting another company that simplified the development process for real estate developers. But as much as I loved it, I wasn't truly passionate.
I'd already taken the leap—no income, living with my parents. I'd saved over the past few years, so I could last for some time. That's what made it so easy and second nature. I was ready to work for free for a while.
Can you paint a picture of what those early days were like? What did a typical morning at the backyard cafe look and feel like?
The first pop-up was in my parents' backyard. We had no idea what we got ourselves into. It took two or three full days of prep to make all the sauces, which—keep in mind—the sauce quantity we made then compared to a day of sauce now was maybe 1/20th. We'd get all our friends and family's orders, write their names on bags, put them in order of when they were coming. That's how we'd make the orders.
The cleanup was brutal. My mom's like, "You better not leave that grease on the ground. Clean my backyard."
That first day, we started at 7:30 setting everything up, cooking, cracking eggs. We made food from 10 to 1 o'clock. The cleaning took four or five hours after that. We were exhausted.
The next week we went to Ryan's house, and it was even more brutal. We started at 6:30, cooked until 1 o'clock, sat outside for an hour to eat our burrito—which was our pay for the week—then cleaned until six or seven. Ryan's mom would be very particular because it was in Ryan's back house. "Clean my floors very well."
How did you get the word out?
At first it was all friends and family posting on Instagram. They came because individually, they knew us all as very good cooks. Everyone knew Ryan makes some damn good Korean fried chicken. They knew me for my burritos and barbecue—brisket and ribs. Omeed makes incredible Persian food and braised short rib.
From those three outlets, everyone would come try it. We'd do maybe 30, 40, 50 burritos a day. It took two or three weeks before we got our first random person. This person DMed through Instagram, and we're like, "Oh shit, this is so cool. A random person's in Ryan's house." We didn't know how to act.
Then a friend said her friends were doing a pop-up in West Hollywood—did we want to be a vendor? We hadn't taken anything on the road. We went and were taking live orders, not pre-orders. It was an hour wait. We had no idea what we were doing. But that's where so much word got out—we were serving way more people than we were used to.
At the second pop-up, a social media influencer who was starting up made our first video. It was a slow domino effect from there.
You make all your sauces in-house. You cook your Oaxacan black beans with avocado leaves and butter, blend your own chorizo with ground beef and turkey instead of pork. What drives you to that level of detail?
Good ingredients make a damn good product. There are so many good breakfast burritos in LA—what's going to make you different? A breakfast burrito will never be healthy, but it can be clean. The eggs we use are pasture-raised organic. At first we used the cheapest Costco eggs you can buy. A friend told us, "Use good eggs. It makes a big difference."
Sauces have to be made in-house. You can't get Sysco sauces—they don't compare. That's how you put your own twists on things and create a product you would eat in your own house. Actually, the eggs we use are better than the eggs we use in our own house.
You could probably go in your pantry, minus a few specialty spices, and make our breakfast burrito. It wouldn't take you as long as you'd think.
How did you arrive at the signature burrito combination? Was it a single eureka recipe or an evolving creation?
The signature was basically the burrito I was making with my cousin way back when. My favorite breakfast burrito place, beyond ours, is Gracias Señora—a food truck in the Palisades. My order would be a breakfast burrito, add guac, sub the bacon for al pastor.
I had no idea how to make al pastor, so where can I get a similar flavor profile that I can buy in the grocery store? Before we learned how to make chorizo, I'd buy soy chorizo from Ralph's—really similar taste, slightly different texture. I added beans because I love bean and cheese burritos. The little gooey bits of cheese with the creaminess of the beans is one of my favorite bites on earth.
When we started Sobuneh, I called Ryan and Omeed: "You guys are a third perspective. Help me make this better." Ryan suggested changing the sauce a bit. Omeed had other tweaks. The burrito we have now is not even the same burrito we had two months ago. We make changes so often because people come and say, "Have you ever tried this?" And we actually listen.
Literally the other day Eddie, better known as @HungryinLA on Instagram, returned back for the first time in over a year. When he originally come by we asked what he thought and he said, "Your chorizo has room for improvement." We're like, "Thank you for telling us that." When he came back, the chorizo was different, and we asked about it. He's like, "I know, it's so much better."
Everyone asks why it's called Sobuneh. I know it means breakfast in Farsi and Persian. How does your Iranian-American heritage influence what you're doing here?
It manifests in a lot of ways. When we were naming it, we were thinking catchy names—"The Night After," something hangover-related, "The Sunday Brunch Spot." Then I said, "Why don't we name this something that really means something to us? What does breakfast mean to us?" Our parents used to always say, "Come to Sobuneh."
Iranian culture—if you have any Iranian friends—it's very much, "Come into our house, here's tea. No, no, I have to get you something." You don't come into our house and leave empty-handed. We have this word taarof for it. When you walk into our space, it's like, "No, no, I insist you have to have this”. There’s no taarof here a Sobuneh, this is our Iranian culture.
When we were starting at Ryan's house, Ryan's mom would be the queen of Persian hospitality. "Can I get you guys tea?" She'd have a whole plate of fruits on the table—strawberries, cucumber. We're not even hungry. She's like, "No, no, I have to feed you. You guys are in my house."
That's how we run it. At the core of our long-term strategy, it's Persian hospitality. We use good ingredients at our house. Persians have fantastic spices. We do clean food. Between the food and how we treat people, that's what Sobuneh is.
Also, Sobuneh is friends and family time. My family, growing up, we'd do barbecues in Santa Monica every weekend. We'd pick up bagels and go to Temescal Canyon, hike and have breakfast there. It's really about connection. We don't do enough of that. We want Sobuneh to be an outlet for connection and meeting people.
What led you to choose Colony Cooks, a ghost kitchen, as the launchpad? Would you recommend this path for other aspiring restaurateurs?
Colony created a natural bridge from pop-up. We couldn't do this at Ryan's house anymore—we had all four of his fridges full, including his mom's two fridges. She basically evicted us. "If you guys are going to do this, leave."
I reached out to a bunch of places. What makes Colony different is they came and they cared about us. Nick and Dima tried our food. They said, "You guys have good product. We know you aren't ready for a full restaurant." Ryan was still working at Farm Shop, Omeed was full-time in law school.
They had an empty kitchen: "Come operate on the weekends, run your pop-up, don't involve our staff. Use our kitchen." They created a natural segue. We went from just Sundays to adding Saturdays, Fridays, eventually full-time.
My recommendation to other restaurants? It is not easy. Do not think it's going to be profitable. We almost went out of business—one month away from closing. You have to know what you're doing. You have to charge what your food is worth. A 50% or 60% food cost will not allow you to survive as a quick service restaurant.
At one point, we were losing three to four dollars on every item that went out the door. We had no idea what we were doing. We figured it out and got to just below breakeven. As we increased sales, we got to that profitability margin—10 to 15 percent.
You also have to create customer connection. You cannot open a nameless restaurant in a ghost kitchen and expect to stay open. You have to treat it like a real restaurant where you're hosting people.
Only one of you came from a professional culinary background. What was the biggest learning curve?
The food itself is pure passion. Being in a ghost kitchen, you can see what other people are doing—not copy their recipes, but see the structure they put in place. We ask people a lot of questions. Our food suppliers, especially at Vesta where we get produce—our rep Ryan would give us tips. You can't be scared to ask for help.
I took advice from my own profession. I was in financial modeling, so I modeled our business like a real estate transaction. Ryan would go into his old ICE [Institute of Culinary Education] class binder: "This is how everything should shape up to be profitable." I'd break everything down to the gram and price it out. Our labor is this much, rent is this much, insurance is this much. To get the right margins, our food should cost this much.
It's a really big learning curve. We're still learning, still baking in systems. You can never stop learning in any industry.
Looking back, what business decisions or moments were pivotal to getting Sobuneh off the ground?
I don't know if I can point to one moment. The biggest thing is following through on what we aspire to do—talking with people, connecting. As good as your food is, if people don't know you and you don't connect with people, no one's coming back.
Our mission was connection. People came to Ryan's house to watch football with us on Sunday. We'd talk about our favorite burritos in LA. We're just a part of that conversation. It's really sticking to what you want to do, creating a good product, and connecting with people.
In your view, what makes a quintessential LA breakfast burrito? How did you set out to refine that with Sobuneh?
We live in the breakfast burrito mecca. There are so many fantastic breakfast burritos here in LA, and they're all so unique and different. There's the sojuk burrito at Cafe Los Feliz that's to die for, Gracias Señor is amazing, Guerrilla Cafecito was fantastic before they sadly closed, Barran's has a chorizo that’s fantastic but tastes completely different than ours, the Kielbasa at Dialogue is unreal, and there’s still so many other great options in LA.
You go to different spots based on flavor profile. Every burrito at the top, you can tell they're quality first—they're doing something really well, but the flavor profiles are all different. We didn't want to create the exact same breakfast burrito at every coffee shop in LA. We wanted our own unique flavor twist.
The moment a burrito leaves your counter, it can be 20 to 40 minutes before someone bites into it. What measures do you take to ensure quality during delivery?
Tater tot timing—we used to time them based on a fresh order, but realized you can't. Our timing goes slightly further now. Honestly, I don't think a burrito fresh off the grill is the best—five to 10 minutes after is the sweet spot. But a Postmates burrito is sadly never going to compare.
In a ghost kitchen, it's ready, put on a shelf, the driver has to come get it, then deal with LA traffic. We make sure wrapping is on point. We try our best to make sure our burritos handle the drive well, however we only have so much control.
The sad reality is, to have the business you need from a ghost kitchen, you have to be on third-party apps or you'll go out of business. We do every step we can to make sure it's as fresh as possible.
Have you had to tweak recipes based on delivery feedback?
Constantly. Our chorizo marinade and the way we cooked it has changed a million times. The way we cook our beef bacon has changed a million times. Pico de gallo has changed. Spice levels—the amount of jalapeños in the veggie was a lot higher, but it's come down.
We layer our burrito so it holds the longest without the tater tots getting soggy. The signature is the most juicy because chorizo is fatty—it has a lot of juice. We separate tater tots from other ingredients so it doesn't go to mush.
Is opening your own physical storefront something you're working towards?
Breaking news. Yes, our own space is in the works, and we’ll have some more details on it very very soon.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
