Dinner Lab
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Dinner Lab was a New Orleans-based members-only pop-up dinner club founded in 2011 by Brian Bordainick, Francisco Robert and Zach Kupperman. It threw culinary events in unconventional locations featuring up-and-coming chefs, bringing together groups of strangers - members paid an initial $175 membership fee plus per-event tickets (over $80 a person). The company expanded to 31 cities across the US and acquired its San Francisco rival Dishcrawl, raising $9.1 million from investors including Whole Foods chairman John B. Elstrott.
02 / Dinner Lab FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Dinner Lab never found a sustainable business model. The pop-up dinner concept was a logistical nightmare: each event required carefully managing a scalable events staff (full-time, later shifted to contractors), sourcing supplies for one-off venues, and juggling food, locations, registrations and staffing variables. Events were too infrequent to justify subscriptions - some members paid full price but got one event every six weeks. The company blamed dwindling capital, cut full-time staff in favor of contractors, tried unsuccessfully to sell diner surveys to restaurants, and finally closed in April 2016, filing for bankruptcy two months later.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Brian Bordainick, Francisco Robert and Zach Kupperman founded Dinner Lab in New Orleans as a members-only pop-up dinner club in unconventional locations.
- Expansion
Dinner Lab expanded to 31 US cities and acquired San Francisco rival Dishcrawl, raising $9.1 million in venture financing.
- Layoffs
In December 2015, Dinner Lab laid off most of its staff and shifted events workers to a contract model while searching for a sustainable operation.
- Shutdown
On April 14, 2016, Dinner Lab suspended all operations, telling members it could not turn the corner on a profitable enterprise.
- Bankruptcy
In June 2016, Dinner Lab filed for bankruptcy; Louisiana taxpayers had given the firm over $3 million in tax credits through the state's Angel Investor Tax Credit program.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In 2011, Brian Bordainick, Francisco Robert and Zach Kupperman founded Dinner Lab in New Orleans: a members-only pop-up dinner club pairing up-and-coming chefs with strangers in unconventional locations.
- 02
The company expanded to 31 US cities and acquired San Francisco rival Dishcrawl, raising $9.1 million; the pop-up model proved logistically brutal - managing scalable events staff, sourcing, and venues event by event, with too few events to justify subscriptions.
- 03
In December 2015, Dinner Lab laid off most staff, shifting to contractors, and tried unsuccessfully to sell diner surveys to restaurants.
- 04
On April 14, 2016, the company suspended all operations, saying it could not build a profitable enterprise; in June 2016 it filed for bankruptcy. No reliable loss figure was disclosed, so no loss amount is recorded.