Female CEOs shouldn't be a rarity in business, but that's (still) the world we're living in. According to the World Economic Forum, as of March of this year, only 15 percent of Fortune 500 company heads are women. But that didn't stop two local visionaries (and Parkland High School grads) from doing things their way and taking a seat at the head of the table.
Brianna Keefe
CEO & Founder of Toastique
A restaurant that specializes in toast? Maybe you have questions. The very first Toastique patrons certainly did. Founder Brianna Keefe recalls them eyeing her first shop in Washington, D.C., a bit incredulously. But more often than not, they left satiated and spouting entreaties for Keefe to open a Toastique location near them. Some may be getting their wish. (Toastique does offer more than toast, by the way. More on that in a moment.)
Keefe long has been a proponent of physical fitness as well as healthy eating habits. She was on the dive team at Parkland High School and excelled at cheerleading as well. “I was super busy,” Keefe says. “Smoothies and smoothie bowls were always my go-to.” She continued with cheerleading on the collegiate level at James Madison University in Virginia. That’s also when she began to experiment with different gourmet toast recipes, piling on various types of produce and proteins like avocado and chicken. “It filled me up but I was never overstuffed. It kept me powered through the day,” Keefe says.
Originally Keefe was studying to be a dietician, but when she decided the many chemistry classes the major required weren’t a good fit, a guidance counselor suggested she try something else. Keefe switched her focus to hospitality management, and, following her graduation from JMU in 2016, she found work at a hotel in Washington, D.C., that catered high-profile events. Keefe was sometimes working up to 80 hours a week. “I was really burned out,” she recalls. “That’s what gave me the extra push to do something on my own. If I was going to work that hard, I wanted it to be for myself.”
She was walking in D.C.’s waterfront Wharf neighborhood when she saw an open storefront. But convincing the building’s broker to take a chance on her idea for a juice bar and gourmet toast fast-casual eatery took some effort. “I spent the next 48 hours typing up this 27-page business plan.” Keefe says. It worked. Keefe’s boyfriend, Kyle Izett, who was working in the construction industry, helped her get the very first Toastique up and running in just 36 days. That was July of 2018—the summertime tourist season in the capital. Keefe says foot traffic was steady from the get-go: “It really took off from there, and it’s been crazy ever since, in the best way.” Curious customers figured out quickly that Keefe’s handcrafted toast creations really were as tasty and filling as any meal. Power bowls, all-natural smoothies and cold-pressed juices were also on the menu. Keefe says most of the things Toastique sells are made from scratch on site, using locally sourced products whenever possible.
For the first six months, Keefe says she worked every day the restaurant was open, from the time she was welcoming the first customer until she was saying goodbye to the last. It was a grueling schedule, but Keefe had found her passion. Once she was certain that all was well at the Wharf location, the next obvious step for Toastique was franchising. A second location was added in Alexandria, Virginia, and then two more were established in D.C. More recent openings in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, and Colorado bring the total number of Toastiques in the U.S. to seven. But there are plans to add even more. Many more; as in 52 new locations over the next several years. “It really just kind of exploded,” Keefe says. “We’re super excited about it.”
And yes, there is a Toastique planned for Keefe’s old stomping grounds. That location is expected to open in the fall on East Third Street on Bethlehem’s Southside, not far from Lehigh University. It will be a special moment for Keefe, whose parents still live in the Lehigh Valley. She admits she doesn’t get home as often as she’d like; instead, her parents often come to see her in Washington, D.C., where her brother, Sean Keefe, also resides in the surrounding area. Sean Keefe is the company’s director of operations. And Kyle Izett, who was so instrumental in getting that very first Toastique off the ground, is COO, CFO and director of construction. Of her parents, Keefe says: “They’re both extremely supportive and try to come to any opening we have, any event that we have.”
She admits her dad was initially leery (as most protective fathers probably would be) when she told him she was quitting her dependable, full-time job to take a chance on an idea for a new kind of restaurant centered around toast. But it would be difficult now for anyone to convince Keefe she was wrong to follow her gut. Toastique successfully weathered the COVID pandemic that proved to be the death knell for restaurants across the U.S. Recently, Keefe herself was included by Forbes magazine on its annual “30 Under 30” list in the food and drink category. Keefe says she was so blown away that she cried when she heard the news. “It’s a very humbling honor,” she says.
Jessica Young
CEO & Founder of BUBBLE
Photos shot on location at Tower 6 City Center Allentown
Build it up or tear it apart: It seems Jessica Young is doing one or the other these days, with the former dominating her professional world, and the latter front and center in her personal life. The thing being torn apart is the historic townhome she’s renovating in Allentown with her boyfriend (a “pandemic sweetheart,” she calls him), and in the “build-it-up” department is BUBBLE, the online grocery marketplace for health foods founded by Young that is quickly becoming an invaluable partner in the clean eating movement for both companies and consumers.
Young grew up in the Lehigh Valley and is a Parkland High School grad. Her family has deep roots in the area; Young’s Medical Equipment and Young Medical Spa are among their businesses. At first it seemed Jessica would follow a similar path, but, as she progressed in her studies of biochemistry at Moravian College (now University), she began to realize that she needed to make a change. “I wasn’t really happy,” Young recalls. “Something felt really off.”
She was 20 years old when she decided to put the brakes on traditional academia and move to New York City to enroll in culinary school. The career change paid off. Young would go on to work in various fine dining establishments in the city, and as a private chef for some A-list celebrities. Turns out, food was definitely Young’s passion, but toiling away in the back of a kitchen was not. The start-up scene intrigued her. She eventually joined a meal kit company that went up and under quickly before landing at the plant-based meal delivery service Daily Harvest, as the director of product and operations. Young is proud of the work she did there—“That company is now a $1.2-billion company,” she says—but in 2018, she decided to branch out on her own, and BUBBLE was born.
Vice.com calls BUBBLE an “online health food paradise”; Young describes it as Etsy for the makers of real foods: “We’re building a platform for health food companies to ship direct to consumer.” Each product goes through a stringent approval process where natural is key. Products that contain additives like refined or artificial sweeteners, preservatives, growth hormones or hydrogenated oils will not earn the BUBBLE seal of approval. But passing the label test is just half the battle—everything on bubblegoods.com must get the thumbs-up from the team’s taste testers. And of course, all products must be prepared in professional kitchens that are food-safe certified. “There’s a high level of curation,” Young says. “The bar is high but the process is fast.” The end result is true transparency about what consumers are getting when they trust BUBBLE to help stock their pantries.
Young, who’s in her early 30s, is aware that she’s somewhat of an anomaly—a young female CEO at the helm of a start-up. She describes trying to operate successfully in that world as an “uphill battle.” So, it’s probably not surprising then that she would strive to cultivate a culture of female empowerment around her. According to bubblegoods.com, 64 percent of the brands on the platform are founded by women. Recently, BUBBLE added its first female engineer to its tech team. “That was a big goal for us, to have a diverse work culture,” says Young. Also, one of BUBBLE’s investors happens to be supermodel Karlie Kloss, who runs the nonprofit, STEAM-driven Kode with Klossy, which offers a free training program for girls and young women who are interested in computer coding.
The pandemic was a time of transition for Young. She came back to the Lehigh Valley to care for her grandmother and ended up sticking around after she met a special someone—that “pandemic sweetheart.” They’re documenting the extensive renovations they’re doing to their 1855 townhouse on Instagram (@allentownhouse).
Young works from home on some days and commutes to BUBBLE’s New York City office on others. She’s trying to keep up with a surge that began in the early weeks of the pandemic. “We had customers and brands rush on to the platform,” she says. Even as stay-at-home restrictions eased and in-person shopping was possible again, it became abundantly clear that the need for an online space bringing innovative food makers to the attention of health-conscious consumers wasn’t going away. “People want the experience of the farmers market and the cool new brand and they want it delivered,” says Young. “They want the ease of having it delivered from their phone.”
While BUBBLE started small with just a handful of brands, that number had swelled to about 675 as of late May, and Young says they’re aiming to approach the 1,000 mark by the end of the year. Another objective is tripling BUBBLE’s core seven-person team, while also upping the ante in marketing and fundraising. “We have lofty goals, so the pressure is on at the current moment,” Young says. Luckily, even though this boss lady is no longer in the kitchen, she can certainly take the heat.
