Sofie Rooney, co-founder of Chimac, tells Robert McHugh about how a trip to Korea changed her life and career.
Since opening in 2019, Chimac has gained a reputation as one of the quirkiest and most original dining concepts in Dublin. Located on Aungier Street, the fast-casual Korean fried-chicken restaurant was established by Sofie Rooney and Garret FitzGerald, after the couple fell in love with the dish during a trip to Seoul in 2016.
Chimac also runs a thriving online business, with its signature sauces now available in over 500 retailers in 21 countries.
Sofie, please tell us about Chimac – the ethos, food, service, etc.
Chimac makes high-quality fast-casual food, accessible to everyone.
There is fast food, and then there are restaurants doing amazing high-end dining. We really wanted to come in at an accessible price point and deliver a product that was a step above most fast-food outlets or fast-casual offerings that existed in the market at the time.
Everything that we sell is made in house. The only thing that we buy is our buns, which we buy from Coghlan’s. Everything else we make ourselves – all our sauces and mayos. Our fries are hand-cut. Our chicken is prepared in the kitchen.
It is difficult, but we really wanted to set ourselves apart by delivering quality produce. We hope that people will recognise that.
Please tell us about your background – where you grew up, studied, etc.
I grew up in Rathmines, and I went to school in St Louis. My first job was in hospitality, making pizzas in Pizza Hut in Nutgrove.
All throughout college, I worked in hospitality. I did an undergraduate in communications, and then I subsequently did an MA in marketing.
I also did a J1 in the US and worked in hospitality there as well. I loved it, but I also wanted a corporate job, or a ‘real job’, so I got one! I worked in marketing for five years at a branding agency, and I enjoyed it, but I always missed the atmosphere of working in hospitality. You just don’t get that in any other kind of job.
Myself and my partner, Garret, had previously worked together when Bunsen opened their doors. He was the head chef, and I was working there as a waitress. We knew we worked well together and we talked about potentially opening a restaurant, and then we did!
What do you think that it was that drew you to hospitality?
It’s an amazing industry to work in, regardless if you want to make it your career or not. It teaches you a lot about the world and gives you a really good foundation for any kind of job.
It’s a very hard job. A lot of people will say it’s an easy job, but whether you’re working in a kitchen or front of house, it’s very challenging – it’s very physical – but there’s something about it that you just don’t get in any other job. You don’t have a phone in your hand, ever, which is so nice! Even now, when I work in our restaurant, I don’t have my phone.
It sounds crazy, but working in hospitality can almost be meditative – you can’t think about anything else except the task at hand. You have so many different small things to do that it just frees up your mind from thinking about your normal life.
Obviously, you have many bad nights, when everything goes terribly wrong, but it is still always OK in the end – and when you have a good night and you’re working well with the team, it just feels amazing.
How did your first trip to Seoul influence your food journey?
Myself and Garret went over to Seoul for my cousin’s wedding. He was getting married over there, and he told us we had to try the fried chicken.
Previously, we had been talking about opening a fried-chicken restaurant. It was before Chimac opened and before Mad Egg opened. There was fast food-style fried chicken in Dublin, but nothing on the same level that was being offered in London, Paris and New York, which had amazing fried-chicken restaurants.
Irish people love chicken, and they love poultry. It was definitely something we wanted to look at.
Then we went to Korea, and we had the fried chicken there. We just became absolutely obsessed with the flavours. The way Korean people enjoy Chimac is a cultural phenomenon.
There’s like 30,000 different Chimac shops across Korea, and all they do is serve fried chicken and beer. You go with your friends and you order a full chicken, the cooks fry it, and then you get a couple of beers, then you eat the chicken, then you have another beer, then you might order another chicken. Everyone’s sharing, and you’re just drinking and eating.
Obviously, in Ireland, we don’t really have that same mentality about drinking and eating together. We like drinking, we like eating – but separately.
When we came back to Ireland with the idea, it was not going to be the same concept of how Chimac is enjoyed in Korea, but we just loved that sense of people coming together and sharing – friends having a good time, it’s casual, but the food is really, really good as well.
Who was your first mentor in hospitality?
Myself and Garret worked in Bunsen when it first opened, and we worked closely with Tom and Finn [Gleeson]. Seeing them on that journey for the first six or seven months was an absolute inspiration. The brand has done so well.
So many times I have asked them for advice along the way, and they have been fantastic.
What are the major challenges in the industry at the moment?
The challenges are endless at the moment – the increase of staff costs, the increase of food costs, the price sensitivity from consumers, and people potentially going out less. It just creates a perfect storm. It’s just a very difficult time for people to navigate.
The media are constantly reporting that coffee prices have gone up, and then consumers complain about it being too expensive. I don’t know anyone who owns a coffee shop who’s making millions off their coffee, you know what I mean?
Sometimes we get bad reviews, people say we are expensive, whereas I feel this is not the price it should be – it should be an extra €3 on top of that! You just have to marry the two together so that it is still accessible to customers.
Before Covid, we were fundamentally just a restaurant. We did a little bit of takeaway, but it was a small part of our business.
Covid changed the industry and our offering. Takeaway was all we ever did, and I think people became so used to our brand being something that you order on delivery, which is great. We love that – it’s part of people’s lives – but then it just transformed our business into having this revenue stream, which is a really big, major part of our business that has all these in-built commissions and extra fees that we never really looked at when we were opening the business because that’s not what we set out to do.
So, all of these things are really hard. There is a lot of your potential margin disappearing to different people, different online tools. There are costs associated with everything to do with running a business these days.
What plans does Chimac have in store for the coming year?
Last year, we did so many off-site events, but this year we might do less. They are a lot of fun, but absolutely exhausting. We had a kiosk in the Aviva last year, and we finished that up in November.
In June, we did 17 off-sites in one month, which almost killed us! It’s really fun, but, at the end, it’s not fun at all.
Our plans for this year are to keep going with what we are doing. There will be some bigger marquee events and brand partnerships, and things like that.
Last week, we did a really nice event with Moët and Big Mike’s at their restaurant in Blackrock, which was so much fun. It was great to see a brand like ours lined with Moët. I never thought that was gonna happen, but that was brilliant!
We will try to focus on a couple of things that add more value for us, rather than trying to spread ourselves thin. We are doing Taste of Dublin, but that’s probably going to be one of the only events we are taking part in this year.
We just really want to focus on our menu, focus on what we are doing right, while making sure we are doing the best-possible job of what we set out to do in the first place.
We have a franchise with Gather & Gather in UCD, which we launched in September. That is quite interesting. We are just testing it out, to see how that goes. Right now is not the time to open loads of restaurants because it’s just so hard out there, but something like this might work longer-term for us. They are running it, and it’s going well, so we’ll see where that goes.
What do you like to do when you are not working?
Well, I started DJ’ing recently. I’m a very bad DJ, so it’s exciting to learn something new.
I go to the gym and run, and stuff like that – nothing super-exciting. I have a dog that I’m always walking!
Which five people would you invite to your dream dinner party?
My business partner and husband, Garret, Martha Stewart, Oscar Wilde, Danny Meyer and Cleopatra.
