Member Spotlight: The RTG Kitchen

As with so many who dedicate themselves to hospitality, the RTG kitchen founder and owner Okeima’s introduction to the world of food occurred within the family. He recalls his love of cooking emanating from his grandma, a chef who was a source of young inspiration for him.

Admitting that he started “copying everything she was doing”, from an early age Okeima felt confident in pursuing this passion. Food is an incredible connector, as much between people and cultures, it can realign us with our past selves and hint towards the future change we want to be. The RTG kitchen has proven to be just that vessel, allowing Okeima also to harness his young interest for drawing, in the mouthwatering presentation his customers appreciate.

The road to glory that RTG represents is one paved with an impressive backlog of chef experience, where Okeima built up industry knowledge and sharpened his skills across a variety of cuisines and styles: Having started out at Burger & Lobster in Soho, he moved on to SushiSamba before a spell with Rum Kitchen. The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in the form of Levi Roots Caribbean Smokehouse, after which Okeima felt ready and confident to take the risk of going solo and starting up his own venture.

But he wasn’t starting entirely from scratch – when working as a chef, on his allocated days off he made quite a habit of selling food to friends and family. Word started to spread, interested whispers grew and Okeima credits a lot of the confidence he felt in starting the business to this.

Having experienced a multitude of methods, approaches and ethos from this experience working in hospitality, he’s been able to clearly define and express what his business is all about and strives to achieve; efficient kitchen etiquette and rigmarole with expansive flavours and eye-catching presentation.

Presentation is a huge component of what RTG do: “I would never put something together if it doesn’t work, with all the dishes we do when you mix all the elements together it just makes everything stand out.” This is so key to keeping the customer experience fresh each time, providing equal doses of variety and consistent quality on their plate.

In order to achieve such appealing presentation, a lot of work goes in before hand and Okeima is no stranger to preparation. “RTG is based on the preparation and presentation. We only do fresh food, which often means an early start – let’s say we’re starting at 9, I need to be up at 4:00 AM to start doing the mango salsa salads and the sauces, prepping the rice and everything.”

In street food, reputation is everything – an ethos RTG champion, which manifests in this commitment to get up and get on so early in the day to ensure each trading day they’re really bringing the best for customers. Necessary to making the operation tick is surrounding yourself with a team you can trust in and rely on.

On a scale of one to ten, Okeima ranks the importance of reputation a ten; “as a small company, you have to protect it. It’s like your baby. I’m always watering the business like a flower then you see it growing and getting bigger.”

As it grows bigger, so too does the need to trust in your team. Okeima recognises the value in investing in the team he’s compiled “because with some people you work with, they will have passions for different things so you have to figure out what they really like doing and put them in that field. You want to get the best out of them and they want to give their best for you – you can’t just have somebody and expect them to be what you want them to be.”

Trading situations can be intense bursts of close-quarters action for hours on end and demand a lot of people. Particularly when someone is relatively new to the industry, this can be a really testing environment. There is nowhere to hide and even just the sight of a big queue out front can daunt staff, which is exactly what Okeima attempts to tap into with “putting staff on when we trade at festivals – they’re really busy and can make or break you. After those shifts, I can really see what type of person I’m working with.”

Playing to everyone’s strengths only benefits the overall operation and there is a tangible sense of pride gleamed from watching employees grow in a role, coming out of their shell and seeing hospitality as a viable path for themselves.

On the day we spoke, Okeima had just finished a regular trading spot at City Point in London and talked me through the rigours of making that work. “You get there at 10:15 to start trading for 11 – you can’t be late because you need each second of those 45 minutes to get ready, then once it starts at 11, we are just flat out absolutely non-stop until 2pm. You have about twenty minutes to clean down after and that’s it. Do it all again the next day!”

Often it’s the unexpected that can surprise when we think about the realities of working in hospitality. This is exactly what faced the RTG kitchen when first starting to trade at City Point:

“So it takes around three weeks to learn because you need to know the environment as well. We had to figure out what we’re going to get water from, where the toilet is, also just how busy it actually is. You don’t get a minute to stop and think, once you’re on you’ve got a queue to get through and that’s it. If you have an issue, break down or can’t keep up with the demand, everyone’s going to go to the next trader. It’s cut-throat like that but you must respect it and treat it like that.”

Keeping oself well and healthy is paramount to keeping the business running positively. You have to prioritise yourself to avoid burn out which is a very real phenomenon in street food that demands such hard, enduring and unapologetic commitment from caterers. Okeima makes sure that he gives himself some time to meditate and free his mind in the morning, “you can’t just jump in to work mode so you have to prepare yourself properly. You are a human at the end of the day, you need time for yourself.”

Furthermore, there are countless opportunities to make mistakes and to learn from them when operating in street food. Okeima’s philosophy on this is concise and to the point – “in street food, don’t give up – just keep going. It gets better each year. If you make a mistake today, when you sleep on it later, you’ll rectify it then tomorrow you can move forward. Each time it’s one less mistake you’re going to make.”

There is always a challenge to overcome – something the RTG kitchen relishes – but it is so important to remember you’re “just a human and sometimes it can be something small, maybe you didn’t sleep well or having something going on in your personal life and you’re just not up for it. But it’s just 24 hours. Then you’re going to sleep and tomorrow gets a bit easier. That’s my motivation. If we’re trading for 8 hours you tell yourself that’s it, just 8 hours and you’re done.”

Even after finishing a busy day of trading, switching off can be something of a task – “People talk about the freedom with running your own business, but if you compare it to a nine to five, when you finish at five, you’re free. With running your business, even if you’re not working, you’re always thinking about the business so it can be quite hard to switch off. There’s always something that needs to be done or some way you can evolve the business.”

Just as earlier in the day, while operating, he witnessed an adjacent trader receive a gas delivery in situ and capitalised on the opportunity to enquire about contact details to get that set up for RTG, a subtle yet potentially significant development to ease trading stress and free up time.

Focus is king, once set up and operating though “When we get trading, it’s literally tunnel vision on what you are doing. For that period, no other trader exists. That’s my focus, my mindset – you’re a business at the end of the day and need to do everything to prioritise your success. I’ll know about the other traders operating wherever we are in the sense of what type of food they’re doing, then I’ll come up with my own scheme, tell myself ‘the only way I can win in this situation is if I do this’ and just go for it.”

“When I was younger and less established, I was always looking at certain businesses that inspire me, to see what they do and how they do it, what I can learn from that and take into what we do. Once I’ve accomplished that or reached that level, it’s looking at different businesses.”

We liken this approach to that of playing a video game and levelling up, and Okeima recognises that the RTG kitchen has now graduated to that position of inspiration and influence itself, as a business others will be looking up to and taking notes from: “I feel about that the same like I did it so they can too – that’s the only way you become better, through the research and implementing what you learn. It’s just like a transformer, you add on bits from here and there to become bigger and better all the time.”

As much as this business has been a journey for Okeima to go on, the business has been a journey itself. RTG initially stood for Road To Glory “which is more like my journey – the journey from being a chef, a dreamer and then reaching my glory which is actually to change to Ready To Go kitchen. So we changed the name because we reached a certain stage and it felt right.”

Owing also to this fitting graduation to the title that accurately describes how RTG operate – often serving customers from taking the order to handing over the meal in less than a minute – is that people used to ask about the name and the story behind the business all the time as Road To Glory. While of course Okeima recognises the value in customers showing such interest, at a point it can become a clog in the operation if it’s taking so much longer to serve everyone and there’s already stringent margins to operate under.

the RTG kitchen is exactly that – great food, that is ready to go. No fuss.

You can find out more about the RTG kitchen here and follow their journey here.