A startup created by Portland footwear design firm Studio Noyes is taking aim at an industry where what professionals wear on their feet is just as important as what is in their hands.
Restaurant, bar and service industry professionals are on their feet sometimes more than 12 hours a day creating the food consumers crave. There are brands like Dansko, Berkenstock and Crocs that are worn in kitchens and behind bars, but “they make shoes that work for a kitchen, not kitchen shoes,” said Erik Hernandez, founder of Mise.
That distinction is critical.
“We realized that all these people were really considering what they wear, but brands weren’t thinking of them,” he said, adding that there is an estimated 12 million people in U.S. employed in the industry.
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Mise has created a shoe specifically designed for use in the hospitality industry. Test pairs are out to more than 100 chefs, and the company expects to start taking pre-orders in mid-November.
Hernandez is a designer at Studio Noyes and has taken on this startup brand full time. He has spent 15 years working in the footwear industry, including four years at Adidas, where he was design director of footwear for basketball. He has been at Studio Noyes for five years.
Studio Noyes was founded in 2013 by Samantha Noyes, another footwear industry veteran. The studio works with companies such as Adidas, Hoka and Columbia Sportswear on design and product.
During seasonal downtime, the team works on its own projects. Mise was one of those downtime endeavors and has been split off into its own startup. It is now a client of the studio.
Mise has made 160 pairs of its shoes and is putting them in the hands of chefs. There are 100 chefs across 75 kitchens, cafes and bars in the Portland area testing the shoes including Carlo Lamagna of Magna Kusina, Nong Poonsukwattana of Nong’s Khao Man Gai, and Ian Willams of Deadstock Coffee. The remaining 60 pairs are going to chefs in Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Houston and New York.
One pair, which is particularly noteworthy, was sent to Chef Matt Abergel at Hong Kong’s Yardbird, a recently Michelin-starred restaurant. It was Abergel who was one of the first to ask frequent customer Hernandez, who at the time worked for Vans, if Vans could make a kitchen shoe.
That was 10 years ago. But that initial question kept coming up for Hernandez and Noyes, who both would hear from contacts in the hospitality industry whether any of the footwear companies they worked for would ever look at this market.
Mise has been funded in-house. Hernandez took a loan out against his 401(k) to fund these early runs. He is hoping pre-orders can fund the initial purchase order, but he is also weighing other funding options. However, he said, any partner must be passionate about serving the restaurant industry.
The six or so employees at Studio Noyes are working on the project as well. The team also has contractors for photography, marketing and other functions who primarily work in the food and beverage industry.
Hernandez and Noyes wanted to make sure any partners on this project are out of the hospitality industry, not the sneaker world they know. They are building this brand in a grassroots way to ensure the target customers’ needs are met.
Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has upended the hospitality industry, Hernandez and Noyes didn’t waver on their belief in Mise. If anything, they doubled down.
“It made us realize how little attention the industry was getting,” said Hernandez, as stories emerged of restaurants unable to get loans or government aid. The startup is planning to incorporate a give-back element to causes important to its customers.
The target price point is $129, which puts Mise in the higher end with Dansko or Berkenstock, said Hernandez, who noted the shoe is made as a “performance sneaker for the kitchen.” It has the same materials that would be found in a favorite running or basketball shoe but everything is designed for ease of use in the kitchen. For example the three elements of the shoe: upper, outsole and internal bootie can all be removed for cleaning.
Mise has been years in the making. Noyes said it has been a learning experience for the team. She is unsure if spinning up new brands is a new model for the studio, but the expertise gained in areas like user research expand the capabilities they can offer clients.
