Rice MBAs bring Miami-based restaurant to Houston

Whatcha got cookin’?
Rice MBAs bring Miami-based restaurant to Houston

BY ARIE WILSON
Rice News staff

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the healthy side.

For business partners and longtime friends Luis Miguel and Frederico Muyshondt, establishing a Houston restaurant that serves healthy and tasty meals is no joking matter.

Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Frederico Muyshondt, left, a current MBA student at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, and Luis Miguel, an alumnus of the Jones School’s MBA program, stand at the counter of their restaurant “Chicken Kitchen” in Rice Village. The two brought the restaurant to Houston after Miguel developed the business plan as a class project.

Miguel, a 2005 alumnus of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, and Muyshondt, a current MBA student, met as youngsters in their native El Salvador. Years after moving to the U.S., Miguel graduated from North Carolina State University and Muyshondt graduated from Texas A&M University, and the pair found themselves reunited in Miami.
Partially due to Miami’s location in the southern-most region of Florida, the city’s food — like the city’s culture — has been influenced by Latin America and the Caribbean. Known as “Floribbean,” the cuisine is a unique part of the region’s charm, the pair said.

“When we [moved to Texas] we missed the food,” Muyshondt said. “In Miami we were used to getting healthy fast food and found that was harder to do in Houston.”
Miguel and Muyshondt were both patrons of a popular award-winning, healthy fast-food restaurant in Miami called “Chicken Kitchen.”

Miguel had pondered bringing Chicken Kitchen to Houston, but it wasn’t until his second-year Rice MBA course, “The New Enterprise and Business Plan Development,” that the idea came together completely. Miguel developed a business plan as a class project.

After he saw that the concept could be more than simply a class project, Miguel brought the idea to Muyshondt and asked if he would like to be his business partner.

With the help of Jones School faculty, Miguel and Muyshondt revised the plan and pitched the concept to Chicken Kitchen’s corporate headquarters.

“Once you get the corporation on board it is a lot easier to convince investors to buy into your idea,” Muyshondt said.

With investors secured, Chicken Kitchen granted Miguel and Muyshondt all rights to the Houston market, and the first restaurant is now open at 2516 Rice Blvd.

But drawing up a business plan, finding investors and opening Houston’s first Chicken Kitchen was only part of the battle. Now Miguel and Muyshondt are faced with managing the restaurant and planning the opening of the next Chicken Kitchen, which will be located on Westheimer Road.

Most afternoons Miguel can be found overseeing Chicken Kitchen’s dinner crowd. And when Muyshondt isn’t in his business classes, he’s managing the business.

“It’s not what you would expect because most MBA graduates get their master’s degree so they can be competitive in the corporate world,” Muyshondt said. “But we are very involved and working at a hands-on level.”

After his positive experience working with the Jones School faculty who helped hone the Chicken Kitchen business plan, Muyshondt decided to leave his job in marketing with Dell to pursue his MBA at Rice.

“It was a very different experience than anything I had seen before,” Muyshondt said. “The professors invited us into their own home after they finished with their work at Rice and offered their professional help.”

Muyshondt always knew he would return to college for an MBA, but was unsure where he would attend. Rice had been a front-runner before, Muyshondt said, and when he saw the one-on-one relationships Rice professors have with their students, he knew there is no way other universities could compete.

Rice and Chicken Kitchen have become an important part of Miguel’s and Muyshondt’s lives — and that trend will likely continue. Over the next seven years, the partners plan to open 24 Chicken Kitchens across Houston.