Erin Wade was a highly-paid corporate lawyer in San Francisco; she worked with some of the largest companies in America but she quit the job to start her own macaroni and cheese restaurant in 2011. Now, she is a millionaire and, by her own claim, "the world’s leading expert on macaroni and cheese".
In her book The Mac & Cheese Millionaire: Building a Better Business by Thinking Outside the Box, Wade said that she went from sounding important at cocktail parties" and looking "damned respectable in a suit each day" to cooking "more than 10,000 mac and cheese dishes" for her eatery Homeroom.
"I have grated over one metric ton of cheese, boiled thousands of pounds of pasta, and whisked such vast amounts of cream sauce that I developed a wrist injury my doctor told me she has only seen in teenage boys with masturbatory addictions," Wade wrote in her book, an excerpt of which was published by Fortune.
Homeroom has sold millions of mac and cheeses over a decade in business and Wade proudly exclaims that no one has dedicated more of their life to this dish than her.
She added that when she opened the restaurant, she did it out of a love of macaroni and cheese but what she ultimately fell in love with was the business. "I never set out to become a mac-and-cheese millionaire. When I first put together my Homeroom business plan, I had estimated my take-home pay to be $40,000 (Rs 33 lakh). I was stunned when in our first year I earned more than I had as a corporate attorney."
In 2020, a decade after running the restaurant, a large, venture-backed restaurant company offered a deal to Wade because Homeroom’s profitability was greater than five of their restaurants put together. Wade took it.
"I discovered that wealth generation is a natural by-product of the pursuit of creating something meaningful for as many people as possible," she said.
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