Joelle Parenteau's Ottawa restaurant, Wolf Down.Supplied
After yearly visits to her fiancé's parents in Germany and eating, what seemed like, nothing but Berlin doner kebabs, 31-year-old Joelle Parenteau figured there was enough pent-up demand in Ottawa to start her own shop there. The only problem was she didn’t have any restaurant experience.
What she did have was plenty of entrepreneurial acumen.
Ms. Parenteau, who had founded two startups in the tech and event-planning sectors since graduating from Ottawa’s Carleton University with an international business degree, pivoted to becoming a restaurateur in May of 2019 when she opened Wolf Down – an intimate space that serves German street food – in Ottawa’s Centretown neighbourhood.
What were you doing before opening Wolf Down?
It’s a little all over the place. Right out of university, I got a job in finance and hated it. It was through that when I saw my first opportunity, which was, since I was in finance, I wanted to try to help small-business owners. I quickly realized they had zero buying power, so that’s when I started my first business, which [enabled] small businesses to have access to corporate rates on major business expenses, such as insurance, banking, travel and technology. That really came about because I saw this problem and I thought, ‘we could just fix this.’ I got that up and running and ended up licensing it off to Canada Post to use as a customer-perk program. I was then in a situation where [Canada Post] paid enough for it – an annual licence fee – and it kind of ran itself at that point, so I was like, ‘Well my salary is paid, and I kind of have nothing to do,’ which was an interesting situation to end up in. Here I was with too much time on my hands, also going through a divorce, so I just went ‘screw it’ and moved to [Los Angeles].
The restaurant specializes in Berlin doner kebabs.Supplied
Where did you learn to love the doner itself?
[My fiancé] introduced me to the doner. It’s funny because he’s not a foodie by any means, but he couldn’t stop talking about this food. I thought that was really strange, and he hyped it up so much. The first time we were going to Germany to see his family, he was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait for you to try this. You’re going to love it.’ He hyped it up so much that there was no way it could live up to the expectations he was setting. I tried it and I was like, ‘Oh my God … what is this? How have the Germans been hiding this from us for so long? How do we not know this exists?’ We became completely obsessed.
And the restaurant?
It was always the proverbial, ‘someone needs to do this.’ And my nature as an entrepreneur is I never know what I’m going to do next. I don’t ever really have a plan … I just follow opportunities. That’s how this came about. It was kind of a joke. As I was wrapping up my previous venture, I was looking for a new challenge.
With no restaurant experience?
Nothing. I haven’t even worked in fast food. I don’t even cook. But I know business.
What was the biggest lesson you took from your other businesses to the restaurant?
We have that lean-startup mentality. I’m constantly trying to streamline and optimize and cut things out. You can tell when you look at our menu, it’s probably the smallest in the city. You can only get a sandwich or salad. It’s funny because you get people who are like, ‘oh that’s it?’ but most people are like, ‘I love that this is so simple, and you don’t make me make too many decisions.’ It’s small partially because of design, but we want to be known by one thing and doing one thing well. In my opinion, that’s really helped our virality.
The streamlined menu just lets customers choose between a sandwich and a salad.Supplied
How did this opportunity come to exist?
This is a product I think this market was ready for. I would never have gone into the restaurant business and opened another burger shop because I don’t know how I would have been different than any other burger shop. Things needed to line up for me – I needed to have the right product at the right time, the right opportunity, the right backers and the right team. It needs to be the perfect storm, and that’s what I looked for in any business I start. It’s more of, ‘Is there an opportunity here?’
What is some advice to people looking to start a product-based business?
Make sure people need it. The one thing that is common across all my businesses is that I only started them after I realized a lot of people were asking for it. I always wait until there was enough people saying, ‘I want to do this or I want this.’ We’d come home and tell all our friends and say, ‘You guys don’t even know what you’re missing out on in Germany,’ and they’d all want to try to it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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