If you’ve never tried Goop Kitchen, Gwyneth Paltrow’s takeout-only, nutritious food operation, you’re missing out. No matter what you think of the Hollywood star or her lifestyle and wellness brand, the consensus in LA restaurant circles is the company’s food is shockingly good. Chef Josiah Citrin, of two-Michelin-starred Mélisse, is a big fan, while Marissa Hermer of Palm Springs’ Bar Issi says she orders it all the time. Eater editor Nicole Fellah gets the Caesar salad wrap regularly. Multiple Hollywood types told me it’s a favorite in writers rooms, too.
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I admit I was hugely skeptical until I tried the brand’s gluten-free (like everything at Goop Kitchen) pepperoni pizza, named after Paltrow’s Pepper Potts character in the Marvel films. When I visited the test kitchen last summer, chefs Kim Floresca and Brent Parrino prepared a fantastic turkey burger. Though the idea of “clean” food annoys me, I appreciate well-sourced and consistently delivered fare that won’t weigh you down. And the food is fairly affordable (like the $17 Andrew Huberman-collab turkey chili or $23 whole square pizza), unlike Goop’s luxury clothing and goods.
Celebrity-branded food businesses are nothing new. But with Goop Kitchen’s expansion earlier this year to San Francisco and now to New York City, Goop Kitchen feels bound to enter a broader national conversation, as Erewhon did when it went national.
I asked Paltrow about all of it last week. We chatted about her intentions for the NYC expansion, her involvement in menu development, and the brand’s future.
Matthew Kang: Do you like the same items on the Goop Kitchen menu as your customers?
Gwyneth Paltrow: Nothing gets on the menu without me loving it. My favorite is the salmon bento box ($18), which is popular but not the No. 1 [among customers]. I also really love the winter harvest chop salad ($16.50) that we do with sharp cheddar and falafel bites; it’s not in the top five [among customers], but definitely one of my favorites.
How much are you guiding menu development?
I’m very involved in ideating all of the dishes. We do multiple tastings. There’s pretty much nothing on the menu that I haven’t had a direct hand in shaping.
This whole thing is my brainchild. It comes from my cookbooks and years of feeding my family. I really wanted to do something the way that I cook, which I think is full of a lot of flavor, and also very clean and healthy. It’s an area that I think has been lacking.
Why expand Goop Kitchen to SF and NYC?
When it started, in our own backyard in Santa Monica, the idea was to bring incredibly high-quality, delicious food to everybody. SF was the next step for us because you don’t have to hire an entirely new team; [you can use the] same operational resources in California. It’s obviously a concept that feels very intuitively California. I was interested to see how it would go down in SF, probably the most urban environment in California. We’re still throttling demand there every day.
Are you excited to see Goop Kitchen expand? Let me know your thoughts by sending a message directly to kangtown@.com.
I’m from here [New York], and all my friends and family were about to kill me if we didn’t open Goop Kitchen in New York. It’s really become a thing: People land in California and text me their order; next question is when is this coming to New York. I think it’s thrilling. It’s a homecoming in a certain sense for me.
In expanding to the East Coast, are you changing the menu at all? Or do you think New Yorkers will gravitate towards different dishes than Californians?
We’re not changing the menu. I think we will probably be open to doing fun things along the way, like our collab with [podcaster and neuroscientist] Andrew Huberman, which was a huge success for us. Everybody wants to eat the same way: really delicious, high-quality. NYC kind of needs that more than anywhere. I haven’t found anything in New York that solves the problem of what should I order that’s really delicious and healthy.
How many locations do you foresee opening in New York and SF? What other cities do you see expanding to?
We have a robust road map for New York and California. We’re looking at Miami, and I think eventually we’ll be in many more cities.
Where does Goop Kitchen fit into the larger Goop organization in terms of financial performance? Is it a financial leader or more of a passion project?
Goop Kitchen is a complete passion project. Feeding people is my love language and creating access to delicious healthy food is a very deep passion of mine. And luckily the business is incredibly successful. Strong unit economics, metrics, repeat rates — we are leaders in many of these categories when looking at competitors. The metrics are off the charts.
What competitive advantages does Goop Kitchen have over its main competitors?
As everybody knows, as you build a food business, the most difficult thing is to scale and maintain the integrity of the food. That’s really the thing to focus on. We developed this business to be takeout and delivery, and engineered the package, like the bento box, to make sure food holds its integrity. We are absolutely obsessed with quality and execution. Once the recipe development is done, and we all feel good about what we’re serving, the operational team is really the most important thing.
Are there any cuisines or trends you think might influence where Goop Kitchen goes from here?
I don’t see us as a very trend-oriented business. We have found success creating food that follows a certain set of values: food we want to eat and feed our families. We want it to be broadly accessible, especially to people with dietary restrictions. I’m very proud of that.
