Shaw expert REALTOR® interviews Ali Bagheri from SUNdeVICH

As a Real Estate Agent specializing in Shaw, through my website HomesInShaw.com I write a blog which interviews the business proprietors of Shaw.  This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ali Bagheri of Shaw's new sandwich shop, SUNdeVICH.  SUNdeVICH is part of the DanAli projects, which includes Seasonal Pantry, run by Dan O'Brien.  Below is the interview where Ali speaks about how he got to this point in his life, the craft required for running one of Shaw's most popular small businesses, as well as what he thinks about the community of Shaw.

Kevin Poist:    Ali, as a real estate agent specializing only in Shaw, I truly appreciate you sitting down to speak with me about your business.  How about we start with some background on how you got to the point where you opened up SUNdeVICH?

Ali Bagheri:  I've been in the industry for about 15 years.  Dan O’Brien and I met in a kitchen and developed the concept for Seasonal Pantry before SUNdeVICH.  Dan was living already in Shaw close to P Street.  I was moving into Shaw.  So we saw this property (that SUNdeVICH now sits upon) and the apartment on the third floor was available and I moved into the apartment.  A year later, we opened up our commercial spaces here.

Kevin:  So what was the inspiration for opening up your commercial properties in Shaw?

Ali:  Well, necessity is the mother of invention.  At that time you either had to go to U Street or Chinatown.  There was little in between.  The convention center is a double edge sword because people think it’s a prime location yet the convention center is only occupied on occasion, so new business start-ups were confused about how to creatively fill commercial spaces in Shaw.  I was working on the SUNdeVICH concept at that time and we ended up seeing this space (under the apartment where I was living) as a great space for both SUNdeVICH and Seasonal Pantry.

Kevin:  How did SUNdeVICH begin?

Ali:  We opened Seasonal Pantry a month before we opened SUNdeVICH.  SUNdeVICH began as an operation July of 2011, but it took a year before that with construction permitting and so on.  Now we are where we want to be:  the two stand on their own and SUNdeVICH and Seasonal Pantry are doing their own thing.  Our original business model is now in full momentum.  Our business model has always specialized towards residential neighborhoods with a strong sense of community.  Everything is close so everything is cohesive and the inner-workings of management are seamless.  It’s not like our headquarters is in California and we are running a shop over on the East Coast.  All of the energy that goes into SUNdeVICH happens right here in Shaw.  This is our neighborhood.

Kevin:  And what is that business model?

Ali:  Dan and I wanted to have a couple of places very close to each other, very competitive with each other.  We wanted to create our plans in a neighborhood that needed and desired small, neighborhood-friendly businesses. 

Kevin:  For being open only a year, it seems Shaw has received SUNdeVICH and Seasonal Pantry quite well.

Ali:  The people of Shaw, as well as media exposure, have been very good to us thus far.  Word of mouth from the people of Shaw, the Washington Post, the Washingtonian, this month’s Food and Wine:  we have been very fortunate from the exposure perspective, bloggers in the neighborhood, and a couple of promotional deals we ran that really helped get out name out there.  The people of Shaw have been amazing with their excitement towards our businesses.

Kevin:  What about the name, “SUNdeVICH”

Ali:  The name is just a pun on the word "sandwich."  The Middle-East, Eastern Europe, all pronounce it "sun-deh-vich." Dan and I use to joke that we would speak with an accent when everyone came.  I wanted to establish the brand and I knew I would trademark it.  The domain name was available.  All these variables came together.  It's fun too.

Kevin:  Let’s talk about the food.

Ali:  There is no reinventing the wheel.  The tastes of SUNdeVICH are all rifts of things that I have tried and tasted from my travels.  I have family in Germany, and the Germans have a high Turkish population.  This was the first exposure to street food:  sausage and gyros and kabobs from street carts.  We applied this concept to the need for Shaw to have a staple sandwich shop.  Since most urban sandwich shops deal with Italian sandwiches, or simply lots of turkey, we wanted SUNdeVICH to reinvent the idea of your neighborhood sandwich shop:  steering our customers away from the roast beef repeat-offenders and other usual turkey-suspects.

Kevin:  How are you incorporating your travels into your food?

Ali:  I want the food to be familiar enough that people are like "yeah I've had that before" and still diverse enough for them to say "I've never had anything like that!  We want our customer to feel the balance of familiarity and exploration in our food.  We don't want people to grow bored with the ingredients.  It should be fun!  We don't take ourselves seriously.  SUNdeVICH is in a garage. We’re in a back alley.  It’s relaxed.  I want people who visit our shop to say:  “Damn that little garage puts out a good sandwich!”  And we already have embraced the fun atmosphere in SUNdeVICH.  I've got some customers who are like "I'm going to try every sandwich in the first 30 days!"  Alex Padro, head of Shaw Main Streets, did just that.  Alex was gung ho!  He was methodical.  We want to make it fun and interesting.   

Kevin:  What about your emphasis on local and eco-friendly?

Ali:  Being a small business gives us a lot of opportunity to be “green” while supporting local farmers.  Since SUNdeVICH’s output is slightly higher than Seasonal Pantry (which prides itself off of its ingredients being 90% local) we cannot be as "local" as Seasonal Pantry is, but we are very close.  I am proud that we only work with small businesses.  SUNdeVICH is a small business, and therefore I want to support small businesses.  We don't deal with Sysco or any of the large suppliers.  We aren’t a franchise and we will never be “corporate” like that.  We have the luxury of working with farmers, local suppliers, and other small suppliers that we find it comfortable to work with.  Our sausage supplier is in Alexandria.  We don't have a freezer.   Our deliveries are on a daily basis.  We sell what we sell that day and start fresh the next day.  We got an '86 board because we run out of food on a daily basis.  I like the 86 board because it contains a live element.  When we are out of something it shows it’s popular.  We have a lot of fun with the board.

Kevin:  And what about Shaw?

Ali:  Shaw is awesome.  I love history and when I moved into Shaw I did a lot of research about the history of the alleys around SUNdeVICH, where the rich people lived facing the street and the poor people lived in the back alleys that took care of the horses.  I just love the history of the streets around me.  It contains a lot of character.  Furthermore, Shaw is located in the middle of the city.  Urban renewal is in full effect.  Even in the three years I have been here a lot has changed.  There is a very strong community here.  I think DC is starting to catch that New York state of mind, in that, people don't live in “New York,” they live in Tribeca, the Village, or whatever small community they are proud of.  Now, DC residents don’t live just in “D.C.” They live in Shaw, they live in Bloomingdale, they live in Logan Circle etc.  People are proud of their existing neighborhoods in D.C.  As far as I’m concerned, everybody wants to live in 2-triple-0-1 (20001, the zip code for Shaw).  Therefore, I’m proud to have a business in D.C.  And I’m more proud to have a business in Shaw.