Description

Episode Summary

In the 1930s, when a fiery mistress decided to get her revenge, she did not serve it cold, she served it hot enough to burn and helped create the legendary Nashville-style Hot Chicken.  Kim Prince carries on the family tradition with her restaurant Hotville and has been scorching tastebuds and the competition in Los Angeles.  The importance of legacy and family are at the core of the conversation, in this episode of The Sydcast.  

Syd Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.  He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, whichLinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.”  He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus.  Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Kim Prince

Reaching as far back as the 1930s, Kim said it was her great-great Uncle Thornton Prince who, along with his brothers, started the hot chicken tradition in Nashville. Legend has it that hot chicken’s origin was rooted in a not so favorable circumstance when a vengeful love interest added some unexpected heat to Uncle Thornton’s food, leaving his mouth sweltering with spice.  From there, the Prince family gave birth to the BBQ Hot Chicken Shack in 1936, later undergoing a name change to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in the 1980s.

Born in California, raised in Tennessee, Kim Prince moved back to California to work in television but in 2013 she decided to return to her family roots in the kitchen.   Kim is now the owner of LA’s Hotville Chicken™ and has brought her family’s deeply rooted hot chicken creations to Los Angeles.  Kim has expansion plans on the burner and hopes to continue to build on the family legacy. 

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the history of Nashville-hot chicken created by the Prince family and how that style of chicken has spawned many different imitators.
• How preparation affects the heat of the peppers and how the preparations might be culturally influenced.
• Difficulties in running a business in Los Angeles and keeping the family-oriented business model through expansion plans and how Kim is tackling that problem.
• Importance of community when it comes to success and how a support network can make or break a business.
• Difficulties COVID has presented for her business and how she has overcome the challenges.

Quotes from the show:

• “If you like fried chicken, you’re going to love Nashville’s Hot Chicken.” – Kim Prince
• “Once something comes into public usage, you start to lose some of the power of the brand itself.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Nashville hot chicken, to me personally, is a legacy project.  This is all about the Prince family and the growth of the Prince family legacy.” – Kim Prince
• “When I try Nashville Hot Chicken at so many different restaurants … I have to honestly say they’re not bringing it.” – Kim Prince
• “While workers here may not be blood relatives, they’re working alongside a true Prince family member, a third-, fourth-, fifth-generation descendant of the original Prince [family].” – Kim Prince
•  “We’re going to do the best we can, with what we can, while we can.” – Kim Prince
• “I am excited about the opportunity but I’m more excited about the fact that people have embraced Nashville Hot Chicken, here in Los Angeles, like it’s their own.” – Kim Prince
• “Nashville Hot Chicken is everything to me.  I plan on retiring doing this.” – Kim Prince
• “The lessons we learn, sometimes they’re spoken … other times you just see it, you observe.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On the current racial disparity: “If they could do it [in the 1930s], I can do it now.” – Kim Prince

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kim Prince

Website: hotvillechicken.com

Twitter: @kimprincetwin2

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This episode was produced and managed by  Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)