Serving up Success in NYC: The Comfort of Having Buff ’n Blue on Your Side

Suddenly, as if someone had just rung a gigantic dinner bell, the masses arrived. Hawai‘i transplants, many of them Punahou alumni young and old, were among the throng. After a 12-year absence in New York City, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue was back to serve up the delicious offerings of the 50th State to hungry Manhattanites.

The man who unlocked the door to the restaurant that day was Henry Engel ’14, alongside his sister and partner, Sephra ’11. The saga of how he engineered L&L’s return to The Big Apple illustrates the power of the Punahou network. It is an intergenerational and international story, involving alumni from three different decades living in three very different parts of the world.

Engel entered Punahou in kindergarten and grew into a solid but restless student in the Academy. “My whole life has been learning through curiosity and experiences,” he says. “I’m not a classroom person, so I’ve always learned to focus by getting my hands dirty in things.”

He enrolled at Pitzer College in Southern California, but soon found himself eager for experiences off campus. “I was getting antsy,” he says. “I wanted to make an impact in the real world.” The summer after his freshman year, he moved to Yellowstone National Park with Sephra, where together they worked at a fine dining restaurant. They had a blast.

His sophomore year, interested in learning about the tech industry, Engel commuted from Claremont to Santa Monica – 50 miles each way, four days a week – to work at two different startups. He was also curious about living in Asia, so that summer he moved to Da Nang, Vietnam. “The government there had just funded a new business incubator to spark economic growth through technology and startups, and they needed help. My main function, even though I was only 19, was to help bring in investors and be a community leader to spark conversations and connect people.”

While in Vietnam, Engel wanted to see if there were others in the Punahou diaspora who had settled in that part of the world. He recalls, “I poked around in the alumni network to see if there was anyone in Southeast Asia, and one name was shouted out. It was Butch.”

Twenty years earlier, Rachan “Butch” Reddy ’90 had traveled a similarly circuitous path to Vietnam. Initially planning to go into “the family trade” and become a doctor (his father, mother, brother and multiple cousins all practice medicine), he participated in several medically-related startups while in med school and eschewed a career in radiology to join a venture capital firm focusing on Southeast Asia. He was based in Ho Chi Minh City.

He first heard about Engel in the summer of 2016. “The Punahou Alumni Association reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, there’s this kid who’s in Vietnam working on a tech accelerator with the government of Da Nang.’ And I said, ‘Why is an undergrad doing an internship in this part of the world?’”

As soon as Reddy met Engel, though, the questions turned to answers. “Henry didn’t mind going anywhere on the planet to pursue his passion. He was an outlier in my view. My job as an investor in venture capital is to assess people’s personal skills and drive, and I saw that Henry was someone who was so impressive that I should stay in contact with him.”

This was the beginning of a beautiful mentorship. Reddy recalls, “I told Henry: ‘Moving forward, get experience at big tech companies – then you can take bigger risks later based on that set of experiences.’” Reddy generously shared his social capital, putting in calls for Engel to the Facebook and YouTube offices in the region.

By the end of the summer, Engel wanted to see more of the world. He dropped out of Pitzer. Spent five months in the Netherlands, where he studied entrepreneurship at Tilburg University. Worked in venture capital in Israel, then Singapore. After a little over a year, he was burned out from his itinerant lifestyle. He moved back to the States and re-enrolled at Pitzer. The school gave him credit for all the business experience he had accumulated while overseas, and he graduated on time with his class.

Engel convinced his sister to move to New York City with him. He landed at WeWork, and was with the company throughout its incredible growth of the late 2010s. He left when COVID-19 hit. 

Engel then joined a company called Superorder as its chief revenue officer and one of its founding members. Superorder provides AI-powered solutions for restaurant chains. Today, one of its clients is a much-beloved plate lunch eatery franchise based in Engel’s home state – L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.

Enter on scene: Elisia Flores ’02, CEO of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, which her father co-founded in 1976 and now spans the globe with 230 locations. She assumed her role in 2019, quickly leveraging her background in finance and process improvement to help L&L franchisees with operations. 

One problem many were having was fraudulent chargebacks, in which a customer pays with a credit card, picks up the food, then claims a refund. Superorder had a solution for this issue, and in October 2023, Flores was able to meet Engel for the first time at a restaurant conference in Louisville. Flores recalls, “It was nice to talk story with someone from Hawai‘i. We were both in our aloha shirts doing our thing there, but we identified with each other and it was like having a friend during this weird work situation we were in.” Soon, several L&L franchisees affected by the chargeback problem were licensing Superorder’s solution.

Before long, Engel was floating the idea of becoming a franchisee himself, in partnership with his sister. Flores pragmatically tried to talk him out of it. She recalls telling him gently, “Dude, you’re in a very sexy industry in a technology job, and you want to invest money to open up an L&L? Running a restaurant is very challenging.”

Reddy, too, advised caution. With Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut) as one of his franchise partners, he understood the difficulties of the Food and Beverage space. “It’s tough,” Reddy says. “It’s a thin-margin, operationally-heavy business. I tried to dissuade him from it.”

Venture capital investor Rachan “Butch” Reddy ’90 crossed paths with Henry Engel in Southeast Asia.

But Engel had the self-confidence – and the business acumen – to pull it off. The last L&L in New York City had closed in 2012 and he was cognizant of its failure points; by leveraging his access to current technologies, he was able to choose optimal locations and construct a plan to yield the best operational efficiencies. He has already opened two more New York City locations with designs to expand into other parts of New York and New Jersey.

Barely a decade out of high school, Engel’s business career is just beginning. While he forged his own path in places far afield, it was the mentors and partners along the way who helped speed his trajectory. From Butch Reddy’s guidance, to business opportunities with Elisia Flores, the Punahou network provided a support system and played a critical role in his journey.

As Engel absorbed the magnitude of opening his business in NYC, he took note of the many familiar faces from the Punahou community who had shown up to support him and his sister that day. He felt a deep sense of comfort in knowing that, no matter where life may take him or what challenges he may face, there is a buff ’n blue network that has his back.  

“It can help you a lot to make the right decisions and have a sounding board for ideas,” he says. “Your early 20s are your most pivotal years, and if you can have someone there to give you direction, it can really help lead you to success.”