How an Inability to Follow Directions Led to the Best Sandwich in Brooklyn

This feature was originally published on Forbes.com.

A staple of any work neighborhood worth its salt, as we all know, is a great sandwich shoppe.

Can you believe that until fairly recently DUMBO, long luring buzzy businesses like VICE, Carrot, Etsy, HUGE and Flocabulary, hadn’t had one? Good sandwiches, sure. But a great sandwich shoppe?

Enter Andrew Jacobi and his Untamed Sandwiches. Starting out in Bryant Park, Jacobi and his partner Chef Ricky King brought their methodical, 100% grass-fed mastery to Brooklyin’s 117 Adams Street last year. Just in time for DUMBO’s continuing business boom.

In a game of word association, the word “braised” might come to mind when thinking about what Jacobi & co. do so well. As in the red wine braised goat sandwich with kohlrabi slaw and red onion that helped put them on the map. Vegetarians have options too, thanks to the charred broccoli-goodness of Sheemaker’s Bounty. It wouldn’t be a New York institution without equal opportunity deliciousness.

Jacobi isn’t stopping at Brooklyn, either. Plans for an E 55th Street location in Manhattan are in the works, all but ensuring a vice grip on New York’s sandwich-keen workforce that spans the East River.

Here’s Jacobi’s take on the Founder  Questionnaire.

1. When did you first know you were going to be an entrepreneur?

I don’t know if I ever said to myself that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. But I have always really enjoyed building things, and I’m also really bad at following directions. I’m the kind of person that will look at a set of IKEA instructions and say “I’m surprisingly excited to build this credenza, but there must be a better way to do this, right?” That mentality meant that I wasn’t cut out for a lot of the corporate world.

But I’m also a pretty careful person and I like to make sure I am well prepared to understand risk before taking it on. So after 5 years of being a consultant, analyst and investor, and 6 years of getting myself over-educated, I wanted to use my knowledge and experience to build something I would be excited about. And I guess that made me an entrepreneur.

2. What inspires you to succeed?

The idea that we are building something that makes peoples’ lives better, in big ways and small: Employing 35 people that I was able to personally choose to join the Untamed Family, and to teach them new skills and open their eyes to a deeper purpose behind food and hospitality. Providing the best sandwiches to customers and making their day a little bit better. Supporting farmers and suppliers who have made a conscious effort to step off the industrial food chain and produce a product that they are proud of. Being a part of local communities of businesses and residents that support and take care of each other. It is a very simple mission, but the fact that the business I helped create is a part of an ecosystem that improves peoples’ lives is very important to me.

3. If you could hire your younger self, what job would it be for?

Something where I could talk to lots of people without messing up processes that are already working just fine. I think that sounds like sales to me.

4. What’s the best part of coming to work everyday?

I love working with my team every day. For three years now, I have unintentionally spent the first hour of every day in one of our shops walking around and catching up with everyone. After I realized that this was the case, there was a short period of time when I felt anxious, that I pointed to that kind of behavior as the reason that I always feel like I’m not getting as much done as I would like.

But now I embrace it. Hospitality is such a hard field. It is grueling work. I know that just about every person on my team could be working at a cushy desk job, getting paid more money to do easier work. And yet something about this environment draws the greatest people to it. I really do feel lucky to be surrounded by the people that I work with, and I believe that being in the trenches with my team makes those trenches feel a little bit more important to them, and at the same time being in those trenches connects me to the reason I love my job and the reason I work so hard every day.

Untamed Sandwiches on Instagram

5. What is the ideal workspace for you, personally?

A restaurant. I love the camaraderie of restaurants, the preparation that goes into every day, the uncertainty of how each day will unfold, the team game required to roll with the punches of a lunch service to make it all work, and the feeling of shared success that comes after a good, hard day. In what other profession does every single member of the team get to participate in the same activity and share in the clear success or failure of that activity every day?

6. What is the ideal form of relaxation for you?

When I’m not working, I like spending time with my wife and with friends. Quiet time to veg out with my wife helps me disconnect, and meeting up with friends to catch up reminds me that there are so many important things going on in the lives of people I care about that don’t have anything to do with the stresses of running my business.

But I’m also not one of these people that either believes that I have achieved balance in my life or stresses about the fact that I haven’t. I know I “work too hard” and that I “have no life.” But I love what I do, so other than when I don’t feel like I am available for my friends and family, I never feel like I am missing anything or that my life is imbalanced.

7. What is your favorite feature of your current office?

That I don’t have one. I work in our restaurants every day. We technically have an office in a shared workspace that we never use, because our managers manage out of the shops and I generally set up at one of their desks or out in the customer area when things are quiet to get work done. I also work from home in the evenings on the couch, stuffed in between my wife and dog.

8. What do the words “company culture” make you think of?

It’s the shared set of values that bind people together. In a restaurant, seeing corporate culture or lack thereof is easy. Does your server look disengaged? Did your plate come out a tangled mess instead of nicely composed? Is the bathroom always dirty or out of toilet paper? That’s a sign that there isn’t any company culture. But even good restaurant cultures can take on many forms.

Some places pride themselves on speed of service, some pride themselves on a folksy charm, some on badass food that needs no explaining at all. None of these are necessarily good or bad by themselves. But to me, a good company culture is top down, reinforced in many ways, all the time by senior leadership and adopted seamlessly and voluntarily by the rest of the team. It infuses every activity that any team member does and leads to greater engagement and sense of purpose from everyone on the team.

9. When was the last time you laughed uncontrollably?

Today. We did a taste test of six other sandwich shops’ wares. Literally all six delivery guys showed up at the same time, and I had to go out and explain to them that I was indeed the man who ordered lunch for multiple people from six different restaurants. Then I carried all six bags back into the kitchen while my team watched, without helping, all of them laughing uncontrollably. So actually, I think other people were laughing uncontrollably at me. I may or may not have been laughing. Does that count?

10. If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing instead?

I think if I wasn’t running Untamed Sandwiches, I would be investing in people like me. I may not have started out to be an entrepreneur, but now that I am one, I can’t imagine working in any other environment. Being around entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial businesses is too much fun.