EDIBLE ENTREPRENEUR

GROWING UP ON A STAINLESS STEEL COUNTERTOP

Ross Katz invites local patrons to belly up to the bar for a shot of Viking Blod, a honey mead with hibiscus. A must try.

Ross Katz celebrates a year with Rooster’s Kitchen

By Alexis Price | Photography by Jennifer L. Rubenstein

For Ross Katz, opportunity knocked the day after he turned 25.

After interning at Ram Restaurant and Brewery during college, he had worked his way up to assistant manager of the six-state chain’s three Chicagoland locations. The regional manager had a question for him:

“Would you want to move to Indianapolis?”

“I don’t know why I would,” Katz replied. “I don’t know what’s out there.”

A promotion to general manager of the downtown Indy location, for one thing. And so Chicago-born Katz became a Hoosier.

That was 2009. Fast forward a couple of years and he was selling software to restaurants. His boss was in town from New York. She had never stepped foot in Indiana and had no clue how to sell to Midwesterners. Katz was beyond frustrated.

“Right there over coffee at 9am I just told her, ‘I quit,’” he recalls. “She was stunned because it was in the first hour of a two-day ridealong she was going to do with me.”

Within a month, he began putting together the plan for his now restaurant, Rooster’s Kitchen. Originally he was aiming for Broad Ripple, but negotiations with landlords were not favorable. Then came an unexpected call about a spot on Massachusetts Avenue, he met with the landlords and decided, “This is a great fit.” Done. Rooster’s Kitchen had a home.

Born into entrepreneurial spirit

Katz says his dad instilled this entrepreneurial spirit in him. “My father always said, ‘Do your own thing. Go out and create your own life.’”

Growing up around food he realized his parents possessed a similar ambition. A true love story, during high school his parents met at a Chicago-style hot dog stand, where the owner gave Katz’s dad a few bucks, winked and told him to take her on a date. Quickly, they became a couple, married and later opened up their own stand, having to sell it once they began having kids. His dad eventually went