Jake Schostak, 35 J

ake Schostak could have simply joined the family business, Team Schostak Family Restaurants in Livonia, and had a fulfilling career. But he’s an entrepreneur at heart, so he decided to start something completely new — Catapult Concepts.

Launched last year with funding from Detroit Venture Partners and others, the virtual company markets its own brands

Founder, Catapult Concepts, Farmington Hills

Employees: 5

Revenue: NA College: Indiana University

Cheese Steak Daddy and Pop’s Meatball Sandwich — which any commercial kitchen can prepare from so-called station-ready kits provided by Catapult.

Restaurants, hotels, bars, entertainment centers, and commercial kitchens looking to increase productivity and capture more sales can participate. More than 20 commercial kitchens currently are part of Catapult Concepts.

Customers place online orders from companies like Door Dash or Catapult’s own website. From there, the orders are routed to a partner kitchen where a courier picks up the finished product and takes it to the customer’s home. Catapult gets a percentage of each order.

“I found that there was an opportunity, now that there are delivery company drivers all over, for anybody to participate in these sales,” Schostak says. “We’re creating very profitable sales for these kitchens.”

Schostak has spent his entire life in the restaurant business, first growing up surrounded by his family’s interests, then working for restaurant companies in Chicago and Washington, D.C., after graduating from Indiana University. While in Chicago, he worked for Lettuce Entertain You, and in the nation’s capital he gained experience with Sweetgreen and Chipotle’s southeast Asian concept, Shophouse Kitchen.

He came back to work in the family business, and in four years had opened 15 Mod Pizza locations around Michigan, with more to come.

Relying on his experiences, Schostak saw the benefit of establishing a central company kitchen where the commissary staff cooks ingredients to exact specifications and makes menu items at scale before sending them out to partner kitchens via the station-ready kits.

“Our (participating) kitchens don’t even have to do extensive prep work,” Schostak explains. “They don’t have to add any labor to the schedule. These are truly incremental sales.”

Although Catapult Concepts started in metro Detroit, Schostak has a lofty goal for expanding his gastronomical startup beyond Michigan; the company opened an outlet in Toledo in March. “We want to be able to say that we have 1,000 kitchens that we’re working with and providing new sales for those businesses by 2030.”

Tim Keenan

Kevin Smith, 38

When Boston Consulting Group (BCG) partner Kevin Smith advises automotive OEMs and suppliers on strategy and operations, it comes from a man who’s dealt with his share of surprises in the business world.

Completing a bachelor’s degree in finance at Michigan State University and then landing his first job with Lehmann Brothers on Wall Street was a pretty strong start to a career in finance. At least it was in 2007.

When Lehmann Brothers declared bankruptcy 15 months later, Smith was out of a job. He quickly pivoted and helped establish a new private equity firm from the ashes of Lehmann.

“Things were going really well, the trajectory and the future were bright,” Smith recalls. “But I started to ask myself a lot of questions. Was this really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? Were there other challenges I wanted to experience?”

Soon after, Smith returned home to Detroit to help drive a unique entrepreneurial startup. Its mission was to produce and sell bicycles with automatic transmissions. The product was well-received, but distribution proved to be a problem.

“I spent a couple years building this business, doing the typical entrepreneurial hustle, and ultimately reached a point where we concluded it wasn’t happening as quickly as we had hoped,” Smith says.

Facing reality, Smith decided to enroll at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he earned an MBA and gained considerable knowledge about the automotive industry and the world of consulting. It led him to BCG.

Another pivot came soon after. In 2018, Smith was providing consulting services to decision-makers within the auto industry when BCG loaned him to the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. to help lead the pursuit of a second national headquarters for Amazon (which landed in Washington, D.C.) and work on other economic development initiatives.

“My role at BCG allows me to engage with OEMs and Tier 1 auto suppliers all across the supply chain to solve the biggest problems they’re facing, and help them think about strategy for the next five to 10 years,” Smith says. “I’m also very involved with economic development all across the region, and my role at BCG enables me to do both.”

Dan Calabrese

Partner, Boston Consulting Group, Detroit Office

Employees: 10,254 • Revenue: NA

College: University of Chicago