When chef Keith Corbin walks into LocoL, the Los Angeles restaurant where he’s a partner, he passes different chapters of his own history. Located on 103rd Street in the Watts neighborhood, an impoverished part of South L.A. where he grew up, the restaurant sits across the street from Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary (it was 102nd Street Elementary when he attended).
More importantly, the restaurant now offers a reboot of a restaurant that was the talk of the food world in 2016, a business where Corbin learned about being a chef and became a manager. When it opened, LocoL was the brainchild of celebrity chef Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, whose attempts to build a healthy fast food empire ultimately collapsed a few years later. (Choi isn’t part of this new iteration.)
Now, LocoL has altered its focus, zeroing in on a mission of economic empowerment. The menu, a soul food-focused selection including brisket burgers, red beans and rice, and 7-Up Cake, reflects what the community wants and what it likes to cook, says Corbin. And, as part of the new nonprofit Alta Community, set up to help incubate the restaurant and empower the Watts community, LocoL seeks to become a workforce training center, giving neighborhood residents an opportunity to learn life skills and start careers.
Corbin has firsthand experience with that. After spending a long stint in prison, he sought a new start and found a job at the new restaurant. The transition was difficult, and even though he tried to quit four times, his new bosses wouldn’t let him. The encouragement and mentorship helped him find a place in the kitchen, the kind of experience he hopes LocoL 2.0 provides its employees.
“It’s a holistic approach, but the start is just teaching them how to show up, teaching them how to work within a team,” Corbin says. Watts has a reputation informed by gang violence and the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Today, its poverty rate, at 27.6%, is double the state average, while the median income stands at roughly $17,000, just a third of the state average.
It’s a challenging place to build a career and job skills, which Corbin highlighted by pointing out the window to a very empty 103rd Street.
“This isn’t like Olympic or Wilshire,” he says, referencing other commercial districts across L.A. “There are not a lot of people getting up to go to work here. We don’t have those examples.”
During a lunchtime interview, Corbin, along with Patterson, who’s a returning partner, talked about their new vision for LocoL. The two chefs, who started working together in 2018 at the restaurant Alta Adams, have been thinking about revising LocoL for years.
Inside the restaurant, with diners sitting at an array of black wood tables, much of the branding and decorations from 2016 remain. (Since LocoL closed, the space has remained largely empty, occasionally used as a catering operation.) A half-dozen workers shuffled behind the counter; one offered an apple-lime agua fresca that helped take the edge off the early September heat.
The first iteration of LocoL, which won restaurant of the year awards for its elevated take on fast food, was a case study of what not to do in a community like Watts. If solely measured monetarily, it didn’t work, Corbin says. But measured in the way it changed lives—he and numerous coworkers, inspired by their experiences, went on to successful careers—it was very impactful. That’s what the new LocoL seeks to achieve.
“My own experience is that success is built on the bones of a lot of failure,” says Patterson. “This business is really difficult, and the first time around, we turned the difficulty up to 11.”
LocoL’s new model focuses on nonprofit ownership; funders and foundations can support the larger organization, which will help run and fund the existing restaurant and future locations. This will help ensure that prices and costs can be kept low as it trains at-need or underserved populations. This model is also popular. From a downtown cafe employing formerly homeless people in Seattle to a Houston-area restaurant staffed with neurodiverse adults, it’s a proven way to provide career training and job skills.
After reopening August 8 with a community barbecue, LocoL remains focused on being a community anchor. Neighbors have rented out space for private events, and hiring is done from within the community; currently, the restaurant has three full-time paid employees, and it provides training for young adults who are placed and paid by local workforce development groups.
Corbin isn’t focused on what’s next. He simply wants to serve lunch, and take it one day at a time. Considering the nearest sit-down restaurant that isn’t a fast food franchise is miles away, it’s a big statement to continue to operate with your values and visions intact.
“We’re embedded in the community, we’ll figure it out as we go,” he says.