What happens when you combine science, entertainment and dessert? You get The Inventing Room—Denver’s one-of-a-kind sugar science experience created by chef Ian Kleinman.
Inspired by Willy Wonka and raised in a family of chefs, Ian turned his childhood curiosity into a business where liquid nitrogen, culinary creativity and education come together. But building such an unconventional concept hasn’t been easy.
Ian shares how a disastrous event in Aspen nearly wiped out the business. He also explains how The Inventing Room adapted during COVID, the importance of constantly experimenting and what it takes to impress one of the toughest audiences in business: kids.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Turning a childhood idea into a real business
• Using science to create unforgettable food experiences
• Learning from expensive business failures
• Balancing creativity with profitability
• Adapting the business during COVID
• Managing food costs, safety and customer expectations
• Inspiring children to become interested in science
• Why believing in your concept matters
This is a story about curiosity, resilience and taking a chance on an idea others might dismiss.
Learn more about Ian Kleinman and The Inventing Room in Denver, Colorado.
Purchase tickets for The Inventing Room
Follow The Inventing Room on Instagram @inventingroom
Check out more episodes for this podcast at The Personal Side of Business
00:00 --> 00:03 Welcome to The Personal Side of Business, where you hear
00:03 --> 00:06 real stories from real entrepreneurs.
00:13 --> 00:17 Hi, and welcome
00:17 --> 00:20 to The Personal Side of Business, where every business has a story.
00:20 --> 00:24 I'm your host, Jet Von der Walde. Today, my guest is blending science,
00:25 --> 00:28 entertainment, and desserts all in one unique setting here
00:28 --> 00:32 in The Inventing Room in Denver, Colorado. We're going to learn how he's building business
00:32 --> 00:35 that's also educational and also tasteful.
00:36 --> 00:39 Welcome to the podcast, Ian Klima. Thank you. Yeah, so tell us, how did
00:40 --> 00:43 we get here? Well, The Inventing Room started when I was
00:44 --> 00:47 a kid watching Willy Wonka all the time. I had this feeling
00:47 --> 00:50 of wanting to work in the factory when I got older.
00:50 --> 00:54 My dad and grandfather were both chefs. So I was
00:54 --> 00:58 kind of born into the industry working in restaurants since I was a kid.
00:59 --> 01:03 And I went through culinary school, worked for some nice hotel brands and
01:04 --> 01:08 stuff like that, and then got let go and wanted
01:08 --> 01:12 to take a chance on The Inventing Room. So yeah,
01:12 --> 01:17 it's a kind of metamorphosizing
01:17 --> 01:20 company all of the time. We like
01:21 --> 01:24 to have a little bit going everywhere. So we make sure
01:24 --> 01:28 that, you know, not only are we running a fun business,
01:28 --> 01:32 but it's also a profitable business, which is very
01:32 --> 01:36 important. So, but yeah, it's the
01:36 --> 01:40 trip has been incredible and we're very lucky to
01:40 --> 01:43 do what we love every day. Okay, so let's start
01:43 --> 01:47 back because you were telling me it was starting right around COVID. This was
01:48 --> 01:52 basically more scientific base and for fun. And then
01:52 --> 01:55 it transformed into this business, right? Yeah. When you
01:56 --> 01:59 started all of that, did you see that in the future at
02:00 --> 02:03 all, that you were going to have something along the lines of an actual storefront
02:04 --> 02:08 for people to come in? I didn't. It was a television
02:08 --> 02:13 appearance that we did on a show called Restaurant Startup where
02:13 --> 02:16 we were able to build the restaurant in 48
02:17 --> 02:20 hours and then have customers come in and experience it. And as they came
02:21 --> 02:24 in and told me how great it was, we then, you know,
02:24 --> 02:28 came up with the guts to do our brick-and-mortar store and to have
02:28 --> 02:33 an actual business. But COVID was definitely the catalyst for how
02:33 --> 02:37 we run the shop now. Before, it was a walk-in
02:37 --> 02:41 shop. You'd walk in, we'd give you some liquid nitrogen popcorn as you're taking
02:41 --> 02:45 a look at the menu. You would order and then a chef would make the
02:45 --> 02:49 dishes to order right in front of you. And then when COVID hit,
02:50 --> 02:52 we could only have a few amount of people in the shop.
02:53 --> 02:56 And I do science demonstrations for my kids and kind
02:56 --> 03:00 of combine the two. And now it's
03:01 --> 03:04 a sugar science program where we concentrate on
03:05 --> 03:08 the science of certain subjects and implement different kinds of
03:08 --> 03:11 food in there as well. So, and I don't know if
03:12 --> 03:15 people know this, right? Like, so you're one of the few
03:16 --> 03:19 that I was able to research online, few molecular
03:20 --> 03:24 gastronomists on there. How did you get into that field?
03:25 --> 03:28 I was working at a hotel and
03:28 --> 03:32 just became very stagnant. I started when I was
03:32 --> 03:35 8 years old in the business doing dishes and working my
03:35 --> 03:38 way up and really needed a spark,
03:39 --> 03:43 something that I could hold onto and
03:44 --> 03:47 do something fun with. So I hate the term molecular
03:48 --> 03:51 gastronomy. You don't want to sit down and have a full head of molecular gastronomy,
03:51 --> 03:54 right? But it's essentially, it's using science to help us cook.
03:54 --> 03:57 So before, I would ask questions,
03:58 --> 04:02 why does sugar do this? Why does this
04:03 --> 04:06 react a certain way? And I never had the answers, but now that we have
04:06 --> 04:10 these different scientific principles, we can actually come up with the
04:10 --> 04:13 answers as a chef. And that's what's exciting to me.
04:14 --> 04:17 When I first started cooking, there was 12 things I could do, grill,
04:17 --> 04:20 freeze. Now there's 120 things I can do.
04:20 --> 04:24 And it's all about that bag of tricks for a chef, being able
04:25 --> 04:28 to reach in there and come out with something new and fun. Were you dismissed
04:29 --> 04:32 when you would ask those questions? Were they like, just go ahead and do whatever
04:33 --> 04:36 you need to do, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've always worked in real
04:36 --> 04:41 high-volume restaurants where the owners were more focused on the
04:41 --> 04:43 bottom line than development,
04:45 --> 04:48 which now that I'm an owner, I can appreciate that. But you
04:49 --> 04:52 never really get new things,
04:52 --> 04:55 experience new things unless you try 'em out, unless you have
04:56 --> 05:00 uh, you know, something you can work for. How often are you experimenting
05:00 --> 05:03 to go to the next level, whatever it is,
05:03 --> 05:07 in, in the shop? Um, every day. Yeah, yeah.
05:07 --> 05:10 Um, I keep a notebook that I have with me. I've done that since I
05:10 --> 05:14 was like 12 years old, um, that just kind of highlights,
05:15 --> 05:18 uh, some things in my head, um, that I
05:18 --> 05:22 want to try, um, and there's about a
05:22 --> 05:26 30% succession rate with it. It's definitely not
05:27 --> 05:30 100%. Sometimes it involves trips to the emergency room.
05:32 --> 05:35 But yeah, we always get from
05:35 --> 05:39 A to B now, which is something really fun. Yeah.
05:39 --> 05:44 What is the ongoing goal? I think that
05:45 --> 05:49 the in-between line of what you're trying to do to go
05:49 --> 05:53 outside the box and experiment, but then also run a business? Because I'm
05:53 --> 05:56 sure it kind of has to be somewhere in the middle, right? You can't go
05:57 --> 06:01 too far outside and go, well, if I keep doing this, I'm forgetting that
06:01 --> 06:03 I have to run a business and get people in every day, be able to
06:04 --> 06:07 sell tickets, you know, things like that. What is going on in your mind as
06:07 --> 06:11 you're running this consistently? It's failure.
06:12 --> 06:16 It's the threat of not making it. I did an event
06:16 --> 06:19 the first year of our business up in the mountains,
06:19 --> 06:23 and I went up there and they said, you know, you're gonna do a couple
06:24 --> 06:27 hundred people a day and this is gonna be a huge event. So we
06:27 --> 06:31 invested all of the money in our bank account to get liquid nitrogen and product.
06:31 --> 06:34 We had to rent a refrigeration truck to drive from here all
06:34 --> 06:38 the way up to Aspen. And we did the event and we
06:38 --> 06:42 did like a couple hundred dollars in sales. They placed us in a
06:42 --> 06:46 spot that was away from all the food. So little details
06:46 --> 06:49 like that, just that little placement absolutely ruined it for us.
06:49 --> 06:52 They thought maybe just the sheer novelty of it was
06:53 --> 06:55 just gonna get people right over there, but you really need to get people to
06:56 --> 06:59 see you. Yeah. And that's a great lesson too,
07:00 --> 07:02 is location, location, location.
07:02 --> 07:06 That's something I learned in culinary school.
07:07 --> 07:11 But if you have a product that people will
07:12 --> 07:15 seek out, that will go and find. It's not that
07:16 --> 07:19 important anymore. But walk-in business, it's really good to be around
07:20 --> 07:24 different entities and stuff like that. But yeah, when I was at
07:24 --> 07:27 the end of the event, I was at the dump up in Aspen throwing all
07:27 --> 07:30 of my ice cream out into the dump and just the
07:31 --> 07:35 sinking feeling of, is this going to work? So number
07:35 --> 07:39 one I got out of that is guarantee. So we only do events that
07:39 --> 07:43 are guaranteed, which means we get paid no matter how many people come up and
07:43 --> 07:47 stuff like that. So Just little lessons, little hard lessons
07:47 --> 07:51 that I'm sure if I went to business school, maybe would
07:51 --> 07:54 have picked that up. But, you know, going on the fly and doing—
07:55 --> 07:58 and see excitement. I mean, like in the beginning, especially if you're a business
07:58 --> 08:02 that's a novelty type of business, you, you're trying to get out there and like
08:03 --> 08:07 just that's going to get eyes on you alone. But then now
08:07 --> 08:11 the business side of it comes in and for you, I'm guessing it's not just
08:11 --> 08:15 like quote unquote food costs, right? You're— you were talking about nitrogen,
08:15 --> 08:18 like liquid nitrogen, to be able to get the things that you need that are
08:20 --> 08:23 probably shifting in costs that are different than in the
08:23 --> 08:27 average restaurant. So from
08:27 --> 08:32 a business standpoint, what have you learned in terms of numbers,
08:32 --> 08:37 looking at margins that maybe you weren't looking at when you were working in
08:37 --> 08:41 the kitchen? Right. Well, we kind of have a really good business to
08:42 --> 08:46 be able to forecast and to understand our costs on a daily basis
08:46 --> 08:49 because I'm the only one that shops. I do all of
08:50 --> 08:53 the prep pretty much by myself. So I can
08:53 --> 08:57 understand those fluctuations where other restaurants, it might have a
08:57 --> 09:01 bigger impact, but we're also not using lobster
09:01 --> 09:05 or New York strips. What really killed
09:05 --> 09:08 us was eggs. This last year when they went up.
09:08 --> 09:11 So just kind of understanding costs from
09:11 --> 09:15 there. Just like my events, I have a guarantee here at the shop.
09:15 --> 09:19 We sell 16 tickets per hour. So again, I know
09:19 --> 09:22 exactly how many people are going to come into my shop, so I know how
09:22 --> 09:26 much to prep. Nothing gets thrown away. It's a very,
09:26 --> 09:29 very efficient business. We're dealing with candy,
09:30 --> 09:33 which has a longer shelf life than other stuff.
09:33 --> 09:37 So All those aspects that I learned cooking
09:38 --> 09:42 in the first part of my career, I'm now applying to keep
09:42 --> 09:47 the business costs low and make sure that it's a valuable restaurant
09:47 --> 09:50 to the community is a huge thing for me.
09:52 --> 09:54 And this business is now for the kids.
09:56 --> 09:59 When I was in fine dining, I was like, I got to impress the adults.
10:00 --> 10:03 Now it's I got to impress the kids. Have you had to up your
10:04 --> 10:08 showmanship? Yeah. You know, we let people taste and
10:09 --> 10:12 you hand them something and it's not like the kitchen where you're behind a door
10:12 --> 10:15 and you don't see their reaction. I get to see the kids' reaction
10:15 --> 10:19 right away and they have no muffler. So they're just
10:19 --> 10:23 like, this sucks or this is great. And yeah, it really makes you be
10:24 --> 10:27 on top of your game, probably a lot more than you know, being in the
10:27 --> 10:30 back of the house. Yeah. You know, I was curious, I was doing research on
10:31 --> 10:34 the venting room in terms of risk.
10:35 --> 10:38 How have you managed that? If something goes wrong,
10:38 --> 10:41 something could go— it could really change like the,
10:42 --> 10:46 you know, the inside of a building. How do you— do you experiment,
10:46 --> 10:49 do all the experiments outside of here first and then come in here, go make
10:50 --> 10:53 sure it's safe here? How does that all work for you? No, safety,
10:53 --> 10:57 you know, we work with like our local fire departments.
10:57 --> 11:01 I actually work with hotels. They'll bring me in and I'll teach the chefs how
11:01 --> 11:06 to use nitrogen. So I would say that this is the safest shop probably
11:06 --> 11:10 in the country for nitrogen use. But a lot of experimentation is
11:10 --> 11:14 done here. We also have a catering kitchen where we do all of our prep
11:14 --> 11:17 for all of our events. We do a couple hundred events every year,
11:18 --> 11:21 so that really, you know, helps us out as far as the bottom line as
11:21 --> 11:25 well. But Yeah, I mean, safety is like, it's huge.
11:26 --> 11:30 When I first started, I had a Honda Civic and I had a doer
11:31 --> 11:34 sitting on the driver's side, went to bed and
11:34 --> 11:37 woke up to the fire department and hazmat.
11:37 --> 11:41 Somebody rear-ended my car. The nitrogen spilled out and blew out the
11:41 --> 11:44 windows because of the pressure. So yeah, that's the
11:44 --> 11:48 first list that I've— that I had my name
11:48 --> 11:49 on. Exactly.
11:51 --> 11:55 When you're dealing with now
11:55 --> 11:59 public that's really interactive with you, what did
11:59 --> 12:02 you feel like was something you learned quickly that you
12:03 --> 12:07 thought like, I need to do this in order to make this all work here?
12:09 --> 12:12 Well, first, our hardest customers are kids
12:13 --> 12:17 and drunk people because everybody wants to put their hands in the little engine.
12:17 --> 12:20 Almost like a stand-up comedian, like that deal, you know, like I feel like you
12:20 --> 12:23 have, you have to be able to take it as you're performing, right?
12:23 --> 12:27 You're doing all this. Yeah. And more than any other
12:27 --> 12:31 restaurant setting I've ever been in, yeah, you're an
12:31 --> 12:34 entertainer here. People have
12:34 --> 12:37 this crazy expectation when they come to The Inventing Room,
12:38 --> 12:41 and that expectation just grows every video they see,
12:41 --> 12:45 every review that they read. So you really have to come through
12:45 --> 12:49 and make sure that that expectation is being met,
12:49 --> 12:53 which is extremely hard to do. Yeah. What have
12:53 --> 12:57 you done, do you think, that has upped your showmanship
12:58 --> 13:00 as time has gone on? Is there anything you were like, I need to improve
13:00 --> 13:04 this to really make this more fun for someone on
13:05 --> 13:08 the other side of the glass? Yeah, we do
13:08 --> 13:12 the demonstration with nitrogen. So we show them, you know,
13:12 --> 13:15 how it boils and sublimates and stuff like that. So I usually
13:16 --> 13:18 pour it on the floor. So you can see it kind of all day.
13:18 --> 13:22 Magic shows. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like a year ago
13:22 --> 13:25 I was like, well, let me add some lights to this. Yeah. So now we've,
13:25 --> 13:28 we have lights that kind of light it all up and, you know,
13:28 --> 13:31 just bring that little bit of wow factor to it. So,
13:32 --> 13:35 but every year when we're slow,
13:35 --> 13:39 which is generally in February, March, I pick a project that
13:40 --> 13:43 will enhance us and it'll be a cool something that we
13:44 --> 13:47 can talk about. For example, we 3D printed systems for our
13:48 --> 13:51 drones, so now we can drop candy packages on people.
13:51 --> 13:55 So that was huge with COVID The kids would walk out on the front
13:55 --> 13:58 lawn and I'd go up a couple hundred feet and drop cotton candy and
13:59 --> 14:02 a bunch of different stuff for 'em. So that's pretty cool. But that was one
14:02 --> 14:05 year, I was bored and I was like, I'm going to take a little bit
14:05 --> 14:09 of money and invest it in a little bit of a cool project.
14:10 --> 14:13 Since you're the owner now, you're doing all this stuff. This is your carte blanche
14:13 --> 14:16 to just be able to do like, you know, if I want to do this,
14:16 --> 14:19 I can do this. Yeah, right. Just whatever. Now, from a business
14:19 --> 14:22 standpoint, what is
14:22 --> 14:26 it you feel like has improved from the moment
14:26 --> 14:30 you opened till now? Something or
14:30 --> 14:34 something you've learned that was like, hey, I need to really make this like a
14:35 --> 14:39 staple of my business in order for me to function. Yeah, I would say
14:40 --> 14:43 just the science aspect of it, how we're always talking
14:44 --> 14:46 about the science behind what we do.
14:48 --> 14:51 That's what people remember. And again,
14:51 --> 14:54 coming back to the kids, when I have them come back into the
14:55 --> 14:57 store, they went to a demo a couple of years ago and they tell me
14:58 --> 15:01 that they're actually interested in science now. That's the hugest compliment that
15:01 --> 15:05 you could ever receive is you know, kids paying attention.
15:06 --> 15:09 Yeah, kids actually getting the point and, you know,
15:09 --> 15:12 having fun in our establishment. But, um,
15:13 --> 15:16 just trying to be on my game every single
15:16 --> 15:20 day, um, you know, whether it be at events or,
15:21 --> 15:24 you know, working the shop, just, um, bringing it.
15:24 --> 15:28 Because that's— it's different for you, right? As from a business standpoint,
15:28 --> 15:33 your science has to always work for
15:33 --> 15:36 the audience because if you're off that day,
15:36 --> 15:39 they're like, oh, now the business— it makes the business seem
15:39 --> 15:42 weak as such, right? Like, you're like, maybe he doesn't know what he's doing,
15:42 --> 15:45 that maybe this is all like a farce, right? But for you,
15:46 --> 15:50 as different from like a, uh, someone who's just—
15:50 --> 15:54 who's really just doing a regular restaurant per se, to have
15:54 --> 15:56 that, they're like, well, if the food doesn't work out that day, the food doesn't
15:56 --> 16:00 work out that day. But for you, like it has to work out in order
16:00 --> 16:03 for them to go out and tell the next group of people like, hey,
16:03 --> 16:06 that was awesome. I gotta come back in here. You gotta see this, you know.
16:06 --> 16:10 So, you know, it's a different standpoint. And then, you know, you were talking earlier
16:11 --> 16:14 a little bit about learning, you know, numbers and being
16:14 --> 16:18 on top of that. What was your,
16:19 --> 16:22 I guess, education in making sure that you understood the margins
16:23 --> 16:25 and stuff like that? Or did you know that from working at the restaurant already?
16:26 --> 16:29 I knew a little bit from the restaurants. I'd work in operations where
16:30 --> 16:34 I'd have to cost out dishes and, you know, come to the owners
16:34 --> 16:37 and explain why this would be a good fit for us.
16:38 --> 16:42 But yeah, running your own place, it's just me and my
16:42 --> 16:45 wife. And if we want to change something the next day, we change it.
16:45 --> 16:48 It doesn't go through meetings or the corporate ladder.
16:48 --> 16:52 And that's what makes this place so great is You know,
16:52 --> 16:56 we can do stuff on the fly, which normally you don't see like in
16:56 --> 16:59 a large corporation and stuff like that. The wheels move a little slower. But,
17:00 --> 17:03 you know, for me, it's, you know, if it doesn't work, you know, we need
17:04 --> 17:06 to figure something out and let's just change it and do it the right way.
17:06 --> 17:10 Yeah. And, you know, kind of wrapping up here, if we were to
17:11 --> 17:16 go back in time to your COVID-era
17:16 --> 17:19 self and be like, hey, this is what's about to happen, But if you can
17:20 --> 17:23 give advice to yourself at that point to maybe expedite this
17:23 --> 17:27 journey and give advice
17:27 --> 17:29 that something could be easier for you, what do you think it would be?
17:32 --> 17:36 I would tell my COVID self
17:36 --> 17:39 that, you know, everything's going to be okay. You know, there was a
17:40 --> 17:43 lot of panic. There was a lot of, you know, pivoting and
17:44 --> 17:47 trying to understand, you know, How do we run a business in this climate?
17:49 --> 17:52 But if you believe in your concepts, if every
17:52 --> 17:56 day when you open that door you're smiling and every
17:57 --> 17:59 day when you lock up that door you still have that smile on your face,
18:01 --> 18:04 it truly does not become work anymore.
18:05 --> 18:09 And I feel like the
18:10 --> 18:13 inspiration, especially that we hopefully give to kids,
18:13 --> 18:17 is that You might have an idea as
18:17 --> 18:20 you're a kid and people kind of dismiss you, but keep that idea in the
18:20 --> 18:24 back of your head because you might have a chance to, you know,
18:25 --> 18:28 take a chance on yourself one day and try to take that next level.
18:29 --> 18:32 And that's what I did. You know, I always thought that this is
18:32 --> 18:35 going to be something bigger and, you know,
18:36 --> 18:39 it worked out that way. So, you know,
18:39 --> 18:41 never let anybody tell you you have a bad idea.
18:42 --> 18:46 Only you can take it a little bit further
18:46 --> 18:49 and make sure that it's an amazing thing that
18:50 --> 18:53 can turn into your career. That's awesome. We're ending on that.
18:54 --> 18:58 Thank you so much. Let's tell everyone how they
18:58 --> 19:01 can find The Invention Room. Location, where you are,
19:02 --> 19:05 Instagram, all that stuff. We're at 4433
19:06 --> 19:09 West 29th Street. So they call it Slow High here
19:10 --> 19:13 in Denver. Our website is tirdenver.com.
19:14 --> 19:17 Tickets are required to come into our shop, so you can get on
19:17 --> 19:21 there and select days. We're open Thursday through Sunday.
19:22 --> 19:26 We also have the ability to do private demonstrations and
19:27 --> 19:30 other stuff like that. Yeah, we're on Instagram,
19:30 --> 19:33 just Inventing Room. We also have a couple shops in Dubai
19:34 --> 19:36 now, so there's a— you can check out kind of some of the stuff that
19:37 --> 19:40 they're doing over there as well. So Um, but yeah,
19:40 --> 19:44 uh, come on, come on down, come on, let's see this. Well, thank you guys.
19:44 --> 19:47 Uh, thank you, Ian, for being on Personal Side Business.