A Leap of Faith into the Restaurant World

Three years ago, a friend invited Shreena Amin, MBA ’12, to attend a pop-up dinner in Chicago’s trendy West Loop neighborhood.

“The only thing he told me is there was a chef who hosted amazing private dinners out of his apartment,” she says.

What ensued was a 10-course meal around a communal table that she describes as “one of the best dinners I’ve ever eaten. I also had a great time meeting the other guests. It was just a really memorable evening.”

The chef that night was Nicolai Mlodinow, a young Californian with a résumé that included stints at such Michelin-starred Chicago restaurants as Alinea, Oriole, Smyth, and Temporis.

The dinner was a turning point for Amin. Today, she and Mlodinow are partners in the recently opened Class Act + Nightcap, a 16-seat communal-table restaurant in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, five miles from downtown.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” she says. “I’ve always been passionate about food, and I love hosting parties.”

She’s also good at raising money. Over the past two years, Amin has raised $3 million from about 30 investors, allowing her and Mlodinow to purchase and renovate a building, secure a liquor license, and hire a staff. The investors, she says, are family members, friends, and professional acquaintances.

The restaurant combines a prix fixe menu with an innovative experience. A typical dinner begins with drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the restaurant’s foyer followed by a multicourse—and multicultural—dinner in the dining room. The evening concludes with digestifs in the restaurant’s bar. There are two seatings per night.

One quirk—aimed at creating the sense of being at a private dinner—is that diners do not learn the address of the restaurant until they make a reservation.

Amin has always been entrepreneurial. While a student at Booth, she founded PrettyQuick, an online booking platform for beauty salons and spas that she sold to Groupon in 2015.

She has also served as vice president of product at two digital startups: ShopRunner, an app that allows consumers to track products and sales at hundreds of retailers, and Braintrust, a global tech talent marketplace.

Class Act, she says, is a totally different ball game. “This is my first brick-and-mortar business,” she says. “In the tech world, you start small with an app or a prototype, and you test and make adjustments before you make a significant investment. But you can’t really do that with restaurants. Restaurants are more a leap of faith. Basically, my family and friends are betting on me and my passion for the industry.”