by Garth Meyer
It started as a 17-inch propane griddle on the rooftop of a North Redondo townhouse during the pandemic. Now it is a two-location South Bay restaurant about to be franchised.
Matthew McIvor, founder of “Proudly Serving,” is set to sign the papers in the next two weeks.
He intends to open a third location himself, then grow it to 50 restaurants in the next 5-10 years.
The original opened in Hermosa Beach in September 2023, on the site of the former “The Spot.” The Redondo location opened this past February.
In July, a restaurant group approached McIvor.
“We’re at the very, very final stage now with this group to come in and help us scale,” he said. “This gets us in front of the right people to franchise the brand.”
A year ago, two partners got involved — one a former client of Localite L.A., McIvor’s public relations firm which lost its clients during the pandemic, prompting him to start what became Proudly Serving. The former client walked into the Hermosa store one day and saw McIvor cooking burgers. He later helped front the money to open in Redondo.
“All three of us are still involved,” McIvor said, the other two guys living in Palos Verdes.
To what does he attribute his success?
“I’ve always had a good palette. The P.S. burger, our only item at the beginning, took about 15 attempts,” McIvor said. ‘There’s layers of American cheese. Upscale American cheese, if you will. I had to find the right pickle, to get the right thickness to the slice of the onions, the right meat-to-bun ratio. A single patty was too much bread. So we only have a double.”
McIvor has lived in North Redondo since 2010. Originally from New Jersey, he thought he’d live in New York as an adult but his wife, a flight attendant, got assigned to Salt Lake City.
So they went there for three years, then kept going west. Both were from the N.J. shore; Sayerville and Point Pleasant. His extended blue-collar family is originally from the Bronx.
“I really thought I’d be in the music industry,” he said, a veteran of staging bands in the basement of his Victorian rental house in New Brunswick, N.J., in the early 2000s during college at Rutgers.
McIvor later spent two weeks at a police academy before concluding it wasn’t for him. Out west, he fell in love with hospitality, first discovering the world of craft beer in the lobby bar of a Days Inn in Kalispell, Mont., while his wife was out flying.
They moved to Redondo Beach, a reminder of the N.J. shore, and started Localite; cold-calling, and walking into restaurants, saying they will do it for free, and gathered 25 clients for public relations/social media.
All the while, McIvor wanted to open a fine-dining restaurant. But the pandemic arrived and the client exodus began.
“So it was back to my roots, New Jersey, the diner capital of the world,” he said. “I already had one foot out of (Localite), I was putting so much effort into making other people’s dreams come true.”
Up on his roof on Armour Lane, McIvor worked to create his definitive burger, and started a pop-up stand in his driveway. He called his P.R. contacts and drew news coverage. By the fifth pop-up, a hundred people were lined up.
“I needed help, and I needed to get out of my driveway,” he said. “I felt bad for our neighbors. I needed to stop being a nuisance.”
He made the Proudly Serving logo in Canva while sitting on his couch, still during the pandemic.
“I have a creative mind but can’t draw a straight line with a ruler,” McIvor said. “I was never a fan of orange whatsoever. It just looked good. Now my whole world is orange.”
The secondary logo at the Redondo Beach store at the edge of Riviera Village is a punk-rock homage to Bob Big’s Boy – no permission asked for.
“It’s not something I plan on using down the road,” he said.
The pop-ups included an El Segundo parking lot, a woman offered her driveway at Aviation and Prospect in Redondo, and the closed Bowlero parking lot in Torrance every Saturday. They had no permits, no licenses. McIvor recruited friends to help.
“We did everything illegally,” he said. “I never started with any capital, no sizable loan or investors. We always just crossed that bridge when we got there. It’s definitely taken off faster than I ever anticipated.”
What is the likely place for the third restaurant?
“I’m hoping in proper L.A.; Culver City to Echo Park,” said McIvor. “People in L.A. think Redondo Beach is San Diego.”
He and his wife, Jennalee, had a newborn at the time of the pop-ups.
“These were not only a passion project, it was a necessity as I needed to bring in some income,” McIvor said.
Experimenting on the rooftop grill, his neighbors said he hit the mark for his burger on the third attempt, but “I was not even close to being there. It’s simple, but I just put a lot of effort into it. Once strangers came up and said ‘this is good,’ that gave me the confidence to go out to the real public.”
Today, after the new papers are signed for franchise opportunities, McIvor will still work on the creative and culture side of the business.
“My goal is to have Proudly Serving be known as not just good food, but for the hospitality. The experience and the atmosphere,” he said. “That’s what people come back consistently for.”
The L.A. proper location will act as the “flagship,” McIvor said, modeled similarly to the Redondo Beach space.
The Hermosa spot has somewhat of a unique layout.
“It’s terrible,” he said, “For lack of a better term. That will be our character place.” ER
