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A young sous chef sets out to build a better apron—and creates a new gold standard of kitchen gear while forging a uniquely personal path of entrepreneurship.
Written by Constance Dunn
Ellen Marie Bennett stopped by a coffee shop on a recent East Coast trip and the owner recognized her. “Are you Ellen Bennett?” he asked. Turns out he was excited to meet the person responsible for one of his favorite work items—a sturdy, good-looking chef coat he’s been using nearly every day for the last decade that still holds up superbly.
It was an early offering of Hedley & Bennett, a company the Los Angeles born and raised Bennett formed over a decade ago on the premise of building a better apron. At the time she was working double duty, as a cook at the blazingly popular Bäco Mercat—where her boss, the famed Chef Josef Centeno would place Hedley & Bennett’s very first order—and at the Michelin-starred, fine dining haunt Providence under chef Michael Cimarusti (“Everything was super, super-high end,” she recounts).
Everything, that is, but the aprons. The kitchen staple had not kept pace with other innovations in the culinary world. Fit and quality were poor. Bennett set out to fix both. Let’s elevate the whole thing and use stuff that actually works, she thought. She employed super-premium fabrics like Japanese denim and created silhouettes to suit their hard-working wearers superbly.
A tagline of the company is Pro grade, for all, which the entrepreneur explains as the recognition of equity that’s vital in a working kitchen. “Everybody matters in the kitchen,” Bennett points out: “Everyone is part of this machine—and if one part of this machine breaks, it goes down in flames.” This premise steers Hedley & Bennett products, which quickly expanded to collaborations with brands like Vans and Madewell, offering gear like chef shoes and coveralls.
“It was everything we wanted to do ever,” Bennett says of the move, which stamped their name and reputation in the highest realms of the culinary world. “We outfit hundreds of thousands of home cooks too,” she adds. Sculptors wear their smocks, workers of all stripes don their aprons and smocks, the latter a popular lightweight apron crafted in a linen-cotton blend.
A bio of Bennett might be titled The Accidental Leader. “When I started this company as a 24-year-old,” she shares, “I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I was my own experience, which made me show up the way I do in life, which is pretty open.” From the start she approached business as something not to be set apart or compartmentalized from real life.
“I was on a mission to go make friends and see if I can help them,” she explains, “So to me nothing was ever ‘Business.’ I would be emailed the CEO of a company and add emojis because that’s just who I am.”
It was not intentional; it just was Ellen being Ellen. But it ended up being a point of differentiation that would make any MBA professor proud. Bennett put down her unstudied and effective approach in her book Dream First, Details Later (Portfolio, 2021), a positive, get-after-it guide described by Seth Godin as “inspiring, beautiful and actionable.”
As for the coffee shop owner who recognized her; so enthused was he to meet the entrepreneur that he fetched his Hedley & Bennett chef coat and asked her to sign it. “That to me is the biggest compliment,” states Bennett. That her product is being used, day in and day out, in a professional capacity. Not just used—but relied upon and valued by those she once stood shoulder to shoulder within the kitchen.
“What better thing to do than show up differently in the world,” muses Bennett. “We need people who have unique perspectives that can bring change and innovation to fields. That’s always been my approach to everything: Don’t try to be that other brand—be your own damn brand.”
