Ex-Cisco consumer chief Flips for grilled cheese

03.06.2011
So after building the world's most popular pocket camcorder, being , becoming his new company's consumer chief and then when his company decided to kill his baby, what does Jonathan Kaplan do for an encore? Or entrée?

Why, grilled cheese, of course!

Kaplan, who left Cisco early this year perhaps when he learned the company planned to , has a new startup: a chain of grilled cheese sandwich shops. According to a , Kaplan plans to call his new business The Melt and serve five variations of the school cafeteria staple.

CISCO, CISCO, CISCO:

Kaplan has also enlisted a celebrity chef and some venture backing for The Melt. Board members include the chef, Michael Mina, as well as Ron Johnson, 's senior vice president for retail, and Sequoia Capital partner Mike Moritz, an early investor in Google. He hopes to emulate the Chipotle Mexican Grill chain, which has 1,000 restaurants and a $9 billion market cap, the Bloomberg Businessweek story states.

Kaplan was founder and CEO of Pure Digital, maker of the Flip pocket camcorder, when Cisco bought the company in 2009 for $590 million. Kaplan was then tapped to head Cisco's consumer business after the acquisition's close.