Fast Casual Industry Growth for 2026

And we likewise have Clinton Anderson, the CEO of Fourth, who will be moderating the conversation with Jason. Jason, how about I let you provide the audience some info about your background and you can also tell them a little bit about Chop Store.

My name is Jason Morgan, CEO of Original Chop Shop. We purchased the brand name in 2016three unitsand I have actually grown it to 26. After a brief stint of attempting to be an accounting professional for about a year and a half, I transitioned into casino home and worked in corporate financing.

I was the very first staff member there after private equity bought business. Helped grow that from 20 to 150 locations, took it public in 2014, and after that left about a year and a half after going public to do this at Chop Shop. My hope is that we can duplicate the success we had at Zos, and we're off to an actually good start.

We're at the counter, we bring the food to the table. The key to the program is we have a drink component as well with fresh-squeezed juices and protein shakes.

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A little more complex than some of the walk-the-line concepts that are out there, however we believe we have actually got something quite special. We're going to include another shop this year and a minimum of 4 shops next year. We will be 31 or so shops by the end of next year.

How to Scale Your Dining Brand

I've been in this function for about 6 years. Fourth, as many of you understand, is a leading service provider of software solutions to the dining establishment and hospitality market. Our objective is to assist our consumers be effective in driving profitability and being efficientmanaging labor, managing inventory, and generally supplying them with tools they need to provide their vision.

It's uncommon to have business that are beloved and growing rapidly, that can duplicate that success year after year. Jason, one of the factors I was so ecstatic to have you join our session is the success at Zos was incredible. I've just fulfilled a handful of brands where there was such a strong customer affinity for the brand.

And now you're doing the same thing at Chop Store. When you speak to customers about Chop Store, they like the location. They speak about its distinction. And to be able to take what is a reasonably complex idea in regards to delivering a great experience for the client, and be able to grow that from a few shops to now north of 30 stores next yearit's amazing.

We're going to talk about how to scale a dining establishment company. Every restaurateur I ever speak with has imagine taking one shop, two stores, 5 shops, and turning it into something much biggerexpanding across the city, throughout the state, into numerous states, and eventually nationwide, even worldwide reach. It's not simple, particularly in today's environment.

Labor is hard. Stock expenses stay high. It's not an easy time to drive profitability and development at the same time. We're grateful to have you here today, Jason, due to the fact that we're going to dig into that subject. The questions are going to be really around: how do you grow a service? How do you scale it and make it successful? How do you duplicate early success? And from there, after we speak about your experience and the lessons you've learned, we 'd love to then state: well, look, how could innovation assist? How can you use innovation as a multiplier to reproduce early success to far-reaching success? Second, beyond innovation, how do you scale terrific teams? And last but not least, AI.

Essential Strategies to Expanding Restaurant Brands

The first question I have for you, Jasonlook, you've done this two times now in the dining establishment market. What are some of the lessons you've found out? What has your experience remained in regards to what it requires to truly drive success in broadening dining establishments? Tell me a little about your path, what you experienced along the way, and possibly a few of the more difficult lessons you found out.

We talked a bit before we started about LinkedIn, and I have actually got a post teed as much as follow this next week about what the playbook is likepoint by pointfor growing an organization. To me, among the crucial things, and I feel extremely fortunate, is that both brand names I've been included with are unique.

And there's absolutely nothing precisely like Chop Store in terms of what we're doing with a big, varied menu. A lot of brand names today are extremely singularly focused in regards to what they're offering from a food product. I feel like we started at an advantage with both brand names by having something special that filled a niche nobody else was doing.

Because it's simply more difficult to stand out when there are 10, 20, 50 ideas within a two- or three-mile radius trying to do the specific very same thing. So a lot of it begins with the brand. Does your brand have something distinct that nobody else is doing? That's uncommon.

Hospitality Industry Trends Redefining 2026

The 2nd thingI came from a finance background, so a lot of my learnings are more financing and data-driven versus a lot of early startup restaurateurs who are innovative types. They love the food, they developed the menu, they built the brand name.

They do not know their breakeven sales. They don't comprehend how margin enhances as sales increase. I have actually seen so lots of business where the numbers just don't work.

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If you don't have those 2 things, you should not be developing stores. Because as I hear your description, you've highlighted 3 things: execution, brand differentiation, and financial viability.

Steps to Expand Your Restaurant Concept

Second, you need an engaging brand name or special principle that resonates with customers. And third, the math needs to work. If you do not comprehend your system economics, your repaired and variable costs, you may be expanding blind and losing money. Precisely. And another crucial lesson is about getting in new markets.

When we broadened to Dallas, I expected new stores to do 5070% of Phoenix sales in the very first year. Too lots of operators assume brand-new markets will open at full volume day one.