Carlisle Corp. recently made a large minority investment in LYFE Kitchen, and is planning steady growth for the 13-unit fast-casual concept.
With openings in Valencia, Calif., in September and Denver this week, LYFE has more growth on deck, said Chance Carlisle, the brand’s new chief executive.
“From opening the first restaurant to this, now our third tranche of restaurants, we’ve had a lot of learnings,” Carlisle told Nation’s Restaurant News.
The chain has units in California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada and Texas.
Carlisle is also president of Memphis, Tenn.-based Carlisle Corp.’s Wendelta Inc. division, which has franchised Wendy’s restaurants in the Southeast.
LYFE, which stands for Love Your Food Everyday, first opened in 2011, and will be honored Sunday with a Nation’s Restaurant News’ Hot Concepts award.
Carlisle discussed the concept and its growth with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Are any changes coming for LYFE Kitchen?
One is in the build-out itself and the design. We’ve been able to make significant cost reductions without sacrificing the look and feel of our restaurant. That’s been extremely helpful. One has been to eliminate walls and give us a much better customer-kitchen relationship.
We’re fast casual but we have a show kitchen to be proud of. We do real cooking, and it’s nice to see the activity of food being freshly prepared. And it provides an energy and excitement to the restaurant that we’re very proud of.
Were you looking to add a young restaurant brand to your portfolio?
My father and founder of Carlisle Corp., Gene Carlisle, has been involved with several innovative brands, going back to his days with Holiday Inn. We’ve been in hospitality for 30-plus years, and we’ve been looking in the past couple of years for another great restaurant company to be a part of and found LYFE.
How does LYFE fit into your other holdings, including the franchised Wendy’s units?
We see it as a way to implement an investment on a national scale that has a tremendous amount of blue-ocean growth opportunities for us. As an investor in LYFE, we are pleased to provide expertise into real estate development and build out its footprint. We probably wouldn’t have a similar opportunity in our more mature restaurant company.
You originally considered being a LYFE franchisee.
LYFE Kitchen’s corporate direction was to have roughly eight to 10 franchisees. We were called and recruited and started to talk to them. We said, “Great. We don’t mind being a franchisee, but we want the entire Southeastern United States.” They swallowed hard and negotiations dragged out a little bit longer. We were talking about it being a meaningful investment for the Carlisles. LYFE was having typical start-up issues: accessing capital, understanding and supporting the SG&A [selling, general and administrative expenses] necessary for a growing restaurant company. And we had a tremendous amount of resources here. We have the access to capital and the personnel expertise. So we said, “Would it make more sense to enter into an arrangement where we help each other?” That took about two months to negotiate, and we’ve been off to the races since.
How Carlisle will help LYFE grow
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What are the benefits and drawbacks?
We’ve got the benefit of having [LYFE] proven on a national scale, which is terrific. The problem is that we need to grow into that national footprint. We couldn’t be more excited with the reception we’ve received in Dallas. We’re still on fire in California. We have franchisees who are knocking it out of the park in Chicago and Denver. But we’re still under 15 restaurants. We have a tremendous amount of future growth potential. … I think you’ll find a very vibrant national concept.
What is the growth plan into 2015?
Since the beginning of this year, we’ve opened seven new restaurants. By the end of 2015, we’ll have at least 23 restaurants.
What are the strengths of the LYFE brand?
We’re not a preachy, this-is-the-only-food-to-eat restaurant. We’re about providing great-tasting, nutritious food that people enjoy in an environment that is approachable and unpretentious and fun to be around. It’s a great casual way to enjoy a meal. I think that has a lot of appeal to today’s consumers. We’re trying to be an inclusive, everyone-is-welcome company.
What strengths in Carlisle Corp. will help LYFE’s growth?
We in particular excel at real-estate development and management strategies. Just in the three months since we’ve been on board, we’ve been able to cut out roughly 25 percent of the build-out costs for the restaurants as a benchmark. When you are able to look at our newest openings, you will see continued refinement as we build out revenue channels that previously weren’t vetted. We’ll build out much stronger catering and much stronger to-go and grab-and-go business than were established in the original versions of our restaurants. Any time you can bring on additional revenue streams and reduce build-out costs, you are headed in the right direction. … By taking on a significant amount of the SG&A ourselves, we’re freeing investor capital to build out a bigger restaurant base. We get more scale, more efficiencies and the virtuous cycle continues.
What’s new on the fall menu?
Jeremy [Bringardner], our chef, has come up with a whole new dessert line. If you haven’t had the new vegan chocolate chip cookies yet, grab one. He’s redoing the base of the budino [the Italian dessert custard], and it’s memorable. … Our food innovation days aren’t over.
What are you most excited about with LYFE?
Selfishly, I’m most excited about opening up a restaurant here in Memphis. We’ll have a location open here in February 2015. It’s really great-tasting, affordable food.
Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @RonRuggless