Casual-dining brand allows employees to invest equity in business
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Owners Miguel Hernandez and Damian Otero are growing their Atlanta-based Rreal Hospitality, opening their fourth restaurant on April 1, by allowing employees to invest equity in the company and creating a marketing company to help other restaurant owners.
Hernandez, CEO of the company, and Otero, chief operating officer, will be featured Thursday at 3 p.m. ET on DrinkedIn Live, the Nation’s Restaurant News channel.
They will be joined by mixologists/beverage directs Jesus Perez and Arturo Salgado, who will be creating a DrinkedIn Live cocktail.
Hernandez and Otero acquired the Rreal Tacos’ original Midtown Atlanta location in August 2021 from Adrian Villarreal, the brand’s founder and namesake. Since the purchase, they expanded into three additional locations in West Midtown, Chamblee and Sandy Springs.
“We have an operation where the five top-performing employees have the opportunity to own a piece of equity with every location we open,” Otero said in a statement. “The idea is to find talented and driven people who start as regular employees and then transition into becoming a manager. Once they check all the boxes, they can become a partner in any given location or multiple locations.”
Hernandez, in an interview, said, “I think we have a very unique business model for our expansion. We are 100% employee-owned company, that means that everybody within our business now has a vested interest in the operation.”
Rreal Hospitality also has created a marketing division, Resto EXP, that outsources to other restaurant operators, Hernandez said. The company helps other operators establish a social-media presence, navigate Google and create websites, Hernandez said.
Rreal Hospitality, which has units in Midtown Atlanta, West Midtown and Chamblee, is looking at expansion opportunities outside of the metro-Atlanta area as well as Nashville, Tenn., and Charlotte, N.C., after it opens its Sandy Springs unit April 1.
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