Executives from the half-dozen 2024 Hot Concepts winners shared what makes their concepts, from toast to hot chicken, successful in a competitive environment during last week's CREATE conference in Nashville, Tenn.
The CREATE: The Event for Emerging Restaurateurs’ Hot Concepts panel included: Brianna Keefe, founder and CEO of Toastique; Logan Powell, CEO of Puttshack; Rich Reyes, co-founder and CEO of Mecha Noodle Bar; Rodney Scott, co-founder of Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ; Peter Tremblay, chief operating officer of Angry Chickz; and Dario Wolos, founder and CEO of Tacombi. The panel was moderated by Sam Oches, editorial director for Informa Connect, parent company to Nation’s Restaurant News.
Keefe of Toastique said she sought franchise partners who shared her passion for the good-for-you brand.
“We’re solely looking for owner-operators,” she said. “It’s going to make your life easier getting up and going to sell this every day. And you know they have their own time and money and reputation involved. … That’s how we are choosing our partners.”
Toastique can teach the skills, provide the recipes, and offer architectural renderings, she added, “but if you don't enjoy being around people and can't manage a team and can't get people to rally behind you and have that same passion, then it's going to be very hard for you to be successful.”
Reyes of Mecha Noodle Bar said, “We're both sons of immigrant parents, so both of our parents took a tremendous risk and kind of reimagined what the future for them could look like. Because of that, we live in a gratitude and for us it's important to find a way to build a company that's not just transactional but transformational.”
Powell of Puttshack noted the technology-forward mini-golf concept, will open its 20th location in November.
“It was started by the founders of Top Golf,” he said. “The golf balls have proprietary technology and track every shot that you make, so you can't cheat.”
The high-end casual-dining experience adds to the concept’s impact, Powell said.
“We have local things in the menu,” he said. “In Nashville, we have tailpipes, but think of it like a larger version of a spring roll.”
Scott, co-founder of Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ, said he has picked up a lot of Southern respect for barbecue after living in the South for 12 years.
“For me, it's just trying to make sure the next one is better than the previous one,” Scott said, adding that the tradition is much like that of casual-dining chain Texas Roadhouse, which is the “need to push forward into the future and modernize and take it to different communities.”
Wolos of Tacombi said his concept started selling tacos out of a Volkswagen on the Yucatan Peninsula.
“At its core,” he said, “the experience that we've created is very much rooted in the heritage.”
Now based in New York City, Tacombi reinvests in the experience, Wolos said.
“We've been meticulous about all the little details that make up the customer experience,” he said. “When we opened up the first taco stand in Mexico” he recalled. “We wrote in our company constitution that we had a responsibility to give back to Mexico, to give back better.”
Tremblay of Angry Chickz said he knew the chicken category was very competitive.
“We, as a brand, focus on three very simple principles: the first principle is the quality we really are passionate or fanatical about the quality of our product and at the end of the day the customer primarily comes to your restaurant because the food tastes good,” he said. “We only have seven items on the menu, so these better be the best darn items that we can possibly serve our customers.”
With 28 restaurants in California, he said, the company has neither changed portion sizes over the past four years nor raised prices, to maintain its value proposition.
The third principle, he added, is the guest experience.
“We spend no money on advertising,” Tremblay said. “All of our business is word of mouth. We just focus on those three items, and it seems to be paying off.”
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