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

Thanks Christina. My name is Jason Morgan, CEO of Original Chop Shop. I've been doing this for about nine years now. We purchased the brand in 2016three unitsand I've grown it to 26. Prior to this, I have actually spent the majority of my career in hospitality in some shape or form. After a brief stint of trying to be an accountant for about a year and a half, I transitioned into gambling establishment residential or commercial property and worked in corporate financing.

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

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

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A little more complex than some of the walk-the-line ideas that are out there, but we think we have actually got something quite special. We're going to include another shop this year and at least four shops next year. We will be 31 or so stores by the end of next year.

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I've been in this role for about 6 years. 4th, as numerous of you know, is a leading supplier of software options to the restaurant and hospitality market. Our objective is to help our consumers be effective in driving success and being efficientmanaging labor, managing stock, and basically offering them with tools they need to provide their vision.

It's uncommon to have business that are cherished and growing quickly, that can duplicate that success every year. Jason, one of the factors I was so ecstatic to have you join our session is the success at Zos was amazing. I have actually just met a handful of brand names where there was such a strong customer affinity for the brand.

When you talk to clients about Chop Store, they enjoy the location. And to be able to take what is a reasonably complicated idea in terms of delivering an excellent experience for the customer, and be able to grow that from a few shops to now north of 30 shops next yearit's fantastic.

We're going to talk about how to scale a dining establishment organization. Every restaurateur I ever talk with has imagine taking one shop, 2 stores, five stores, and turning it into something much biggerexpanding across the city, throughout the state, into multiple states, and eventually national, even international reach. But it's hard, especially in today's environment.

Labor is tough. Stock expenses stay high. It's not a simple time to drive profitability and growth at the exact same time. We're thankful to have you here today, Jason, due to the fact that we're going to dig into that topic. The concerns are going to be really around: how do you grow an organization? 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 say: well, appearance, how could innovation assist? How can you use innovation as a multiplier to reproduce early success to significant success? Second, beyond innovation, how do you scale excellent teams? And last but not least, AI.

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The first question I have for you, Jasonlook, you've done this two times now in the restaurant market. What are some of the lessons you've learned? What has your experience remained in regards to what it takes to really drive success in broadening dining establishments? Inform me a little about your course, what you experienced along the way, and maybe a few of the harder lessons you discovered.

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 a business. To me, one of the crucial things, and I feel very lucky, is that both brand names I have actually been involved with are unique.

And there's absolutely nothing precisely like Chop Store in terms of what we're finishing with a large, diverse menu. Many brand names today are extremely singularly focused in regards to what they're offering from a food. I feel like we started at an advantage with both brand names by having something unique that filled a niche no one else was doing.

Since it's just harder to stand out when there are 10, 20, 50 principles within a two- or three-mile radius trying to do the specific very same thing. A lot of it begins with the brand name. Does your brand have something unique that no one else is doing? That's rare.

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The second 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 enjoy the food, they built the menu, they built the brand name.

They do not know their breakeven sales. They don't understand how margin enhances as sales increase. I have actually seen so numerous companies where the numbers just don't work.

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If you don't have those two things, you should not be building shops. Due to the fact that as I hear your description, you have actually highlighted 3 things: execution, brand differentiation, and monetary viability.

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Second, you require a compelling brand or unique idea that resonates with consumers. And 3rd, the math has to work. If you don't understand 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 brand-new markets.

When we broadened to Dallas, I anticipated new stores to do 5070% of Phoenix sales in the first year. A lot of operators assume new markets will open at complete volume the first day. That nearly never ever happens. And when the stores open sluggish, but you have actually signed leases and developed a monetary model based upon higher volumes, you get overextended.