Bango: From a 300-square-foot acai shop to leading a 'Better for You' movement

How Jae Kim is Scaling Chi’Lantro

Jae Kim emptied his $30,000 in savings and maxed out his credit cards to launch a Korean food truck in Austin in 2010. Now he is leading 13 Chi'Lantro restaurants across Texas and building toward the next cycle of growth. He even won a deal on Shark Tank, then walked away from it to grow on his own terms. Jae has lived every stage of growth and made the hard calls even when he felt stuck. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear insights from a Founder building a brand to break through! The late night that created kimchi fries Late one night on his downtown Austin food truck, Jae had a batch of kimchi sitting unused. Customers kept telling him they did not know what kimchi was, so they did not want it. This is hard to believe today, however, in 2010, of course, no one knew kimchi. Jae did what every visionary Founder does: he caramelized it, let the smell roll out of the truck, and piled it onto hot fries. His bet was simple: let people taste it before they could second-guess it. That is how The Original Kimchi Fries were born, a dish Chi'Lantro now serves more than 200,000 times a year. If you are building something the market has not seen yet, your first job is the one Jae had on his truck. Get people to experience the difference. Jae's story is about one critical decision after another, each made while the business was stuck in the middle, too big to be small and too small to be big. If you are a Founder facing those same challenges right now, this is your episode. The risk everyone told him not to take Every Founder eventually meets the moment when their own success becomes the ceiling. In 2015, Jae met it with five food trucks and lines wrapping the block. It was clear that Chi'Lantro was a success and leading the charge in the red-hot Austin food scene. The safe move was to keep adding trucks. Jae decided to do the exact opposite. The reason he chose stability over momentum is the lesson restaurant Founders need most. The next move changed the trajectory for his business forever. Jae did not gamble. He moved before the ceiling could trap him, and that is the difference between Founders who scale and Founders who plateau. Walking away from Barbara Corcoran Most Founders would chase the very deal Jae landed: $600,000 on Shark Tank from a shark who believed in him. A shark with a proven track record of scaling businesses. Jae made it on Shark Tank after applying three times, got an offer and then walked away. Understanding why he said no is worth more to your business than the deal itself. He turned down money to chase something he valued more. Instead, he backed himself with partners who had already built and sold a brand bigger than his own. That is the kind of decision that keeps paying off for years. "I've wanted that relationship more than the money because of the experiences and the wisdom that they had." - Jae Kim When sales dropped 90%, his real test began In 2020, Chi'Lantro's sales fell 90% almost overnight when the governor told residents to stay at home. Jae could have protected himself and pulled his money out. What he did instead tells you everything about why people follow him. He again made what many would say would be a difficult decision — he chose his team over selling out. He told his team the truth about how long the company could keep paying them and gave them a choice to stay or go. Every team member chose to stay. Then, with no customers, Jae and his team just started giving their food away, more than 20,000 meals through Chi'Lantro Cares. Their community wrote checks to keep the kitchen running. The team he protected became the reason Chi'Lantro came back stronger. Those values trace back to his family: a single mother who built business after business after immigrating, and a sister he lost to NF2, whose memory still drives him. It is the WHY beneath every decision he makes. Why success in one city means nothing in the next The love you earn in one city does not always follow you to the next. Jae is living that right now in Houston, and it has been one of the hardest parts of scaling. What keeps him in the fight is a fanatical focus on his core fundamental principles he refuses to compromise on. Chi'Lantro serves authentic flavors with uncompromising standards for: great food, great service and clean restaurants. "It's easy to open up a restaurant, but the real fight comes afterwards on a day in, day out basis." — Jae Kim Listening to what Jae protects, and why, will sharpen how you defend your own brand. More lessons worth pressing play for 1. The three questions Jae asks himself before opening any new location — the ones he says he learned to ask the hard way. 2. Where Jae goes to keep sharpening his decisions, and how he turns other Founders' experience into his next move. 3. His read on why money is more expensive right now, and the kind of growth he believes this market actually rewards. Where to start if you are stuck I asked Jae what he would tell a Founder still sitting there, grinding it out right now. His answer was about the Founder, not the business. These are the lessons that a Founder tells a Founder. These are the lessons you want and need to hear. So, if you are stuck in the middle today, listen to this episode and start there. Take care of yourself first, then make the next decision the way Jae is taking his $30,000 and building a company that continues to break through. P.S. Jae's story is the kind we bring to life at the Founderology Growth Summit, the event for visionary restaurant Founders ready to scale. If you want to spend two and a half days with Founders doing this work, join like-minded Founders at 2027's Founderology Growth Summit [https://founderologysummit.com/], Aug. 2-4 in Chicago. If You Are Ready to Grow, We Are Ready to Go! Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear insights from Founders who are building brands to break through!

How best friends are building their pizza and brew empire

Two childhood friends bought a pizzeria at 21 with no plan. Now they leading nine restaurants and getting ready to scale Best Pizza & Brew towards its next destination 35 locations. Best Pizza & Brew Founder, Mitchell Millar made a decision while out golfing with Co-Founder Joey Freis to stop answering his phone. By the end of the round, Joey had five calls from their general managers, each looking for answers to their questions. It's a funny story and a familiar problem for most Founders. If your team cannot get through a round of golf without you, you do not own a business. You are the business. Joey and Mitchell have been friends since elementary school. At 21, they bought the pizzeria where they were both working, called Pizza Nova. And then changed the name to reflect their shared passion — Best Pizza & Brew. Today, they are leading nine restaurants, eight across Southern California and a first out-of-state location in Chandler, Arizona. The goal is 35 locations by 2035. In our conversation, we discussed what it took to stop being the answer to every question and start scaling towards their vision. If you are a Founder stuck in the middle right now, this is your episode for mere answers for moving forward. The pizzeria they bought on instinct Joey and Mitchell did not set out to build an empire; these two friends loved the pizza business. "We liked it so much. We were talking all the time, kept going, and realized that this is our passion without knowing it at the time," Freis said. That passion is a real asset, and it is also a strategic filter selecting leaders who are passionate about growing Best Pizza & Brew. Joey and Mitchell have watched talented managers burn out. Not for a lack of skill. These managers simply did not love the work the way the two of them do. Their advice to any Founder is if you love it, do it. Loving what you do is what gets you started. It is the fuel for a business; however, it does not grow a business. The garage doors that wouldn't stay shut Picture a cold San Diego evening. The big garage doors at one of the restaurants are rolled wide open. The dining room is freezing. Guests are uncomfortable. And not one team member has thought to close them. That image, Mitchell says, is what scaling without systems looks like. At three locations, they could stay on top of things themselves. They would hold a meeting, talk about closing the garage doors and greeting the tables, and everyone would nod along. Then the next Friday night, they would look around, and nobody was doing any of it. It's a lesson Joey and Mitchell learned the hard way, and one every Founder eventually runs into. Saying something in a meeting is not the same as building a system for it. A nod is not accountability. The reminder lives in your head. The system lives in the building and works whether you are there or not. You scale your standards through building your systems. Getting the team to lead without them When I asked Joey to name one of his most critical decisions, he didn't reach for a location or an acquisition. He named their incentive program. The more stores Joey tracked, the harder it became to analyze each number. A GM who owns one store's numbers acts on them. So they handed ownership down to the people closest to the work. The Founder lesson — the more control they let go of, the more they got back. More Founder lessons worth pressing play for: We covered far more than I can address here, and I really want you to hear Mitchell and Joey's take on what being stuck in the middle really feels like, and how they moved through it. No. 1 Why Mitchell still interviews every hire, even over FaceTime, and the reason that will change how you think about hiring: people want an experience, or they would have just ordered DoorDash. No. 2 What buying a competitor taught them, which had nothing to do with the real estate and everything to do with two things they had avoided for years. No. 3 The truth about going out of state, where the hometown halo effect disappears, and they could no longer train new staff at a store down the road. Where to start if You are stuck I asked Joey and Mitchell what they would say to a Founder stuck at three locations, unable to see how they will ever reach eight or 10. Joey's answer was to get an incentive program in place, then start handing real responsibility to the people running your restaurants and trusting them with it. Mitchell's was even simpler. Pick one problem. Ask your GM what the biggest problem is this week, and fix it. In his experience, the other problems are easy to fix from there, and the next location no longer feels out of reach. And keep having fun with it, he says, because if you do not love this work, then it just becomes another job in the industry and not a passion to grow something that ultimately is the Best Pizza & Brew. You do not get unstuck by solving everything at once. You get unstuck by fixing the thing in front of you. P.S. Joey and Mitchell are no strangers to our Founderology Growth Summit, and the room is full of Founders just like them, figuring it out together.  If you want to spend two and a half days with Founders doing this work, join us at 2027's Founderology Growth Summit, Aug. 2-4 in Chicago [https://founderologysummit.com/]. If you are ready to grow, we are always ready to go!

The success formula that took Everbowl from 1 to 400 locations

If you're a multi-unit restaurant founder stuck, knowing you have outgrown the early days but can't figure out the next move, this episode is for you. I sat down with Jeff Fenster, who built five eight- to nine-figure companies, exited three, and grew Everbowl to more than 100 open locations with almost 400 units sold across the country. His construction company, WeBuild, builds Everbowl locations at up to four times lower than the industry average and for clients across the industry. Jeff is also a best-selling author who runs the five-rule playbook on every company he builds, called his Success Formula. If you are stuck in the middle trying to figure out your next step this is your episode. What Jeff sees that most restaurant founders miss Five minutes into our conversation Jeff mentioned a line that addressed being stuck in the middle immediately: "Home cooking tastes better than a 25,000-unit McDonald's." His point? Home cooking has never scaled to 25,000 locations. McDonald's has because home cooks make food decisions. McDonald's makes business decisions. Most multi-unit Founders build their company the way a home cook builds a meal. They live in the recipes. They obsess over the product. The focus on opening a location. And the growth ceiling shows up anyway at 5 locations. Or 12. Or 20. Jeff put it this way: "I can hire a chef to be the chef. I can't hire a business owner to be the business owner." Business owner belongs to you as a Founder. The second you confuse the two roles, you stop scaling. The 25-year-old in the mirror Jeff was 25, running his first company, a payroll and HR business called i-CHEX (later becoming CanopyHR). He felt the pressure to look smarter than everyone he had hired. Every time his team brought him a brilliant idea, he tweaked it just enough to stamp his name on it. His best talent walked out the door. He kept blaming them. Until one day, he caught himself doing it again, and realized: "The common denominator here is me." That moment changed his career. From that day forward: All the credit went to the team All the blame stayed with him His only job was to make his people brilliant The company went from barely surviving to a successful exit (the first of many) and remains a key foundation of his Success Formula. When you can't afford talent, change the currency Jeff had one Everbowl location. A great guy named Brian Augustine, the brother of a family friend who had come out of Trader Joe's, applied to work with him. Brian wanted to build out Everbowl's training program. He was brilliant, however at this early stage, Jeff did not have the resources to hire him. Brian came back with a counter and every Founder listening needs to hear. He told Jeff to skip his paycheck for a full year. Every two weeks, instead of cash, he wanted to buy equity at the current valuation. Jeff said yes, and with Brian's support, Everbowl opened: * Year 1: 4 stores * Year 2: 14 stores * 24 months in: 18 Everbowls operating Brian still has his equity. He owns a couple of Everbowl stores in Utah, and his equity is worth a multiple of the salary he gave up. The takeaway is one I want every Founder to write down. When you cannot afford the talent, change the currency and it always doesn't have to be equity. Think about how many Brians are in your network right now? Three more breakthroughs waiting for you in this episode Jeff and I covered a lot of ground in this episode. Here are some more Founder insights you will want to hear and apply. No. 1 The cheapest hire is your most expensive mistake Why saving a few dollars an hour on mediocre talent costs you the lifetime value of a customer plus every friend they warn away. Jeff's math will rewrite how you hire. No. 2 Jeff's Success Formula The five-step playbook behind every business Jeff has built. He has run the same system through payroll, recruiting, restaurants, and construction. No. 3 The anti-pitch that protects every franchisee Every potential franchisee starts the call expecting a sales pitch. Jeff opens with the opposite. He asks them to find every reason NOT to sign. The result? Better operators. One last thing before you press play I asked Jeff what he would say to the Founder listening right now who is feeling the weight of every decision, and wondering how to take a first step. His answer was simple. "Make a phone call. Right now. Someone you know who can help you. Don't bury yesterday's problems and carry them into tomorrow. A bad plan today is better than no plan." This episode is one of those rare conversations where the second you finish it, you're going to want to do something. P.S. If you want to spend two and a half days with Founders like Jeff, in a room full of operators doing this work, join us at 2027's Founderology Growth Summit, Aug. 2-4 in Chicago [https://kwoodpartners.com/fgs-2027-waiting-list/]. We are rooting for you. Always

How R&R Brands scaled from a single brand to a multi-brand platform

I sat down with Scott Taylor, Founder and CEO of R&R Brands, a visionary and an industry icon whose fingerprints are on some of the most important brand-building work of the last two decades. He is also a great friend, past-colleague and dedicated educator too! R&R is trail blazing a new path in the multi-concept space: six brands and growing, anchored by Party Fowl, Bravo Brio, Cody's Original Roadhouse and Santa Fe Cattle Co., built on a model that partners with Founders instead of swallowing them or chewing them up. In this conversation, Scott held nothing back on what it actually takes to scale from a single brand to a multi-brand platform without losing the soul of any of the brands. The multi-brand model that isn't private equity and isn't a gotcha R&R is not a private equity roll-up business. It is not a franchise machine. It is something Scott, his partners and team are building deliberately to fill a gap he saw firsthand: smaller Founder-led businesses need infrastructure and a partner, not a buyout and a pile of paperwork. This is something every Founder weighing outside help or investment needs to hear. Why R&R was built as a family-office-backed strategic partnership, not a private equity vehicle. How the model leaves the Founder in a stronger position whether the end game is acquisition, partnership or support. The "we leave it better" philosophy that separates real partners from gotcha deals How Party Fowl went from bankruptcy to six locations without losing a single team member Seven restaurants down to two. A brand like so many that had lost its identity, its menu and its swagger. Scott walks through what he actually did in those first weeks at R&R's first major rebuild. The conversations he had with the remaining team that turned an underdog story into a 14-month turnaround. This part alone is worth pressing play. The first questions Scott asked the team to find the brand DNA again Why the underdog mindset became the rebuild's most powerful tool How not a single team member left during the turnaround Why every R&R brand has someone whose fob is to push back on R&R This is the structural decision that defines how Scott runs the platform. Inside every brand sits a leader whose job is to defend the brand DNA. Even when it could be so at the R&R level would be to consolidate menus, vendors or operations across the portfolio. Scott explains why scaling six identical brands is not the win it looks like on paper. The brand-protector role embedded in every R&R concept The trade-off between platform efficiency and brand integrity What happens the moment a multi-concept operator stops protecting what made each brand work Why culture, not food, not price, is the only real moat The decision-making matrix every founder needs before they build a second brand Must Consult - Must Inform - Don't Worry About It. Scott shares this simple and powerful framework he uses with leaders across the R&R portfolio. H explains why most Founders who want to launch a second concept are not actually ready, even when they think they are. His take on the Founder who insists on driving two buses at once and getting stuck is the kind of thing you do not forget once you hear it. The three-tier matrix every Founder can use to clarify decision rights How to know when you have actually replaced yourself as a steward of the brand The single test that tells a Founder whether they are ready for a second concept If you are a Founder saying to yourself, I am just stuck and What do I do next?, this episode answers that question in so many real and meaningful ways. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear real insights from Founders who are building brands to breakthrough!

Bango: From a 300-square-foot acai shop to leading a 'Better for You' movement

Every Founder hits a moment where the business is too big to be small but too small to be big. I call it the Stuck Zone. And what you do next determines everything. On this episode of the Founderology — Built to Breakthrough podcast, I talk with Ryan Thorman, Founder and CEO of Bango and a contributor to the Founderology Growth Summit. Ryan and his friends started with a 300-square-foot açaí shop and have grown Bango into a better-for-you concept with 10 locations, two more in construction and a franchise model that is gaining serious momentum across the East Coast. In this episode, Ryan held nothing back about the critical decisions he made at every stage of growth — and why he chose to grow slower when everyone said grow faster. What I share here is just the beginning of what Ryan shares in this fast-paced podcast. Stop gunslinging and get clear  For the first several years, Ryan and his team had no plan. They were young, throwing things against the wall and running hard without direction. Then came the critical decision to stop and define what Bango was actually going to be. That single act of clarity changed every decision after it — and Ryan shares why he believes most Founders stay stuck because they never make this decision at all. Who you hire — and how fast you fire  Ryan made the decision to bring in executives to help scale. It backfired — and he had to walk it back with his franchisees. Then he made a second critical decision: how to solve the problem without making the same mistake twice. The answer was right in front of him the entire time. If you're about to make your first big hire, listen to this before you sign the offer letter. Grow Slow When Everyone Says Grow Fast  Everyone told Ryan to strike while the iron was hot. He made the critical decision to do the opposite — turning down markets, walking away from eager candidates and slowing down when the industry said speed up. His one non-negotiable before opening another location goes against everything the growth playbook tells you. If you are feeling pressure to move faster than you are ready, take a page out of Ryan's playbook on doing what is right, not fast. Choose your shots instead of taking every shot  When I asked Ryan about the one decision that changed everything, he flipped the question. His answer was not about what went right — it was about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in mistakes they could have avoided. Ryan is a risk-taker by nature. The critical decision was learning the difference between taking every shot and choosing the right ones. Every Founder who are wired to move fast needs to hear how he reconciled that. And that's not even half of it. Ryan goes deeper on franchising, culture, team and the decisions that separate Founders who scale from Founders who stall. But the two moments that will stay with you are these:  The moment where all the critical decisions paid off  Ryan describes a moment every Founder chases and almost no one talks about openly. It is the payoff of every critical decision on this list — and why no one could have prepared him for how it would feel. This part alone is worth pressing play. The advice that starts with turning off your phone  Ryan closes with something deceptively simple. It is not a strategy and it is not a framework. It is the one thing every stuck Founder knows they should do but never actually does — and it is the shift that makes every critical decision after it possible. If you are a Founder asking yourself, What do I do next? — this episode answers that question in so many real and meaningful ways. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear real insights from Founders who are building brands to breakthrough! Kathleen Wood is the Founder of Kathleen Wood Partners, host of the Founderology —