Restaurant insights by 7shifts

The thought of expanding locations might bring dollar signs to your eyes, but it’s important to first ask the big question: Are you actually ready?

Watch Sam Fung’s latest video covering everything you need to know before you open your next restaurant location.

Typsy also put together a quick five-step gut check. Nail all of these with a hard yes, and hey, maybe you are ready to do it all over again.

✅ Are you physically—and mentally—prepared to multiply the challenges?
✅ Can your first store fly without you?
✅ Do you have systems and processes in place to copy-paste?
✅ Are you rich enough (really, though)?
✅ Is there actually a market ready for what you plan to offer?

Say you have decided you’re ready to expand. Now comes the not-so-fun part: money (or rather, financing). Sure, using profits from your first spot would be nice—but that’s not always realistic.

Check out this Reddit thread where operators share tips on everything financing-related:

What about opening a second concept, instead of a second location?

It’s one thing to duplicate what already works. It’s another thing to switch it all up.

So, we also caught up with two multi-unit restaurant owners to find out why they chose to launch a second concept, instead of opening location number two.

🔥 Josh Bishop, Wildfire and Fork & Fire in Arizona

For Josh, the goal of opening Wildfire, his first location, was actually to support his barbecue food truck with a physical kitchen. But given that there was too much barbecue nearby, he went with everyone’s second favorite food: chicken wings. And when another barbecue joint closed down, he decided it was time to turn the Fork & Fire food truck into a physical location, too.

It came down to too much competition: “It was simply proximity… We’re a pretty small community… In that area, there were already two barbecue places.”

Read more about Josh’s story (and how 7shifts has supported it) here!

🍜 Andy Yuen, Odd Couple and SULU in Saskatchewan

For Andy, his second concept may have been new—but the space wasn’t. When the opportunity came to purchase an existing restaurant, the location and layout were just too good to pass up. And in many ways, creating SULU in the ‘new-old’ space made more sense than recreating Odd Couple.

Andy saw time and cost savings: “If you start from scratch, it would probably take at least a year. In a year, a lot of things change—the markets change so fast… We spent not an insubstantial amount of money to do a reno, but it should still be quite a bit less than if I were to start from scratch.”

Read more about Andy’s expansion journey here!

Before wrapping up, we also asked Josh and Andy for a few more insights on what it takes to run multiple spots. Here’s what they had to say:

💬 What are some challenges or considerations when managing teams across locations?

Josh: “Presence is so key in the industry… When the owner is there in the restaurant, or the general manager, it’s often different than when the assistant managers are there… There are a lot of little things—psychologically—that in a restaurant, the owner sets the precedent for… And with every restaurant that opens, that presence is diminished.”

Andy: “I’m really fortunate to have two really good managers who truly care about our restaurants, just as if it’s theirs. That’s really what to do… If you have a team of people who are truly adaptable and genuinely care about your space, that’s the most important thing.”

💬 What advice would you give operators looking to expand with more locations?

Josh: “If you can’t walk away from your current restaurant for a month, two months—and truly believe that it’ll operate as well or better than with you in it—you’re not ready to take on that because it’s going to take a couple months of complete blindness to your current operation to open a second location.”

Andy: “I watch a lot of NBA basketball, and I love the Raptors—what I see in them is that just because you’re not going for a championship this year, doesn’t mean you’re not going to do any deals if there are good deals… So don’t pass up on good opportunities even though times are tough. And the only other thing I’d say is just be really flexible in this market. Especially for small operators like us, the only strength that we really have is to be flexible.”

Some rapid-fire tips from multi-unit operators who’ve been there, done that—and scaled successfully.

🎧 Garrett Mills, Partner of Uncommon Brands, on the biggest challenge for expanding founders:

“​​ In terms of what kind of challenges our founders face, as you break out of that one to two-unit concept to become a multi-unit threat, I think it comes down to many founders’ hesitation to give up control.”

“ Running one restaurant is very different than running three, and it’s obviously way different than than running ten. And I think the evolution of that depends on a founder’s ability to find people they trust and really tweak the business model to be more GM-driven.”

🎧 Ellen Yin, Founder of High Street Hospitality, on the perks of sharing staff across stores:

“We love to cross-pollinate. Especially if you are in the management track, sometimes, it’s easier to manage people in a place where you haven’t worked with them… or somebody has a skill set that we feel could be developed and would be a great fit for [another restaurant].”

“ Having people cross-pollinate also helps us ensure that our culture can be cross-pollinated. We’re opening a new concept… we are having team members from our other concepts participate there to ensure that we inoculate that culture into the new location.”

🎧 Amelie Kang, Owner of MáLà Project NYC on how restaurant roles change as you expand:

“I was doing the day-to-day operations. I would do service. I would be the expo. I would be on the floor and bussing tables… But since day one, I knew that we needed to grow in order to have the team grow. We had to be physically bigger in order to build a bigger platform for my team… I was prepared to grow my team like that.”

“So now, having the fourth location and going into bigger expansion, my core team is all my original employees. And we all grew together from the floor doing service to now having to work in a startup mode… figuring out how do you form a team and how to function like a startup—rather than a restaurant, which is a different format of working.”

You don’t have time for pointless articles (because you’re busy expanding). These aren’t those.

🍽️ Restaurant expansion 101
Tips to help you run multiple stores without losing your mind—team management, tech tools, and everything else in between.

👥 How to manage one team across multiple restaurants
Learn more about the challenges (and solutions) to keeping your crew in sync, even when they’re spread across town.

📆 How to get multi-unit scheduling right the first time
Say goodbye to compliance challenges, inconsistent communication, and double-booked shifts—here’s scheduling across stores made easy.