N e i g h b o r h o o d N i c h e

e f f e c t i v e ly g r o w i n g & s c a l i n g y o u r r e s ta u r a n t

t o

National Stage

3 // What Drives Success

6 // New Concepts & Experienced Management

9 // Growth in the Modern Age

10 // How to Perfect the Concept

12 // Location, Location, Location!

14 // Find your Niche

16 // Vendors Who Grow With You

19 // Creating Consistency

20 // About PAR

Contents

What Drives Success

Why is it that some restaurants are doubling in size every few years, while a handful of brands have reached a

plateau, and many others fail or fade into obscurity?

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According to reports in QSRmagazine.com, several quick serve

and fast casual concepts have either doubled in size, or they’re

projecting it. For example, Jersey Mike’s opened 170 stores in one

year and Firehouse Subs doubled in size in less than five years.

Charley’s Philly Steaks currently has 600 stores in its portfolio,

but visionary CEO Charley Shin says he hopes one day to have 5,000

locations. Not to be distracted by that pace of growth, Shin’s new

market entrant, Korean fast casual Bibibop is already in 30 locations.

In this age of discerning and fickle consumers, pricey real estate, rising wages and the demand for high-quality, healthy food choices, how is growth even possible?

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At PAR, our everyday job involves quickly customizing POS systems and deploying them across hundreds, or even thousands, of corporate and franchisee locations, rapidly, smoothly, and seamlessly.

As a software solutions company and advisor to many of the best-

known, multi-unit operators across the nation and around the globe, we

decided to take a look at what really drives growth.

This is about more than improved store and franchise communications

or staff development. Those are table stakes that we hope are already

part of your corporate culture. What you’ll read about next are strategies

and tactics taken straight from the front lines, where we operate every

day in our mission of supporting these brands in their growth objectives.

Our unique, global exposure to restaurant POS provides our team an intimate and fresh understanding of the

concepts and business models that are driving real growth across restaurant segments.

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New Concepts & Experienced Management

In venture capitalism, investors say to bet on the jockey versus the horse, suggesting that experienced

management will come out victorious. These are individuals who have battle scars and experience, who can make those “blink” decisions, who intuitively know when to

pivot and when to press onward.

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Salsarita’s Fresh Mexican is an 84-unit Charlotte-based fast casual provider.

Helmed by CEO Phil Friedman, an industry veteran who previously

transformed McCalister’s Deli from 30 stores to 300.

“I wanted a relatively small franchise chain in fast casual. I wanted something that was still founder-owned or early management, so I could hopefully add value by being part of it.” — PHIL FRIEDMAN

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With so much on the line throughout an expansion, a corporate strategy involves flattening out the learning curve. Instead of spending years to develop, simply go out and buy.

Since so much of growth is tied to franchise development, brands are investing in specialized talent, executives who can

structure franchise deals intelligently and know the pitfalls when moving beyond the relative safety of corporate stores.

As reported in QSRmagazine.com, Fransmart, the leading global franchise developer behind The Halal Guys and

Five Guys Burgers & Fries, has brought on industry veteran Michael D’Arezzo. D’Arezzo brings 30 years of experience,

growing brands like Carl’s Jr. Hardee’s, Burger King, Mrs. Field’s, and Baskin Robbins.

Erbert & Gerbert’s already has 100 locations in 16 states and is on track to becoming one of the fastest-growing sandwich chains in the country. The Wisconsin-based company recently hired Buffalo Wild Wings ‘ Jeremy Burke, who led design and strategic direction there for a decade.

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growth in themodern age

Here’s another growth strategy. Take an existing premium brand with a rich history and legacy, and let the new generation bring a modern approach to expansion.

Graeter’s Ice Cream is a fourth-generation food retailing business that’s been around for 140 years.

In 2005, family members put manufacturing and technology investment at the heart of their

growth strategy.

They’ve since expanded from a small core of Cincinnati stores to multi-state operations supporting ice cream,

baked goods and candy production, an online shopping division, distribution into over 6,000 grocery stores in 45

states, and 34 corporate stores in the Midwest.

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As reported in Forbes Asia, Charley’s founder Charley Shin borrowed $3,000 from his uncle

during his junior year of college, and started out in a former Kinko’s: “It was a hole-in-the-wall,

not even the size of a two-car garage,” Shin said. Using fresh ingredients and quality beef, it

was food he thought would attract busy college students who were on a tight budget.

California-based Ono Hawaiian BBQ (71 locations) is 15 years old, and the founders

realized along the way that the original menu was far too extensive, so they scaled back to

items the they were passionate about, namely, Hawaiian-style plate lunches.

Salsarita’s has placed an emphasis on food culture, making sure its general managers

have nutritional fluency when interacting with guests. The chain cooks in small batches,

and moved the chargrill to the front of the house, which not only signals freshness to the

guests, but makes transferring cooked meat to the line easier.

how to PERFECTTHE CONCEPT

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Check out our blog post:

Not all deployments are created equal. Deployment of a new POS

solution, POS hardware, or POS software can significantly impact

your brand. It is imperative that your POS solutions vendor works

closely with your teams to understand your business culture, and

the goals associated with your deployment.

4 Deployment Best Practices for your Restaurant

CLICK HERE11

location, location, location!

Technology means you can do more with less. Small footprint franchises— under 2,500 square feet—

are taking off (Salsarita’s, Wayback Burgers).

With a precise knowledge of operations, no part of the footprint is wasted, and that includes the back-of-the-

house space formerly devoted to computer equipment and servers, which now becomes liberated space due to cloud technology like PAR Brink POS software replacing

bulky servers and file storage.

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A smaller footprint can also reduce the cost to entry for franchisees, yet another reason to re-think traditional space

allocation and guest touchpoints like online ordering and delivery.

In fact, the high cost and scarcity of heavy auto traffic real estate has led other brands to rethink traditional parking lot locations, and look more to spaces that can take advantage of these online ordering and delivery trends.

Emerging brands are inventing and perfecting a unique blend of traditional and non-traditional sites. Graeter’s, for

example, now has locations at a major league ball park and a zoo.

Charley’s enjoys a niche in malls and military bases across the U.S., with 503 locations. The UAE is second with 24 locations followed by Saudi Arabia with 10, South Korea and Japan, where it has five locations each. Most of the locations overseas are in malls and military bases.

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findingyour niche

Many fast casual categories are crowded with established players and new entrants.

Do we really need a new burger, quesadilla or noodle bowl?

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Menu R&D can be an element of success. The inclination to make every guest happy with endless options will eventually run into the operational fulfillment of providing that cornucopia with consistency. The most successful emerging brands have gotten very good at simplifying and refining menu options.

Moe’s was a new player in the fast growing Mexican concept, and they chose to focus on family-

friendly (natural ingredients in kids meals, which was appealing to moms and dads) and vegetarian-

friendly (tofu protein, vegetables prepared on separate grills) differentiation. Moe’s marched

Westward across the Mississippi River on the boost of that strategy.

Graeter’s Ice Cream has focused on enlightened partnerships with other brands.They recently partnered with a local brewery to produce a blueberry stout beer based on one of the most popular Graeter’s flavors.

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vendors whogrow with youWe see it all the time. The solution that worked

for your first store, or the five stores in your first city, doesn’t work when you expand into other states or

countries. All of a sudden, it’s about supply chain and technology.

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There are now a myriad of third-party integrations to

consider. With rapid roll-outs into a new territory or

franchise locations, you can’t rely on a vendor without

a proven track record of developing intuitive solutions

that will require weeks of training time, or doesn’t align

with a quality guest experience.

Have the field teams of a start-up actually been in the field? Do they have local knowledge and relationships? It’s one thing to develop interesting features and another to have built a rigorous methodology around implementation in multiple locations.

Challenges exist at the other end of the scale as well.

Many chains have found themselves with large national

vendors who charge exorbitant fees for prototypes, or

who scale back on support once they’ve signed contracts.

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Check out our blog post:

Do all your technologies and interfaces know each other?

Are they well acquainted? Do all parts of your solution “talk” to

one another? Streamlining all your processes has never been

more important than in today’s competitive market.

The Value of Integrations

CLICK HERE

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create consistencyIn scaling, you not only have to connect the dots, you have to plan for the dots that don’t exist yet.

How do you create the foresight and capacity to identify what is next in technology or operations—and integrate

that across your brand?

How do you make sure the guest experience at Store #234 in Dubai is the same guest experience as Store #1

in Des Moines?

How do you guarantee your franchise stores are consistent with the corporate stores, without a cookie

cutter look and feel?

Growth in food retailing is a combo meal of disciplined planning and a series of entrepreneurial

experiments, the balancing of proven concepts with new ideas that have the best chance to scale.

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ABOUT PAR

PARTECH.com

PAR Technology Corporation’s Hospitality segment has been a leading provider of restaurant and

retail technology for more than 40 years.

PAR offers technology solutions for the full spectrum of restaurant operations, from large chain and

independent table service restaurants to international quick service chains.

Products from PAR also can be found in retailers, cinemas, cruise lines, stadiums and food service

companies. For more information, visit partech.com or connect with PAR on Facebook and Twitter.

PAR’s stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PAR.

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