Familial ties play a significant role in shawarma concept Osmow’s branding, though this is to be expected given its name.
Founder and namesake Sam Osmow bought a submarine shop in 2001 in a small Ontario town, shortly after immigrating to Canada. Emerging competition from a newly opened Subway nearby started chipping away at the shop’s success, affecting the family’s main source of income.
But a simple customer interaction later sparked Osmow’s interest for flipping the shop to serve Mediterranean cuisine, when a regular showed interest in a traditional meal he made from home.
“I think a lot of people had no idea what this type of cuisine was,” said Ben Osmow, Osmow’s CEO and son of Sam Osmow. “There was no familiarity around Mediterranean cuisine, what it meant, what it entailed.”
Ben Osmow, son of the Osmow’s founder, is CEO and head of franchise operations.
Ben Osmow and sister Bernadette Farag hold executive roles at Osmow’s, but the two have been assisting in the brand’s growth since childhood. As kids, the duo undertook sampling efforts around town for more than a year, visiting festivals and community centers to share food and menus.
“We would just try to get people to try the food and ask them to come into the restaurant if they liked what they tried,” Osmow said. “After that year and a half of doing free sampling and really pushing the message and the food, the restaurant started having regulars line up.”
All grown up, the siblings now run the business together. Osmow serves as head of franchise operations in addition to CEO, and Farag holds the positions of president and chief marketing officer.
The company’s first franchise opened in 2008 through a family friend, and Osmow said the company stuck to family and friends until 2015, its first “real year” franchising.
Now all but seven of its 188 units are franchised, and the shawarma concept continues to see growth in the United States and Canada as it nears its goal of 200 units by January. But substantial growth does not dilute family’s impact on the brand; if anything, Osmow said it amplifies it.
More than two decades in, some of Osmow’s earliest franchisees have brought their kids into the business. Some franchisees have even been introduced to the brand via their children.
“It’s a really awesome thing to see,” Osmow said. “We’re seeing so many family businesses spark within the Osmow’s brand as we continue to grow.”
Much of this growth happens from within. The company heavily favors a multi-unit model as a majority of its franchisees are multi-unit operators. Management training is prioritized as a result, Osmow said, as franchisees are taught how to go from running a single unit to multiple units.
“There’s a lot of people that think it’s just a copy-and-paste model, but it’s not that simple,” he said. “We try to actually walk our franchisees through what are going to be the struggles … and talk them through some situational approaches and navigate how they would manage each and every one of those scenarios.”
The shawarma restaurant category has some smaller players, like 38-unit Naf Naf Middle Eastern Grill and Shawarma Press, which launched in 2017. In the Mediterranean cuisine sector, there’s Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, Nick the Greek and The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill, each of which ended 2023 with fewer than 100 units.
Osmow said the company implemented policies that cultivate stronger relationships with and among its approximately 50 franchisees. Osmow’s encourages franchisees to communicate with each other through quarterly meetings, workshops, franchisee-building exercises and networking opportunities provided at its annual gathering.
Office employees are also required to work one to two days at an Osmow’s franchise every six months and must visit a different location each time.
“It really allows our office to connect with the franchisees across North America altogether and show them that we’re there with them,” Osmow said. “We want to hear from them. We want to see what they’re seeing, and more importantly, we want to be able to service our customers with the franchisees. I think that’s one way we can really push the idea of a family business.”