“I’d rather serve people fresh food and charge a little more rather than save 2 percent on food costs to pocket the difference.”
— Robert Maynard
BACKGROUND
• Former NYC real estate development exec turned co-founder of Famous Toastery.
• Opened the first location in 2005 in Huntersville, North Carolina. Today there’s 30-plus.
Your childhood friend, Brian Burchill, pitched the idea of opening a breakfast-brunch restaurant in 2005. You thought it was absurd. What changed your mind?
I had no interest in the restaurant business. I worked in restaurants when I was younger, in a lot of diners being in New York. The people who ran them weren’t nice at all. I said if I have my own restaurant, I’ll treat people the complete opposite—I was treated like crap, so I treat people like gold.
Brian was persuasive and sent me a round-trip ticket from New York City to his place to stay for four days. By the fourth day, we had a down payment for a restaurant. It wasn’t a very big investment. Then to see you can take $50,000 and turn it into a $50 million business is crazy. Brian had a great knack, took a tiny place back in 2005 and turned it into a very busy place in a matter of six months.
And what makes Famous Toastery unique?
No one does scratch made like we do. When someone gets soup from a competitor, it’s frozen. When we make soup, it’s made that day. We roast our own turkey. We don’t cut a corner. We can probably do a better job talking about that. To get to scale, some get private equity and they want to beat you up a little and save that 2 percent. I may be naïve, but I’d rather serve people fresh food and charge a little more rather than save 2 percent on food costs to pocket the difference.
How is franchising going?
What I realized was selling franchises is probably one of the easiest things to do. It’s amazing how quickly people are willing to give you money. But there’s a misconception of thinking when somebody writes you a check and opens a restaurant, they’ll follow the system. That doesn’t always happen. We haven’t sold a franchise since I think 2018, and that’s been on purpose. To get it right, we didn’t just want to do it to collect fees. We want to make sure all locations are running well.
We have a handful of franchisees signing deals for new locations, and we’re also doing corporate locations along with selling franchises and building them from the ground up. We probably have five to seven in the development stage.
How are you surviving in the new economy?
Stick to what your guns are, keep the food at a high level. I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing, but you have no choice—you can’t survive if you don’t raise your prices. Everything since 2019 has about doubled; it’s out of control. I hate the idea of raising prices. It upsets me. I want to be the affordable luxury.
What’s your advice to budding franchisors?
You’ve got to take care of franchisees and your employees, and that in turn takes care of your customers. That took a while to truly understand over the years. With franchising, support, support, support. They pay a royalty to support them, so make sure they get what they need.