QSR February 2023

There’s one location open and run ning—a 2,400-square-foot Houston model that portends future development. But two, in Scottsdale and Denver, are slated to land in Q1. The Pasadena test kitchen is no lon ger open to the public. While there’s a lengthy road ahead, Daddy’s is off to a rare spurt. “It just all feels right,” Webb says. “And it doesn’t mean the path to success is at all linear, but we’re definitely in a very good place, and with great chemistry.” What Webb is referencing is that intan gible piece that often splits upstarts from those that make it. For Daddy’s, it clicked through the center of COVID-19. Webb maintained a fine-dining catering business in Daddy’s early days. When the pandemic hit, though, one company moved down ward and the other rocketed: Daddy’s watched sales leap 200 percent. Georgalas says COVID forced Daddy’s, like hosts of brands nationwide, to make serious adjustments and gather intel as it tried to figure out how to reach people. There came a point where drivers pulled up and got in line, and guests piled up outside. Georgalas had never worked in a restau rant, so he went to the front of house and tried to meet every customer who walked in. Naturally, Daddy’s didn’t staff for a 200 percent increase, which kept him busy. Georgalas handed water bottles and cook ies to drivers and diners. As regulations relaxed, Daddy’s fig

“biggest, baddest thing you could have.” Daddy’s expects to spread mainly as inline or endcap locations, with about 25 per cent or so as standalones. “When I’m in the space, it has the gravitas of a legacy brand,” Webb says. What can’t be lost, however, is why Georgalas pushed his chips in on day one. Webb’s Los Angeles-based catering shop, Taste of Pace, was asked to make sliders and tacos at an event back in 2013 (they weren’t on the menu). She developed a fried chicken sandwich with sriracha mayo, Thai-style slaw, buttermilk fried chicken, and a brioche bun. The food drew a crowd and even the praise of actress and singer Mandy Moore. The following day, Webb called her dad and flippantly mentioned she had a retirement plan. He’d be able to hang in the Venice Pier, wear Hawaiian shirts, and fry chicken. That’s where the name, “Daddy’s,” was born. Webb’s father, an artist and graphic designer, would actually, in time, craft the Houston store’s interior alongside Harri son, a global consultancy company that’s assisted with development of several familiar restaurant aesthetics, including Fogo de Chão and Maggiano’s. It’s an authentic-looking shack that mismatches elements of a house, like win dows of random sizes, and a door hanging from the dining room ceiling. Think of it as American South with Japanese minimal ism as a backbone.

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DADDY’S HAS BIG-TIME BACKING AS IT READIES TO GROW.

ured out how to schedule shifts and leverage tech, which was an area the brand got ahead of from the outset; it had to, given the lack of foot traffic and parking. Daddy’s became one of the early customers of Ordermark (now Nextbite)—an online ordering solution that offers integration of third-party delivery providers—and dipped into facial recognition kiosks and autonomous delivery. By the end of 2018, Dad dy’s was on 11 delivery apps and offered native online ordering. Essentially, the fast casual navigated COVID with an omnichannel system before the couple (or many other people, for that matter) were even sure what that term defined. “We were able to take a look at our data and look at our numbers and say, this is what we need here and adjust and once that dust set tled, that’s when we realized,” Georgalas says. “We came up for air and we’re like, oh, I think we have something here.” Georgalas reached out to old contacts and a close friend. Even tually, Daddy’s crossed paths with Dr. Ben Litalien, founder of FranchiseWell, an agency that consults with mega groups like UPS and IKEA. The partnership evolved into an investment from Dave Lini ger, the co-founder of global real estate franchise RE/MAX. He chose Daddy’s from 200 potential candidates. “Hearing the success stories, hearing the challenges, [Dave] telling us that he’s made every mistake in the book in the last 50 years, but hearing what that’s yielded as far as the success that people were set up for from inside the business and outside, is really what was attractive to us,” Georgalas says. Daddy’s then set out to design its Houston flagship, a standalone the company says shows potential franchisees an example of the

Returning to the food (and Georgalas’ initial inspiration), Webb fine-tuned her sandwich over the years before Georgalas tried it in 2015. He believed Webb found her Shake Shack. “I told her you should do something with this and she looked at me like I had five heads and she said, ‘well, you should do this with me,’” he says. At the start of 2018, Webb and Georgalas opened Daddy’s at Smorgasburg food market. The weekly event attracted 4,000 cus tomers when the restaurant joined, but saw upward of 13,000 at some points. Hundreds of sandwiches were sold each day and later that year, Georgalas tracked down the Pasadena space. They signed a lease and moved in 18 days later. Webb notes, although she didn’t recognize it then, she had been training to be a CEO for years. “A chef’s career is very similar in a lot of ways,” she says. “You’re type A, a little high strung, have to be a great leader, have a product to get out on time, on budget, at a certain tem perature. There were so many similarities that I didn’t even know I had been cultivating.” But importantly, in addition to the sandwich, Georgalas believed in Webb. His first role, he says, was to support her and find ways to get the message out. He was an institution position trader at Deutsche Bank and the hospitality sector before they met, with no inkling to get in the restaurant game. “It was about supporting her, supporting a woman as a founder of a business called Daddy’s, which is really cool. And the magic is really starting to happen,” he says. Why the franchising route came down to Liniger. They jumped

DADDY’S CHICKEN SHACK (2)

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FEBRUARY 2023 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com