How does a growth chain break into a competitive restaurant market? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features John Abdo, the CEO of the 11-unit, Minneapolis-based chain My Burger. We spoke with Abdo at the recent Create conference in California, an event hosted by Restaurant Business parent company Informa Connect that is targeted at growth restaurant brands. We wanted to get the perspective of a growth chain dealing with the various challenges the current industry operates in. Beef costs are soaring, the industry is competitive, and finding new locations isn’t easy. We also get the story of an interesting, family-owned company and how it thinks about expansion, including strategies for new locations, and where the chain is planning new restaurants. We’re talking growth on A Deeper Dive so please check it out.

How growth chains adapt to a changing restaurant market

A Deeper Dive

That's not exactly the market for my burger right now. We do really well with my age group, not a surprise. I effectively am marketing to myself, I guess, but young families. I've got three little kids and I'm an elder millennial. That's kind of what our brand looks like in a lot of ways, but elder millennials are doing all right. They still need to go out and eat. We're trying to track more baby boomers, trying to convince them that it's like an old school diner experience where you're really taken care of. But boomers have plenty of money and they're eating burgers and fries just as much as they always do.

So we can try to get on to the newest, freshest, hottest, trendiest thing to our own detriment, or we can actually stick with what works and I think what people actually are looking for. And there's a lot of segments that I believe are ripe for some serious traffic coming into a MyBurger location. How does a regional restaurant chain take the next step in its growth? Hello, I'm Jonathan Mays, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business.

And in this week's episode of A Deeper Dive, I spoke with John Abdo, the CEO of MyBurger, an 11-unit burger chain based in Minnesota. This is a great conversation, not only because John is a fellow Minnesotan like me, but he has a really interesting story to tell. He talks about the history of his restaurant chain. He talks about the company's growth plans.

The struggles for growth, how the company is deciding on good real estate or cheap real estate, how the company is looking at growing over the next couple of years and how it is going to finance that growth.

How growth chains adapt to a changing restaurant market

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

How growth chains adapt to a changing restaurant market

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.