ONE LOCATION OR MULTIPLE?

Join the Mad Food critic today as we discuss what is the magic number of locations to have. One location or multiple?

Local Eats are the Best Eats!

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SPEAKER_00 0:09

Good afternoon. Today is August the 2nd, 2026, and straight from the High Lake Caverns studio, this is the Mad Food Critic Podcast. I do want to share something with you real quick. Yesterday, as you know, we do the reels on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, and they're all funny and they do drive some points home. Yesterday, we did something that we had not done with the Mad Food Critic, and that was film on location at a locally owned little pastry shop down in Bayborough, North Carolina. I thoroughly enjoyed uh the shoot because it does it reminded me of something of why I do all of this. As I sat down with the owner and I talked about her business and the struggles that she has and and some of the things that just she just brought back to life uh from someone who's just been in the industry longer than you should. But you know, it just brought back so many different memories of things I had not really forgotten, but just weren't at the surface anymore. And so we're gonna we're gonna be talking about that over the next couple of months on some of the things that she kind of unraveled. But today I had something on my mind that somebody reached out to me about, and I said, absolutely, I will touch base on this subject. And it's called scaling boundaries. Now, what am I talking about? I'm not talking about scaling a mountain, although in the restaurant industry, that's basically what we do every single day. We climb a mountain. Some days we make it to the top, and some days we fall to the bottom. But what I'm talking about today is something I've noticed over the years. People often say our goal is to open another location, and then another, and then another, and so on, and so on. And on paper that sounds like success. But today I want to ask a different question. At what point do you stop multiplying excellence and start multiplying problems? I love seeing small businesses succeed, it does my heart good. In fact, I hope every local owned restaurant becomes so successful that they have locations all across the country. But here's the challenge. When there's only one location, the owner is usually there all the time. They know the employees, they know the regular customers, they know the fries aren't cooked long enough, they know when a dining room isn't clean, they know when someone's having a bad day. Quality isn't just managed, it's lived. My dad had a statement, and he said, you could own a business, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be restaurant business, you could own a business and have and hire someone to run it for you, but they are not as invested as you are, and they're not going to take care of business as you would. You set out to open your business and you had a dream in mind, they don't share that dream. They can't. It's physically impossible. They can share the instructions, but they can't have shared the dream. Is it possible to have more than one location and be successful? Yes, it is. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is caution, be careful, because it can be a trap. I know for a fact every restaurant or business I've ever owned, I've always been right in the middle of it. And to me, that is what contributed to my success. I can't be in all places at all times. Even if I had two locations, I can't manage both the way I manage that single location. And if you're honest with yourself, you'll agree with me. If not, well, then we have a difference of opinion, and that's what it is. So when I say that you you can be successful at it, there are people who run different. Let's say they have four locations of a restaurant, they hire great managers, and they do a great job of taking care of the day-to-day operations. What did I say in the very beginning? They can follow the directions that were set up, the blueprint, if you will, but they understand that they do not have that dream inside of them that helps them to run your business like you would. If you were there, maybe there's a smudge on the window and you would go clean that. Or maybe there's something in the parking lot and you pick up that piece of trash on your way in. Remember what I told you? What constitutes a wow experience? It is consistency from the parking lot to the cash register from beginning to end. And if you are mistaken enough to think that you can hire someone that will take care of all of those details, just like you would, you're mistaken. And again, that's my opinion. But then comes location number two. Now the owner can't be in two places, so they hire a manager. Maybe they're fantastic, maybe they're just okay. Maybe they care as much as the owner. Maybe they don't. And now you've introduced something that wasn't there before, either consistency or inconsistency. And what is one of the biggest killers of the restaurant industry? Inconsistency, whether it be in food, whether it be in quality, whether it be in service, whether it be whatever. And you're you you develop that scenario of people saying things like, Well, you know, that original location is the best one. Go to that one, or actually, you know what? The the original location is not that great, but location number two, that's the one you need to go get lunch from. The manager over there is awesome. So, how do you fix that? So, this is why I'm trying to just bring up the different scenarios of issues that you can have in this trap. And by the time the business has 10 or 20 locations, the owner may have not even ever met the people that are serving your food. So now you have people saying things like, Oh, don't go to that location or across town. They're saying, I don't like that business. Same name, same logo, same menu, completely different experience. I see it happen in restaurants, hotels, retail, retail stores, even hospitals. One location makes you a lifelong customer. Another location makes you swear you'll never go back. And here's what fascinates me customers don't judge individual employees, they judge the brand. That's right, you. If one location disappoints them, they rarely say the manager wasn't very good. They simply say, I don't like that company anymore. Because I have always said this from my beginning of ever being in my first business. You can go to any restaurant, and if you don't believe me, you just try this. You can go to any restaurant in the US, locally owned, not chain. You can go in and you can have the best food, you can have the best atmosphere at the best price, everything can be perfect, and then you get that bad server, and now your experience is ruined and you walk away from that business saying, I'm not ever going back there. That place is horrible. They don't train their employees, or could be the other way around. You could have a great server, you could have all the other things be all components be great, but the food is less than standard. And now people are saying, you know, it's it's a great service, you know, the prices are great, it's a great place to go, it's fun, you know, it's a good vibe, it's a great Friday night date place, but the food is just not, it's crap. It's all pre-made, pre-frozen, pre-crap. So scaling isn't about owning more businesses or opening more buildings. Because one bad experience has a way of painting every location with the same brush. Remember that. It's about asking yourself one difficult question. Can your standards, your standards, Mr. Restaurant owner, that you put into the dream of your restaurant, can your standards survive when you're no longer in the room? Because just because your name might be on the sign, your reputation now depends on people that you may never even have met. And I think that's why some businesses expand too quickly too and too vastly. Growth becomes the goal instead of consistency. Anybody can duplicate a building or a menu, very few can duplicate a culture, and maybe that's the real definition of success. Not how many locations you have, but how confidently someone can walk into any one of them at any given time and know exactly what kind of experience they're going to receive. So today I'll leave you with this thought expansion is exciting, growth is admirable, but protecting your reputation, that's the hard part. Because the farther your business stretches, the more important your culture becomes. Bye bye.