Freshii

We took a little trip to Torrance this afternoon to check out this other viable spot. I liked it a lot. It's an end cap spot with a great visible signage facing Hawthorn Blvd. I am told it gets around 186,000 cars that drive around this intersection. It's currently a cafe so we will have to go through the change of use process. Kind of annoying seeing how its a 6 week process but I'm thinking we can cut it to 3 weeks if we hire and expediter.

End Cap 1400 Sqft

Interior

Well aside from some scouting, I've been busy calculating our cost margins and looking at vendor routes and who to use for certain services. An unbelievable amount of energy is spent building the ground floor of restaurants, it's crazy. I can't wait until we make a decision on a place.

On another note, I came across an article on Freshii. If you aren't familiar with this fast casual food chain, here's a link. They are 50 stores strong and they have system wide revenues of 50 million a year. The CEO is Matthew Corrin and he is 29 years old. Amazing right? They were founded in 2005 and they have a plan to reach 700 stores in 5 years.

Freshii

It's cool to dream big but for the meantime, I've got some work to do. Things are on track and I'm hoping we break ground in a months time.

Mac

Operations in Palos Verdes

Spent the afternoon watching food get prepared today. Seems like I'll need to know in detail of how each item on our menu is made. If there will be one person responsible for how our food tastes and is prepared, it will be me. I've been documenting the process all day today and making training videos for when I start to train our line cooks how to make our food. This will be quite the process. I never realized how much preparation goes into each in every pot of Pho broth. Chicken was a little bit easier than the beef pho but still, pretty lengthy process.

Look what I did!

I'm still working out the kinks of how our new kitchen will flow. Keep in mind we won't be able to mirror exactly what PV is currently doing because we won't be doing the same kind of volume. We are expanding into heavy traffic areas. The rent is considerably higher meaning we will need to be operating at almost 3-4 times capacity.

Dan and I are currently allocating different parts of the business to each other for efficiency. He's up in Westlake / Thousand Oaks area scoping out other suitable locations. I believe we are able to look as far down south as Orange County and as far north as the valley but our first two locations must have one in LA. I really hope the location on Beverly will fall through. I'm not happy with such high rent but hopefully we can negotiate down.

Alrighty well going to eat a bowl of Pho I made for myself. Yummm

Mac

Prepared by yours truly

Monday Dreads

Life is one big refining process. If you have the motivation and the mindset to constantly better yourself, then you're a natural business man. I'm running all over LA talking to people that will eventually assist me with my venture. The business is all about putting the correct pieces together, connecting with people and the ability to leverage people's money, time and energy. I love my job ... looks like I've finally found my calling. This is fun for me. I wake up everyday knowing that I'm building something; building a service to provide for people. I don't get the Monday dreads like I used to at my previous job. I don't even see this as working and it's the best feeling in the world. Anyways, I'm 50% in the office today and the 50% in the field doing more recon for a location I like. I can't wait to see this finally materialize.

The Office Today

Q1 is over, TGIF

Restaurant space in LA is super limited and in very high demand in some areas. I'm finding this out first hand. I didn't realize what went into search for viable locations to setup shop. Negotiations are getting close and the excitement is building up! I can't wait until we engage our architect and we start to plan the workflow of the restaurant.

Hubworks? Possibly

Next week, I'm looking into iPad / Android tablet integration for our POS system. We have several conference calls early in the week and we will be checking out functionality, pricing and compatibility. First up? Hubworks. Seems like they have what we need for our concept. We are looking to get 3-5 iPads per store that will preferably replace the need for a cashier. I've looked at the pros and cons for this type concept and it seems like it could really boost efficiency. Though, it won't be until we start operating that we'll find out exactly how efficient it is.

Menus on LCD's

Been brainstorming ideas of how the interior will look like. Menu's on LCD's an option? It's possible but I have to explore every avenue. Anyways, pretty productive week. Will end off this week with a bowl of Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup).

Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Mac

New Sparrow Logo!

A week ago, I asked friends as well as a couple professional graphic artists to render their take on our existing logo.

Original Logo

I went through several logos people were sending me but upper management and my colleague Dan came to agreement with this logo.

New Logo

I just want to thank my boy Daniel for helping me with this. Much appreciated, and if you're reading this, i'll be reaching out to you as we need you for other projects. The final product is below.

Things are plenty busy at the moment. Will catch back up in a couple days.

Mac

Friday Briefings

Two weeks have come and gone. We've completed a grip of work and things are still smoothhh. Yesterday we had our first meeting with an architect that was referred to us. Turns out his company has built out dozens of locations for Jersey Mike's as well as Panda Express. He has two decades of experience in building restaurant spaces and seems to the perfect resource for us to use. He came to one of our prospective locations and gave us a run down of his services as well as the limitations of what we can expect out of this location. He was goooood, real good. We still needed a couple architects as a reference though. We will be meeting another architect early next week that was referred to me by a buddy who own's a shabu joint in Newport Beach.

I finished the rough dimensions from our location in PV. Seemed to be useful as a reference as we continue to search for locations.

Best of my ability, I am no architect lol

Upper management now requires we document our weekly activities. Mandatory Friday meetings or conference calls will be the norm. Structure of the firm is slowly developing. Things are starting to feel more corporate, exciting! Business cards are a couple weeks out as we decide on the final rendering of our new logo. And to whoever reads this blog, have a great weekend! LOL

Mac

The Location Scouting Continues!

After half the week of scouting locations to build our Sparrow's at, my shift of awareness is now on square footage of places wherever I am. I constantly try to judge how much space square feet is in any restaurant or building I walk into. Also, you don't realize how many Subways there are in LA until you actually look. I swear I've seen over 20 Subways in 5 square miles. How is this even possible? Then I wiki'd how many locations Subways actually have. Any guesses? Here let me help you out.

Subways has 38,181 locations in 99 countries. 

Whhhatt? I knew they were in the thousands but wow. Their revenues are roughly 16.2 Billion per year. This is the dream of where we are headed. But let me just focus on our first two stores and then we'll talk. 

We got to see a couple more locations in Brentwood. Our broker let us take a look at this location on Olympic. The space was actually two locations that have been combined after knocking down the wall in between them. I had a huge concern with the signage at the top of each space. I asked the property owner if there was any chance we could combine the top portion of the buildings so our signage's wouldn't look so odd. It was a no can do ... Pass ...

PASSSS

Well, still going back and forth to our PV locations. Still trying to draw up the floor plan so we could use it as reference as we continue our search for new locations.

Mac

Dan Joins the Team

Employee #2 is now fully on board. Dan and I are now head of the Sparrow expansion project. We have tasked out portions of the business that we will complete either separately or jointly. Things are going as planned and I can see more structure being implemented. We've been scouting places all over LA with our leasing broker.

Some locations of interest include:

Beverly Hills

Santa Monica

Melrose

La Brea

Culver City

Westlake

Silverlake

Hollywood

Never realized how taxing it is running all around LA. I love it though. I was built for this job. Here are couple gutted out restaurant spaces we may be interested.

1500 Sqft in Culver City

1100 Sqft in Beverly Hills

Learning quite a bit about the formal leasing process. Our broker seems a bit hesitant to show us places because we are a new entity. We aren't an established restaurant and in our position, only money talks. Though I know we still need to do our due diligence about the area demographics and nearby competitors, I like these locations. The leasing process is quite lengthy and a lot goes into looking over the terms, making sure the building complies with restaurant space city requirements. I am brand spanking new to this side of the business but I'm doing my homework everyday to catch up to speed.

Architect is scheduled to meet us in the middle of the week. Will be learning more about the build out process then. In the meantime, I am continually building the operations manual.

Mac

Week 1 Complete

So far, this project is going smooth. I was able to collect the data we'll need when we start to make our food at our new locations. This combined with calculating our profit margins on all items on our menu as well as listing inventory supplies we'll be needing has taken up a majority of my time this week. Establishing our vendors at our new locations will be a little tricky but we'll get a better understand of this as we move forward.

POS at PV Sparrow

I have a couple commercial leasing brokers scheduled next week to show me around. Lined up a couple potential architects that we may be able to use when we build out our first couple locations. Other than that, this concludes the first week at work. Pretty productive I'd have to say lol.

Mac

Getting the hang of things

So this marks the 3rd day of the Sparrow expansion project. What a breath of fresh air. Been making my own schedules and planning out my weeks. My background is in finance and I've literally gone from stocks to sandwiches in a matter of weeks. Getting the hang of things quite fast I might add.

I'm tasked out in Palos Verdes to mine raw data about the ingredients pertaining to every item on our menu. I'm documenting all processes on how to create the food on their menu. Here is what the current menu looks like.

Current PV Sparrow Menu

Management is telling me that we may need to slim down this menu. We're looking to do a fast casual Vietnamese joint. I'm thinking we are going with just Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup), Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sub), and Bun (Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad) as the main three dishes and the appetizers. Vietnamese Coffee and lemonade will also be an essential item on our new menu. Currently building an operations manual that will act as a live document to guide us in building multiple locations. 

Been searching for an experienced commercial real estate broker that can assist me to find limited restaurant space in the big city of LA. Will be engaging a few prospect in the up coming days.

Mac

Sparrow Genesis (Day 1)

Today, my venture begins. The goal? Build out a Vietnamese food franchise in LA. 13 months ago, one of my Uncles started a restaurant named "Sparrow" in Palos Verdes. They opened in a historically difficult location but yet in a years time, they stand to make back their initial investment and turn a fairly decent profit. This is where an idea formed to take this concept and expand it. I've been hired on to establish the ground floor of this project. Location leasing negotiations, replication of recipes, consistency of floor plans and ambiance at all locations and logistics of vendor routes. Plan is to build out 12 locations in a  24-30 month time frame. I am employee #1 and I will be documenting my progress with this blog. Wish me luck! Here is headquarters as of current.

Mac

HQ of Current

PV Prototype Store