EP10: Breaking the Turnover Cycle That Kills Restaurant Expansion

Etkin Tekin left his corporate strategy position at AB InBev's innovation arm to co-found one of the Northeast's fastest-growing restaurant concepts. While most operators struggle with an expensive recruiting cycle—hire, train, lose people, repeat—Haven Hot Chicken broke this pattern. In this episode, Etkin reveals how they built an internal pipeline that promotes 40% of store leadership from within while maintaining just 10% turnover. This approach has slashed hiring costs, ensured brand consistency, and created the team stability necessary for sustainable rapid expansion.

Key Takeaways:

• Why hiring for culture fit beats skills every time (and how to spot it)
• Specific tactics that reduced hourly worker turnover to just 10%
• When to hire specialists vs. generalists during rapid growth
• How to build community impact directly into your business model
• The framework for making tech investments that actually improve your bottom line
• How to manage shared leadership with multiple co-founders without chaos

Perfect for: Multi-unit restaurant operators, franchise executives, anyone struggling with high turnover, and leaders building teams during rapid growth.

About Etkin Tekin: Co-founder and CEO of Haven Hot Chicken, former innovation strategist at ZX Ventures (AB InBev), helping scale Nashville-style hot chicken across the Northeast while building a company culture with industry-leading retention rates.

Time Stamp Chapters

• 00:00 Intro: Meet Etkin and Haven Hot Chicken
• 02:04 Origins: Nashville inspiration to pandemic pivots
• 06:50 Career Switch: From AB InBev to hot chicken
• 09:28 Corporate Lessons: Scaling in innovation
• 12:13 Authenticity vs. Scale: Big brands' innovation struggles
• 17:15 Leading Through Ambiguity: When to provide clarity
• 21:06 Low Turnover: How Haven keeps staff
• 24:28 Internal Promotion: Finding leaders without traditional experience
• 27:30 Hiring Evolution: Generalists vs. specialists during growth
• 32:51 Multiple Founders: Division of responsibilities
• 37:26 Beyond Growth: Haven's true mission
• 41:13 Hiring Instincts: Finding the right people
• 43:58 Lightning Round: Career insights and communication basics

About Us
Opus is the hospitality training platform purpose-built for the frontline. Train 100% of your team in 101 languages on the job to quickly get them up the productivity curve. With full visibility across your workforce, you get the frontline business intelligence needed to drive your business.

Have an idea or experience you'd like to share? Keep the conversation going with us on LinkedIn!

Transcript

Rachael Nemeth: 0:00

Hello everyone. Today I'm back to basics. I'm really excited to sit down with Edkin Tekken, co-founder and CEO of Haven Hot Chicken. What makes his story really unique, and why I'm really excited to talk to him is that his perspective on restaurants is a little split. He's worked adjacent to restaurants. He's also worked directly in the industry. And so I think that gives him this broader view of the whole ecosystem, actually. So he spent years in corporate. I'll let him talk a little bit more about that in like corporate growth and innovation before he co-founded one of the Northeast's fastest growing restaurant concepts. So I'm really excited to have him on because he really represents operators who bring this kind of broader perspective of the whole ecosystem, which I think is rare. A lot of us are lifers. But he has a different perspective, not just on restaurant ops. So and I think because of that, Haven Hot Chicken has experienced pretty explosive growth and will continue to while keeping this remarkable low turnover, which is impressive for any team that's balancing rapid expansion with just ops excellence. So Etkin, welcome to Back to Basics. I'm so excited to have you on.

Etkin Tekin: 1:20

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is exciting.

Rachael Nemeth: 1:22

Yeah. And I I loved the closed door conversation we had the other week. So I was really excited to have you on. Why don't we just start with the basics? Just tell us a little bit more about Haven Hot Chicken.

Speaker: 1:33

Yeah, so uh Haven Hot Chicken uh got started in 2019. I'm one of four co-founders, so it's myself, Oblatronica, and Jason Sobosinski. The four of us uh all literally we coordinated 200 orders via email in 15-minute windows through the window of a restaurant in May of 2020. It was wild. Um in June of 2020, we found a sweetheart of a deal in downtown New Haven to take on a lease. We signed a lease in June of 2020. I know that's five years ago, but if you remember what five years ago looked like, no one was signing leases. So they're like, yeah, you can just have this. And we're like, great, all right, we'll do that. Um so we opened in October of 2020, and the rest is history. We had lines down the block for months, six feet apart, of course. And yeah, the intent from the beginning was always multi-unit, scale, build a brand, build a company. That was what I was brought on specifically to do. I just spent uh seven years at A B InBev and ZX Ventures um working on innovation and uh new venture development and uh uh marketing innovation and things like that. And so I'd learned about scaling businesses, I'd learned about the formal structure of scaling. Um, and so that's what we did. We spent 18 months really locking in the foundation of the business, opened our second unit in June of 22, uh, two more in early 2023, and then from November 23 to August 24, we opened five units in 10 months. Um, that almost killed us. I uh we're still standing today, we're super happy about it. But that was it's one of the more challenging professional things that I've ever done. Um, we had to bring over a dozen salaried management um and well over a hundred team members into the company, and we needed to train them in a robust way. Uh and Haven Hot Chicken stands on its product quality and its hospitality. Uh, so that training needs to be robust, uh, it needs to be detailed. We need to find the best people uh and then train, develop, and retain them over time. Um so yeah, that's it's probably the biggest challenge we've had so far as a company today.

Rachael Nemeth: 3:31

And I want to come back to that. Um, you know, as we all know, getting from one to three is really getting really hard. Getting from three to seven is a whole different chapter. Um, but uh I know that so much of your thinking is informed not only by your relationship with your co-founders, which I want to come back to, but I want to talk a little bit about your journey. You know, you I had mentioned this before, but you are not a restaurant lifer. Um and um I guess I can't say it either to a certain extent, but um, you know, you spent time in F and B as well as tech at companies, enterprise and small. And so, you know, outside of just going to Nashville, um, what really drew you back to the restaurant industry after working in these kind of adjacent segments?

Speaker: 4:24

Yeah, so I I kind of like, I mean, like half in, half out in terms of being a lifer. So when I was a junior in college, I I started a restaurant. Um, I walked into an existing operating restaurant with one of my friends who became a business partner with a business plan and convinced them to close their restaurant and to open our concept and become a one-third partner in it. Um, as a 21-year-old, I had no idea what I was doing, but I was very, very confident. Um, and and so that that that's kind of where it all got started. I love bringing joy to people. I love creating things, and uh I love seeing the effect that uh a great meal can have on somebody. And so that was exciting, and that was kind of the launch of my entrepreneurial career. Worked here and there in restaurants in my early 20s, and then um I actually worked for Jason, uh, who's one of my co-founders and the president of the company. I worked for him at Caseyus, um, where in my interview with him, I was 23 at the time, I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna improve your top line, I'm gonna improve your your your uh your EBIT, and I'm gonna partner with you in a business someday. And he's like, Yeah, okay. Um now here we are. Yeah, here we are 10 years later, and we we are business partners. Um But so uh again, I I've always had the bug for building things, and so um I was doing a little bit of a side hustle doing kind of uh food costing consulting and uh kind of experience, you know, kind of uh front front front of house experience consulting for restaurants in the New Haven area.

Rachael Nemeth: 5:55

Um it was like excellence, or is that something different?

Speaker: 5:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you you can call it that. Um and so I was working on that while I was working for Jason, and I had an opportunity, I was introduced to uh the eventual co-founders of Byte, um, another fantastic restaurant tech company in the space. Um and I worked with Jeff and Stoss for for about a year, uh, helped co-found Byte, um, made a ton of mistakes and uh learned a lot, and uh we we definitely iterated through several phases of of Byte's products. Um I'm I I am not part of the the the current kiosk solution, I I predate that. Um But I think at that time I realized that I was missing some of the technical skills uh and experience that I needed in order to be a true leader and a manager um that that's able to develop clear, concise strategy to drive teams forward. And so I had the opportunity to join ZX Ventures, um, and that's where I truly cut my teeth. Um and get getting the perspective.

Rachael Nemeth: 7:00

That's what I want to dig into is is the the kind of journey to to ZX Ventures working in food and bev innovation. I I want to stay here for a while and tell me some of the the, you know, maybe just like the biggest lesson you learned there that you've kind of made sure to apply while building Haven.

Speaker: 7:22

Yeah, I I had to learn how to become a leader laterally and then upward as well, right? Like I, you know, I was often put in situations where I had kind of like dead-on arrival projects that I would just sheer will and might kind of push through. Um, I learned a lot about how to articulate information in a compelling way. Um, because again, even ZX Ventures was a very small part of ABN bev, but even within that system, there were priorities. And so you had to fight for resources, you had to fight for attention um and focus. And um, as somebody that joined at a pretty junior level, I think it was a a band 6B when I joined, um it was uh, you know, I didn't have a lot of pull anywhere. And so I had to, I had to learn the system and I had to understand what moved the needle. I had to uh create compelling uh strategy. Um and I failed at that several times. Um, but then there were a couple of times where I was able to uh work on some really cool projects that did make an impact and did move the needle for the business.

Rachael Nemeth: 8:33

So and this whole idea of storytelling and compelling storytelling, I'm sure also translates to the brand story that you're telling today, too. There's so much about founding a company. Tech or not, that's around narrative. And um it doesn't just come down to how you differentiate yourself from competitors, it's about um the the kind of confidence to move forward and to make an argument so you have a uh pod, someone to sort of get behind you. Um and so that I think is a really interesting component of of what you're talking about, the the kind of storytelling piece.

Speaker: 9:17

Yeah, absolutely. And I think storytelling starts with authenticity, right? Um, that's something that um again at at ABMB, I I also I sat with the North America innovation team. Um, I was there when they turned through 30 different flavors of uh best damn, the hard sodas. Um, and it was just it was outrageous, right? Um and uh, you know, watching that, you know, billion-dollar brands really struggle to create new things because creating authenticity is near impossible. And so um, but being authentic means understanding who you are. And so we asked ourselves that question very early on with four co-founders as well. That's a that's a tough go. We everybody that we talked to before we open open the business, they're like, one of you won't be here in a year or less.

Rachael Nemeth: 10:07

Um and we're proud to say super, super rare to have four co-founders or three co-founders, I think, in your case.

Speaker: 10:12

Yeah, yeah. And so, but six years later, um, you know, we're about to this fall we'll celebrate the five-year anniversary of brick and mortar operations. Um, so we're a little behind you in the birthdays. But um, like, but five, you know, like five, six years later, the four of us are going strong. We're closer than ever, but but again, we set the ground rules. We have seven core values as a business rigorous, relentless, humble, teamwork, joyful, positive, inclusive. That's the Haven way. It's not Ekins' way, it's not Jason's way or Craig or Rob. What is the Haven way of doing this work? Um, another mantra we have internally, are we being a good employer? Anytime we're talking about anything training, people planning, uh, recruiting, um, even um even removing somebody from the company, are we being a good employer? Are we doing this the right way? Um, we can always ask ourselves that question, and anyone in the company is allowed to ask that question. Um and so having those pieces allowed us to formulate kind of what the eventual brand identity was for Haven. Because if we're super clear with everybody, every day we talk about a high quality product, a great guest experience, and and I like to talk about being a good employer. Um it makes everything a lot easier because it's you just have to filter everything through our values and through what we stand for as a business. And uh it it simplifies decision making.

Rachael Nemeth: 11:38

I I can really relate to that too, around you know, authenticity isn't just something that you um think about or do. It has to kind of be embedded in everything that you're trying to achieve. And and like we've messed it up too. One of the things for us, the core values was really important too, where um we didn't want it to just be a neon sign on the wall. So instead of telling the team what the values were, we actually just co-built them with our our entire, you know, original kind of founding team, the first five people that we hired, um, and then got feedback from everyone else. And I think because of that, because of the kind of co-building that we did, maybe it's because I have a co-founder too, and we're just sort of used to finding ways to collaborate. I wonder how much of that is from like being a solo founder versus like having a business partner or partners the whole time, you know?

Speaker: 12:35

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, again, when when we looked at the founding team, what our strengths and weaknesses were, and kind of understanding how we best work together, having common language to communicate with each other on a consistent basis that kind of kind of took the emotion out of the room and kind of also depressurized the room a little bit, where you can just walk into something. You know, I learned this model at ABN Babos that SBI, Situation Behavior Impact, as a really great way to uh to talk about difficult things, right? Um, but but then for us, it's very easy based on based on our values and based on what we stand for. You know, I can sit in a procurement discussion and I I know and feel confident that um like our chicken is NAE halal, no antibiotics ever, and and halal, um, and it's never frozen. I know for sure I'm not gonna sit in a room where somebody is gonna be rogue and be like, hey, I found I found a 30% price savings in our chicken, but it's not halal nae or fresh. I just I I know I'm not gonna sit in a meeting like that, and it's because of the values that we've created, right?

Speaker 2: 13:45

Yeah.

Speaker: 13:45

And and because of what we stand for as an organization, there is there is shared consciousness around the way that we do business. Uh, and so that, you know, again, we're not perfect at it, but like that's what we seek to permeate down to the store level. Um, something really important that we've always said is is that we can't force culture. We can set up the guardrails for it. Um, but the leadership at each of the stores truly shapes the culture at the store level. Um, and we want to foster that and we want to provide kind of the the high-level kind of guidelines around it that we believe, um, but nothing more, nothing less. And then after that, culture is what you practice preacher permit.

Rachael Nemeth: 14:26

Um, how much of that though that that ethos around like a culture is something you you co-build, it's something that that you know everyone has to embody. What informed that? Is it, you know, like did you see that in the other jobs, or was it kind of antithetical to what you were doing before?

Speaker: 14:49

Yeah, I think that in one of the the pre-meeting potential questions, we were talking about like some key takeaways from ZX Ventures, and one of them that I that I had jotted down for myself was um constantly being able to lead through ambiguity. Um, it was painful and difficult. I think it sharpened me in a way that was very helpful professionally. But at the same time, if you can provide clarity, do. Right. And so I I think one of my big things around this is if we can provide clarity and about where we're going, why we're going there, um, and how to be a part of it, um, then you can you can generate buy-in, right? Um, I think we we think that culture fit is essential during the hiring process, um, as well as the recruiting process, we screen for culture fit more than skills fit, especially you know, at the store level. I don't mind if you've never worked in a restaurant before. That's not a problem. Um you can teach are you gonna come are you gonna come to work with a positive attitude, hungry to learn, you want to grow within our company, um, and you want to be the best, and you want to provide you wanna make the best product in and day out, great. We will show you how to do everything else. Thanks, Dylan.

Rachael Nemeth: 16:07

You know what I worry about though is that I I worry that that's going away. You know, when I was working at Unit Union Score Hospitality, um, EQ was a huge part of how we hired. Um, you know, it's in Danny's book. And I and but now you hear a lot more about AQ agility quotient. And that is such, it's so much more agility starts to bring back skill and less of that sort of soft emotion. And um, and I I don't know if you feel the same, but I kind of worry, especially in light of of kind of strained economic times that a lot of employers are going back to. Can you just like do the job and are you the best at the job? Um, rather than are you the one who's gonna kind of continue to grow with us, you know, or maybe, I don't know. That's how let's starting to worry me.

Speaker: 16:59

Yeah, it's it's a great provocation. We we talk all the time about our training philosophy and we go back and forth. We so we have a robust uh training philosophy. Um, we like to invest in people and make sure that, you know, servant leader style have have we given you the tools, resources, and environment to succeed. Um, and training is a major one of those. Um in the very, very earliest days, we taught everyone absolutely everything. Um and then like I think we've kind of like like had kind of like a pendulum swing at times within the company, where other times we have kind of narrowed it in. It's like, all right, if you are just great at this one thing, we'll let you do it. Um and you don't have to be cross-trained. Um I think we found a happy hybrid today, where I think it's gotta be upwards of 90% of our uh our teams are cross-trained in multiple positions, and I would say probably over half of our hourly team members are cross-trained across all positions. Um, but it isn't everybody, right? Like if you have an extremely extroverted, uh people forward, uh, hospitality-focused person that literally wakes up every morning to interact with people and bring joy to people, let them like that's okay.

Rachael Nemeth: 18:22

Um that level of personalization is so critical, I would guess. I mean, like, how is that contributing to your low turnover? Can you talk a little bit about that? And like, have you gotten feedback from your frontline specifically around why they're staying?

Speaker: 18:40

Yeah. Um, I I will say that that that uh the hourly turnover rate was was at a point in time. It's definitely uh it's it's probably a bit higher today. Um, but we have again, these aren't new things, right? People don't quit jobs, they quit managers. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2: 18:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 18:57

Um our locations, um, again, we we haven't been perfect in hiring, but we're we're always looking to make sure that we have great store level leadership. Um, and at the end of the day, that's why people stay. They they see a culture where um not just their store level leadership is standing side by side, but um again, I've been to two locations today. After this, I'm going to another two locations. Like I'm present. Um, we want to make sure that people understand that we care and we are trying to be good employers. And again, that's like it's much less about the things that we say, and it's much more about the things that we do, right? Um, and so again, whether it's uh compensation and benefits or training programs or recognition platforms or whatever it might be, um our actions are always gonna speak louder. And again, we haven't been perfect with that. Um, you know, our prior before before coming on board with Opus, we had a a training system that was kind of uh, you know, it was uh it wasn't up to our standard and it wasn't meeting the needs of today's workforce, um, which is why we we joined on with you, right? Um and and it's something that we got consistent feedback on, like, hey, I need this to be easier. I need to I need to have these this information shared with me in a certain way so that I can actually ingest it. Um, and that was important to us. So um, yeah, again, listening to our teams, making sure that we have uh high quality touch points with them, doing coffee chats. Uh, this spring we did a our our HQ team did uh spring cleaning. We did one store a week for nine weeks where we would go from nine to midnight, um, and we would go and do a deep clean with the stores. Um, and that was one, it was great to have nice uh shiny uh shiny stores, but but also it was an opportunity to we did karaoke one night and I had a blast. Yeah, and and my you know the team members at the store is like, is this the guy in charge of the company? This is ridiculous. Um, but again, that's it's it's it's a part of of humanizing the whole interaction. We were talking at the very uh uh beginning of this, like I, you know, I I I don't see this as uh like I am just another person in the organization. And so as part of that, um making those human connections and being authentic and and showing that you know this is also something that you know I want to be involved in and be a part of, I think that resonates.

Rachael Nemeth: 21:29

Yeah. I you said so much just now around some of the the kind of minutia that keeps people here. And so much of it is not really on paper. It's a lot of just what you do as leaders. I heard you say, maybe I'm getting this number wrong, but I heard you say in an interview that around 40% of your store leadership during expansion actually came from internal promotion.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth: 21:57

Um is that number right?

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth: 22:00

Okay. Um, incredible. Um So, you know, in referencing back to what you were saying earlier, where people leave managers, not jobs, I agree. Uming that, how do you spot those potential leaders who might not have the traditional managed restaurant management experience per se?

Speaker: 22:19

Yeah, for sure. Uh yeah, the 40%'s right. I wish it was higher. We actually have a uh we have a goal internally of having that be 70 as we grow. I want people to have careers here, uh, and I want to show them the paths of growth. And again, instead of saying and showing instead, I love being able to talk to a team member that's interesting, interested in becoming a key holder or a trainer or a team lead. Hey, your your assistant general manager started where you are 18 months ago. And it's the truth. It's like that's actually what's happening. They can go talk to that person so that they can see that growth trajectory. Um, I think that's really important. Um, in terms of uh the the backgrounds, I I would say like our internal teams, I think they have less of the um the folks that have grown through the business have I think they generally have restaurant experience, but but less so management experience. And so that's that's one of the big things that you know uh we need to train on business acumen. I need to on uh train on soft skills, um, coaching and development. Uh, you know, our our AGMs are are really focused on operating the business, and our GMs are really focused on growing the people in the business. Um and that's a different is that the opposite?

Rachael Nemeth: 23:36

Yeah. I I always hear like the the the GMs are the ones who are focused on you know running the business, running the PL, and the AGMs are so kind of people focused, you're telling me it's kind of the reverse.

Speaker: 23:49

It's the other way around.

Rachael Nemeth: 23:50

Huh.

Speaker: 23:50

We find that the people we have we're not special. We have we have our our three pillars of operating success are guest experience, team engagement, and business health, um, in that order. And we believe that if we take care of our guests by having uh really well-trained, happy team members that the business health will follow, um, the most important job in the company is growing people within the company. Um, so our GMs uh have that as a key focus.

Rachael Nemeth: 24:21

Um So maybe let's kind of I want to go top of funnel then, which is um when you think about hiring to begin with, what roles you know, in the past year, because you've seen so much growth, or what couple of roles did you prioritize hiring earlier than some of your restaurant operator peers might have? Or, you know, I'm curious, like what was the strategy and um on like the sort of sequence of leadership hiring? I understand kind of the in-store hiring, but you're building a big business here. Um so you know, it's not just like open a store, you have real leaders at the corporate level who are helping you. Is a lot of that just partnering directly with co-founders who I want to come back to? Or did you have was there sort of an infrastructure in mind?

Speaker: 25:13

Yeah, so it started with just the co-founders. Um, you know, across the across the group of us, initially so like when we first started the company, only Craig and Rob were full-time. Um, Jason and I were part-time for the first couple of years. Um, I joined full-time uh with the company in in the winter of 2023. So I'm like closing in on two and a half years full-time in the company. Um, kind of had a lived a double life of uh of the corporate world and uh the startup grind uh for for for quite some time. Um I think in the early stages of comp uh of the company, we really looked for smart and ambitious people, and it was okay if you were a generalist. Um that was something that we didn't mind. I mean, I I think it's true of pretty much any startup, whether it's in in restaurants or tech or restaurant tech, uh, like wherever it is, you need people to be able to wear a bunch of hats and uh, you know, maybe not uh, you know, uh a mile wide and an inch deep, or you know, in an inch wide and a mile deep, but like you need somebody to be able to, you know, dig a moat around a pretty serious set of responsibilities and be dangerous at it, right? Like I don't need them to be the best at anything, but I need them to be competent and I need to be able to trust them to move forward with that body of work. And that was the the initial hiring philosophy. And then I I keep and again, bracing one of our core values, humble. We are very proud of what we've accomplished and we think we've done a pretty good job so far. We also know what we don't know. We try to be self-aware and we try to check ourselves frequently on when is the right time to bring in a specialist for a specific piece of work. Um, and so when we when we got to our third and going on fourth location, of the four count co-founders, exactly zero of us had done multi-unit. Like, like like we set out to build a multi-unit restaurant concept, and none of us had actually done it before, which is a different story. Again, the the brash, you know, the the kind of the naivety and and uh and and uh and confidence to do that was again kind of outrageous. But but after we opened the third location, we had the fourth one on the way, we're like, wow, we we need help. So that's when we brought Gretchen on. She, you know, she started uh in the organization as our COO and then transitioned to our chief people role. Um and it's been great. She really helped us, you know, through all of her experience at Starbucks, um, understanding what HR, people development, recruiting, all of that looked like, and she helped us get to the next level there, which was critical for our growth because without having the right funnel of people coming into the organization, it just wouldn't have happened. But yeah, as as we grow and as I look towards the next couple of years, it's it is starting to look at specialization. And I think in our like unrecorded conversation last week, one of the things I talked about is like as you look at specialized hires and focuses within departments that might not have any current FTEs, what level do you hire at? And um and looking at all of those components, I'm always looking for the one thing is it it's it's such a trope, but like sometimes it's not a literal gw in somebody's eye, but sometimes you talk to somebody and you just you just get it, and it just makes sense, and you can tell that they are running at the same speed as you are, and that they need to learn and they need to onboard, and they need but this person is going to make shit happen at the end of the day. I apologize, I'm not, I don't know if I'm a lot to curse or not.

Rachael Nemeth: 28:47

That's all you want. Um the um love hearing that because there is there's always that kind of one to you to use your word, the glimmer. I feel like I always find it when people are asking really good questions in the interview process. And they're so curious, almost like annoyingly curious about the business. And sometimes that might indicate that they're too much of a generalist, but I I like to think that most of the time when we're bringing on a specialist, it's largely because they actually do want to know about the whole business so that they can be better at their, you know, vertical. With that in mind, okay, this was kind of my million-dollar question, um, which is coming back to the co-founder thing, you, Rob, Craig, Jason. You you must have different expertise areas, you know, but there's four of you. So how do you think about dividing responsibilities and shared leadership at just at the co founder level? Um, and specifically, how are you handling decision making?

Speaker: 29:51

Yeah, for sure. So when we first started, so again, there are some kind of more clearly defined roles in the business from the beginning. Rob has been culinary from day one. He, you know, our signature sauce is called Rob Sauce. So I I introduce him uh frequently. I'm like, oh, this is Rob of Rob Sauce. Uh that's a frequent way to introduce him. So he's kind of always had that track. Um Jason has always been a brand guy. Um, you know, when I worked for him back in the day, I worked for him because he was a serial entrepreneur that like anything he touched, you could just you could, if you put a hundred brands on the wall across a variety of categories, you could pick out Jason's brands because of how compelling they were. Um and so like he had such strength in in the branding side of things. Um and then Craig uh had always just been great with uh the data and the tech around the business. And so there were some natural fits. I always like to say that I'm uh I'm the guy that doesn't actually do anything, I just manage and lead people, but um I was brought into the business because of my corporate jobs, uh, because I've seen what scale looks like. Um I'm the one that has the awareness when the system we designed to operate and grow the business breaks, and then I know what to look at and then how to build the next version of the operating system, right? Um you know, a lot of those things become critical. Um, and then from a decision-making perspective, we started through a lot of committee decision making, and then we opened our first unit and our second unit and realized we don't have time for that. Um, and so that's uh seeding control and and providing decentralized decision making became really important to the business. We're still not perfect at it. Um you know, we generally like uh myself as the CEO and Jason is the president of the company. We often like, you know, we will often kind of give some formal approval to to really big decisions. Um, you know, whether they're and especially if they're one-way doors or two-way doors, especially, then you know, that has some gravity to it. And decisions we can undo, or if like once we make that decision, we have to live with it for a long time. Um but yeah, we're really looking to, you know, as we scale, you know, what one of our biggest focuses for the last three or four months is empowering our district manager and operations manager to run their business. Um, they have a group of nine stores and store-level leadership teams. Um our GMs from the very early days complained about who they were supposed to listen to within the company. Um, again, being humble here, right? They have they have four co-founders, they have uh chief operating officer, they have um all these people, and who are people supposed to listen to within the business? And uh, you know, uh I come into a store and then Jason comes into the store, and then Rob comes in, and they're like, I don't know what to do. Um so we have to provide clarity to people in terms of you know, there is some hierarchy and there is some structure that we want to follow here so that we're not muddying waters and we're giving people comfort in knowing where they're supposed to go when they need something answered.

Rachael Nemeth: 33:08

So it sounds like you're you're starting to build that middle management layer in too, not only to give some clarity to the GMs, but I'm sure to a little bit of protection on your end too, so you have some breathing room to see the whole business and you know get some perspective. Yeah.

Speaker: 33:25

Um, I always have more work than I can do in 24 hours, um, day after day. And so, you know, I think I can't remember who told me this, but it's always resonated with me. Like the responsibility of a co-founder or a CEO or a leader is to understand that there are a hundred priorities and you get to choose a couple. And your your ability to choose which ones and then who does them uh separates you from a subpar, average or a good or great leader.

Rachael Nemeth: 34:00

What with that though, you know, uh I've always found that in order to kind of drive that prioritization, I have to keep coming back to my North Star. What is that for Haven Hot Chicken? Or actually, what is that for you? Is it just a kind of mission-based North Star or some there's something really tactical like, you know, 100 stores in five years or something?

Speaker: 34:26

Yeah, 100 stores in five years, that's that's like a measure more than a a North Star. Um we want to make the best hot chicken anyone's ever had. Full stop. Um, we love hot chicken. We're hot chicken positive. Uh, you know, we we like we like we like other brands and uh we love people raising cuisine awareness. We're excited to go into into new new uh regions and areas that already have um, you know, uh, you know, whether it's local, regional, or national competition, we welcome it. Um we want to stand by our product and the and the guest experience that we provide. Um as long as we can stick to that uh and do that consistently as we grow, uh, I'll be really happy. Um I'm proud of I'm proud of the amount of guests that we serve and make happy every single day, day in and day out. Um and again, we're not perfect, but uh we we have teams that also take pride in delivering that great guest experience and that great product. And yeah, I want to be able to do that responsibly over time. I want to be able to develop people. You know, I think, you know, it's not the millions of dollars in revenue, it's not the locations, it's not the awards, the amount of people that have grown within our system. Um that's the thing that when I wake up every day, I'm like, hell yeah, let's do this. This is exciting. I get I get to do this every day. I get to watch people grow. I've I've watched people go from team member to um to salaried management. Uh, I've watched people go from the store level into our corporate team. Um that makes me really proud. Again, like we're I was afforded some of those. I was cold recruited on a whim uh to a to an amazing corporate job. And then I was given the opportunity to grow with that organization. And looking back at it over and over again, somebody was betting on me, somebody was investing in me, and somebody was trusting me with their bet and that that I would be successful and I would make them proud. And so I like being able to do that for other people. I like being able to say that with a straight face, when I I have I'm interviewing an AGM tomorrow and I'm interviewing on Friday, and I make it very clear to everybody that it uh if you demonstrate, not if you say, if you demonstrate that we should invest in you, we will. Um because we want people to grow within this organization. Um and to be able to, again, point to other people in the room that manifested that, uh, yeah, makes me really happy.

Rachael Nemeth: 37:12

A lot of what I what really resonates with what you've been saying throughout this conversation is that you've been able to strike this really beautiful balance between um the more kind of methodical systems-based approach to how you grow your people, you know, you know, putting in a sort of a training platform, thinking about how people can grow, mission, vision, values, all those things. But there's this um kind of unseen piece that I have a hunch you aren't even measuring. It's just, is it, does it feel good? Is this thing kind of working or not? Um, which I think is kind of scary to to think about, especially as you're growing a large business. But my I and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my hunch is like that's part of what's making it work, is just like trusting that the system is working, you know?

Speaker: 38:14

It's something, uh, yeah, it's this has been said in various instances, but like it's like I I I can't describe it, but I can tell you when I see it.

Rachael Nemeth: 38:22

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 38:23

Um, you know, it's like I I'm not one for design, for example. Like I can't make design myself, but I know what good looks like. Um, and similarly with people, you have to trust your instincts sometimes. Um and again, people uh it's part of it's pattern recognition, right? Like you talk about people talk a lot about power with pattern recognition and investing and things like that, but pattern recognition when it comes to hiring is just as critical. Like you get to these, you know, again, that thirst for knowledge, that proactivity, that hey, I decided to crunch my numbers a different way. Have we thought about looking at it like this? Um one of our first one of our first LTOs came from our top performing GM, um who was like, again, it came out of left field. Um, it was in August of 2023. He's like, guys, I made something and it needs to go in the menu. What are you talking about? And he he showed us pumpkin spice banana pudding, which is gonna release again for the third time this fall and is one of our top-selling LTOs ever. Um he was proactive. Jonathan Southard is now our operations manager on the corporate team. He was manager of the quarter five times in a row and made it undeniable that he was hungry for growth within the company. And I love people like Jonathan. Uh but but again, and it they take many different forms. We have other, we have we have plenty of other fantastic people within the organization that make that make me proud day in and day out. But again, when you demonstrate that proactive hunger to grow and to contribute uh and to learn and to test yourself and to stretch yourself, make yourself uncomfortable. Um, you know, a lot of those things, when I look fondly back at me at 26 years old, not knowing what the hell I was doing in Chelsea and Manhattan at a corporate job, like I I had no idea what I was doing, but somebody trusted me to do it. Um and I was able to figure it out. Uh and so uh again, having that drive and passion and ambition, um, you're right, it's hard to measure, but once you find it, yeah. Keep it. You identify you identify it and you have to let that person run. That's the most important thing. You cannot stifle that. Um so when you identify it, you do something about it.

Rachael Nemeth: 40:52

Um what a lovely way to end this conversation, starting with like rigid corporate structure and coming down to like organic people growth. Um before we wrap things up, Edkin. Um at the end of Back to Basics, we always have five lightning round questions. They are quick. You have to just tell me what you feel and not explain it um more to keep people on the edge of their seat and also you. Um so I'll ask you five questions. Um first being, what was your first job?

Speaker: 41:28

My first job was uh at Dunkin' Donuts. I would uh I would make the bagels every morning and uh be the first person to endure running the drive-thru.

Rachael Nemeth: 41:36

Awesome. Um what's a food trend that you're completely over?

Speaker: 41:44

Food trend that I'm completely over, boba?

Rachael Nemeth: 41:49

I think there's a lot of people who are gonna be mad at you saying that. Not me. Um what's a rent uh what's a restaurant industry tech trend that you think is overhyped?

Speaker: 42:04

Um I wouldn't say overhyped. I I I think the I think the the kind of the breadth of of too many organizations, I like I love Opus because you're you go deep in something incredibly important. Um there are too many companies that you know I I think the the trend that should be over, I want to be over, is just this massive thinn diagram overlap in terms of capabilities across platforms. Um that would make it easier to make decisions around tech.

Rachael Nemeth: 42:41

Uh heard. Uh what was the last book that you read or podcast you listened to?

Speaker: 42:48

The last um I listened to um uh Amy Polar just started a podcast and I listened to uh uh Good Hang. Um and uh yeah, I interviewed um I listened to two episodes recently, Idris Elba, and uh the second was um Andy Andy Sandberg. Uh oh yeah. That was enjoyable.

unknown: 43:19

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth: 43:21

Um love it. Uh and last is about you. What skill are are you going back to basics on right now?

Speaker: 43:34

I think um I recently am rereading Radical Candor um and communicating effectively um with clarity and candor, uh is something that's very important. Uh that's been my 2025 professional goal um is to communicate effectively. Um you know it's all it's often the year before that it was um make hard decisions faster. The year before that it was make decisions faster, and I felt the need to clarify it the year after. Um so uh so yeah, my my my annual goal this year is to communicate more effectively.

Rachael Nemeth: 44:17

I love the reread too. I I read Radical Candor maybe when I was 22, and I feel like that's a good I never got rid of it. You know, the book's still on the shelf. So something, yeah. Um well Edkin, thank you so much for joining me today. It was awesome to speak with you. Um likewise. And uh next time I'm up in Connecticut, I know exactly where I'm going for a Nashville hot chicken. So thanks. There we go.

Speaker: 44:44

Fantastic. Thanks so much, Rachel. Appreciate it.

Rachael Nemeth: 44:46

Yeah, bye.