In just a few years, Josh Halpern, Chief Business Officer at Crave Worthy Brands and former CEO of Big Chicken, helped turn a small restaurant concept into a franchise juggernaut without relying on VC money or sacrificing unit-level economics.
Here's what struck me most about our conversation: Josh doesn't think like a typical restaurant CEO. He came up through consumer-packaged goods (CPG) — Procter & Gamble, Clorox, Anheuser-Busch — and brought a business mindset that challenges a lot of the conventional wisdom in this industry.
What follows is what I learned about how to scale a restaurant brand without torching your franchisees, culture or quality.
How can restaurants grow without burning through their marketing budget?
From the beginning, Josh understood that brand building starts with unit economics. Celebrity and hype can generate awareness, but they can’t create loyalty. Josh told me that Shaquille O’Neal was “the best trial mechanism on earth,” helping Big Chicken attract enormous interest. But trial and repeat business are driven by different things.
Customers might visit once because of Shaq. They only come back because the food is good, the experience is consistent and the value is there. “No one is going to say, ‘Hey, I really don’t like the food, and I really don’t like the service. But I just love Shaq so much. I’ll come back every week.’”
The same principle applies to franchisees. Celebrity-driven hype can create initial excitement (Josh turned down 6,000 franchisee applications in three years alone), but long-term success depends on generating healthy returns.
That reality drove Big Chicken’s relentless focus on operational improvement. Rather than accepting rising labor and food costs as unavoidable, the team searched for efficiencies everywhere. Small improvements compounded into meaningful gains.
You don’t need a celebrity partner or a massive marketing budget to scale. Instead, be honest about what drives repeat business, and build your operations and economics around those things. Also, growth for growth’s sake is a trap. Don’t be afraid to say no when your strategy demands it.
Why do most restaurant loyalty programs fail?
Most loyalty programs are speaking to the wrong person.
Josh introduced me to a concept from his CPG days: the difference between the shopper and the consumer. The shopper is the person whose credit card hits the terminal or who presses “send” on the DoorDash order. The consumer is the person with the sandwich in their hand. And they are often different people with very different motivations.
He gave me a great example from his own life. There’s a fast-casual burger chain near his home that his family eats at constantly. But they only go there because his oldest son decided four years ago that this was the burger joint. Now, it’s a family ritual. Josh has never eaten at this place without his kids. He wouldn’t ever think about going there alone.
But the chain’s loyalty program didn’t capture that contextual data. It just showed that Josh is a middle-aged man who visits frequently, but never for weekday lunch. So, they sent him an offer for a free milkshake if he came in Monday through Friday, 11 am to 2 pm, excluding holidays. It completely missed the point. He’s not the decision-maker. His teenage son is. And the family only goes together, usually after sports or on weekends.
That’s the disconnect. “It’s still very, very much about the guest, not about the shopper. And it’s why so many restaurant loyalty programs are a little rough,” Josh said. In CPG, understanding the shopper versus the consumer is foundational. In restaurants, it’s still an afterthought.
That’s why instead of offering generic “come in and get a free combo” offers, Big Chicken runs promotions like end-of-school-year achievement certificates — where kids get recognized for finishing the school year and the family gets a free milkshake if they come in together.
If you’re building a loyalty program or running promotions, ask yourself: Who’s actually making the decision to come to my restaurant? And am I speaking to that person, or am I speaking to the person I think is making the decision?
How can restaurants build loyalty with millennials and Gen Z?
This was one of the most fascinating insights from my conversation with Josh, and it’s something every restaurant operator should understand: Younger guests today see themselves as brands.
Think about it. People under 40, especially under 30, are curating their social media presence like it’s a portfolio. They’re creating content and thinking about which brands they want to be associated with. They’re not just customers — they’re collaborators. How well your brand aligns with theirs is more important to them than the quality of the food.
Josh talked about Dave’s Hot Chicken, which he openly admires. They convinced thousands of people to post videos of themselves eating Dave’s Hot Chicken in their cars. They weren’t paid or given free food in exchange for creating content. They did it because being associated with Dave’s Hot Chicken was on brand for them.
He contrasted that with his own experience at Big Chicken. Their sandwiches are big, over-the-top, with toppings like mac and cheese, cheese curds and Mexican street corn. They get a lot of Instagram Reels of people showing off these crazy contraptions they’re about to eat, which works very well for their brand.
If you’re thinking about wading into the world of consumer-created content, remember: You can’t force it. If you try to manufacture that kind of content, it comes off as contrived. Younger consumers want authenticity and can spot an impostor from a mile away.
How do you keep franchisees profitable when costs keep rising?
Josh’s philosophy is simple, but powerful: It’s not his job to ensure franchisees are successful. It’s his job to maximize the probability of their success. That might sound like semantics, but it’s an important distinction. Franchisees are independent business owners who make their own decisions. And while franchisors can’t control that, they can provide the resources, pricing and support that gives their franchisees every possible advantage.
At Big Chicken, the team does this by negotiating contracted pricing on ingredients, so that franchisees aren’t exposed to wild commodity cost swings. They build labor matrices franchisees can follow to keep their costs in check. And they’re always on the lookout for cost savings — even on the smallest items — so that margins don’t erode over time.
Like finding a one-and-a-half-cent savings per straw. It doesn’t seem like much. It’s definitely not the kind of thing you put in a press release. But when you’re going through 500 straws a day, it adds up to about ten bucks a day, which becomes over $3,600 a year, per location. Multiply that across dozens of locations and you’re looking at real money.
The other piece of this is about building a real partnership. When franchise agreements have the potential to span decades, the ability to work together is crucial. For Josh, that means balancing everyone’s interests so that the guest’s, franchisee’s, supplier’s and company’s needs are met. It’s a framework he calls “four wins every day.”
There’s a lesson here for independent operators, too. You’re still managing relationships with suppliers, staff and guests. Thinking about how everyone in your ecosystem can win, as opposed to optimizing only for yourself, creates lasting success.
What happens when your restaurant outgrows your POS system?
Sticking with “what works” regardless of change kills a lot of growing brands. They find a fruitful supplier relationship, smart tech stack or efficient operational model, and they assume it’ll scale. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, the thing that got you to a specific milestone holds you back from reaching the next one.
It’s a widely applicable philosophy. The supplier that takes a chance on a small restaurant may not be the right fit for a 25-unit operation, even if their partnership was crucial to early success. The same goes for tech. If you’re a five-unit chain, your tech stack is not going to work at 500 units. You’ll outgrow your POS system, your inventory management solution and your scheduling software. Recognizing that and making the change proactively can help prevent an operational crisis.
Josh talked about this idea in terms of leadership, too. He knows that he’s not the CEO for a brand growing at industry-plus-a-point. He’s the guy that comes in to fix big problems or drive major growth. If Big Chicken ever reaches a point where it’s in a steady state, with flat growth, he knows he’ll be the wrong person to lead it. And he’s OK with that.
That’s a level of self-awareness some founders and operators don’t have. They build something from scratch, and they can’t imagine letting go, even when the business needs something different. But the founders who have bad exits are usually the ones who stayed too long. Their chapter ended, but they didn’t want to admit it.
The lesson here is about continuous improvement and honest self-assessment. Are your systems still serving you, or are they holding you back? Are you still the right person to lead this stage of growth, or do you need to bring in someone with different strengths? These are hard questions, but they’re the ones that separate brands that scale successfully from those that flame out.
Actionable steps you can take in your restaurant today
Josh’s philosophy is built on hard-won wisdom, not abstract theory. Here are some takeaways you can start applying in your own operation right now.
Get clear on who’s actually making the decision to visit your restaurant
Is it the person paying, or is it someone else in their household or social circle? If you’re running promotions or building a loyalty program, make sure you’re speaking to the real decision-maker, not just the person whose credit card you see. This might mean shifting your messaging, offers or even the menu to appeal to families, kids or groups rather than individuals.
Commit to continuous improvement on unit economics
Look at every line item in your P&L and ask: Is there a better way to do this? Can I negotiate better pricing with my suppliers? Or reduce waste in my kitchen? Or train my staff to be more efficient without sacrificing quality? Individual wins might be small, but they add up. And in an industry with razor-thin margins, those small wins help keep you profitable.
Be honest about what stage of growth you’re in and what the business needs
Consider whether your systems and leadership are still the right fit. If you’re outgrowing your tech stack, upgrade it. If you’re outgrowing your supplier relationships, find new ones. And if you’re outgrowing your own skill set, bring in people who can take you to the next level. There’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s the smartest thing you can do.
Tune in to learn more
Josh has built brands by focusing on the fundamentals: unit economics, franchisee success and guest experience. Staying curious, humble and focused on what matters helped him do it without losing his soul.
To dive deeper into Josh’s thinking, check out the rest of our conversation here and the resources that follow. They’ve shaped his approach, and I think they’ll give you a lot to think about as you build your own legacy in this industry.