From Operator to Leader: Success after 3 Units Requires a Mindset Change

Scaling franchise operations

When he opened a Papa Johns Pizza in East Liverpool, Ohio, in 2002, Nadeem Bajwa was determined to get it right. Bajwa had spent a decade rising through the ranks from dishwasher to delivery driver to the manager of multiple units. In his 30s, Bajwa leapt into ownership and spent most of his waking hours trying to ensure that his foray into franchising would be successful.

He carefully watched over the building of the restaurant. He did all the hiring, training, scheduling, and inventorying. If he was short on staff, he got into his car and made deliveries.

When he opened his second Papa Johns in Salem, Ohio, six months later, he followed the same script. “But that got a little bit tougher,” he says. As he set his sights on opening more restaurants, with a goal of owning 12, Bajwa came to a realization.

“You can only go so far solo—one location, two locations. At some point, after three, you’re going to need somebody to help you,” he says. He needed to shift his mindset, become less of a hands-on owner, and focus on building leaders.

“It’s very difficult because you get used to controlling things with one unit or two units,” Bajwa says. “But you cannot grow if you do not delegate. And the only way you can delegate and be successful is if you find someone who carries the same passion as you.

And, if you’re going to find somebody who carries the same passion as you, they also are going to want to grow. You have to start thinking about other people’s growth, not just yours.” His goal of opening 12 Papa Johns locations?

That went right out the window once he started growing capable leaders. Today, he owns nearly 300 units in 12 states. The shift in mindset that Bajwa underwent, relinquishing complete control and transitioning to strategic oversight, is often the first, most important step for franchisees who are looking to grow their operations into larger, multi-location enterprises.

Delegating and growing leaders

Hannibal Myers worked for years in brand corporate offices before becoming a multi-unit franchisee with Church’s Texas Chicken. He’s advised hundreds, if not thousands, of franchisees on growth strategies. A different skill set comes into play when franchisees begin adding more units than they can personally manage, Myers says.

When that happens, their mission should be developing strategies that can be replicated and “voiced by somebody else and then executed by these teams that are sometimes separated by large distances,” he says. “Rather than you making each one of these individual decisions yourself, you’re providing some oversight and some direction and a plan to follow. Somebody else is making those kinds of day-to-day decisions for you,” he continues.

“So, you need to get comfortable with delegating, get comfortable with thinking about problems that are systemic rather than specific.” Franchisees who have successfully made the jump from one unit to many agree that as they added to their portfolio, they had to adjust the way they operated. Scaling requires franchisees to develop or hire strong leaders.

You can’t be everywhere at once. Also on the to-do list: making sure you have the infrastructure in place to replicate success. This often requires centralizing some functions, such as HR and marketing, for efficiency.

It’s also important to invest in technology to streamline operations, enhance the customer experience, and provide data insights. Successful large-scale operators must carefully choose markets and grow at a deliberate pace. Some concepts “need time to ramp up.

It may not be cash flowing as quickly as you need it to be. Also, rapid development is definitely taxing on the management team,” says David Paris, a lawyer who specializes in representing multi-unit franchisees. He’s also a partner in a company that owns multiple brands, including Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, RimTyme, Take 5 Oil Change, and AFC Urgent Care.

“Grow at a measured rate,” he advises. “Don’t be pressured by a franchisor to bite off more than you can chew.” In addition, he says, when choosing which markets to go into, “make sure that you’re getting good demographic and geographic analysis.

That’s very important.” Growth brings many benefits like increased profits, more leverage with franchisors, bulk pricing, and greater freedom. But there are pitfalls to avoid on the journey.

Lessons from multi-unit franchisees

We asked a handful of franchisees to share what they learned along the way as they successfully expanded their operations. Comfort is your enemy Let’s say you’re a franchisee with one very successful restaurant, but you want to add others. Your instincts might say that, as you grow, you should do things exactly the same way as in your first restaurant.

But you’ve got to change that thinking, Bajwa says. “For a lot of people, the struggle is this: They grow their business, unit-wise and revenue-wise, but they haven’t grown mentally. You have to grow mentally also,” he says.

“A lot of time, people will open one unit and want to go to a second unit and then more, but they want to do exactly what they did in the first unit. They think, ‘Why should I have an operating partner?’ ‘Why should I have an area manager?’

“You have to be able to bring more people and coach more people into the circle,” he continues. “I tell people, if I am to be the smartest one in the room, then I’m in the wrong room. I would not learn anything.”

The great thing about franchising in general, and Papa Johns in particular, is that there are so many great tools and resources to help you grow the right way, Bajwa says. But some franchisees in the early stages of expanding their operations don’t take advantage of those. “Because they have been so successful in one or two units, they overlook all the tools that are being provided, all the training that Papa Johns has,” Bajwa says.

That’s a mistake, he adds, because Papa Johns invests heavily in them. “When you buy into the Papa Johns franchise, you’re buying the business model. Yes, you’re very good at what you do in your store, one location,” he says.

“But as you grow, there are a lot of data tools that are the result of a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge. So be open-minded. Your mindset needs to change.

Believe that you need other people’s help to grow.” As you become a bigger player in franchising, you must constantly adapt, Bajwa says. That’s certainly true with technology.

“With a good franchisor, like Papa Johns, at the end of the day, it’s all about how are you going to make it convenient and a good experience for the customer? How are you going to make it convenient for your team members to handle the customer?” he says.

“The more tools you have—whether it’s technology, whether it’s marketing—you have to invest in those. If you have a good franchisor, half of your work is done because they will provide you tools. But some people do not want to invest in them because they feel they are already doing pretty good, and that’s where the problem lies.”

Because Bajwa stayed open-minded, he’s grown far beyond his original goal. Once he started identifying and developing future leaders, he knew he could keep adding units because he had built, and continues to build, a great team. As he added units, it became clear to him that he needed his own call center to take orders.

“The call center worked so well that, fast forward, I am one of Papa Johns vendors,” he says. “My call center services multiple brands, including Papa Johns.” As he built restaurants, he was able to see that it would be cheaper and more efficient for him to have an in-house construction team.

“I ended up with my own construction company,” he says. “They’ll build 15 in 2025.” Bajwa also has his own accounting business and technology business.

“All of those, there was no plan for it,” he says. “It all came with growth because I was open-minded, adapting to change, and looking for efficiencies.” Through it all, Bajwa has managed to stay passionate about the business, always looking for ways to improve.

He knows he’ll never be satisfied with things remaining just the way they are. “Staying in one place is just stale,” he says. “Comfort is your enemy.”

Let go of your ego Ricky Davis had been a longtime Sonic franchisee when he convinced his son, Scott, to join him in the family business. The younger Davis was in college and had a son on the way. He had never shown more than a casual interest in Sonic.

He was intent on blazing his own path. But his father handed him an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “I needed to transition from college life,” Scott Davis says.

He went 40 miles up the road to Batesville, Arkansas, to an entry-level position in a Sonic restaurant. “I learned every operational position in a Sonic Drive-In,” he says. “I guess I had kind of learned things by osmosis over the years, just being around it.

I had always been good at networking with people and with communication. I learned pretty quickly that I was pretty good operationally in the restaurant, especially with building a team around me, and so moved up as an assistant manager in Batesville and succeeded at that level and then moved up into management not too long after that.” In 2007, he took charge of the construction and opening of another Sonic on the south side of Batesville.

“That was my first baby restaurant business,” he says. “I was involved in finding the real estate, designing the building, ordering equipment, and staffing. That’s when I first started and got involved in the ownership part of it.

I was also running that same Sonic Drive-In that I had for several years.” By 2009, he was overseeing five Sonic units for Davis, Hull & Rowden (DHR), the franchise group founded by his father and two partners. “That’s when I really started venturing out into growing future managers,” he says.

“I kind of really tried to put that—growing people—on my shoulders to be able to expand.” DHR’s company slogan is “Our People Make the Difference.” Davis always kept that in mind.

It fit well with his natural networking skills. “If you don’t have great people to build infrastructure with, it can be very difficult to grow,” he says. He used the southside Batesville restaurant as a seed store.

“For example, if I had another Sonic that I needed to place a general manager in, typically, I was pulling them from that southside location. Then, that would free up the spot for me to be able to load another potential future general manager for us there. “It really helped me as far as being able to have a great, established drive-in where I was able to continue to grow future great leaders for our organization.”

Today, the group owns 36 Sonic units. In July 2019, DHR branched out into Slim Chickens and has operated the brand’s highest-volume restaurant since. In early 2026, DHR’s eighth Slim Chickens will open.

Scott Davis owns or has a significant interest in 14 of those Sonic units and all of the Slim Chickens restaurants. He’s learned a thing or two about operating multiple brands and locations. “Whether you’re looking at Sonic, whether you’re looking at Slim Chickens, or any concept out there, you want to grow in quality, not just in quantity,” he says.

“And when I say growing quality, that means being able to go out and select good real estate. That means being able to make the investment in infrastructure, in your people, and then being able to continue to make investments in facilities. All those things are going to create a successful operation.

“The other thing I would tell you is, it’s very pivotal, especially if you have the desire to grow past one or two units, to be able to let your pride and the ego go and to always be trying to figure out ways to replace yourself with somebody who’s better than you are, whether that’s better than you are in operations or better than you are in finding new people. Never have so much ego that you can’t rob another great idea, whether that’s from other concepts or from other organizations that you’re seeing be successful.” Plan 5 years out It wasn’t very long after Hector and Jennifer Haget opened their first Jersey Mike’s Subs in Foothill Ranch, California, that they decided to sign a three-store territory deal with the franchisor.

Ten months later, in 2009, their second location opened. Suddenly, they were swamped. “The second one was much more difficult because we really were still a one-store operator,” says Hector Haget.

“We basically were doing everything. All we did then was split our time between two stores.” He was spending 60-plus hours in one of the restaurants; his wife was spending the same amount of time in the other.

Six months in, they decided to hire a manager largely because of what was looming. “We knew we were going to open another store within 12 months,” he says. From that experience, the Hagets took away a key lesson in multi-unit ownership: Invest in people earlier than you need to.

It’s a lesson that has guided Hector Haget’s planning as the pair have opened a total of 14 Jersey Mike’s, a Mountain Mike’s Pizza, and a Cilantro Taco Grill. More are on the way. He shares that lesson with other franchisees because it positioned him for growth.

“I started investing in people whom I thought had potential to manage and run operations,” he says. “We basically made a conscious decision to invest in the future growth because we knew, once we did the three stores, we were going to do another 10-store deal with Jersey Mike’s. “I knew that in order to develop, we were going to have to invest early and not reap the benefits of all the work early.

We would reap it later. I started investing in future general managers and carried that compensation burden earlier than probably a lot of people would have.” That strategy of looking ahead wasn’t just limited to finding future leaders.

The Hagets kept investing the money they made back into their businesses. They kept positioning themselves to reach their goals. “We took just what we needed, and we put everything back into the business and into the systems and into the people to get to where we wanted to be five years down the road, seven years down the road,” he says.

Here’s another thing Haget shares with ambitious franchisees. “Find a concept that’s proven and find a concept that has the operating processes that are tried and proven because that eliminates a lot of the headaches, stress, and responsibility that could come on top of trying to open a new business and make it successful,” he says. “You’ve got enough to do just marketing that business.

You don’t want to be worried about what’s going on inside your four walls. There’s a lot of great new concepts out there, but I’ve looked at some of them. They look great on the outside.

But when you look at them on the inside, they’re not buttoned up; they’re not ready. So do you really want to risk your money, risk your time, and risk everything in that environment even though it may be the hottest thing going on paper?” Lastly, Haget has a warning.

Good times don’t last forever, so plan for the rough periods. “When it comes to finances and managing finances, always keep a healthy working capital balance in your book, so you can weather storms,” he says. “We opened in 2008 and 2009.

Well, the recession came in 2009, right? It was sinking all kinds of businesses. We were able to withstand that and prosper and grow between 2008 and 2010 because, financially, we were in a very good debt position and cash position, and we were very conservative.

“I’m not saying that you have to be conservative. I’m saying you have to understand what your cash requirements are and plan for that. Don’t just assume because your business is killing it and the cash is coming in that it’s always like that.

You want to plan for those times when it gets tough, and it will, especially in the restaurant business.”