How Philadelphia based chain Honeygrow sparked growth by closing stores and resetting

It’s never easy to admit defeat, but that’s exactly what Justin Rosenberg had to do a decade ago.

The founder and CEO of the Philadelphia-based fast-casual stir-fry chain Honeygrow, which first opened in 2012, had quickly scaled the brand into major markets like Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Washington D.C. It had also developed a scaled-back version of the concept, called Minigrow, that it was leveraging to open in smaller footprints in urban markets.

But the pursuit of flashy, high-traffic, urban locations led Honeygrow to sign some bad leases, and in time Honeygrow was forced to shutter its Minigrow locations and pull out of Chicago completely.

Rosenberg reset his growth strategy, spending time improving operations and building his team while also prioritizing more suburban locations. Today, Honeygrow is rapidly growing in the eastern U.S., with 76 locations open and dozens more under development.

Rosenberg joined NRN’s editor in chief Sam Oches on the main stage at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., to share more on the Honeygrow story, and later sat down with Oches to dig deeper into that story for the latest episode of Take-Away with Sam Oches.

In this conversation, you’ll learn more about why:

• Potentially strong AUVs should not fool you into bad leases

• You shouldn’t reinvent the wheel if the wheel keeps spinning

• There are no bad teams; only bad leaders