The Original ChopShop was founded in 2013 by a Scottsdale, Arizona couple who were “tired of eating Chipotle every day,” said CEO Jason Morgan.
So founders Ryan and Caitlin Jocque hired a chef and developed a menu to launch the first Original ChopShop.
“If no one came but themselves and their friends, they would have been happy about it,” Morgan said. “But they opened the first shop and the line went out the door. And it just went from there.”
The Jocques, apparently, weren’t the only ones looking for variety.
Acquired by Hargett Hunter in 2016, The Original ChopShop is now owned by Houston-based investment company Mac Haik Enterprises, which also owns Slapfish. Original Chopshop has a pretty diverse menu, with about 35% of sales coming from protein bowls, built on a base of vegetables, greens or rice and highly customizable. There are salads and sandwiches, as well as juice and acai bowls.
Everything on the menu is made from scratch in restaurants. “We’re cutting, chopping and dicing in stores, hence the name,” said Morgan.
That’s a point of differentiation in a world filled with single-focus concepts, like Nashville hot chicken or pizza, Morgan said.
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“How many times are you going to get hot chicken in a month or pizza?” he posed. “Because we have bowls and salads and protein shakes and breakfast, you can come multiple times a week and have a different experience each time you come.”
Morgan likes to say the concept serves five dayparts: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and catering.
Now with 24 units in Arizona, Texas and Georgia, two to four more restaurants are scheduled to open next year, and all are company owned.
Morgan said the brand is playing a long game.
“It’s perhaps a longer game than I wish we were playing,” he said. But Original ChopShop is focusing on making sure the technology and systems are in place to scale. Kiosk ordering is available in all units, for example, and about half of orders come through the kiosks.
But the brand looks to build an emotional connect with consumers, he added.
“Walk the line concepts, like Cava and Sweetgreen, don’t have much hospitality in what they’re doing. We sometimes call it prison style,” he said. “It’s successful, it’s just not what we do.”
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