Innovation in Private Equity: Taylor DeHart’s Operator-First Approach to Restaurant Investing | Venture Capital Series

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity.

My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is Taylor DeHart, principal at Savory Fund. Now, Savory Fund partners with growing restaurant brands in the food and beverage industry, focusing on operator partnerships and strong leadership to help these brands thrive. Based in Lehigh, Utah, it works to elevate concepts nationwide, providing hands-on support from veteran operators and finance experts.

Under Taylor’s guidance, Savory Fund has influenced the growth of multiple high potential concepts, including technology companies and emerging restaurant brands. Taylor himself has a decade of experience in food and beverage investments, financial strategy, and transaction structuring, and oversees six companies within Savory’s portfolio. He earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

holds a BS in finance from BYU’s Marriott School of Management, and previously served as president of the Finance Society at BYU. He’s also performed diligence on hundreds of emerging brands and advised on multiple buy and sell side transactions in the restaurant space. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits

Taylor DeHart (01:20)
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Anthony Codispoti (01:37)
that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today. The principal of save refund, Taylor DeHart. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Taylor DeHart (01:42)
you

you

Of course, thanks for having me on Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (02:09)
Okay, so Taylor, you studied finance at Brigham Young University, BYU. What initially drew you into that field of study? What was the attraction for you?

Taylor DeHart (02:21)
Great question. I actually wasn’t quite certain what I wanted to do until a handful of years into school. And I realized that I was a numbers guy, but also that I had a passion for entrepreneurship. And I felt like studying finance gave me the opportunity to tap into that strength of being able to review and understand numbers in a deep way, but also be more on the strategy side. And so as I made the decision between studying accounting or finance, I felt like studying finance gave me more of a forward facing future looking

application of my skill set and have really enjoyed it ever since.

Anthony Codispoti (02:54)
All right. So then ⁓ at some point, I think this was towards the end of your education, you landed an internship at Apple in Cupertino where you were part of their ⁓ finance development program. What was that like in turning there and working at Apple? What did you learn?

Taylor DeHart (03:12)
Yeah, it was incredible. It felt like at the time I’d hit the jackpot, you know, in terms of respect that I have for organizations across the world. You know, Apple is in the top three, if not number one. incredible organization, incredible talent. The things that they were doing, I was very bought in on. had a wonderful time out there in California. And to this day, that experience continues to kind of have its, its imprint on even the savory today, which we’ll talk about more later.

Anthony Codispoti (03:41)
And as I understand it, you were actually offered a full-time position there. And after all the glowing things that you just said about Apple, I’m a little surprised that you turned it down. Why was that?

Taylor DeHart (03:53)
Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s one that led me to the question, you know, my own decisions at the time. ⁓ but for me, I felt like I had seen the best of what the corporate finance world had to offer. And with everything that I just said about the organization, about the people, it just didn’t quite have that entrepreneurial flair that I was looking for. ⁓ I felt like my personality would be better suited for a late stage growth company. ⁓ you know, one where I could kind of be in the middle of the value creation.

Whereas working for an incredible organization, but they do some pretty incredible things. for me, just felt like a little bit smaller company would be better suited for, like I said, my personality, but also just my skill set.

Anthony Codispoti (04:36)
Had you had a taste of sort of the startup or the entrepreneurial world by that point?

Taylor DeHart (04:43)
I lived in little bit in college. I worked for a little bit smaller company organization, but it was very light at the time.

Anthony Codispoti (04:53)
So, but it was just enough, because I’m just trying to get my head around, you had this great offer from this company that you respected and you’re having a great time. What was it that in you that sort of said, this is great, but I want smaller, I want startup? Was it just like you felt like you weren’t having enough control or enough input into what Apple was actually producing?

Taylor DeHart (05:16)
That’s exactly right. You touched on at the end there, just being able to contribute to what makes it great. Obviously being part of a broader finance work is extremely important for any company. But for me, it was more wanting to be kind of at the ground level of something a little bit smaller and to create something. You know, for me, Utah is where I’m from. I was born and raised here at the base of Snow Basin Ski Resort where they held the 2002 Olympic downhill and will also hold the

2034 Olympic downhill. And so I have a lot of pride about this area and spent some time in California, saw what the success story had become of Silicon Valley and read all the books of the Titans that helped build that and thought Utah is this young emerging state that has an opportunity to something pretty special the same way that they’ve done in Silicon Valley. And I felt like I wanted to do that early in my career. So not only, you know, some of the size of the company, but also felt like I wanted to be here in the state of Utah building something great.

Anthony Codispoti (06:15)
⁓ interesting. Come home and bring a lot of those ideas and the skills and the future success that you see the sort of the seeds that already been sown for in Silicon Valley. OK, so how did the opportunity to join Savory Fund come about?

Taylor DeHart (06:25)
Is that correct?

Yeah, so I mentioned in my college days, you know, I had an opportunity to be mentored by actually, who is today the managing director of Savory. And while I was out in my one bedroom apartment in Santa Clara, California, he gave me a call and described to me what he felt like he was going to create at the Savory Fund. At the time, it operated under a different flag. And I’m happy to share more about that later in our conversation. But, you know, I thought it sounded like something I was very interested in. And so

This mentor reached out to me and just gave me the opportunity to join at the ground level of something that I felt would be an amazing opportunity coming right out of college to have a path to being involved in &A, being involved in the potential investment practice, ⁓ multi-strategy, multi-brand shop that he was in the process of creating.

Anthony Codispoti (07:19)
so you got in right sort of the beginning right at the ground floor.

Taylor DeHart (07:23)
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to touch on some of the background if that would be helpful.

Anthony Codispoti (07:27)
Yeah, yeah, you said at one point it was operating under a different name, under a different umbrella.

Taylor DeHart (07:32)
That’s right. Yeah. know, say we find actually hasn’t been saved fund since its inception for the first 10 years of our history. We actually were just an operator. We were like any other operating company out there. started our founder up in one restaurant in 2008. And, uh, you they, he assembled the team over time, but from that one restaurant in 2008 to, you know, 150 restaurants in 2018 really assembled it.

a pretty impressive team. I joined in 2015 and at the time they had roughly 25 locations and restaurants and under the portfolio of one brand. And between 2015 and 2018 is when we really hit the accelerator group from 25 locations to over 150 across 11 states and became one of the largest franchisees in the country. We’re consistently recognized as one of the fastest growing operators in the restaurant industry.

on a frequent basis. we were excited about what we had in 2017, 2018, but we needed to change in regard to our capital structure. And that’s when Sabri was born. Sabri was born in 2018. We raised our first fund, which was a $100 million fund, debut coming out of the gate. thereafter, we just realized we needed to come into that new capital structure.

And ever since we’ve raised that, we’ve continued to raise concurrent funds, we’ve realized that we’re really able to kind of have the full package of capital available to the people who we’re investing into as well as expertise from our histories being an operator.

Anthony Codispoti (09:17)
So what was the brand or brands that you had in the early stages when you went from that one to 150 restaurants?

Taylor DeHart (09:25)
Yeah, so the primary one was actually a bakery and cafe concept here in state of Utah. It’s very similar to a Panera Bread. Many people are familiar with that. It was early during the age of the birth of what’s called fast casual. ⁓ For the listeners who have never heard of that, it’s elevated food, but then still in a quick service format. So Chipotle really kind of invented the space. ⁓ This bakery and cafe concept was really one of the early adopters of that space.

That was one we grew from one to 50 locations. Along the way, we acquired roughly 70 Little Caesars. So we became one of the largest Little Caesars operators in the country. That was more of what I would call the bond in our portfolio. A little bit less growth-like, more just being there, cash flowing, a very stable brand, been around through multiple recessions. So it extended a little bit more of the bond. And then we had bought three other companies, a company called Swick, which is specialty beverage concept.

⁓ as well as a Hawaiian barbecue concept based here in Utah and then an actual true southern barbecue concept all based here in Utah as I mentioned.

Anthony Codispoti (10:31)
And so do you still have the Little Caesars franchises? Do you still have the bakery concept?

Taylor DeHart (10:37)
We do not. So in 2018, 2019, when we started Sayfree, we made the decision to shift our strategy slightly rather than continuing to grow brands to hundreds and eventually thousands of units like we could have pursued. We decided to become the core and primary investor for emerging brands across the country. And so we sold our 50 bakeries. We sold our 70 Little Caesars.

Anthony Codispoti (11:02)
Mm.

Taylor DeHart (11:06)
And that’s when we started SABRE. ⁓ And we brought Swig, MoBET, as in R &R BBQ, which we’re currently in our portfolio, into SABRE fund. And that’s how we kicked things off.

Anthony Codispoti (11:16)
And so now you’re the majority owner of each of these concepts. Is that how it works, the ones that you invest in, or is there a different structure?

Taylor DeHart (11:23)
Yeah, we have,

we are and have been, we have added some additional partners along the way. And we’ve sold, you know, portions of both SWIG and MoBEDET to some strategic partners who have made those investments recently.

Anthony Codispoti (11:36)
Makes sense. And so the transition away from sort of the bond of, you know, ⁓ Little Caesars and this established bakery that seems like it was doing well into these emerging brands, was this just ⁓ more of a, hey, we love to create. We love to be kind of involved a little bit earlier on. Like there was a like a ⁓ creative marketing itch that you had to scratch or what what was kind of behind the thesis here.

Taylor DeHart (12:05)
I’d say the biggest thing that we learned along the way, and as you can imagine, we learned some really important lessons from our decade as an operator. Some expensive, some inexpensive, but all really important. But the reason we did this and the major acknowledgement that we made here is there are things that we are good at and there are things that we are not as good at. And when we started Savory, this was us doubling down on what we know were exceptional.

We know we’re great at identifying the next generation of great restaurant brands. We know what it takes to successfully capitalize those groups to give them the leadership resources and the other resources that they need to be successful and grow them from a regional brand that’s perhaps in just one or two regions into five, six or seven regions.

Anthony Codispoti (12:55)
And so what is it that you look for in the next generation of restaurant brands? What are the green flags that’s like, oh, these guys are onto something that the world’s really going to appreciate here pretty soon?

Taylor DeHart (13:10)
Yeah, I think it would be probably helpful if it would be good if I paint the picture of what the restaurant industry of everything we’ve kind of learned over last 17, 18 years. And I think it will make more sense. My answer once I kind of give you that context. Um, so the restaurant industry, it’s massive. There are hundreds of thousands of restaurants across the country. And this is an industry that in many ways has an undeserved reputation for risk. And where that comes from is.

Anthony Codispoti (13:22)
Okay, great.

Taylor DeHart (13:39)
It’s highly entrepreneurial. So there’s this early phase of restaurants that exist where there are minimal barriers to entry. If you want to start a restaurant, you and you’re a passionate entrepreneur or founder, you usually can go in and find a space that whether it was a previous restaurant or some other, you operation, you can go in and for a relatively small amount, invest in and create a menu, fall in love with the type of food, fall in love with, you know, some type of aesthetic that you want to bring to the community.

that you’re passionate about. So you can start that restaurant. And that happens every day. If you look here across the industry, about 70 % of all restaurants are operated by single unit operators, ⁓ which is a staggering number considering how large the industry is. And every once in a while, you start to see inside of this early wave of restaurants, somebody start to rise above the rest. And usually those people start to open a second location or a third location. And over probably a seven to 15 year period,

They just stick at it. And not everyone has that, you know, stick to it and it’s that persistence to just keep going. even in the face of challenges, this isn’t always the easiest industry to operate in. And so what we look for is a founder that has stuck to it, ⁓ and has built a pretty incredible culture and has built an impressive leadership team. ⁓ but that is looking for someone to help them take it to the next level. ⁓ what really sticks out to us and have the right culture.

Got to have a strong leadership team, as I alluded to, that has to have strong unit economics. They have to have figured out the profitability equation. ⁓ That’s extremely important because the challenges that are associated with scale, which is what we’re very accustomed to, they’re very different than the challenges of starting the restaurant and dialing in and perfecting the profitability. The number of restaurants that approach me and say, if I just had your buying power, or if I just had your great contracts that you have with

you know, this vendor or that vendor, I would be more profitable. My answer is usually that’s not true. You, there are costs associated with scale that you don’t even have any ⁓ view into yet. And scale is expensive in and of itself. And so you can’t rely on buying power. You can’t rely on, you know, ⁓ a stronger economies of scale as you grow to dial in your profitability profile. That’s the responsibility of the founder. So when we look at brands, if they have that trifecta of culture, leadership and strong

unit economics, that’s, we’re ready to jump in.

Anthony Codispoti (16:11)
And are they usually approaching you? Are you sort of ⁓ combing through the landscape of the US to look for these unearthed gems? How does this come about?

Taylor DeHart (16:22)
So early in the days of Savory, I would describe that it was more of us going into a city, trying to find the best restaurants in that city, the ones that had, like I mentioned, five to 15 locations. And it really started to kind of stand out above the crowd. ⁓ We would drop into a city, we would meet with six or seven founders. They would all give us the full spread. So a story for another day, but by about the fourth meal, you’re pretty spent ⁓ at that time.

You know, we spent a lot of the early days just getting to know the regions that we wanted to be in and founders across the country. Because the success of our industry is so visible, meaning you can drive by and see how many locations are popping up. We’ve had a lot of people reach out to us as of late and you know, we meet them just through our kind of standard channels. They reach out to us and say, hey, I what you did for this brand. Would you be interested in helping me do it for my brand?

So a lot more of it has become inbound in today’s day and age, but we’re still out in the community. We’re still out spending time in the varying cities that are out there. We’re constantly with our own portfolio companies. And that gives us a glimpse into kind of what’s happening in the market. And so we always have a beat on what brands are the most successful across the industry.

Anthony Codispoti (17:35)
So what are you looking at in terms of geography and, I don’t know, either size or where they are in the life cycle? They’ve got five units or they’ve got 15.

Taylor DeHart (17:47)
Yes, our sweet spot really is ⁓ five to 15 locations. And then from a cash flow standpoint, you’re between $2 $4 million in positive EBITDA. From a revenue standpoint, anywhere between 15 and 45 million in top-line sales.

Anthony Codispoti (18:05)
And geography, you’re agnostic or there are certain parts of the country that you’re more interested in.

Taylor DeHart (18:10)
The geography agnostic, ⁓ know, certain parts of the country are more difficult to operate in and we take that into consideration. ⁓ But if you’re in one of those states that’s a little bit more difficult to operate in and you have everything that I described earlier in terms of, you know, team and great margin profile, we’ll absolutely make an investment.

Anthony Codispoti (18:28)
Taylor, I wonder if we can pick maybe one of your portfolio companies and kind of go through the life cycle from how you found them, ⁓ how that sort of courtship happened, what it is that you’ve been able to help them with and where they are today. Sometimes the specificity of one particular example can really help people kind of, I don’t know, visualize what it is that you guys do.

Taylor DeHart (18:54)
Yeah, one, the one that I’ll call out is a company called Swig. They’re a specialty beverage concept. They’ve really created the movement behind what’s today more commonly referenced to as dirty sodas. You know, they have well over a hundred locations across the country, very successful franchise program, very successful corporate store program. But when we got involved, they were what I described as a fledgling shop that was based in St. George, Utah, the southernmost town in Utah, right on the Nevada Arizona border.

And, uh, you know, when we got involved with them, it really just started out of a conversation between, you know, our, our team and the founder who was really not even coming in to talk to us about a potential investment. They came in, we’re just asking for advice. Should we franchise? Should we not franchise? How can we grow our brand? And the relationship started in, in that capacity and through the giving of that advice, um, and just being willing and open to share best practices. That founder ultimately left that meeting that day.

gracious for the advice that she had received. And about an hour later jumped on the phone and called our managing director and said, Hey, I liked everything that you said, why don’t we just partner? ⁓ And so, you know, after, after some time, considering that and contemplating it, said, yeah, let’s jump in on this. So, you know, they’ve grown to 17 locations. They were in the Utah market and it started to grow down to Arizona. But I would describe.

the state they were in is they’ve kind of outgrown their ability to operate in those states, which is very common inside of your food and beverage. As you grow, just…

Anthony Codispoti (20:28)
What do mean they outgrew

it? Like they didn’t have the supply chain infrastructure? What was lacking?

Taylor DeHart (20:33)
more of just the leadership, more of the leadership infrastructure

and more of just the ability. You know, it’s really difficult in this industry to work on the business and in the business. Every single day, they were just trying to show up for their team and be supportive to everybody who had helped them build it to that day. But every once in a while, you need to be able to take a step back and look at the strategy and look at the types of systems and processes and tools that you’re bringing to the business to make it more efficient and effective. And that’s really exactly what Sayreed did. We ended up buying a majority stake in that business partnering with the founder.

who is a phenomenal individual and she continues to be the face of the brand today. But we helped them through about a six month period to double the profits through enhancements in the key costs of food and labor. Enhancing, creating better systems and processes and technologies around that business. And then we grew from 17 locations in 2018 to, by the time we…

We brought on our new partner who are the former owners of the Utah Jazz, the Larry H Miller group who are incredibly well respected group here in state of Utah. We had 55 locations around that time. And then we stay very active and involved with that business today with our new partnership that we formed there ⁓ with that group. And today they have well over 120 restaurants across the country with three or 400 under development.

Anthony Codispoti (21:54)
my gosh, that’s significant growth coming.

Taylor DeHart (21:56)
Yeah,

phenomenal outcome. We’re thrilled and we continue to be involved in this day, love that concept and it’s been amazing to be along for the ride.

Anthony Codispoti (22:05)
And this one is a franchise concept. these new locations that are coming are all or mostly franchises.

Taylor DeHart (22:14)
So I would say it’s probably 50-50 at this point. still, you we take a view in franchising where we like to have a significant skin in the game. We know what it’s like to be on the other side of a franchise relationship. We have a franchisor who, you know, come rain or shine, commodity pressure, no commodity pressure, labor pressure, no commodity or labor pressure. You know, they take their cut and, you know, and you’re expected every single day to show up and live with what’s left over.

Anthony Codispoti (22:17)
⁓ okay.

Taylor DeHart (22:42)
And look, that’s a system that works. It’s been very successful across the country. And there’s a lot of alignment can be achieved. We know what it feels like to have to live with what’s left over at the end of the day. And so we try to have a lot of alignment with all of our franchisees in all of the brands in which we partner with. And so it’s really important to us that they also see someone who has skin in the game, who’s in the trenches with them operating that business every single day, the same way they are.

Anthony Codispoti (23:09)
that’s great. You mentioned ⁓ with this company brought in some technology to help with their processes. I’d be curious to hear a little bit more about what some of that technology look like. And if you find it difficult, sort of layering in some new technology ideas into an otherwise sort of conservative and traditional industry.

Taylor DeHart (23:33)
Yeah, it’s definitely interesting to have watched the technology adoption in this industry over last few years. ⁓ Our founder was a technologist for 11 years before he started this company. I worked at a tech company as well. A handful of the people who are in executive leadership positions at Sabri have more of a technology background and spend a decent portion of their career focused on other industries. And I think that lens has really benefited us. ⁓

we really focus on before we go in and just adopt a technology, understanding what KPIs matter to the food and beverage industry. A lot of times private equity has a reputation inside of many industries, but in food and beverage specifically where they come in, they hack portions, they lower the service all in an effort to drive EBITDA upward so that they can ultimately drive to an outcome and to a sale. And ⁓ that does happen. It has happened historically.

And we’re very sensitive to that because we spent 10 years as an operator. We know that that is the kiss of death and we watched it happen too many times and we know what it feels like from the inside to know what that looks like. And so for us, we are very focused on let’s identify the KPIs that matter and then let’s use technologies to support the achievement of those. So when I bring that up, I’m saying is labor cost extremely important for a restaurant? Of course it is.

But also if I cut that back too much, then the person who’s across from me is having a bad experience and they’re very, they’re less likely to come back again and again and again and bring their friends. And so, you know, we’re hyper-focused on this. We call it a productive tension between we have to have our teammates in stores being productive and efficient, but we can’t cut back so much that we’re not creating value for the person on the other side of the counter. So.

we’re monitoring labor KPIs and using technologies to tell us what’s the right way to predict sales to ensure that we have proper levels of staffing at all hours of the day. ⁓ Instead of just saying, let’s cut labor, we’re saying, let’s optimize our labor model and ensure that we have all the personnel that we need to support our guests coming in our door and giving them the best experience we possibly can. So you have to make sure through technology adoption that you really understand what actually matters.

And it’s that person coming through the door, making sure they have the best food possible with the appropriate service levels and they’re being treated well when they walk in the door.

Anthony Codispoti (26:01)
And so is an example of the tech that you introduced here, just about sort of that optimal scheduling. We’ve got enough people, but not too many given what we’ve seen in the historical sales trends, when the busy times are busy times of day, busy times of years, et cetera.

Taylor DeHart (26:17)
Yeah. So we, actually, one of my first projects when I joined Sayre was I wrote an algorithm that predicted sales down to the hour. ⁓ and then we ended up building our own software inside of our, company that allows us to take that algorithm, overlay it on the schedule and then recommend, what the schedule should be. So we really make it simple. It’s not always the case that you have a manager on the other side, ⁓ who has to operate and deal with the challenges of every single day.

that has the time to sit there and really build a perfect meticulous schedule that’s backed by data and science. And so we partner with them. say, okay, here’s your recommended schedule based on the software that we’ve built, the hourly sales. Here’s the people that you need. They review and then they adapt for their specific location. They might know something that we, the algorithm didn’t know. I have some big birthday party that I have to accommodate or something else. so.

The other thing I’d say about technology adoption is you have to keep the human element in to ensure that there you can accommodate for things that are unpredictable by an algorithm or by some type of AI. But yeah, that’s a perfect example of how we came in, adopted technology, built it when it wasn’t there. Nowadays there are better labor scheduling the softwares, but when we were first getting involved, you know, there, just wasn’t anything there.

⁓ And so, you we’re now partnering with third parties more effectively than we were able to a few years ago. ⁓ But that’s a perfect example of through technology adoption, we’re able to create value just because of our unique lens in the industry.

Anthony Codispoti (27:50)
What’s some of the emerging trends or tech that you see in the food and beverage industry that you’re particularly excited about, Taylor?

Taylor DeHart (28:00)
Yeah. So I would say, if you go back to 2020, what COVID caused was probably 10 years worth of technology adoption in two years. And so a lot of the technology that was adopted at that time was around how do I get my food to my guests, no matter where they are, because they can no longer come to me. And so you see the advent of Doordash and Uber Eats and a lot of these marketplaces were positioned extremely well to kind of capture that. What I’m very interested

⁓ What I’m very interested in in the future is where, ⁓ how restaurants bring that back native to themselves and how they’re trying to get back to a place where their guest is one-on-one ⁓ as opposed to having to interact with them through a marketplace. That’s what it was before.

Anthony Codispoti (28:49)
Meaning like sort

of getting away from sort of this trend of like Uber Eats and DoorDash and that sort of thing. Am I understanding that?

Taylor DeHart (28:57)
Yes, so not necessarily in some ways. Yes, but not, not entirely. So meaning a lot of customers are going to go to a marketplace like Uber eats in DoorDash to order their favorite food. It’s out of convenience. have a loyalty to the simplicity that they have created for them. But what has always been the hallmark of restaurants is having people in the restaurant, experiencing the culture, experiencing the menu in real time, and also being able to interact with them on a one-on-one basis, even when they’re

and taking and eating that food outside of the restaurant. So to give you an example of that, Houston’s Hot Chicken is one of our portfolio companies. They are extremely meticulous in how they design their to-go packaging. They know their guests love to eat their food on the go. They know they love to eat it at home and in other places. And so they’re not always engaging with HHC, which is what it goes by, Houston’s Hot Chicken. But HHC has been very meticulous around how do I design my

packaging to ensure that my brand, which is very strong, ⁓ is experienced by the customer even when they order off-premise and they’re ordering from one of the marketplaces.

Anthony Codispoti (30:06)
And so where do you see that going? do brands sort of refine that?

Taylor DeHart (30:11)
So a lot of the technologies we’re seeing today in terms of loyalty and value creation ⁓ are aimed at just that, helping individual brands ⁓ engage with their employees more on a one-to-one basis. So loyalty programs are becoming far more popular. Loyalty programs can sometimes feel like a discount program and not very many brands that are in this emerging elite phase that we operate in are seeking to become a bargain brand or a discount company.

So what they’re doing is they’re coming up with extremely innovative ways to create loyalty programs where they’re giving these loyalty members special offers. And sometimes there might be a secret menu or something like that, but only loyalty members get to participate in. Others might be considering ⁓ just certain swag or other offers. They’re choosing to provide more value instead of just giving what they already have, exactly, giving what they already give just at a lower value.

Anthony Codispoti (31:03)
rather than just a cheaper price.

Taylor DeHart (31:08)
And it’s really exciting and fun to see what some of the brands are

Anthony Codispoti (31:12)
Well, that does sound cool. Let’s see, Taylor, I don’t know. there’s, you know, you’ve done a lot of sell side, lot of buy side transactions. Is there one that was particularly challenging that you can kind of take us behind the scenes on and talk about it, how you worked through it, how it’s kind of shaped your philosophy today?

Taylor DeHart (31:35)
Yeah, that’s a great question. There have been multiple that I’ve learned from. I often say, find me an investor that, you know, hasn’t experienced some type of adversity or hasn’t had to navigate through some potential losses. And I’ll tell you that investor hasn’t been in the game long enough and they’re about to find out. I, you know, I’ll talk about one, I will say we’re entrepreneurs, but we’re also investors. And that’s what’s interesting about Savvy that makes us unique.

If you think about the mindset that an investor needs to have, they need to be highly disciplined, be very rules-based, make sure that they’re recognizing patterns. And they say no 99.5 % of the time. Hopefully, the 0.5 % of the time that they’re making investment decisions, they’re choosing the right ones. But they’re not even perfect, even after saying no as many times as they have. On the other side, entrepreneurs say yes most of the time.

as long as they’re focused on an opportunity that’s exciting. And so we kind of balance that and we try to be recursive and disciplined on one side, but also create value with an entrepreneurial lens on the other side. So I will say there have been times as we’re trying to strike the right balance between those two. And one of the deals took place in 2020 when we made an investment. think we probably over-complicated it a little bit in an effort to ⁓ just continue to invest through those COVID years.

and make sure that we continue to ⁓ assess price and take risks because that’s what we do as investors. ⁓ But I think we probably over complicated a little bit because we were in our entrepreneurial mind maybe a little bit too much. ⁓ And so one of the things that we learned through that process was that deal structure can kind of strangle opportunities and there really shouldn’t be any reason to over complicate something. So we’ve shifted so much the other direction ⁓ to where

Anthony Codispoti (33:25)
Keep it simple.

Taylor DeHart (33:26)
That’s right. We just keep it simple and rely upon alignment more than contracts, if that makes sense. I often say to the entrepreneurs that we partner with that now that I’ve gone through this and probably negotiated well over half a billion dollars in transactions, whether it’s debt or equity financing. ⁓ But I often say that the paper that we are going to put in place and we’re going to negotiate is really just protections for both sides for fringe cases.

But the decisions we make on a day-to-day basis and how we’re going to manage our relationship is based on trust. And the moment you and I start pointing toward our agreements is probably the moment where, ⁓ you know, we, that’s exactly right. So we rely more on alignment. We make sure we protect ourselves and our investors who’ve entrusted us with their capital, but we rely far more on alignment than we do on the constructs of a legal document. And we’ve learned that along the way.

Anthony Codispoti (34:01)
things are falling apart.

Yeah, so you guys are real big on this sort of like operator partnership model. There’s a lot of collaboration on a day to day basis. Talk us through what that looks like a little bit more from a practical standpoint.

Taylor DeHart (34:32)
Yeah, so we, as I mentioned before, Saviourly is this balance of, we do have capital, but capital is in many ways a commodity, right? You have to find other ways to be valuable to the people that you partner with. And so we bring our, call it 17 years of operating expertise in the industry, having learned the lessons that I described before. And, but we also bring a team of experts that’s been doing this for 17 years as well. The combination of all of those is really impactful for a brand. So,

You know, we recently invested in two companies. ⁓ one of them was up here this last week and we were sitting down with the team that they have assembled, which is really about half a dozen individuals who were either one of the founders of the brands or they’ve helped bring the stores to life or they help bring the food to life. But beyond that, they really don’t have this massive infrastructure to support them. So day one, after a savory partnership, they have access to real estate construction and development expertise. They have support on human resources to ensure they’re remaining compliant.

They have accounting and finance support and not just hiring somebody off the street who has those expert abilities. They’re bringing on people who have sold half a dozen brands in the last five years and know exactly what the next buyer is looking for. So from pretty much day one, we’re setting them up for success and showing that we’re applying best practices of what we know from having lived, you know, what is going to be important to them over and over again over the last few years. That’s just a quick tangent on finance and accounting, but.

We’re also bringing recruiting, right? People are the lifeblood of this organization. ⁓ We have a strong recruiting ⁓ practice that we bring to bear and these brands have that day one. Again, they’re just getting these experts that they probably wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. But because we have a whole portfolio that we’re able to spread them across, we get to give them everybody. And there’s a handful of people here at our office and other functions that we perform.

And there’s about 50 of us here that are constantly supporting our brands, you know, and performing every function that you would need inside of a restaurant from real estate and development all the

Anthony Codispoti (36:36)
Say more about what you guys have found to be effective on that recruiting and retention standpoint for police.

Taylor DeHart (36:45)
Yeah. So we benefit from the fact that we buy cool brands. If I can be that casual in the way that I describe it. ⁓ You know, the brands, they stand for something and whether that is, you know, doing good. You know, we bought a company recently called South Block and they’re all about building healthier communities, one block at a time. And that is a, ⁓ that’s a message that resonates with so many people. And so what you have to do is you’re hiring practices.

You have to be identifying people that align with your brand and they kind of self select. don’t have to really search too hard. Like if you have a great brand and people line with, they’re going to come to you. ⁓ And so, you know, we benefit again from buying cool brands that already have very ⁓ interesting missions and values that they bring to bear. But then we also are looking for ways financially to ensure that our employees benefit when we benefit. So one of the things that we did early on.

⁓ Let’s find a way to simulate some skin in the game for people from assistant general managers. Sometimes they’re 16, 17 years old. But how do we give them a career path that when they resell its position or when the founder is able to take some cash off the table that they benefit as well? And we’ve been able to see people ⁓ cash checks that have changed their life ⁓ because of that program.

It’s the most rewarding thing about what we do, whether it’s a founder or whether it’s an assistant general manager who just had their mortgage paid for for six months. It’s such a cool experience to able to live that.

Anthony Codispoti (38:17)
And so it’s some sort of like a profit share without having to deal with sort of the messiness of equity. So that in a liquidity event that some other folks get to take part in the upside.

Taylor DeHart (38:29)
That’s exactly right. Yeah, so we’re very intentional about our bonus programs and ensuring that our people have the ability to win.

Anthony Codispoti (38:35)
That’s really cool. How about red flags as you’re evaluating deals and you know, now that you guys have got a track record, you’re seeing a lot of them. What are some very common red flags that you see that maybe our listeners could benefit from, especially if they’re, you know, in startup kind of restaurant mode, like, that’s a pitfall I need to avoid.

Taylor DeHart (38:59)
Yeah, think my message to founders is if you want to grow, you have to be prepared to share the operational control and the decision making for your business. There really is, it’s really difficult as an individual to try to stay the single decision maker when you are responsible for thousands of people’s jobs and you’re responsible for a large organization.

So it’s difficult for founders and we’ve lived through this. I’ve had multiple conversations, but they go through this evolution where they built this brand. feel like it’s an appendage to them, like it belongs to them. It is theirs and no one reveres and respects that more than us. But there has to be this shift in your mentality from I’m going to, I’m going to do what I say to I’m going to do what I feel is right. Almost more of a stewardship. There’s this shift that takes place when you have to realize that.

You’re no longer just responsible for building something that you had in your head and now you’re very proud of what you’ve built. You have to be mindful of the thousands of jobs that you have created or have the potential to create. You have to be mindful of all of the people who are around you that rely upon this organization to support their lives and their families. And if you really want to grow to a large point and you want to create true enterprise value in your business,

Just be prepared and know that it’s going to take other people around you to support you to do that. And so once you’ve made that acknowledgement and you’re able to gain comfort with it, then it becomes extremely important who you align yourself with. And that decision is perhaps the most important decision you’ll ever make with your life, ⁓ particularly in the lens of a founder. Because if you align with the wrong group, ⁓ they can take your vision somewhere very differently. ⁓ But if you align with the right group, they’ll help your vision become a reality.

and actually help you get there as opposed to you having to do it all by yourself.

Anthony Codispoti (40:58)
Yeah, that’s interesting how you put that, know, that, ⁓ the, the founders, they see the business as an appendage. ⁓ I would, you know, I’ve never done restaurants, but I’ve had my own businesses before created my own brands. And it feels very much like, ⁓ like, like a labor of love, like a child. ⁓ and so when somebody comes in and they’re trying to do it in a different way, albeit to help the overall vision, that can be difficult.

I got here because I did things this way. made a lot of hard decisions. Not all of them were right, but my path has generally proved successful more times than not. And now I’m going to turn over a lot of that decision making or a lot of the idea generation process to some folks who understand how to do this on a higher level. But that’s still a hard transition to make. ⁓

Is there a way, is there something for the founders themselves? Because I hear the second part of what you’re saying is make sure as the restaurateur, the brand owner, the startup person to make sure that you choose the right partner going forward. Any advice that you can give to people on best way to sort of evaluate things from the startup ⁓ entrepreneur’s perspective in finding the right partner for themselves?

Taylor DeHart (42:21)
Yes, I would say be very thoughtful about what you want before you run a process ⁓ to find a partner. Trying to go out and find capital is extremely distracting. It takes a lot of time and energy. And you need to be very thoughtful about what you want. If you are trying to maintain control and you’re like, hey, I have a vision, I want to execute on it. I’m not quite ready to invite an equity investor who’s going to have a say. The very definition of equity is it’s fairness.

you’re going to be treated fairly, right? In the financial context, that means we’re going to distribute money fairly. But from a governance standpoint, it means that we need to be fair to one another ⁓ in the decisions that we make. And so if you’re not quite ready to kind of bring that on and share that burden, I would encourage you to look after debt, right? A debt provider is like, look, I’m willing, I’m more than happy to let you retain control of your business. I just need my money out first and you can do whatever you want thereafter.

based on some rules that I’m going to lay down for you. An equity investor is going be different. They’re going to put money in your business. They’re going to, just like you, they’re going to wait for what’s left over ⁓ after the end of the day. And then you get to split that. ⁓ But an equity investor is taking more risk than a debt investor. They don’t get their money out unless you do. And therefore you need to know that they’re going to have a seat at the table. They’re going to have an opinion. ⁓ And they effectively purchased their right to have an opinion. And so you need to figure out

You know, what exactly are you looking for? A minority investor will have an opinion, but they won’t be able to control the decision making overall. A majority investor has taken a large enough risk where they’re likely going to want to be able to influence the decisions in a big way. know, Sabri is a majority investor because we feel like we bring a lot to the table, but I’m maybe going to say something that will help kind of round out my commentary over the last couple of questions here, but it’s…

founders are the lifeblood of consumer organizations, especially during this phase. So there is nothing that’s more important to us than the investments that we make in the relationship we have with our founder and the team that we’re helping them to build. Some of the relationships we have are, they’re our deepest friends. spend, you know, as much time with them as we can. We know their families, we know what’s important to them. We know what they value. And we believe that they are absolutely crucial and essential. And so it’s not as if

everything they’re doing and everything they’re creating has to be muted by bringing on a financial partner. ⁓ It’s more exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (44:55)
Quite the opposite, right? Especially the partnership

model that you guys are talking about. Like you wanna keep building on the foundation that they’ve put in place.

Taylor DeHart (45:03)
That’s exactly right. So it’s extremely important. So to go back, I’m going to come full circle to your question around red flags. If we identify a founder who wants to just keep all control, who’s unwilling to take advice and unwilling to recognize that if you take on an investment, you are now a steward of the jobs you’re going to create. You are a steward of the capital that you’ve been entrusted with. If there is a founder who’s unwilling to acknowledge that and reverence that moment, we really end up in a stalemate.

The reality is us investing in that, won’t be good experience for them or any investor because they’re not quite ready to be able to share in that stewardship and responsibility to build a great brand the way that it’s envisioned.

Anthony Codispoti (45:45)
Taylor, where do you see savory funds being in, gosh, we used to say five to 10 years, but that just seems so long. So call it the next two to four years.

Taylor DeHart (45:54)
I’m

Yeah, so I alluded to this before, savory will not depart from what it knows it’s good at. Our hallmark, our core, will always be finding the next generation of American restaurant brands and allowing them and giving them the resources that they need to be successful on a scale nationwide. That will always be our core. In the future, we might consider other ways in which we can expand on that. ⁓ Is there a way where we can benefit the rest of those who are in this massive industry through?

some type of a debt offering or some type of minority investment offering or something like that. But we’re not quite there yet. ⁓ We believe that we still have work to do in terms of staying very disciplined. Again, we know what we’re good at. know where we can have the most impact. So we still think there’s work to be done. I do believe that SAVERY and its reputation will continue to grow in the industry and we’ll continue to find ways to leverage that.

in the future in a way that we feel like we can be the best in that space. I will say we won’t jump into whether it’s an investment option or some type of operating or consulting support unless we feel like we can be the absolute best to do it.

Anthony Codispoti (47:06)
So I hear all that and I take that to mean that you want to continue to grow the brands that you’re already invested in while also looking for new opportunities to be involved.

Taylor DeHart (47:17)
That’s right. Yep. And we expect that there will be some other ancillary opportunities that grow out of that. And we’re excited to figure out what those are.

Anthony Codispoti (47:27)
that sounds mysterious. Are you ready to say more yet about those ancillary opportunities or is that a revisit down the road?

Taylor DeHart (47:36)
That’ll be revisit down the road. ⁓ We’ll figure that part out in coming years.

Anthony Codispoti (47:37)
Alright.

All right, fair enough. I want to shift gears now, Taylor, and talk about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life. Maybe it was something professional, career-oriented, maybe it was personal, maybe the two overlapped. How did you get through it and what did you learn, Taylor?

Taylor DeHart (47:59)
Yeah, I think I’ll probably make it. Obviously, everyone has personal challenges that they face. And for the group today, I think I’ll reference more of a professional challenge. I think one of the first deals that we ever did didn’t go as planned, and it started to unravel a little bit. And I remember being in that situation, and I alluded to this earlier, right? Find me an investor that hasn’t experienced some adversity in their portfolio. And I’ll tell you, they’ve not been doing it long enough.

But it was one of the first deals. I had a lot of pride of authorship and ownership in it. It was a partnership that I helped pull together. And ⁓ it started to unravel. ⁓ And when it first started to unravel, I looked at that situation. And I spent a lot of time mulling it over and trying to figure out, OK, why did this happen? Why did it play out the way that it did? What could we have done differently? And all of those are extremely important. ⁓

But what I felt was more important about shaping and growing from it was the quick pivot. ⁓ We immediately pivoted. Probably we spent maybe a day or so kind of mulling it over trying to figure it out. But we benefited from our, and I benefited from just my years in the industry, knowing exactly what we needed to do, realizing what we have versus what we don’t, ⁓ and finding an alternative solution fairly quickly. And so it was one of the situations where

of what could have been a pretty significant failure and what felt like a meaningful failure at the time. We just had to see what we had left in our arsenal and figure out what chips were still on the table, pick all those chips up and make the most out of the situation. And I won’t go too much more into detail in that specific one because there’s a lot of the people that were involved that are still involved with us today.

But it was a difficult situation for us to go through being young in my career. then it was now has become one of those moments in time where I draw the most inspiration from because it was one of those things that should have been a death blow and it ended up being one of the most important things we ever did as a firm. And we grew a capability that day that we’ll have for the future.

Anthony Codispoti (50:16)
Yeah. And I the listeners are like, I want the specifics. Give me the dirty details. But, you know, I respect why you want to kind of keep that under your hat. But can you say more about sort of that response? What did you say? 24 or 48 hours where it looked like this was it? This was the death blow and how you and the team kind of rallied together and what sort of those internal steps look like to turn it, you know, from disaster into a

Taylor DeHart (50:20)
the

Anthony Codispoti (50:45)
something that continues on.

Taylor DeHart (50:47)
Yes, I remember I was at a conference when I got this initial phone call and I’ve never returned to that conference because I get sick to my stomach every time I think about it. So I ended up spending just the time sitting in the hotel room, just kind of managing the situation. And the feeling was again, we take very seriously our obligation as investors, as a private equity investor. And I don’t think many people really think about it this way.

Anthony Codispoti (50:56)
Okay.

Taylor DeHart (51:17)
I think that this is a fairly unique view. Maybe they do, but again, I’ve used the word stewardship a lot. We’re responsible for investing the savings of other individuals that they’ve worked hard to, ⁓ to earn, whether that be for a large institution or a pension who’s investing on behalf of, you know, fire or police or anything else. ⁓ or whether it’s an individual who started a business, took massive amount of risk themselves and decided to entrust you, meaning Savory, with their capital.

And so that’s the immediate reaction. it’s like, my goodness, I wanted and did everything I could to be successful in this and to ensure that we, you know, we’re good stewards of this capital. and it’s kind of potentially falling apart. ⁓ and then you just take that moment and then you have to have a moment of realization and say adversity comes.

every single time. That’s kind what we reached about that 24 to 48 hours was we can no longer sit here and just mull it over because it’s over, it’s behind us. We have a decision we need to make. Are we going to just lay down or are we going to fight for that same cause that I just described to you just in a different way than we fought for it in the first place? And that’s really the shift that we took. we ended up ⁓ taking, like I said, what chips were still left on the table, which were the assets that we’d invested into.

and finding a way to convert us into another concept and found a way to ensure that we were able to take everything we’d invested and ensure that we keep that and our investors are able to keep that in a way that was valuable that also set them up for a successful sale in the future. ⁓ And so was phenomenal. It was very cool. It’s one of those situations where I don’t think that every investor can do this. A generalist investor that doesn’t have knowledge of

the space they’re investing in and all they’re doing is just allocating capital would have a really difficult time doing what we did. But we called upon.

Anthony Codispoti (53:18)
They wouldn’t understand

sort of the operational aspects of being able to reallocate those assets and how to do it, but actual strings that were available to pull.

Taylor DeHart (53:26)
Exactly. And so that’s where us being a specialist fund really helped us because we’ve been doing this for 17 years. So we knew what vendors to call. We knew how to repurpose equipment. We knew what types of businesses would use the same type of equipment. There so many things that we were able to do because of that specialist lens. And as I mentioned, part of being a great investor is when things don’t go right is ensuring that we maximize whatever we can. And that’s exactly what we did in this situation.

Huge lesson learned, but it was a pretty tough 48 hours trying to figure it out and mull it over, but it didn’t last long. And I’m super grateful for that experience. It’s shaped who we are today and will make us better in the future.

Anthony Codispoti (53:57)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I hope at some point you feel comfortable returning to that trade show. But ⁓ in the meantime, Taylor, what’s your superpower? How would you characterize that?

Taylor DeHart (54:11)
Thank

man, I would say I can take significant amount of complex inputs and find a solution that can as much as possible, check the box to solve for all of them. ⁓ you know, I, I kind of thrive in chaos and complexity. ⁓ I’ve learned a lot along the way, but just love problem solving. and, ⁓ yeah, I’d say, ⁓ you know, the other thing I would probably add is just bringing the team along for the ride.

and allowing others who are around me to participate in that. It’s extremely rewarding when you get to have a diverse array of portfolio companies, each of them having their own particular challenges that they’re facing, to be able to show up, see those, that complex criteria that we have to solve for, solve it, it works, growth happens, people are happy, jobs are created. It’s a pretty phenomenal experience. I’d say sometimes it helps me, sometimes I end up just…

There’s good and bad with all of your strengths and your superpower. Sometimes I’m solving problems for people that I probably shouldn’t. Other times I’m solving bigger problems for our organization. So I would say that’s my superpower.

Anthony Codispoti (55:25)
So if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re a guy who sees the chessboard pretty well. You understand how the pieces can move, how they can come together, how they can solve different problems, how they can all be used to kind of push forward towards a common goal. ⁓ Let me see. Two more questions here. How about some daily practices that you find helpful, Taylor? Maybe ⁓ something that gets you started in the day.

Taylor DeHart (55:30)
Yep.

That’s right.

Anthony Codispoti (55:54)
Maybe something that helps keep you on track when curveballs are thrown in your direction. What are some things that you find helpful to realize?

Taylor DeHart (56:04)
Yeah, and I’m going to share some advice that’s been helpful for me. ⁓ You know, I’m not so arrogant to think that this is what should apply to everybody, but in my mind, I’ve been in the same place since I graduated college, and that’s not a super popular path ⁓ into this day and age. And so my thought would be to commit. ⁓ Commit to something. Like, find what you’re going to commit to and stick to it. It’s really easy to jump side to side these days, and in many ways, you’re rewarded for it.

⁓ in the job community. But the success that I’ve been able to have is by choosing to commit to something, lean into it, spend the time ⁓ understanding, you know, what are the most important areas to spend your time and to invest into and then lean in. ⁓ Everybody I talked to on my team, just lean in. The last thing you want to do is lean out because that’s the only way to guarantee a mediocre or subpoor outcome. commit and lean in. The other thing, you know, I’m a family guy.

The other thing I would recommend in terms of just kind of daily habits is I include my wife in everything. ⁓ She feels, you she has other things that she’s focused on. She owns a business herself, but she is my biggest ⁓ advocate. She’s also the best consultant I have in my array of ⁓ the people who are around me. She’s a fantastic sounding board. She’s phenomenal strategist. And so whether it’s a spouse or whether it’s just your person, have somebody that’s there who ⁓

can keep you honest with yourself. It makes it so you won’t just believe in your own, you know, the own story you’re telling yourself, but will help you kind of call it how it is and really just find yourself a person who’s going be an accountability partner and someone you can share that with so that you can make good decisions. She’s consulted me on multiple occasions and helped me make a better decision for our organization and we all benefit from

Anthony Codispoti (57:53)
Is she actively involved in the business or this is something she’s doing it as a supportive spouse?

Taylor DeHart (57:58)
Just as a spask. No, so I include her on, you know, and obviously I keep things confidential that need to stay confidential. You know, but, you know, for the most part, when it comes to decisions we’re making for growth and, you know, whether it’s a portfolio company and leadership and things like that, she keeps me grounded and understands kind of what we’re going through.

Anthony Codispoti (58:19)
Yeah. Okay. Last question for you, Taylor, but before I ask it, I’m going to do two things. First, everybody listening, just pause for a second. Go hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great conversation here today with Taylor DeHart from Savory Fund. And I want you to continue to get more great interviews like this in your feed. Taylor, I also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you or the company or to follow your story or that of Savory’s. What would be the best way for that to happen?

Taylor DeHart (58:49)
Yeah. So, LinkedIn would be a great place to connect. that’s where, you know, you can continue to kind of follow along, ⁓ do everything we can to share, ⁓ updates along the way and brands we’re acquiring and they’re successful. you can reach out to me, the email, you can find that, you know, through LinkedIn as well. if you’re a restaurant operator, come to restaurantology. It’s savory’s unique conference that we host every single year here in Salt Lake city. So we are seventh year doing it. This year we have a private, concert.

taking place the day before, that everyone is welcome to join. And ⁓ it’s a conference built for operators between two and 20 units. So if you’re wanting to learn more about Sabri’s approach, but not just our approach, we’re going to bring people from across the industry to help you have the resources you need to be successful, whether we’re your future partner or not. ⁓ We’d love to have you come. We have a lot of our team members who are up on stage sharing best practices. that would be ⁓ probably the most effective for those who are in the industry.

And for those without, who just want to follow along for the story about, you know, a specialist fund, ⁓ kind of taking a niche and seeing it come to life, I think LinkedIn and obviously we have a strong PR ⁓ team, so follow us on other news channels as well.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:05)
So, Restaurantology, where do we find the link for that?

Taylor DeHart (1:00:10)
It’s restaurantologysummit.com. ⁓ yeah, that’s, that’s great for you can also go to stay refund.com and there’s a link that you can find there as well.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:20)
There’s a link inside there. And

when is the next one again, Taylor?

Taylor DeHart (1:00:24)
It’s September 10th and 11th of this year.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:27)
Okay,

great. We’ll find a link to that and include it in the show notes for everybody. So last question for you, Taylor. ⁓ You and I reconnect a year from now, and you’re celebrating. You’re super excited about something. What is that thing that you’re celebrating a year from now?

Taylor DeHart (1:00:44)
You know, we recently made an investment into a company who, you know, they’re phenomenal. They have everything it takes to be successful. Say we made the investment and allowed them to, this ⁓ is back on what I said before, really simplify their capital structure and give them the appropriate capital structure to be successful moving forward, all the resources that they need to be able to get back into a growth phase.

I think this company one year from now will be one of the most attractive restaurant companies, not just in the emerging elite phase, but in the entire country. And I’m excited to celebrate that with them when ⁓ we’re able to point towards our partnership as a moment where we were able to give them all the things they needed to be successful. It has massive potential. It’s going to continue to grow. And I’m excited for what they look like when you’re.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:17)
Wow.

Can you give us the name or do need to revisit with you in a year?

Taylor DeHart (1:01:37)
No, it’s Hawkers Asian Street Food. It is an incredible company ⁓ that has done some incredible things and we couldn’t have been more excited to put more fuel in the tank to see them grow into the future.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:51)
What is it specifically about this particular concept that has you so excited?

Taylor DeHart (1:01:56)
You know, I’d say it resonates and connects with Gen Z and millennials better than really any other casual dining in the country. ⁓ And so you have a lot of these, I would say some of the concepts that we are all ⁓ familiar with, that we’ve known since we were kids, let’s call them Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Chili’s, they’re phenomenal. They’re great brands, they’ve grown, ⁓ but I think that they’ve been around for some of those earlier generations.

This is kind of that next wave of casual dining where it’s experiential, it immerses you in Asian culture. It takes you to a place you’ve never been before and it allows you to explore while sitting in the core walls of restaurant. There very few restaurants that can successfully say they do that. We like to think that all of our portfolio does that. But I was grateful for the opportunity to partner with them and to be able to scale that and to give them the capital structure and resources they need to be successful.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:51)
Super cool. Well, Taylor DeHart from Savory Fund, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Taylor DeHart (1:02:59)
Thanks Anthony. Appreciate you having me on.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:02)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.