Discover how Jason Morgan, CEO of ChopShop, scaled his restaurant brand by putting people first. See how clear career paths, a strong culture, and internal promotions reduce turnover and drive sustainable growth.
Behind every successful restaurant expansion story lies one unshakeable truth: growth doesn’t happen without great people.
In a webinar, Fourth’s CEO, Clinton Anderson, sat down with Jason Morgan, CEO of ChopShop, to discuss how the brand scaled from three units to more than 25 locations, and why a “people-first” approach is the real growth multiplier.
Jason’s view is clear: “Our team took everything we hated about past jobs… feeling underappreciated, underpaid and growth-stifled, and built the opposite culture here.”
That philosophy has paid off. While industry turnover often exceeds 130-150% annually, ChopShop’s hourly turnover is about 97%, roughly half the norm. The average GM tenure is over 4.5 years, and more than 80% of general managers were promoted internally.
One recent workforce study by Black Box Intelligence found that hourly turnover across limited-service restaurants dropped from peaks above 170% in 2022 to about 135% in Q3 2024. Fermag also notes that replacing an hourly worker costs roughly $2,300, while replacing a general manager can exceed $16,000.
Those numbers make ChopShop’s retention metrics not just impressive, they’re financially strategic.
One of the most impactful moves ChopShop made was formalizing career pathing for hourly employees. Their internal development map shows every possible step, from cashier to shift lead, assistant manager, general manager, and beyond.
This gives staff a clear line of sight into their future and helps managers coach toward goals.
Jason’s approach reflects a broader workplace shift that Harvard Business Review calls the move from career ladders to career portfolios, creating flexible, multi-directional growth opportunities that let employees build skills across roles and disciplines, not just climb vertically.
For ChopShop, this philosophy has been transformative. Employees don’t just see a job, they see a career in hospitality worth investing in.
Jason and his team introduced AGM-in-Training programs to prepare high-potential employees for management before a new store even opens. It’s an intentional strategy to reduce risk and shorten the ramp-up period during expansion.
While it costs more upfront, the payoff comes in readiness and cultural alignment. Managers are trained in ChopShop’s systems, values, and service model long before they step into a new role. That continuity is what keeps quality consistent as the brand grows.
As Jason put it during the webinar:
“We’d rather invest in readiness than scramble when new stores open. Having people who already live and breathe the brand makes every launch smoother.”
Jason’s hiring rule is simple: if a candidate hasn’t eaten at ChopShop, it’s a red flag. “You have to love the product to represent it,” he said.
That mindset, hiring for belief, not just skill, has helped maintain an authentic culture even as the company expands into new markets.
Clinton Anderson echoed this point during the discussion:
“People who love the brand give that extra 10%. It’s not just a job to them, it’s personal.”
ChopShop has also built a reputation as a career-launching brand. Jason openly supports team members who “outgrow” the company, writing references, celebrating their next chapters, and keeping alumni connections alive.
“It builds our reputation as a growth culture,” he explained. “People know if they come here and do well, they’ll leave stronger.”
That generosity fuels retention too. People stay where they feel invested in, not trapped.
In a tight labor market, ChopShop’s results stand out:
It’s proof that investing in people pays compounding returns. Culture isn’t just a feel-good factor, it’s a financial driver.
A recent Forbes report found that employees who feel deeply connected to their organization’s culture are four times more likely to be engaged and almost six times more likely to recommend their workplace to others.
ChopShop’s people-first approach proves the same point in practice: strong culture doesn’t just retain talent, it accelerates performance and growth.
Want to hear this all straight from Jason? Watch the full webinar on-demand and discover how ChopShop is achieving profitable, people-first growth.
At Fourth, we believe scalable growth starts with empowered teams. Our workforce management platform helps operators create predictable schedules, reduce burnout, and improve communication, so managers can focus on coaching, not firefighting.
By integrating labor forecasting, scheduling, and employee engagement in one system, we help operators turn workforce chaos into consistency.
If you’re ready to build the kind of team that grows with you, not away from you, we’d love to help.
Christina Lau (Host, Fourth):
Everyone, welcome to our webinar today. Our session is all about the growth playbook for restaurant CEOs with an exciting guest speaker I will introduce momentarily. So we’ll go ahead and get things started.
I’m Christina from the Fourth team here as your host. And just as people are joining and signing on, I’ll use this time to cover a quick few housekeeping notes. So first is that this is being recorded in case you do want to re-watch it, share with someone, be interested, or if you have to step away at any point.
We will email you the recording afterwards.
And second is if you have any questions… if you’re joining us live, you will see an option to submit a question towards the bottom right of your platform.
So now to get to what you came for. I will introduce our speakers to let you know who you’ll be hearing from.
So first, our guest speaker, Jason Morgan, the CEO of Chop Shop. Thank you. And we also have Clinton Anderson, the CEO of Fourth, who will be moderating the conversation with Jason.
So Jason, how about I let you give the audience some information about your background and you can also tell them a little bit about Chop Shop. And then I’ll let you take it from there, Clinton.
Jason Morgan (CEO, Chop Shop):
Okay, great. Thanks Christina. My name is Jason Morgan, CEO of Original Chop Shop.
I’ve been doing this for about nine years now. We bought the brand in 2016—three units—and I’ve grown it to 26.
Prior to this, I’ve spent most of my career in hospitality in some shape or form. After a brief stint of trying to be an accountant for about a year and a half, I transitioned into casino property and worked in corporate finance. That led to a corporate finance job at another casino company, into a hotel company, and then to Zoës Kitchen in 2008. I was the first employee there after private equity bought the business. Helped grow that from 20 to 150 locations, took it public in 2014, and then left about a year and a half after going public to do this at Chop Shop.
My hope is that we can replicate the success we had at Zoës, and we’re off to a really good start.
Our brand is a better-for-you, fast-casual concept. We’re at the counter, we bring the food to the table. It is primarily protein bowls—about 40 percent of the mix. We also do salads, sandwiches. The key to the program is we have a beverage component as well with fresh-squeezed juices and protein shakes. We do all stables, we do breakfast all day. So one of the biggest menus in fast casual today. A little more complicated than some of the walk-the-line concepts that are out there, but we think we’ve got something pretty special.
We’re going to add another store this year and at least four stores next year. So we will be 31 or so stores by the end of next year.
Clinton Anderson (CEO, Fourth):
Thanks, Jason. Hey, everyone. It’s great to be with you again. My name is Clinton Anderson. I’m the CEO here at Fourth. I’ve been in this role for about six years.
Fourth, as many of you know, is a leading provider of software solutions to the restaurant and hospitality industry. Our goal is to help our customers be successful in driving profitability and being efficient—managing labor, managing inventory, and basically providing them with tools they need to deliver their vision.
And so I’m really grateful to have Jason with us here today. It’s rare to have companies that are beloved and growing quickly, that can repeat that success year after year. Jason, one of the reasons I was so excited to have you join our session is… the success at Zoës was amazing.
I’ve only met a handful of brands where there was such a strong customer affinity for the brand. And you guys took that to huge heights. And now you’re doing the same thing at Chop Shop. When you talk to customers about Chop Shop, they love the place. They speak about its differentiation.
And to be able to take what is a relatively complicated concept in terms of delivering a great experience for the customer, and be able to grow that from a few stores to now north of 30 stores next year—it’s amazing.
The topic today is an interesting one. We’re going to talk about how to scale a restaurant business. Every restaurateur I ever talk to has dreams of taking one store, two stores, five stores, and turning it into something much bigger—expanding across the city, across the state, into multiple states, and ultimately national, even international reach.
But it’s not easy, especially in today’s environment. Many restaurant chains are seeing flat to negative same-store sales. Labor is tough. Inventory costs remain high. It’s not an easy time to drive profitability and growth at the same time.
But we’re glad to have you here today, Jason, because we’re going to dig into that topic. The questions are going to be really around: how do you grow a business? How do you scale it and make it successful? How do you replicate early success? And from there, after we talk about your experience and the lessons you’ve learned, we’d love to then say: well, look, how could technology help? How can you use technology as a multiplier to replicate early success to far-reaching success?
Second, beyond technology, how do you scale great teams?
And lastly, AI. Everyone’s talking about AI—how are you thinking about using advanced AI capabilities in your business?
So with that, let’s dive in.
Clinton Anderson:
The first question I have for you, Jason—look, you’ve done this twice now in the restaurant industry. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned? What has your experience been in terms of what it takes to really drive success in expanding restaurants? Tell me a little about your path, what you experienced along the way, and maybe some of the harder lessons you learned.
Jason Morgan:
Wow, that’s a pretty open-ended question to start with. But in my mind, there is a playbook here. And it’s a playbook that I think a lot of people have pieces of.
Turns out it’s a lot about execution. Like, a lot of people talk about the same things around the restaurant industry. You could talk to 10 other CEOs—they’re all working on the same five or six things in their business.
But not everybody’s winning, right? The people that are winning are executing a little bit better than the other folks.
We talked a little bit before we started about LinkedIn, and I’ve got a post teed up to follow this next week about what the playbook is like—point by point—for growing a business.
To me, one of the key things, and I feel very fortunate, is that both brands I’ve been involved with are unique. Zoës—there wasn’t really anything exactly like Zoës during the time we were growing that business. And there’s nothing exactly like Chop Shop in terms of what we’re doing with a large, diverse menu.
Most brands today are very singularly focused in terms of what they’re offering from a food product. I feel like we started at an advantage with both brands by having something unique that filled a niche no one else was doing.
If you told me I had to run a brand selling hot chicken or pizza or burgers, I’d probably have a harder time doing that. Because it’s just harder to stand out when there are 10, 20, 50 concepts within a two- or three-mile radius trying to do the exact same thing.
So a lot of it starts with the brand. Does your brand have something unique that no one else is doing? That’s rare. It doesn’t happen often.
The second thing—I came from a finance background, so a lot of my learnings are more finance and data-driven versus a lot of early startup restaurateurs who are creative types. They love the food, they built the menu, they built the brand. I probably couldn’t do that from scratch.
But if you gave me something that has all those components in place, I can take it from there and put the playbook in place.
One of the key things people miss—I see this in private equity-backed companies and others—is they don’t understand their unit-level economic model. They don’t know their breakeven sales. They don’t understand how margin improves as sales increase. They don’t understand cash-on-cash returns.
I’ve seen so many companies where the numbers just don’t work. And yet people say: let’s open 10 more. And I’ll say: why? It doesn’t make money. Stop.
You need to find a concept that is unique. And you need something that works financially. If you don’t have those two things, you shouldn’t be building stores.
Clinton Anderson:
Yeah, maybe both, right? Because as I hear your description, you’ve highlighted three things: execution, brand differentiation, and financial viability.
You’ve got to start with execution. If you don’t have an operating model that works, expanding it just multiplies problems. Expansion of an ineffective operating model is a disaster.
Second, you need a compelling brand or unique concept that resonates with customers.
And third, the math has to work. If you don’t understand your unit economics, your fixed and variable costs, you may be expanding blind and losing money.
Jason Morgan:
Exactly. And another key lesson is about entering new markets. At Chop Shop, our home market was Phoenix, where we saw strong sales and margins. But when we expanded to Dallas, I expected new stores to do 50–70% of Phoenix sales in the first year.
Too many operators assume new markets will open at full volume day one. That almost never happens. And when the stores open slow, but you’ve signed leases and built a financial model based on higher volumes, you get overextended. Many brands end up retreating back to their home markets.
I always joke: if you look at the “hot concepts” list each year, maybe three to five out of 50 have actually doubled or tripled their base. It’s not as easy as people think.
You need patience, capital, and the ability to withstand a slow start.
Clinton Anderson:
That’s a really good point. Many founders are creative, visionary types, but expansion requires combining that creativity with operations and finance. Otherwise, they get rose-colored glasses about success in the home market and assume it will translate quickly.
You mentioned expecting 50–70% volumes. That’s sobering. I’ve even seen cases where it’s just 25–30% at launch. It underscores how critical capital structure is.
Jason Morgan:
Yes. Most small growth concepts like ours rely on equity, not debt. Banks won’t lend unless you’re generating $1–2 million EBITDA, and personal guarantees are risky. So you need equity sponsors who believe in the vision and the team.
Another lesson: you need to open four to six stores in a new market within two to three years. That’s expensive, but it creates critical mass, builds awareness, and justifies above-store leadership. Without it, you stay slow and unprofitable.
At Zoës, we had a scattered early footprint. At Chop Shop, we deliberately built strong bases in Phoenix and Dallas first. That gave us the profitability to withstand slow starts in Houston and Atlanta.
And we were fortunate that Dallas—our second market—was also where our team lived. Having the whole team in-market to support stores, hire, and ensure culture was huge.
Clinton Anderson:
That’s a great segue into the team discussion. People often underestimate how critical team is to scaling. How have you approached building and scaling your team?
Jason Morgan:
This is something I’m really proud of. Our team took all the things we hated from past jobs—feeling underappreciated, underpaid, growth-stifled—and built the opposite culture here.
We emphasize growth mindset and career pathing. We rolled out training that maps progression from cashier to shift lead to assistant manager to GM to regional manager. And it resonated so much more than I expected.
Our results: hourly turnover around 97%—about half of Chipotle’s. GM tenure over 4.5 years. Top third of hourly staff tenure 2.5 years. Over 80% of GMs promoted internally.
We also created interim roles like AGM-in-training to have people ready for the next opening. That costs more upfront, but pays off in readiness, culture alignment, and reduced training cost.
At Zoës, we overstretched regional managers with 10–13 stores each. At Chop Shop, we keep it to 4–6. That’s made a huge difference in execution quality.
And we’re careful to hire people who love the brand. If someone comes to interview and hasn’t eaten at Chop Shop, that’s a red flag.
Clinton Anderson:
I love that. People who love the brand give that extra 10%. It’s not just a job. And when you create opportunities for them to grow, they stay longer.
Jason Morgan:
Exactly. On the corporate side, I hire “doers,” not executives who just build layers under them. We’ve kept the team lean, provided growth opportunities, and accepted that some people will outgrow us and move on—and that’s okay. I even write references for them.
We’ve already had people go on to bigger roles in the industry, and that builds our reputation as a growth culture.
Clinton Anderson:
That’s fantastic. Let’s move to another enabler: technology. How do you think about it?
Jason Morgan:
My fourth hire at Chop Shop was an IT lead, which most people thought was crazy. But I believed scalability depended on it.
We replaced the POS quickly, added inventory/back office systems, and launched digital ordering early—even overpaying to get it. We also added a data warehouse (Mirus) so we could do real reporting, not rely on canned POS reports.
When COVID hit, even at 18 units, we looked like a 150-unit brand. We had digital ordering, our app was launching, and we were ready. Today, 74% of sales are digital, and 40% of transactions have a loyalty number attached.
That tech foundation has been huge for scaling.
Clinton Anderson:
I couldn’t agree more. Tech gives managers the tools they need, especially in new stores, and creates consistency.
One last topic: AI. Everyone’s talking about it. What’s your perspective?
Jason Morgan:
We’re still experimenting. Some AI guest response tools aren’t great yet. But we’re rolling out an AI-powered prep planning tool that I’m really excited about—it will help optimize kitchen time, reduce waste, and lower breakeven costs.
Beyond that, I’ve played around with ChatGPT for press releases and posts, but nothing major yet.
Clinton Anderson:
That’s okay—you don’t need to figure it all out yourself. Vendors should embed AI into their tools. We’ve been deploying AI across our product suite, and the combination of algorithms plus data from thousands of restaurants creates powerful insights in labor and inventory.
It can make young managers much more effective and free up their time to coach teams and delight guests.
Christina Lau (Host, Fourth):
Perfect timing. We do have a couple of questions from the audience, so let’s take those before we wrap up.
Audience Question: What is your playbook when you enter a totally new market?
Jason Morgan:
We typically start inside the city loop with the first location. We seed the market with proven leaders from another market who move there and live it daily. From there, we focus on execution and let growth be organic—word of mouth, social sharing. We don’t spend much on marketing.
And, as mentioned earlier, we try to open 4–6 stores relatively quickly to build awareness and continuity.
Audience Question: How do you make sure scheduling stays consistent across stores?
Jason Morgan:
At Zoës we used a flat labor percentage, but that didn’t scale well. At Chop Shop, we built a regression model using six months of store data.
On the x-axis: daily sales. On the y-axis: hours worked. From that, we derived a formula: a fixed number of hours to open a store, then add an extra hour per $150 in sales after $2,500.
This keeps us within 1% of labor forecasts every week. Managers distribute hours by peak (lunch, dinner, breakfast), then adjust in real time if sales beat or miss forecasts.
Clinton Anderson:
That’s a great example. And we’ve actually built AI labor scheduling tools that do exactly this for managers who don’t have finance backgrounds. It’s a huge opportunity for the industry.
Jason Morgan:
Yes—and I think back-of-house labor is the next frontier. With prep planning tools, we can better allocate time for cutting, prepping, and line service. I think we’ll unlock 10–20% efficiency improvements.
Clinton Anderson:
Exactly. These tools are maturing fast, and the next few years are going to be exciting for the industry.
Clinton Anderson:
Jason, thank you so much for joining today. Your blend of financial discipline, operational execution, and focus on people and culture is rare. I learned a lot personally, and I know our audience did too.
Jason Morgan:
Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
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