In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb, chats with Shawn Lalehzarian, co-founder of The Red Chickz, a West Coast Nashville hot chicken brand that opened its first unit in Los Angeles in 2018.

Lalehzarian began his restaurant career as a dishwasher in a local restaurant in San Diego in 1998. He eventually moved on to be an assistant manager and moved upward into a senior ops position with HMS Host, opening more than 50 restaurants in airports around the nation and in Canada.

He found two partners in 2014 and eventually opened The Red Chickz in 2018.

"When we decided to get into a hot chicken concept, we flew out to Nashville and asked basically everyone from the Uber driver to the bellman at the hotel if they knew anyone in their family that knows how to make Nashville hot chicken," Lalehzarian said. "And some of those folks invited us to their homes and showed us the homestyle of Nashville hot. So what we serve in our restaurant today is exactly what we brought back from Nashville."

What sets The Red Chickz apart from other chicken concepts? Lalehzarian said there are "bold" differentiators.

"Our product is the crunchiest friend chicken in the hot chicken market, and frankly in the fried chicken market," he said. "From the start we have had a pretty innovative menu in the segment, and we are trying to keep it that way."

That includes serving products like shrimp and chicken and waffles, salads, loaded veggie plates and French toast.

To learn more about The Red Chickz aesthetic, menu development and out-of-the-box operations, click the link at the top to watch the podcast in its entirety.

Beverages have become big business as boba, dirty sodas, coffee and kombucha take center stage on the franchising market. Juice It Up, which has been selling cold and raw-pressed juices, smoothies, açaí bowls. toasts and bagels for more than 30 years, has been an industry leader.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of QSRweb and Pizza Marketplace, talks to Susan Taylor, president and CEO of Juice It Up, based in Southern California, about how the brand has been leading the beverage market. Juice It Up recently opened its 100th unit in Gardnerville, Nevada.

Taylor said the definition of a meal replacement has changed since the launch of the juice brand, and smoothies and juices are no longer sweet treats after a workout. Instead, they're nutritious and fill the needs of those looking for more protein, living vegan lifestyles or needing fuel for the day.

"It's interesting the way that the segment has grown," Taylor said in the podcast. "Beverages as a complete segment (includes) everything from coffee to smoothies and juice bars. I think that consumers today are much more sophisticated and really looking for different things to be able to fuel their lifestyle that has kind of expanded the category.

"Depending on where you are in your health and wellness lifestyle journey, you can come in and you can do a fresh-made order juice using beets, celery, carrots, ginger, turmeric, anything that you want to be able to have in that, or you can build your own. And there's a pretty dedicated core of customers that really look for that."

Gen Z and millennial consumers have been shaping beverage trends as of late.

The generations that are coming up now look at beverages in a totally different way from just want something right now," Taylor added. "There's an experience. They're just they're thinking about what it provides to them from a nutritional standpoint to just how they feel like they're treating themselves as well, too."

To learn more about how Juice It Up is innovating the beverage industry, listen to the podcast in its entirety.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb, talks with Brian Simowitz, president, and Andie Smirl, director of franchise sales, for Houston TX Hot Chicken. The Nashville hot chicken concept launched during COVID in 2020 in Las Vegas. The brand now has 31 units.

Part of what draws diners to the concept is its electric brand energy. With more than 400,000 social media followers, Houston TX Hot Chicken seems to be striking a nerve with consumers.

"The energy that you get from that level of social media followers that are engaging with our brand on a daily basis is unbelievable. So, you know, and it gives us a lot of relevance with new franchisees coming in as well, because they look at it and go, man, this brand is crazy," Simowitz said during the podcast. "And I'll share with you, quite honestly, we get a lot of potential franchise leads just from our social media and how big that social media footprint is."

Smirl joined the brand when it had already sold more than 100 units and said a lot of the brand's leads are truly organic.

"A lot of our leads are truly organic," she said during the podcast. "They are coming in because (potential franchisees) either tried the food or they've seen our social media. They've seen our content, either on LinkedIn or Instagram, something like that. So we're really lucky that we don't really have to sell that part of it. It's already really exciting to just see the brand. So I think that we get to be pretty strategic in kind of how we decide to grow.

"We don't want to just throw one restaurant across the country where our support is in Vegas. We want to be available and ideally in the same time zone for a little while at least where we can just kind of strategically grow to best support our franchisees. So we're pretty lucky in that and we don't take that for granted, but we want to be really smart about who we partner with."

To learn more about how Houston TX Hot Chicken attracts top-tier franchisees, what the brand's leaders look for in franchise partners and what the future holds for the company, listen to the podcast in its entirety.