Fast Casual Executive Summit
Savory co-founder Shauna Smith and CEO Clay Dover will share insights on the company’s “Savry System,” a roadmap on building a management infrastructure that handles growth at the upcoming Fast Casual Executive Summit taking place October 4-6 in Arlington, Texas.
Image: Willie Lawless, Connect Media
July 13, 2026 By Judy Motley – Editor: RetailCustomerExperience.com and DigitalSignageToday.com, connect media
Growing a restaurant brand requires more than loads of money. A strong strategy is needed to pursue hyper-growth.
There is a successful strategy underway at Savory Fund where leaders have created a repeatable framework that aims to professionalize brands without taking away the soul.
Savory Fund launched eight years ago and the private equity firm now has 13 brands in its portfolio, including Pincho’s, Mo’Betah’s Hawaiian Style Food, Houston TX Hot Chicken and Via 313 Pizzeria. It partners with brands to help them grow without losing what makes brands great.
Savory Fund’s growth strategy is the focus of a session talk, “From Capital to Culture: What It Really Takes to Grow a Restaurant Brand“Upcoming Fast Casual Executive SummitTaking place October 4-6 in Arlington, Texas.
Session Panelist Shauna Smith, Co-Founder of Savory Fund, and CEO of Savory Fund clay doverWill share insights on the company’s “Savoury System”, which is a roadmap on building a management infrastructure that handles growth, as well as why most brands fail at scale and operational failure points.
Smith and Dover will detail how to navigate the high-risk transition of control and protect brand identity at the same time, as well as what traditional private equity gets wrong about restaurant culture.
Reasons for failure while scaling
In a preview interview, Dover, the former Velvet Taco CEO who took over the CEO role earlier this year, shared some insight into why brands fail en masse.
A top reason? Is growing very fast.
“At Savory, we see this all the time – a concept with strong AUVs in two or three locations gets to 15, and everything that made it special falls apart. The founder’s instinct is what makes the brand special, and the trend isn’t repeated,” Dover said in an email interview.
He said the infrastructure is replicable: proven unit economics, documented systems, a leadership bench and a supply chain built for the tenth restaurant, not the second.
“Growth exposes weakness; it never fixes it. If the model isn’t consistently profitable at the unit level before expansion, scale exacerbates the problem exponentially. That’s why we won’t add locations until the foundation – people, processes and P&L – can carry the weight. The brands that win at scale are not the ones that grow the fastest,” Dover said.
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According to the CEO of Savory, one key to success in growing a brand is to hire ahead of the growth rate.
“Build the leadership bench before you need it — bring in multi-unit operators, finance and human resources leadership when you have five restaurants, not 25,” Dover said. “It seems expensive at the time, but promoting your best restaurant manager to a role they’ve never had, mid-expansion, is far more expensive. I’ve learned this the hard way, and have also experienced the value of investing in it ahead of time.”
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About Judy Motel
Judy Motel is the editor of RetailCustomerExperience.com and DigitalSignageToday.com at Connect Media. He is an award-winning editor, reporter and blogger who has worked for nearly four decades in top media including AOL, Information Week and Internet News, as well as leading technology providers including HP. He has written about everything from breaking news to in-depth industry trends and reported on technology long before the advent of the Internet, including the first smartphone. When she’s not sharing insights on trends in digital signage deployment and retail customer experience she’s at the beach or watching the latest live murder trial.