We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brittny Lowrey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brittny below.
Brittny, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?
We’ve made a few substantial jumps within The Happy Grilled Cheese company that warranted big decisions as our company grew to maintain quality of experience and food. First, we moved from food truck to a brick and mortar. That involved making sure the new restaurant was the same customer experience that we were known for and making sure every menu item stayed the same from each location it was being served. That meant the first week we opened bringing in our food truck staff to show familiar faces to the customers and establish comfort and brand recognition. Recipes and portioning tightened up for both so the product would look and taste the same. We also painted the restaurant to reflect the same paint design as the food truck. Our second restaurant was an easier move as we had that system in place to expand. The next test of our systems was opening a food truck in Austin, Texas where the supply chains, products, and brand awareness were not the same as Jacksonville. That was a fun challenge, as we got to develop some new menu items to reflect the Texas culture (hello scratch made queso!). Anything we couldn’t directly replicate recipe wise we changed on the menu so that it wasn’t the same name as the Jacksonville item. Our newest venture, Dine Happy, is a sister brand to The Happy Grilled Cheese but is an organic, all natural spin off. Some menu items are familiar (The Bacon Mac is a sibling to the Mac Melt / Daddy of the Mac) but are very different recipes and have different ingredients. We don’t use anything with food dyes, we use hormone free cheeses, cage free eggs, and all locally baked breads. It has been a fun new market for us to explore, especially being able to tackle vegan options and be more available for food allergy concerns. It’s harder to do vegan / gluten free at The Happy Grilled Cheese locations due to volume and small kitchens. Consistency in experience is always forefront for us as we manage the locations.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and moved to Baton Rouge in 2005 to attend LSU. I graduated in 2009 and was working for a spa franchise based in New Orleans at the time. Part of my job included new store openings, buildouts. and market evaluations of locations. I moved to Jacksonville to continue that work. After ten years in the spa industry, and a strong foundation in building and managing small businesses from a really amazing corporate office, I was ready to make the jump to a local business and pursue my passion of being involved in food. I was working for Jax Restaurant Reviews as a side project and had met Anthony Hashem, the founder and my partner in HGC. At the time he was ready to move from food truck only to brick and mortar, so the expansion was a perfect opportunity for us. I pretty much drove him crazy until he hired me on as an office manager to start and throughout the years me buying into the company became a natural next step. I absolutely never get tired of getting up and cooking every day. It will sound cliche, but it doesn’t feel like work. The Happy Grilled Cheese over the last ten years has become a staple in the community and we’ve made so many memories. We’ve served at weddings of clients who met at our food truck on their first date, we’ve been on a customer’s Christmas card, we’ve served at huge festivals, we’ve served at so many birthdays. We’ve always said “it’s not just grilled cheese” and we operate by that statement. You don’t know what serving that meal to someone may mean in the scale of their day. Fun, happy, cheesy comfort is our brand.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Respecting your team and understanding that they don’t exist just to work is so paramount to keeping good people. Family and life come first, work provides money to enjoy it. So many bosses act as if employees are there to serve them and it’s so absurd. Employees keep our companies running and recognizing that value is key.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
We value retention. Happy, repeat customers bring their friends and family and are excited about your brand because they are a part of it. Knowing their names, remembering their orders, and visiting with them creates value and appreciation. Many of our customers come in multiple times a week and we love that. We have long term customers that have been coming to eat with us for ten years. That is what helps growth the most. Those customers are ambassadors.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thehappygrilledcheese.com
- Instagram: @the_happy_grilled_cheese, @atxhappygrilledcheese, @dinehappyjax
- Facebook: The Happy Grilled Cheese