What if the reason you survive your own mistakes has nothing to do with how smart you are, and everything to do with your product?
Ashley Morris spent years in finance before he bought the sandwich shop he was obsessed with in college. Today he’s the CEO of Capriotti’s and Wing Zone. He’ll tell you the real asset he bought was product-market fit so undeniable it gave him room to make every mistake in the book.
In this conversation, we get into why product-market fit forgives the mistakes that sink everyone else, why owning your data means nothing until you know what to do with it, and what actually transfers when you scale into a second brand.
If you’re grinding against the current and can’t figure out why, this one shows you where to look first.
That’s Ashley Morris. To learn more about Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, visit capriottis.com.
The Playbook Takeaways
- Product-market fit is the asset you are actually buying. Ashley bought the sandwich shop he had been obsessed with in college. What he really acquired was demand so undeniable it gave him room to make every mistake in the book and still survive.
- Owning your data means nothing until you know what to do with it. Collecting guest data is the easy half. The operators who win are the ones who have decided in advance what decision the data is supposed to drive.
- Not everything transfers to the second location. Scaling a concept means working out which parts of the first restaurant’s success are portable and which were local, personal or accidental.
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Keep going: restaurant concepts worth building, how to build a restaurant business plan, and restaurant technology worth paying for.
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About the Author: Josh Kopel is a Michelin-awarded restaurateur and the host of the Full Comp podcast. He helps independent operators build more profitable, more durable restaurants — more about Josh or learn with Josh.
