I started Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint in 2009 with my childhood best friend Mike Sabin. We were both feeling at the end of our ropes with our jobs at the time, and I called him after one particularly bad day. In the space of one conversation, we decided, let’s finally open the bar together?! Initially, we just thought it would be fun to run a bar for a while. We never imagined it would turn into what it has become today: a company with multiple locations across Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, with over 500 employees.

The early days were wild and fun, and we learned as we went. Eventually, however, as we started to experience success and grow, and especially when we surpassed 10 locations, we started to see signs of the issue that all small companies face as they scale – we were outgrowing our initial systems and processes and seeing decreases in efficiency and profits across the board. In fact, one day our President, Jason Owenby and I realized that we were making more profit with five stores than we were with ten. It was time for a change, but we didn’t have a comprehensive plan.