After more than two decades of being a franchisee, Brandon Gawthorp is ready to be a franchor now.
The Houston-based founder of the fast-casual Urban Bird Hot Chicken concept has 16 units, as of Monday, and expects to have 29 company-owned units open across Texas by the end of the year.
But that, apparently, wasn’t enough to keep him busy.
In December, he and partner Chantal Gawthorp acquired the seven-unit Bun Slut, a fast-casual smashburger concept in Texas that Brandon felt had potential as the next concept in a multi-brand portfolio he plans to build.
Both brands will begin franchising, perhaps by next year. But first, the Gawthorps have a lot more restaurants to build.
To understand what Brandon has planned, however, it’s necessary to go back in time a bit.
Brandon and Chantal were Wingstop franchisees. They previously had about 32 units in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. And things were going well.
But Brandon had always dreamed of being a multi-unit operator, so they decided to invest in franchising the fast-casual pizza brand MidiCi.
That proved to be an expensive mistake.
After spending a lot more than they had been led to believe was needed to get their first MidiCi location opened, the restaurant failed. The franchisor (MidiCi Group) later filed bankruptcy.
And the Gawthorps were left with an empty end-cap location equipped with two pizza ovens and a $15,000 per month rent. Brandon set out to find another tenant to take over the space, but it couldn’t be just any concept, because of the pizza ovens.
Meanwhile, in 2018, he and Chantal took a trip to Las Vegas, where they tried a spicy Nashville hot chicken sandwich limited-time offer at Bruxie Chicken & Waffles there.
“I didn’t know what hot chicken was at the time, but I love spicy,” he said. “I thought it was amazing.”
So he came back to Houston and started hunting for hot chicken—not necessarily to open a restaurant, but because he craved it. There wasn’t much to be found, just a food truck—where there was an hour-long wait.
Then, in the same retail center that housed his empty MidiCi, Brandon noticed that a Tom & Chee grilled-cheese restaurant had closed in an in-line spot.
Brandon went to the landlord and asked if he could swap spaces. “I guess because I had been paying rent for a year without being open—nobody does that—he said, ‘Okay, let’s talk.’”
Brandon said he convinced the landlord he could make a really great Nashville hot chicken restaurant in the in-line spot. “I had never cooked it before,” he said. “But I convinced him I could.”
The landlord made the swap. Brandon just had to get the Nashville hot chicken concept open by May 2020.
Of course, then COVID-19 hit.
The pandemic delay actually helped, giving him more time to develop what became Urban Bird, said Brandon.
“I had to create the recipe, which I thought would be easy, but it took 60 experiments just to come up with the chicken,” he said.
The menu was rounded out with waffles and fries, a Hot Cheeto-topped mac and cheese and Kale Slaw in a maple vinaigrette, as well as shakes and frozen custard.
The first Urban Bird opened in September 2020, and sales began to climb. The Gawthorps sold their Wingstops and decided to grow the hot chicken brand.
Urban Bird Hot Chicken offers tenders with varying spice levels, loaded fries, shakes and frozen custard. | Photo: Shutterstock.
“I had been a franchisee for 21 years and I wanted to be a franchisor,” he said. “It’s so much better being in control of everything.”
Last year, Brandon stumbled across the Bun Slut concept while looking for locations to convert to Urban Bird. Nasser Holdings, the owner of the then-six-unit Bun Slut, with a seventh under construction, was ready to sell, and Brandon saw it as an incredibly simple brand to operate. It was also open until 4 a.m., attracting a brisk late-night business.
Now with an eighth location underway, Bun Slut needed a few tweaks, like better buns and adding seasoned fries, he said. Brandon plans to develop the systems and training needed to smooth operations for growth, as has been built into Urban Bird from the start. And then look at franchising.
And perhaps more acquisitions, he added.
Within these two brands, Brandon has also been building incremental sales with virtual brands.
At Urban Bird, for example, the cases of jumbo chicken tenders he purchased were about 75% jumbo tenders and 25% smaller tender pieces.
So rather than piling the smaller pieces into a sandwich, Brandon came up with a loaded-fries dish that included mac and cheese topped with the smaller hot chicken pieces, then drizzled with sauce.
“We called it Urban Fries” he said. “I put it on the menu and overnight it became our No. 1 seller.”
That became a secondary virtual concept called Chronic Fries, with a line of loaded fries with various toppings. It’s available on the Urban Bird menu, if you flip it over, but it also operates as a separate brand on DoorDash, though the food comes from Urban Bird’s kitchens.
“Last time I checked, when we had 12 stores open, we did a total of about $1 million in sales per year, just with the virtual brand,” he said.
Now Brandon is testing an Instagram-able slider with a bright red poppyseed bun on the Bun Slut menu. That could lead to another virtual secondary brand that Brandon hopes to call Slapbox Sliders.
The new sliders at Bun Slut could become a virtual brand. | Photo courtesy of Bun Slut.
Brandon is very aware how crowded the hot chicken category is getting.
But consumers are still loving their fried chicken tenders with varying levels of spice, as is made evident by reports that the rapidly growing Dave’s Hot Chicken, out of Los Angeles, could be bought by Roark Capital for $1 billion.
The Gawthorps see plenty of room for growth, with hot chicken, smashburgers, sliders and whatever else comes their way.
“Where you win is just by being really good,” Brandon said.